“How do I register?”
“Any name but your own. Try George Tefft.”
The old man nodded, pulled himself laboriously from his chair. “You won’t be too long?” Liddell shook his head, watched the man shuffle to the door, where he stopped with his hand on the knob. “You think somebody spotted me and tipped them off? You think that’s why they set the trap?”
“If it is a trap.”
The old man thought about it, nodded his head. “It’s a trap. Lee’s been dead six months. He couldn’t have died Monday.” He opened the door, walked through to the outer office, and closed the door behind him.
Liddell picked up the clipping again, scowled at the face that stared back at him. The caption read: “Know this man? Police have announced that John Doe, victim of a hit and run accident at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 58th Street early this morning has still been unidentified at press time. He carried no identification when the body was found.”
2
The morgue was at the end of a long, silent corridor in the basement of City Hospital. There were two doors at the far end, one lettered Medical Examiner on frosted glass, the other opening into a brightly lighted room, painted a sterile white. A tall, thin bald man sat at a white enamelled desk, biting on the almost invisible nail of his left thumb while making entries in a ledger. The unshaded bulb in the ceiling caused the attendant’s bald pate to gleam shinily.
He looked up as Liddell crossed the room to where he sat, and seemed glad of an excuse to put his pen down. He fished a handkerchief from his pocket, polished the bald spot with a circular swabbing motion. “Looking for someone?” His voice was rusty, as though he didn’t get much chance to use it.
“Understand you’ve got a John Doe you’re trying to get a make on.” Liddell flipped his credentials in front of the man’s eyes.
The thin man shook his head. “Not us, mister. We got a make on all our guests.” He continued to gnaw on the macerated cuticle.
Liddell pulled the clipping from his pocket, flipped it on the man’s desk. “How about this one? Says here he was John Doe’d.”
The attendant took his thumb from his mouth, leaned over the picture, studied it. “Oh, him. Identification came up with a make on him this morning. Prints on file in Washington.” He stared up at Liddell with washed-out blue eyes. “Friend of yours?”
Liddell shrugged. “Could be. The picture wasn’t too good. Any chance of seeing him?”
The thin man nodded. “Ain’t much to look at. Bounced his head off the curb, looks like.” He got up, limped around the desk. “Come with me.”
He led the way to a heavy door set in the far wall and tugged it open. Beyond was a high-ceilinged, stone-floored, unheated room with double tiers of metal lockers. Each locker had its own stencilled number.
Liddell wrinkled his nose as the blast of carbolic-laden air enveloped them. There was no word spoken as he followed the thin man across the floor to the rear of the windowless room. The attendant stopped in front of one row of drawers, tugged on a handle. The drawer pulled out with a screech. A piece of canvas that bulged slightly covered its contents.
The attendant reached up and pulled on a high-powered light in an enamel reflector. He grabbed the corner of the canvas, pulled it back, exposing the body of a man.
The face was oyster-white, the hair dank and damp. Despite the misshapen head, it was obviously the body of the man pictured in the clipping.
“That’s your boy,” the attendant grunted. He pursed his lips, studied the dead man objectively. “Never knew what hit him. Like I said, looks like he bounced his head off the curb.”
Liddell nodded. He placed one finger against the dead man’s right cheek, rolled the head to the side. The skin was clammy and cold to his touch. He bent closer to the body, detected the three-inch scar that ran along the side of the jaw bone, grunted under his breath.
The attendant watched the performance curiously, swore when the phone in his office started pealing. “Damn thing always rings when you’re nowhere near it.” He nodded at the body. “Got enough?”
“You go ahead and answer your phone. I’ll wait.”
The thin man seemed undecided, then shrugged his shoulders. “Guess you can’t walk off with him.” He showed the yellowed stumps of his teeth in a grin. “Got one babe stashed away I wouldn’t trust nobody with, but this one ain’t that pretty.”
His bad leg clip-clopped across the floor as he hurried to answer the phone. As soon as he had disappeared through the door leading to the outer office, Liddell whipped back the canvas. There were no signs of bullet wounds or any scars of any nature with the exception of an old appendix scar. Liddell scowled at the unmarred expanse of abdomen, pulled the canvas back into place.
He was standing with his hands in his jacket pocket when the attendant limped back across the room.
“Make him?” the thin man wanted to know. He recovered the dead man’s face, slammed the drawer back into place with a clang that reverberated through the entire room.
“I’m not sure. What was the make on him?”
The attendant shook his head. “You’ll have to get that from the medical examiner’s office.” He watched with interest while Liddell’s hand disappeared into his pocket, re-appeared with a folded bill. “Although I may have it in my records,” he amended hastily.
He fell into step beside Liddell as they re-crossed the room to the office. Outside, he walked around the desk, pulled open a drawer in a small card file, flipped through it. “His name was Dennis Leeman. Mean anything to you?”
Liddell ignored the question, stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He lit it, filled his lungs with smoke and expelled it in twin streams through his nostrils in an effort to clean out the morgue smell. “Nobody claim him yet?”
The attendant dropped the card back into the file, pushed the drawer shut. “Not yet.” He sank into his chair, stared up at Liddell. “My guess is nobody’s going to claim him. Unless he’s got relatives out of state.”
Liddell nodded. “Where’s your phone?”
The thin man motioned to the instrument on his desk. “Be my guest.”
Liddell dialled the number of the Hotel Carson, asked the operator for George Tefft. “One moment, please,” the receiver rattled back.
He could hear the buzz as the switchboard rang, then, “Mr. Tefft doesn’t answer. Would you care to leave a message?”
Liddell glowered at the mouthpiece, shook his head. “No message.”
3
The Hotel Carson was an old, weather-beaten stone building that nestled anonymously in a row of similarly weather-beaten stone buildings that line the north side of 47th Street. A small plaque to the right of the door dispelled any doubts as to its identity.
A threadbare and faded carpet that ran the length of the lobby had long ago given up any pretence of serving any useful purpose. The chairs were rickety and unsafe, the artificial rubber plants grimed with dust.
Johnny Liddell waved to the watery-eyed man behind the registration desk, who raised his eyes from the scratch sheet only long enough to return the salutation. The private detective headed for the lone elevator cage in the rear. A pimpled youth with slack lips and discolored bags under his eyes nodded to him as he got in.
“Blesch take care of the old guy I sent over for cold storage?” he asked as the operator followed him into the cage, slammed the door after him.
“Yeah, but the old guy ain’t there now.” He checked the watch on his wrist. “He checks in about three and about fifteen minutes later he goes tearing out. Kind of surprised me. When he went up, he was carrying an armful of papers. I figured he was holing up for the winter.”