“Isn’t anybody there?”
For longer than he had expected, she held the phone, waiting for a response.
Then: “Tom?”
He drew in a breath.
“Is that you, Tom?” she asked. Very faintly, he could hear the singsong of a television behind her voice. From farther away than the television, her mother yelled, “Are you crazy?”
Tom hung up, then dialed his own house, without any idea of what he could say to his mother, or if he would say anything at all. The telephone rang twice, three times, and when it was picked up Dr. Milton’s voice said, “This is the Pasmore residence.” Tom slammed down the phone.
He looked at his watch and watched the minute hand jerk from ten-fifty to ten fifty-one.
Then he lifted the receiver again and dialed von Heilitz’s telephone number. The phone rang and rang: Tom counted ten rings, then eleven, then fifteen, and gave up.
Unable to stay in the room any longer, he went to the bed and put on the shoes von Heilitz had taken off him, splashed water on his face in the bathroom, glanced at a taut face in the mirror, dried himself off and straightened his tie, and let himself out into the hallway. Through the last door came the sounds of a trumpet and tenor saxophone softly, slowly playing “Someone to Watch Over Me” in unison. Voices drifted toward him. He walked to the stairs and went down to the lobby.
A few sailors had spilled out from Sinbad’s Cavern, and stood in a tight knot around the door, holding glasses and beer bottles. The night clerk leaned over the desk in a pool of light, slowly turning the pages of an Eyewitness. Tom came down the last steps, and the clerk and a few of the sailors glanced up at him, then looked away. Steel drum music from a jukebox came faintly from the bar and grill. Lamp light fell on worn leather chairs and couches, and illuminated red and blue details in a patchy Oriental carpet. On the other side of the St. Alwyn’s glass doors, cars streamed up and down the street. Tom began moving through the sailors, who parted to let him open the door of the bar.
The steel drum music instantly sizzled into his head. Women and sailors and men in loud shirts filled the room with shouts and laughter and cigarette smoke. A couple of sailors were dancing in front of the crowded bar, flinging out their arms, snapping their fingers, drunkenly trying to keep in time to the music. Tom slowly worked his way down the bar, squeezing through the sailors and their girls, cigarette smoke making his eyes water. At last he reached the door, and went outside to the Street of Widows.
The market was closed, but the vendor still sat on his rug beside his hats and baskets, talking to himself or to imaginary customers. Across the street men went up the steps to the Traveller’s Hotel. A CLOSED sign hung in the door of Ellington’s Allsorts and Notions. When the light changed, the cars and buggies began to move toward Calle Drosselmayer. The ping-ping-ping of the steel drums sounded through the window with the flashing neon scimitar. At a break in the traffic, Tom ran across the street.
“Hats for your lady, hats for yourself, baskets for the market,” sang the barefoot vendor.
Tom knocked on Hobart’s door. No lights burned in the shop.
“Nothing in there, the cupboard be bare,” the vendor called to him.
Tom beat on the door again. He searched the frame and found a brass button and held it down until he saw a small dark figure moving toward him through the interior of the shop. “Closed!” Hobart shouted. Tom stepped back so the shopowner could see his face, and Hobart darted to the door, opened it, and pulled Tom inside.
“What do you want? What you looking for?”
“My friend isn’t still here?”
Hobart stepped backward and said, “What friend? Do I know what friend you’re talking about?” He was wearing a long cream-colored nightshirt that made him look like an angry doll.
“Lamont von Heilitz. I came here with him this morning. We bought a lot of things—you said I looked like his nephew.”
“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” Hobart said. “Maybe a man says he’s gonna be somewhere, maybe he never means to come. Nobody tells Hobart—no reason for anybody to tell Hobart, don’t you know that?” Hobart stared at him stonily, then took a step toward the door.
“You mean he didn’t come?”
“If you don’t know, maybe you’re not supposed to,” Hobart said. “How do I know what you are? You’re no nephew of that man’s.”
“Did the policeman show up?”
“There was someone here,” Hobart admitted. “Might have been him.”
“And my friend never came for the meeting,” Tom said, for a second almost too stunned to worry.
“If you’re his friend, how come you don’t know that?”
“He left the hotel hours ago to come here.”
“Could be that’s what he told you. Man came here and waited, could be that’s what he wanted him to do,” Hobart said. “I see you’re worried, but I tell you, I worried about Lamont twenty, thirty years, it never did a bit of good. He put on a stringy old wig and a bunch a rags, and he stood on a street corner somewheres, watching for something he knew was gonna happen. I’m talking straight to you now, nephew.” Hobart put his hand on the doorknob.
“How long did the other man wait for him?”
“He was here a good hour, and when he left he was steaming. Don’t look for any favors from that man.” Hobart’s teeth gleamed in the dark shop. “Nearly tore off my bell, way he went through the door.” He patted Tom’s arm. “You just go back and wait for him. This is the way your friend works, don’t you know that yet?”
“I guess not,” Tom said.
“Don’t worry.” Hobart reached up to hold the bell with one hand as he cracked the door open with the other.
“That’s what he told me,” Tom said, and went outside. The door closed silently behind him.
“You got in, but did you buy?” the vendor chanted.
Tom glanced at the shoeless figure leaning against the wall. He nearly laughed out loud—relief made him feel lighter than air. He walked past the entrance of the Traveller’s Hotel toward the vendor and knelt on the sidewalk beside him. “You had me worried,” he whispered. “Why didn’t you—?”
The vendor was a foot shorter than von Heilitz. Two doglike teeth jutted from his upper jaw, and ragged brown scars sewed shut both of his eyes. “A basket, or a hat?”
“A hat,” Tom said.
“Three dollars, pick your size, pick your size.”
Tom gave the man bills and picked up a hat at random.
“Did you hear a fight, or a scuffle, or anything like that, a couple of hours ago? It would have been outside the bar across the street.”
“I heard the Angel of the Lord,” the vendor said. “And I heard the Lord of Darkness, walking up and down in the world. You’ll look handsome, in that hat.”
Tom gave the hat to a sailor as he passed through the bar to go back to his room, and the sailor placed it on the head of a pretty whore.
Laughter, soft conversation, and music filtered into the fourth-floor hallway. Tom let himself into his room and went to the window without turning on any of the lights. The man in the white shirt was picking his teeth with a fingernail, and a young woman in skin-tight shorts, high heels, and a halter top whispered in his ear. The man shook his head. She leaned against him, and rubbed her breasts against his arm. The man stopped picking his teeth. He turned his head and uttered two or three words, and the girl jumped away from him as if she had been touched with a cattle prod.
Tom pulled a chair up to the window and sat down, his chin on his forearms. After three or four minutes, he pushed up the window. Warm, moist air flowed over him. Steady traffic passed before the hotel on Calle Drosselmayer, and now and then a taxi pulled up and let out couples and single men who walked across the sidewalk and up the steps to the hotel.