“A fat man in cowboy clothes came in here about an hour ago,” I said. “I want to know why.”
Nobody his age, which I put at close to fifty, should have giggled the way he did. The noise gave him a hillbilly aspect that collided with his disco getup. “You really think I’m going to answer you?” He shook his head with real pity, as if I’d just asked the ultimate dumb-shit question. I noticed he was already reaching for the wall phone behind him. It was unlikely he was going to call the police. I wondered just who his contact would be.
“Don’t touch the phone.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me.”
He was sensible enough to drop his hand.
“What was he doing here?”
“Who?”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “Who? Phil Davies, you asshole.”
He shrugged. “Just stopped by to have a brew.”
“Right. You and he are undoubtedly good friends. You probably give him clothing tips and like that.”
He glanced at his white suit as if I’d just insulted not only his mother but his wife and children as well.
“You got something against my clothes?”
“Yeah. A lot.”
He glowered.
“Davies. Why was he here?”
He started to reach for the phone again.
This time I grabbed him hard enough to give myself a small thrill. I pulled him even with the desk and threatened to jerk him over it.
“Hey, shit, c’mon.” I could tell he was worried about his clothes.
“Why was he here?”
“Jesus, man. Let me go, all right?” He was scared and kept pawing for the phone.
I decided to emphasize my point.
I dropped him, then I went around behind the desk and took the phone off the wall. This was nothing that required strength or brains. It snapped right off its holder, the way Ma Bell intended. I threw it in the wastebasket.
“Hey. God, man. Hey.” He was babbling. I had succeeded in astounding him. The sweat on his face was as bright as the rings on his fingers.
“Hey, yourself, jerkoff. Now answer me.”
He sighed. Touched a hand to his face. A trembling hand. “He gets laid.”
“What?”
“He comes here and gets laid.”
“Who does he screw?”
“Usually some chick named Jackie.”
“Where do I find her?”
“Not sure.”
“Bullshit.”
I said it sharply enough that his boozy eyes got nervous again.
“Really,” he said.
“She got a pimp?”
“Uh-uh. She’s only part-time. I think she’s a model or something.”
I looked around the office. At the girlie calendar. The black-and-white TV set. The couch that was sprung and filthy. I couldn’t imagine a model working out of here.
“What kind of model?”
“Over at the Triple XXX.”
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. “You call that ‘modeling,’ huh?”
“Yeah, that’s what they say on the marquee, asshole. `Live models.’”
“Right. Just like Cheryl Tiegs.”
“Who?”
“She’s a model. A real one.”
“Oh, yeah? Nice tits?”
I just shook my head. “Was Jackie here tonight?”
He hesitated.
I put some mean on my face.
He sighed again. He was getting as tired of the game as I was. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that was her.”
“Where would she have gone?”
The way his eyes flicked — for just a moment and to the left — answered my question.
“What room did they use?”
But he had gotten silent again. I reached over and started to grab him, but he backed up and held up a hand to stop me.
“Two-two-three,” he said.
“You sure about that?”
“Yeah. It’s the room they always use.”
“Give me the key.”
“She’s got it. Knock. Just say Larry sent you.”
“Clever material. ‘Larry sent me.’”
“Fuck you.”
And that was how I left him.
From various rooms I could hear TVs and laughter, and from one the sound of lovemaking. With the wind swallowing it all up, everything sounded lonely and futile. The door to Room 223 was ajar. I prodded open the door with my toe, felt to my left, and clipped on the light.
Larry hadn’t been kidding me. Jackie was there, all right, naked and striking a seductive pose across the rumpled bed.
The only trouble was that, with a great deal of precision, in an act apparently long on skill and short on passion, her throat had been slashed. Blood was soaking the sheets around her and giving her poor, small breasts a curious kind of Indian war paint.
16
After I closed the door I went back downstairs to the office. The clerk was just hanging up the phone when I got there.
I went behind the desk, grabbed him, threw him onto a chair.
Then I told him about the dead woman upstairs. As I spoke, I watched his face. He seemed honestly shocked, and then afraid.
“Shit,” he said miserably, “shit. They’re gonna blame me.” You could hear the tears in his voice. “I’m goin’ back to the slammer for sure.”
Usually I wouldn’t have had the stomach for it, as I don’t take any particular pleasure in the misery of others, but now I just leaned against the back of the desk and watched him.
He lit a cigarette and jumped up and started pacing. He looked seedy and mean and vulnerable all at the same time.
“You killed her, didn’t you?”
“Jesus Christ,” he said, whirling on me. “No, I didn’t. I really didn’t.”
“You’ve got a record, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but for B and E. Nothing violent.”
“You know how cops are. Suspicious of you no matter what you did time for.”
He wiped sweat from his face. Lit another cigarette.
“You need a buddy,” I said after a time.
Now he was into the depressive side of his manic run. He stared out the front window at the cars that crept by.
“You need some help, Larry,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, dully. Jane had sounded that way the other day in the park.
“But if I’m going to help you, I’ve got to know what was going on here.”
“Yeah.”
I went over and picked up his pack and put another cigarette in his mouth. I even lit it for him.
“I don’t want to go back to prison,” he said. He sounded about eight years old, with the boogeyman loose in his midnight bedroom.
“Then tell me the truth.”
He shook his head. “I’m as scared to tell you the truth as I am to go back to the slammer. You saw what happened to that whore upstairs.”
“Who did it? Phil Davies?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Why was she killed?”
“Because she knew.”
“Knew what?”
He exhaled smoke. With red neon splashing his beard-stubbled face he looked like a prisoner already in hell.
“Knew what, Larry?”
“Knew what was happening.”
“What was happening?”
“She posed for pictures for some guy.”
“What kind of pictures?”
“You know. With bottles and fruit and stuff up her. That kind of stuff.”
I thought of the photos of Jane and Phil Davies. “Any other kind of pictures?”
“Whaddya mean?”
But I had a feeling he knew exactly what I meant. “Any other kind of pictures — with men while another man was watching?”
“Kinky stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“I suppose.”
“You know a man named Stephen Elliot?”
He said it quickly and badly. “No.”
I smiled. “I thought we were going to be buddies, Larry.”