And he was being tugged this way and that way by the girl who was going through his pockets with great energy, muttering about the room key and saying, “You wah somepin, honeh. Somepin for shu-wah.”
“I follow you,” I said.
“But this lovely child is going to break through into the next century, at exactly the age I am now, and the prospect makes me desperately envious. You, sir, could well manage it too, I suspect, but in the fullness of your years and with dimming…”
With a little squeal of satisfaction she yanked the key out of one of his pockets, stared at the tag, then looked at the nearby room numbers. She wore a bright red cloth coat over a very short white dress that was cleft almost to the navel. Her pouty, saucy, cheap little face peeked out from between the two heavy wings of white-blonde hair that hung straight from center part to collarbone.
In the corridor light I noticed their hands were dirty. It is impossible to drink all evening without ending up with dirty hands. It is one of the unsolved mysteries of our age.
“Raht they yahs youwah nummer, sweetsie pah!” He put a soiled hand against the wall. “I don’t believe I… I think I’m going to…” He slid slowly and fell on his side with a small thudding sound against the carpeting.
I offered to help her with him. She refused so very sweetly. She couldn’t trouble me none. She said she could manage all raht. So I went around the corner and began humming just loudly enough so my voice would carry to where she was. I unlocked my door and opened it and then closed it again without going in, closing it audibly and cutting off the little tune just as it clacked shut.
I went back to the corner and put one eye around carefully. His topcoat was pulled out of the way. She was kneeling, just pulling his wallet out of his inside jacket pocket. Her thick white hair hung forward as she bent over him. Her underlip had fallen away from her teeth and I could hear how her excitement and fear was making her breath fast and audible. She kept snapping her head around to look the other way, toward the elevators. She shoved the currency into the slash pocket of her red coat, put the wallet back in his inside pocket. She picked his arm up and started to take the wristwatch, hesitated, let the arm fall. She picked the key off the carpeting, stood up, and, biting her lip, looked at him and at the door to his room. I could guess what she was thinking of. Would it be worthwhile to unlock the door, drag him in, and go through his belongings? She stood crouched, fingers hooked, her stance ugly. It was a posture feral as any carnivore. It was the hunting stance, and it made me think of Fortner Geis’ money, and the far cleverer beast who had gone after it and taken it from him.
I saw her decide to settle for what she had, and cut her risk by getting away quickly. She straightened, shook her hair back and I pulled back and flattened against the wall, realizing she would come my way, heading for the fire stairs.
The only sound she made was the quick whisking of fabric. She came around the corner in a hurry, saw me out of the corner of her eye, gasped, tried to run, but I caught her from behind, my left arm around her waist, right hand snaking into the right pocket of the coat and coming out with the folded wad of bills as I released her.
She spun, felt in the pocket, came cautiously toward me. “Hay-yuff,, huh?” she said in a husky whisper. “Gimme hay-yuff.”
“Give you nothing, dear girl.”
“Oney a feeyiffteh them, huh? Pitcher a Gen’I Grant for lil ol‘ Cinny Lee?”
She spread her coat, wet her mouth, arched her back. “You room raht close by, innit? Less you’n me tote that ole man inna his room so as nobody gets agitated bout him lyin inna, hall, then it give me time, I go inna your room, given you a ride like you never hay-yud afore, worthen at fifty plusen a teeyup for sure, lahk to pleasure me a big size mayyun all the whole naht long, honeh pah.”
“Run on back to your cotton patch, corn pone.” She had the heels of her hands on her hipbones, fingers spread on her thighs, pointing to the floor. I saw the hemline of the narrow skirt of her white dress climbing as she stealthily worked it up with her fingertips. I knew what she was going to try. If the kick had landed where she wanted it to, she could have plucked the cash out of my nerveless hand and gone tripping happily down the stairs, leaving me there making goldfish mouths, and sweating into the carpet. When it came I turned sharply and, as she missed, got my palm under the back of her ankle and gave the kick a lot more elevation than she wanted. The skirt ripped up the side and she went tumbling back, rolling up onto her shoulders, legs scissoring. I noticed with academic appraisal that she wore nothing under the dress, that she was an unpleasant soft white, almost blue white, and that she was by no means a natural blonde.
“And the accent is fake too,” I said.
She sprang up, looked as though she might try for the eyes, and thought better of it. And in the brisk and nasal flatness of the pure Midwest accent, the kind you hear in the small towns of Indiana and Iowa, she suggested I perform an anatomical impossibility, and categorized me as an indulger in several of those specific practices most frowned upon in our culture. Somebody behind one of the closed doors yelled to knock it off for chrissake, and she stopped abruptly, ran to the stairway door, yanked it open, and disappeared.
I found the key on the carpet beside sweetsie pah, unlocked his door, scooped him up, carried him in, and dumped him on his bed. I went out and got his hat and brought it in, closing the door behind me. Turned a light on, worked him out to topcoat and suit coat. Hung them in the closet. Put money in billfold, billfold in suit coat. Loosened tie, belt, removed shoes. Turned out light. Stood for a moment looking down at him, hearing his steady snore. Poor honeh had slipped through the fangs of the cat, and he wasn’t the type to give them a chance at him again. I had fanned the currency before putting it back where it belonged, didn’t make an exact count, but saw it was over four hundred. We were both locked into this single century. As Fortner Geis had been. So help the fellow traveler, McGee. The Cinny Lees spring at you every chance they get.
If this man could be a four-hundred-dollar fool, Fort could have been one too-at fifteen hundred times the cost. I set his night latch and closed the door behind me and went back to my own leased cave.
After my light was out I made a better identification of Cinny Lee’s emotional climate after she knew she’d lost it all. Outraged indignation. She had invested time, training, and experience, had cut him out of the pack, softened him perfectly, had slipped by the hotel security patrol, and had gotten the chloral hydrate into him at just the right moment. If he had not gone into that talking jag, if he’d had the room key in his hand instead of an inside pocket, if the big stranger hadn’t come along, she would have gotten inside the room with him minutes before it hit him and knocked him out. Then, in privacy and safety she could have plucked him clean of every valuable from his gold wedding ring and cuff links to the change on his bureau. Then, if she was the, cool hardened operator I guessed she was, she would sneak out with his key, stash the loot, sneak back into the room, strip him to the buff, take all her clothes off, rip the cheap dress in strategic places, tip a chair and a lamp over-quietly-and get into bed with him and get some sleep and be ready, when he awakened with a savage and blinding headache and total loss of memory, to be crying hopelessly and pitifully. She had no idea where his money was. He could search her if he thought she had it. All she knew was he had forced her. He had torn her pretty new dress, see? Her father and her brothers would be frantic. She’d never been away from home all night before. She was really only fifteen. He’d been like some kind of crazy horrible animal. Oh, oh, what was she going to do. Oh boo hoo wah haw hoo, oh God. She’d better k-k-k-kill herself. Th-Throw herself out the windowwwwww…