Chapter 26
“Please deposit 65 cents.”
Pamela Rhodes picked the coins off the shelf and dropped them into the pay phone. After a brief silence, she heard ringing at the other end.
“Good morning. Waldorf Astoria, New York. How may I help you?”
Pamela shifted the receiver to her right hand. “Yes, could you please connect me to the room of Dr. Paul deVere?” she asked.
There was a pause before the voice answered, “I’m sorry, Dr. deVere is not in. He left the hotel this morning.”
Pamela frowned. “Could you connect me to the room of Dr. Amanda Hutch, please?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. Dr. Hutch and Dr. deVere both checked out this morning.”
“Checked out?” Pamela asked. She swore to herself.
From the other end Pamela detected a muffled conversation. The original voice returned.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I misspoke. Dr. deVere and Dr. Hutch did not check out. They both left this morning with their suitcases and indicated that they would be back in a few days.”
“Did they say where they were going? I’m a friend of theirs and I really need to reach them,” she added desperately.
“I’m sorry. They didn’t say where they were going or when they’d be back. We are, of course, holding their rooms,” the clerk added in a haughty tone. “Is there a message I can take for either of them?”
“No, no thank you,” Pamela said dejectedly. “I’ll try them later.”
She hung up and stood holding the receiver before slamming it down on its cradle. Where had they gone? And why? She had been hoping that deVere or Hutch would know what was going on and give her some guidance. There was no one else to turn to, no one who could provide her direction.
She shoved her change purse into her pocketbook and slung the bag over her shoulder. She felt so alone. She’d just have to wing it.
Paul deVere hoisted both suitcases and carried them through the Love Field concourse. How long before they start putting wheels on these things? he wondered. He pushed through the crowd.
At the far side he turned and searched for Amanda. She was not by the exit. He began to turn away when she emerged from a newsstand, a newspaper under her arm.
“Taxis are out here,” he called, and pushed his way outside. In the fresh air, a skycap hailed a cab. DeVere gave the driver the address for the downtown Holiday Inn while the skycap put their bags in the trunk. When they were settled in the rear seat deVere waved his hand back and forth in front of his face.
“I can’t believe that they let you smoke like that on the plane,” he groused.
“Hey, tough, it’s the times,” Amanda said, looking out the window. “You know what they say, when in Rome…”
DeVere blew his nose. “Yeah well, just because one is in Roman times shouldn’t mean there are no rules.” He wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and smelled his shirt.
Hutch shot him a warning look.
DeVere ignored the rebuke and nodded toward the newspaper.
“Anything in there?” he asked.
Amanda unfurled the newspaper in her lap. It was the Dallas Times Herald and the date, November 19, 1963, was displayed across the top of the front page.
“The President’s coming to town,” she answered.
DeVere nodded and gazed out the window.
“His trip is outlined in here,” Amanda said. She unfolded the paper and shoved it at deVere who turned and looked at it.
She pointed to a map that diagramed a motorcade route.
DeVere resisted asking what she thought Lewis was up to. They put their constant mutual questioning on hold whenever a third person was present.
Pamela Rhodes paid her cab driver, ignoring his stare, and walked briskly to the front entrance of Cazzie’s. She moved past the billiard parlor entrance and entered through the same door she had seen Ginter use. The lobby was a tiny, dimly lit space dominated by an oversized counter. Behind it stood a black man in his mid-sixties who stared at an open magazine.
He started when he looked up. Pamela smiled, hoping that she appeared disarming. The clerk’s eyes narrowed and he glanced over her shoulder.
“Yes, missy?” he asked, still looking behind her.
“I’m looking for Mr. Ginter. Could you tell me what room he’s in?”
“Two Twenty-eight,” the man said without checking anything. “But he’s not in now. Can I help you?”
“He applied to do some work for me and I wanted to hire him and find out when he could begin.”
“You came all the way down here for that?” the clerk asked.
“Well, I tried to call, but there are no phones in the rooms.”
The clerk hesitated. “Mr. Ginter already got a job at the Book Depository,” he said.
Shit! What the hell is the Book Depository? She kept her smile.
“Yes, I know. He told me that. But Mr. Ginter was going to do some additional work for me.”
The old man’s eyes bored into her and she hoped that her nervousness wasn’t showing. She put her left hand on the counter, palm downward, to prevent him from seeing her shake.
“In any event,” she said glibly, “I need to leave something for Mr. Ginter.”
“I can take it,” the man offered, extending his hand.
She had thought of this. She glanced at the wooden mail cubbies behind the desk and extracted a large flat manila envelope from her pocketbook. “I’m afraid it’s rather big. It’s the plans for the job along with his cash deposit,” she said, not handing him the envelope. “Maybe I should just slip it under his door?”
The man considered before dropping his hand and shrugging.
“Stairs to the left.” He returned to his magazine.
At the top of the stairs she proceeded down the hall to room 228. Music was playing from a record player on a floor above her, but no sounds came from any of the adjacent rooms on the second floor. The hallway was deserted.
Pamela’s knock on 228 went unanswered. A faint stench of stale urine reached her nostrils.
I wonder what this neighborhood is like today, she thought. I hope they tore this place down.
She checked her watch. It was a little after 3:30. She checked the hallway again, concerned that the desk clerk might wander up after her. She worried that he seemed suspicious, but she ignored the feeling.
In the dim light, she looked at the door to room 228. To her dismay there were two locks, a key-in-knob privacy lock and a deadbolt. Shit! She had hoped that this would be easy, that there would only be the privacy lock which she could by-pass with a credit card or plastic driver’s license—that is, if she had a credit card or driver’s license, she reminded herself ruefully.
On a hunch she tried the knob. It wiggled but didn’t turn. She bent and peered in between the door and the jamb. The lock itself appeared to be a basic pin-and-tumbler. She could see the bolt slid into the doorframe. She stood back up and looked across the hall. The other rooms didn’t have any deadbolts. Apparently Ginter wasn’t taking any chances.
She checked the hallway again. From her pocketbook she extracted the thin flathead screwdriver and pick she had purchased that morning. She inserted the tip of the screwdriver into the deadbolt’s keyhole and turned it slightly clockwise until the plug was minimally offset from its housing.
She assumed that the lock was a five-pin pin-and-tumbler, but even so she knew that there were still over a million pin combinations. She kept the pressure on the plug and inserted the pick behind it into the keyhole. Bent at the end, the pick slid in until Pamela felt it hit the first pin. Then she lifted the pin until she felt the slight click when the top pin slid into the housing as if pushed by the correct key. She knew the pin falling into place on the ledge in the shaft caused the click, and that once on the ledge it would remain wedged in the housing and not fall back into the plug.