“Never seen her.”
Galupian said, “Did I just tell you to cooperate, you stupid ass?”
“What?” Mott said.
It’s a quickie joint, all right, McCall thought, and Mr. Mott the night man, uninformed as to the protocol, is still manfully keeping the cover.
“Tell him!” Galupian said, and turned away.
“Okay, okay,” Mott said. “So I remember her. Jesus, what’s going on here?”
McCall said abruptly, “She took a room here?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“I don’t remember exactly. Short time ago.”
“Just once?”
“A few times.”
“You’re sure of this.”
“Now he wants to know if I’m sure! Listen, bud, she’s too much chick not to remember.”
“Chicks!” Galupian muttered, obviously suffering.
“With the same man?” McCall asked.
“I don’t know,” Mott said. “She always comes to the office herself. Signs the registration, see, while her — well, husband waits in the car. I never laid eyes on him. She did the paying. Always had a wad a foot thick. You know these rich chicks.”
“Did she use the name Laura Thornton?”
“Are you kidding?”
“What name did she use?”
“Something like... here.” Mott went behind the counter, opened a filing cabinet, and began to look through cards. “Yeah, I thought I remembered. Addison.” He handed the card to McCall across the counter.
The legend on the registration card was “Mr. & Mrs. Joseph Addison.” The date was recent.
“You say she registered several times. I’d like to see the other registrations.”
Mott dug out four more cards. All four were signed “Mr. & Mrs. Joseph Addison” in the same neat, cool hand, and all were of recent date.
“Do you remember how she acted?” McCall asked the night clerk.
“The way they all do on the way in. Rarin’ to go.”
“Shut up!” Galupian said. “Listen, Mr. McCall, we got to put up with certain things. These college kids want action.” He slapped his forehead. “They’re kooks! Believe you me. Sometimes like to tear the place apart. What can you do? Personally I’m against how they act. Coming on with all this long hair and beads and junk. I run a clean place, Mr. McCall. Once I caught two of ’em tripping out. I gave ’em the heave, believe you me. All those hot chicks, like this Laura. Wasting it on pinheads.” He laughed. The sound died in the quiet. “Okay, okay,” he said. “So I don’t appreciate you, either. The hell with you. And you want to know something? I don’t like Governor Holland, too. The hell with him. So Laura Thornton come here with a guy. So what?”
“She came here and now she’s disappeared,” McCall said, “that’s so what. I’ll just keep these registration cards,” McCall said.
Nobody said anything as he left.
5
In the dimness of the raftered bar at the Red Harbor Inn, McCall sipped a weak gin-and-tonic and considered what he had found out so far about Laura Thornton.
He was alone in the bar except for the square-faced bartender with the middle-aged paunch. McCall ached for a cigarette. He had tried cutting down, found it didn’t work for him, and so he had quit in the middle of a pack. Throwing away the pack had been an act of sheer heroism. But smoking was an act of stupidity, he kept telling himself. Something in the stuff contracted the blood vessels. He’d be a candidate for atheroscelerosis soon enough.
Still, it was hell.
He nibbled at a cube of sharp cheddar on the bar. That was another thing. You stopped smoking, you shifted your neurosis to eating. He pushed the plate of cheese away and bit deeply into his adulterated gin. Maybe I’ll wind up an alcoholic, he thought, and grinned at the thought. He ordered another. Weak, too.
“Get many students in here?” he asked the barman.
“We get ’em.” The man poured with a professional nip. “Friday and Saturday nights especially. Some beauts.”
“The hippies any trouble?”
“Listen,” the barman said. “We get some of the longhaired ones, sure. But the way people talk, you’d think they’re all going to hell in a handbasket. But what’s so different? Remember zoot suits, for chrissake? Peg pants? How girls acted in Prohibition? That was before your time, buddy, but any time’ll do. I was just thinking of the Thirties. Dance marathons. Six-day bicycle races. Jitterbug. The Dipsy-Doodle. Benny Goodman. Crazy, the kids went crazy. Later, Boom-Boom-Didem-Dadem-Wadem-Chew, f’gawd’s sake. Mairzey-Doats and Doazy-Doats and Li’l Lambs Eat Ivy. Yech!” He flung his bar rag down. “And the drinking. Everybody was stoned. Sex-mad, too.” The barman half shut his eyes. “My old man was a Methodist preacher. Tie that. And I was a real high flier. Kept a jug of corn in my locker in high school. Had a Model A, and it rocked, man, you believe it. And all those sweet pickings.” He chuckled with nostalgia. “There was a party every night, and what went on in those back bedrooms was something. Kids are healthier today. More honest. The skirts came up just as easy in those days, and there was always Peggy Pregnant the All-American Roundheels. And, hell, smoking weed, too. I tried it and went back to booze. I hit a dozen alcoholic wards before I wised up. Reefers, they called them then, bombers. You’d buy a tobacco-can full.”
The bartender stopped to refuel.
“But the colleges didn’t have the problems they have now,” McCall argued.
“This has been coming a hell of a long time, friend,” the bartender said. “By the way, my name is Grundy.”
“You don’t sound it,” McCall said.
“What?”
“I mean, never mind. McCall’s mine. How do you figure?”
Grundy reached to the back bar, brought up a bottle of Jack Daniels, and poured himself half a slug in a shot glass. He drank it quickly and washed the glass. “That’s how I do it now — my quota for today. How do I figure, Mac? I figure the kids are in the last half of the twentieth century, and the colleges are still back in the nineteenth. And that’s how the kids figure. That’s what this unrest is all about. I wish there were more of them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the real rebels, the revolutionaries, the ones who’ll stop at nothing to overturn the system. They’re only a handful.”
“You’re on their side?”
“Sure. Why not? I’m against the Establishment — any Establishment. But even the college kids who aren’t activists are more intelligent and serious than my generation was. But nobody listens to them. Jesus. Just half a shot glass and listen to me. Another one and I’d be a poet.” He looked at McCall’s drink.
“No more now,” McCall said, finishing it.
“They’re all right, those kids,” the barman said. “Make no mistake about that.”
“Count on me,” McCall said. “Name’s Mike, Mike McCall. Nice talking with you, Mr. Grundy.”
“Call me Joe,” the barman said. “Joe Mozzarella, the spaghetti king. Out of Joe Cacciatore, fifteen to one.”
“Which is it? You told me Grundy.”
“Ah, sweet mystery of life.”
“You sure it’s bourbon in that bottle?” McCall asked.
“I knew a doctor once drank ether. All the time. Smelled terrible.”
“No kidding, Joe, what is your name?”
“Vermicelli.”
“Have it your way. Seeing you.”
“Mike, Mac, McCall, does it make any difference as long as I don’t call you Sally?”
In his room, McCall put a call through to Governor Holland. The governor was not at the mansion; nobody seemed to know where he was. McCall left a message and said he would call back if anything developed.
He sat on the bed, wishing for the lethal weed and thinking more about Laura Thornton. Whoever had been with her at the Greenview Motel had played it cosy. The girl had done the dirty work, registering, paying for the room. Could it have been Damon Wilde? He very much wanted to talk with young Mr. Wilde.