Old woman, it's only
A false joy you bring,
Old woman upon your hand
I see a death's-head ring.
Old woman, it's our winter.
We'll never see a spring.
Old woman, it's time to cry.
Why must you still sing?
"BLACKENED FACE"
The cab driver was a fat man who reminded her of Jackie Gleason, which made his deep, gravelly voice quite startling. When she told him where she wanted to be taken he didn't say anything, but gave her a quick, speculative look in the rearview mirror as he pulled away from the curb. During the ride, which,because of the Veterans' Day traffic, took half an hour,she paid little attention to the area they were passing through. She let her mind drift, free associating, finding melodies in the whine of passing cars and patterns in the cracks along the streets.
He let her off at a comer where an old black mans old newspapers and shoeshines in front of a grocer whose green and yellow produce lay in bushel baskets below the barred storefront. The thought of trying to connive her way out of paying the fare popped up unbidden from her childhood, and she tipped the driver lavishly by way of putting the thought back where it belonged. She wondered at it, though- Was it a sign of age, or was there significance to this unexpected recurrence of the old ways?
The cab roared off; she sniffed, as if hoping to catch a scent, and began walking east down the block, because it seemed to be slightly downhill. She knew that what she sought was around here somewhere,and she would find it more quickly and easily on her feet, slow as they were. They hadn't always been slow. Once she had danced. Once she had danced well enough to earn-
Stop now, she told herself firmly. Fools live in the past, as saints live in the future. It was her lot to feel the waves from one-she couldn't afford to let her mind remain in the other.
Children played in the street, and didn't see her,because she had nothing to do with their world. She passed men and women her own age, all of whom were so wrapped up in their dreams that they never looked outside themselves. She came to the place she had Seen, and the excitement of a true Seeing was far back in her mind. The scene before her held a promise and a threat, and she could almost taste them both on her tongue, sour and juicy as lemon, fear and pleasure.
She identified the hotel by its neon sign, which was mostly burned out, then looked around briefly. It was on a hill, and the side she could see was done in peeling red paint. It had a single door, also red, that was no bigger than the door to a house and had no window. She felt almost young again as she pushed it open and entered the lobby.
TWO
The Wolf and the Gypsy
The city is a cesspool,
my apartment is a mess.
You say you got a problem,
just give me your address.
STEPDOWN
"Hell of a thing," said the hotel manager. He wiped his shining forehead with a dirty hanky, dragging it roughly across two ripely swollen pimples. He shifted around, glancing at the body, and away, shying like a nervous horse. Guy was too young to be managing a flop house. Stepovich could tell the kid felt ill, but that being here made him feel so important he couldn't stand to leave. This poor old woman leaking blood onto the hotel's cheap carpeting was probably the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.
"Think they raped her?" The kid scrubbed at his forehead again, scratched at one of the zits, then absently squeezed it. Stepovich looked away. He'd rather look at the body.
"Sure," Durand said, heavily sarcastic. "What man wouldn't get it up for her? I mean, the streets are crawling with granny bangers, aren't they?"
"Shut up." They made him tired, both of them.
Someday, when Durand had seen what elderly women looked like after they'd been raped, he wouldn't joke about it anymore. "Leave the kid, uh,witness alone. Homicide will want him first."
"Yeah. They'll have a lot of questions for you. And they like their meat fresh. Hope you don't have any plans for the next twelve hours or so," Durand said cruelly.
The kid stared at him, not sure if Durand was serious or not. Durand cop-stared at him. "I, uh, I should be down where I can answer the phone, shit like that," the kid muttered uneasily. "If I'm not right at that desk, you'd be surprised how many people try to sneak out without paying."
"Probably not," Durand said.
"No, really, they do," the kid insisted righteously."They…"
"No. I mean I wouldn't be surprised. Go ahead,get back to your phone, kid. We want you, we'll call you." Then, "Try not to touch the door as you leave,okay?"
Stepovich wondered why Durand bothered. The kid had already smeared it up once, coming in here,and then again when he led them up here. Besides,it wasn't like homicide was going to get all worked up and dust the whole place. The department's funds were limited; right now all of them were going toward that child mutilation case and the Exxon Basher. Media loved those. Some old gypsy woman getting herself killed wasn't exactly the Manson murders. What was it Durand had said as they came in?"Mighta known. A gypsy. They're always killing each other."
He'd already phoned it in. Now there wasn't much to do except wait until homicide arrived to take over.He and Durand had taken the call as a domestic violence. Well, maybe it had been. But the kid manager hadn't seen anything, and wasn't even sure who the room had been let to. Stepovich glanced back to the body. It pissed him off. Dying bloody in a cheap hotel room, that was something to happen to a pimp or a pusher, not to an old woman. Anybody who'd lived that long deserved a better death.
She'd fought it. He had to say that for her. There would be skin under her fingernails, he'd bet, and it was obvious it had taken more than one blow from the knife to take her down. The last one had been as she lay there, a driving jab into her back and out, to make sure of her. Her legs were flung wide, one shoe half off. An intricately patterned blue shawl led from her body to the door. Had it snagged on her killer's watch? No one would ever know. Her face was turned away from him but her hair, thick as a young girl's,though grey, had come half undone. A pink edge of ear and a silver hoop earring peeked out of it.
Durand was crouched over her, staring at her face. His head was cocked, like a puppy staring into a stereo speaker at a recording of wolves howling. Puzzled.
"What?" Stepovich demanded.
"Gypsy told my fortune, once. I was wondering if it might have been her."
Stepovich frowned. "You saying we should call bunko, that she's been working scams lately?"
"No. Naw," Durand seemed embarrassed. "It was a long time ago, at a fair when I was a kid. In a little white trailer covered with dust, hooked to a battered old Caddy. She said that thirty-two was my number,and that foxgloves would be important to me."
"Foxgloves?"
"You know, kind of a pinkish flower, grows by the roads some places."
Stepovich stared at his partner, waiting.
Durand stood. "So." He cleared his throat, folded his arms. "Maybe we should call bunko, maybe they'd recognize her."
"Maybe. And maybe we should let homicide do it,so we don't have to repeat everything bunko says to us to them." Most homicide cops Stepovich knew got bent out of shape if they thought a regular cop was trying to muscle in on their work. No, it was better to just take it easy and wait here, protect the scene until the homicide dicks got here and took over. Then it would be time for their afternoon break, and then there'd be another couple of hours of riding around,and then he could go home. He walked to the room's single window and stared down at the street, wondering how long it would take for homicide to arrive.And how many questions they'd ask, and how long they'd keep him and Durand here. It seemed to Stepovich that time had stopped, and wouldn't start again until they got here. It would never start again for the old woman. But when the detectives got here, it would be the end of the "waiting by a body" time and the beginning of the "waiting for the shift to be over" time. He wanted to go home. And then he could get rid of that knife. The thing was sticking in his brain, bugging him.He wished he'd never seen the damn thing. Just touching it made him feel crawly. He should have left it on the sidewalk, he should have gone ahead and booked the gypsy for concealed weapon. He thought of all the times he'd leaned switchblades up against the curb and stomped them so he wouldn't have to book a kid for concealed weapon. Well, the gypsy's knife wouldn't have yielded to that sort of treatment.Thick blade, at least two inches across at the hilt. And a weird hilt. On the surface of the hilt, toward the blade, there were these three little pins or pegs,shaped like stars. All three stars were enclosed in an engraving of a crescent moon. He'd never seen anything like it. He had it at home, in the bottom drawer,with his socks. It had been there since that night he'd gone to the tank and the gypsy hadn't been there. No one had sorted that out yet; all the paperwork said he should still have been there. What the hell. Stepovich was betting he wouldn't see the gypsy again.