I was looking back, still undecided what I should do, when the little runt finally dropped his eyes. A moment later he got up and moved into the men’s room, at the rear of the building.
I hesitated for a minute and then acted on impulse. Perhaps, I must have reasoned, if I could speak to the poor little guy in private, he might be willing to talk. Maybe Casserman and I could help him somehow. Get him into a hospital or at least to a doctor.
I got up and walked into the men’s room. It was empty.
Let me emphasise two things. First, that I followed the runt into the men’s room no more than two minutes after he entered it — actually, I think it was just over a minute. If, in that brief time, he had emerged from the room, lie would have had to open the door, cross my field of vision — I sat staring at the door — and walk the entire length of the bar before leaving by the street entrance. Second, there was absolutely no way out of the men’s room except by the single door. There was a small window set in the rear wall, but some years previously someone had smashed through that window and rifled the cash register. Shortly after, Casserman had heavy steel bars set into the window frame. In addition, a thick wire-mesh screen had been placed over the entire window, bars and all, from the outside. Only an insect or a mouse could have gotten through that window without tearing off the wire screen and cutting through at least two or three of the steel bars.
There was a rear door, but it was in the opposite corner of the building, behind the bar. It was bolted and locked and Casserman carried the key. I don’t quite know how Casserman passed the fire marshal’s annual inspection, but the fact remains it would have been impossible for the runt to leave by that exit unless he went behind the bar and got the key from Casserman — which he did not do.
I stood in that dingy men’s room and looked around. The stall doors were attached by springs and they were all wide open. To keep them closed they had to be locked. From the inside. There was no place else in that room where anyone could stand, sit or crouch without being seen.
I walked to the barred window at the rear of the room and gazed out. The bars were in place, the wire screen intact, the window closed and locked.
Only a few yards behind Casserman’s place, a series of railroad tracks came together and ran off toward a sprawl of waterfront salt flats. As I stood at the window, frowning in bewilderment, I looked down those empty tracks and for a fleeting second I thought that I saw someone walking along them. I had the odd impression that although this figure was walking slowly, it was, paradoxically, receding rapidly into the distance. Then I decided that my eyes were deceiving me, that a blur of shadows in the moonlight was all that I had actually seen.
As I lingered at the window, looking down that shiny, dwindling road of steel track and wooden ties, a sense of the most indescribable desolation overcame me. I don’t possess the words to convey it. A sudden feeling of heart-stopping, overwhelming loneliness washed through me. It was not a mere physical sense of loneliness; it was a loneliness of the psyche, of the spirit, an abrupt and unaccountable conviction that I was alone and isolated from all humanity, that I was sinking, soul-hungry and desperate, into an awful, inconceivable gulf of immense outer darkness, a universe of unutterable cold, unrelieved and never-ending.
I shuddered and turned away from the window. A minute later I was back at the bar and Casserman came over.
‘You see him?’ he asked.
I took a long drink and grinned at him rather foolishly. I suppose it was some kind of reaction from the experience I’d just had. ‘How could I see him?’ I replied. ‘He went into the men’s room and disappeared!’
Casserman scowled at me. ‘I was up near the front; I didn’t see him go out.’
I drained my glass and shoved it across the bar. ‘Hell, one of us needs glasses then!’
I left late, a bit the worse for wear and went home. I didn’t sleep well.
The next night when I stopped in at Casserman’s, Fred wasn’t there. His place at the end of the bar was empty.
When he got a free minute, Casserman came over. ‘I’m worried about that little runt. Probably lyin’ sick in some flea-bag flophouse.’
I sipped my beer. ‘Can you get his address?’
Casserman scratched his head. ‘Maybe. Rick Platz used to know all that race-track bunch. Maybe I’ll call him tomorrow. No use tonight.’
‘By the way,’ I said, ‘do you know the runt’s name — I mean, besides ‘Fred?’
Casserman shook his head. ‘Cripes. I don’t. He just never told me. But Rick probably knows.’
A late assignment kept me from Casserman’s the next night. The following evening I stopped in as usual.
Casserman sliced the foam off a beer and set it before me. ‘I got the runt’s address,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Rick didn’t know at first but he found out and called me back. Just as I figured, it’s a kind of flophouse. Eleven Buren Street, around the corner from Water Street. The runt has a room there. His last name, Rick says, is Amodius.’
‘I’ll look him up tomorrow,’ I promised.
Since I didn’t have to report to the city room until four in the afternoon, I had plenty of time the next day. I drove down Water Street, turned at Buren and parked just around the corner in front of a four-storey brick tenement-type building. It was the kind of place which had seen better days fifty years ago. The bricks were black with soot and grime, the window panes cracked and pasted together with tape, the front sidewalk a litter of blown papers and broken bottles.
It was situated in a seedy, waterfront neighborhood and I didn’t like leaving my car, but I had little choice.
The doorbell obviously didn’t work so I just clumped down a dimly lighted entrance hall until I ran into someone — a wild-looking teenager carrying two gallon jugs.
He shrugged impatiently when I asked for Fred Amodius. ‘I dunno no names here. See Mr. Catallo.’ He nodded toward a nearby door. I knocked on it.
There was a stir inside and an enormous fat man wearing a satiny pink bathrobe opened the door. He took a swipe at his scattered hair and scowled… ‘Yeah?’
When I mentioned Fred Amodius, I saw the blood rising up through his bristly jowls. ‘That lousy punk! You’re too late, mister! They dragged him out of here yesterday. The lousy punk!’
‘He was sick?’ I asked.
He grinned evilly. ‘Yeah, he was sick all right! So sick he stunk up the place! He musta croaked up there in that closet a coupla weeks ago. The lousy punk! I let him have the place for nothing — over a year now. Said he’d take out the garbage and stuff. Clean up a little. The lousy punk! A month now and he ain’t done nothing! Good riddance!’
‘Can I see his room?’ I asked.
His scowl deepened and he hesitated. Finally he shrugged. ‘Sure, if you can stand the stink. Top floor, last room at the back, left. Leave the window open.’ He peered at me with suspicion, ‘Whatta you lookin’ for? You a relative? There’s nothin’ in the room. That dope didn’t leave a dime.’
I told him a distant relative of Amodius had sent me to check the room. He didn’t believe me but he let me go up anyway.
I was starting up the stairs when he called out, ‘Lousy punk!’ I had the feeling, this time, that he meant me instead of Amodius, but I didn’t make an issue of it. I supposed he was miffed because I hadn’t slipped him a bill.
At the end of the fourth-floor hallway, I saw a tiny door on the left and swung it open. Catallo was right; it was a closet. An undersize cot, a kitchen chair and a wooden box comprised the furniture. The cot was covered with a stained mattress, which looked as if the rats had stampeded in it. The only other things in the room were some newspapers and magazines strewn on the floor and one pair of torn socks tossed in a corner.