“You can’t park here, mister. Got to keep the curb clear. If you want to come into the hotel, you can leave your car in the parking lot around the corner. You planning to register?”
“I might as well.”
“Okay, you go around the corner to the left. You can’t go to the right, anyway, on account of they turned it into a one-way street five-six years ago.” He seemed to resent this change. “Better lock up your car, and you can come back through the alley if you want. It’s shorter that way. I’ll turn on the light at the side door. You want me to take your luggage?”
“Thanks, I can carry it myself.” Not having any.
The parking lot was a dark quadrangle hemmed in by the lightless walls of business buildings empty for the night. Carrying my brief case for appearance’s sake, I walked along the alley to the side door where the old bellhop was waiting. The naked yellow insect-repellent bulb over the door splashed jaundice on his face. He accepted my brief case as if he didn’t really expect a tip.
A woman with thyroid eyes and chins sat behind the desk in the deserted lobby. She offered me a room with bath for two-fifty, two dollars without. I didn’t really want to stay there. The migrant years had flown through the place and left their droppings.
The Captain had made a mistake, I thought, perhaps a deliberate one. It didn’t seem likely that Mrs. Wycherly had ever lived in the Champion. I decided to find out, before I contracted for a night-long date with depression.
The thyroid eyes were going over me, trying to decide if I was too choosy or too broke. “Well? You want the two-fifty with the bath, or the two-dollar one? I’ll have to ask you to pay in advance,” she added, with a glance at the worn brief case which the old bellhop was holding.
“I’ll be glad to. But it just occurred to me, my wife may have taken a double room.”
“Your wife a guest here?”
“She’s supposed to be.”
“What’s her – what’s your name?”
“Wycherly,” I said.
The fat woman and the old man exchanged a look whose meaning I didn’t catch. She said with something in her voice that was patronizing, almost pitying:
“Your wife was here for quite a bit. But she moved out tonight, less than an hour ago.”
“Where did she move to?”
“I’m sorry, she left no forwarding address.”
“Was she leaving town?”
“We have no way of knowing. I’m very sorry, sir.” She sounded as if she meant it. “Do you still want a room? Or not?”
“I’ll take the one with the bath. I haven’t had a bath for a long time.”
“Yessir,” she said imperturbably. “I’ll put you in 516. Would you sign the register please?”
I signed myself H. Wycherly. After all, he was paying for the room. I gave the woman a fifty-dollar bill, which she had a hard time making change for. The bellhop watched the transaction with great interest.
When he and I were alone in my room on the fifth floor, in the delicate interval between the window-raising and the tipping if any, he said:
“I might be able to help you put your hands on your lady.”
“You know where she is?”
“I didn’t say that. I said maybe. I hear things. I see things.” He touched the corner of his bleared eye with the tip of his forefinger, and winked.
“What did you see and hear?”
“I wouldn’t want to say it right out, you being her husband and all. I don’t want to make more trouble for her. She’s a troubled lady already. But you know that, you’re married to her.”
“I’m not working at it.”
“That’s good. Because if you was working at it you’d be getting pretty poor returns on your labor. I guess you know that, too, eh?”
“What I know doesn’t matter. What do you know?”
“I don’t like to make trouble for anybody.” His old and slightly tangled gaze shifted from me to my brief case, which he had placed on a wicker luggage stand against the wall. “You wouldn’t have a gun in that little case? I felt something in there that sure felt like a gun to me. And I don’t want to be party to no shooting.”
“There won’t be any shooting. All I want to do is find Mrs. Wycherly and talk to her.”
I was beginning to regret my impersonation of Wycherly. It had seemed like the quick way to get the facts, but it was involving me in too many facts.
“You don’t need a gun for that,” the old man said, edging towards the door. “Jerry Dingman’s no troublemaker.”
“Look here, I carry the gun because I also carry a lot of money.”
He stood still. “Is that so?”
“I’m willing to pay you for information, Jerry.”
He looked down at his feet, which bulged like potatoes in his slit shoes. “I got this fifteen-dollar bill I owe Dr. Broch for my feet. I never get far enough ahead to pay it.”
“I’ll pay your doctor bill.”
“That’s real nice of you, son,” he said sentimentally. “Let’s see the color of your money.”
“After I hear the color of your information. You know I have the money. Where did she go, Jerry?”
“From something she said when I was putting the luggage in the car, I think she was going to the Hacienda Inn. Anyway, she asked the guy if the Hacienda was a nice place. He said it was a big jump up from here, and that’s no lie. It’s a kind of a ritzy resort place out of town.”
“She went there with a man?”
“I wasn’t planning to tell you that. Shut my big mouth, eh?”
“Describe him.”
“I didn’t get a good look at him, either time I saw him. In the car, he kept his face turned away. He didn’t want me to see him, me or anybody. Before that, when he went up to her room, he didn’t take the elevator. He came in the side door and went up the back stairs. He didn’t look like one of the guests, so I followed along behind to see what he was up to. He knocked on her door and she let him in and I heard him sing out her name. So I figured it was all right. Matter of fact, I thought he was her husband.”
“Did you hear anything to that effect?”
“Just what I said. He called her Catherine when he went into her room – he sounded real glad to see her. Then they closed the door and that was all I heard. About twenty minutes later, she checked out and he was out front in the car waiting.”
“What kind of a car?”
“I think it was a new Chevvie.”
“Did she go with him willingly?”
“Sure. Matter of fact, it was about the first time I ever seen her reasonably happy. Most of the time she dragged herself around here like she was expecting to hear the last trump any minute. I never seen a lady so blue in my life.”
“How long was she here?”
“Two weeks and a little over. I thought it was sort of funny her checking in here in the first place. It’s a decent enough place but not the kind of a place a lady would choose for herself. And she had good clothes, good luggage. You know that.”
“What do you think she was doing here?”
“Hiding out from you, maybe,” he said with a grizzled smirk. “No offense intended.”
“None taken. Getting back to the man in the car, you should be able to give me a general description.”
“Yeah. He was a fairly big man, not as big as you but a lot bigger’n me. He had on good clothes, dark coat and hat. He kept his hat turned down and his head turned away, like I said, and I never did get a good look at his face.”
“Did he look anything like this?” I described Homer Wycherly.