“It could be him. I couldn’t say for sure.”
“How old a man was he?”
“Getting on, I’d say. Older’n you. But not as old as the old guy that came to see her last week. I can give you a good description of him.”
“Thin old man with a white moustache?”
“Yeah. I guess you know him. I took him up to her room but she wouldn’t let him in. She wouldn’t even open the door. He was mad as blazes. He tipped me good, though,” Jerry added reminiscently. “Speaking of tips, you promised me fifteen smackers.”
“In a minute. Did Mrs. Wycherly have any other visitors?”
“Yeah, but listen, mister, I can’t stand here jawing all night. I got to put in an appearance down in the lobby. That Mrs. Silvado on the desk, she watches me like a hawk watches chickens.”
“Who were the other visitors?”
“There was just the one that I remember. I’ll tell you about him, only right now I got to go down, let Mrs. Silvado see that I’m on the job. I’ll come right back up soon as I can. Only pay me my money first.”
I gave him a twenty-dollar bill. His gnarled hand closed on it, burrowed with it under his faded jacket, and came out empty.
“Thank you kindly. I’ll bring you the change when I come back up.”
“You can keep the other five. There’s something else I want you to do for me. Which room did my wife occupy?”
“End of the hall on the third floor. Three-two-three, the number is.”
“Is there anybody in it now?”
“No, it’s one of the ones we rent by the week. It ain’t even cleaned out yet.”
“Let me into it, will you?”
“Not on your life, mister. I could lose my job. I been working here nigh to forty years, ever since I got too big to make jockey weight. They’re just waiting for a chance to retire me.”
“Come on, Jerry. Nobody needs to know.”
He shook his head so hard that his hair wisped out. “No, sir. I don’t unlock no doors for nobody but the rightful occupants.”
“You could forget your passkey. Just leave it on my dresser.”
“No, sir. It ain’t legal.”
But he left it. Forty years as a bellhop hollows a man out into a kind of receptacle for tips. Twenty years as a detective works changes in a man, too.
I went down the firestairs to the third floor and let myself into 323. It was a room with bath very much like my own, containing the same bed and dresser, writing table and desk, wicker luggage stand and standing lamp. And a sense of heavy hours, of boxed and static time which refused to pass.
The dresser drawers gaped open, empty except for a nylon stocking with a laddering run. The closet contained a row of twisted wire hangers and dust-mice along the baseboards. In the bathroom cabinet, I found spilled powder and a green drugstore bottle with one lone aspirin tablet at the bottom. The towels were damp.
I found the wastebasket behind the bed. It was full of crumpled newspapers, and lipstick-stained pink Kleenex. A fifth bottle with a half-inch of whisky in it stood on the floor beside the wastebasket.
I pulled out the newspapers and looked them over: they were this week’s Sacramento Bees. In the most recent, dated two days before, I found a pencilled checkmark beside an announcement in the shipping news. It stated that the President Jackson was due in San Francisco harbor the following day. Apparently Catherine Wycherly had been keeping track of her husband.
And thinking of her daughter, too, it seemed. When I stood up, the light caught the window and I could see writing on it. I crossed the room. The window overlooked an alley and faced a blank brick wall. Scrawled large in the dust that covered the pane was a single word, “Phoebe.” Against the dark opposing wall it stood out like an inscription on a headstone.
Strangeness entered the room from the night outside. I could feel it entering me, and hear my heartbeat thudding in my ears. The sound of my heartbeat merged with the noise of the elevator throbbing like an embolism in the bowels of the building.
I closed the door of the ex-Mrs. Wycherly’s ex-room and ran up the firestairs, keeping ahead of the noise of the elevator. It was ancient and slow, like its rider. I got back to my own room before Jerry Dingman did.
He had a bottle of beer in his hand.
“How are things down in the lobby?”
“Slow. I told Mrs. Silvado you wanted some beer so’s I could get away again. I had to go next door for it, and that will cost you another fifty cents.” He peered anxiously at my face, as if our whole deal might break down over this issue.
“All right,” I said.
He let his breath out. “Aw hell, I’ll throw it in. I’ll throw the beer in.” He set it on the dresser and surreptitiously picked up his key. “I hope you like beer.”
“Sure. I’ll split it with you.”
“I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not? Sit down. I’ll get a glass.”
He edged nervously over to the bed and sat down sighing. I poured his half of the beer in a glass I got from the bathroom and drank mine out of the bottle.
The old man sucked foam from his bristles. “You wanted some more info. I kind of forget what it was.”
“I’ll make it quick. I want to get out to the Hacienda Inn before they hoist the drawbridge.”
“Ain’t no bridge there, Mr. Wycherly. It’s nowheres near the river. It’s golf course all around it – got its own golf course. Got its own flying field. Got its own everything. This is good beer.” He smacked his lips, half drunk on the taste of it alone.
“You were going to tell me about Mrs. Wycherly’s other visitors.”
“Visitor,” he corrected me. “There was just the one other, far as I know. He was here to see her a couple of times before.”
“Before when?”
“Before last night, when they had the row. It sounded like he was slapping her around a little bit. I thought of calling the police, but Mrs. Silvado said no. She said if we called the police every time a guest had a private row, they’d be running in and out like Keystone cops. Anyway, it didn’t go on very long.”
“Who was the man?”
“I dunno his name.” He scratched his thin hair. “He was a big man, sharp dresser. He smiled all the time. But I didn’t like his eyes.”
“What didn’t you like about his eyes?”
“I dunno. He looked at me like a dog or something – a dirty dog in the gutter – and he was Jesus God personified. He had this turned-up nose like he was smelling something.” Jerry used his forefinger to push up the drooping tip of his nose.
I produced the blotter I’d taken from Merriman’s office, with Merriman’s picture on it.
“Is this the man?”
He held up the blotter to the light. “It’s him, yeah. Smiling all the time.” Laboriously he spelled out caption: “What does firstest with the mostest mean?”
“It’s just a gag.” A running gag that had run out. “What time was he here last night?”
“Along about nine–nine-thirty. He stayed about half-an-hour. He was still smiling when he came down. I noticed tonight she was wearing dark glasses. I think he blacked her eye.”
“Do you keep watch on all the guests this way?”
“Just those I like. I was worried about your lady. I still am. You better get out to the Inn and get together with her, Mr. Wycherly. You appear to be the kind of man she needs.”
“Did she ever talk about me?”
“No, she never talked about anybody, or to anybody. She spent all her time in her room, never went out.”
“What did she do with her time?”
“Mostly she was eating, and drinking. She drank quite a bit this last week. I ought to know, I took the bottles up to her.”
I played my last card, the picture of Phoebe in yellow. “Did this girl ever come to visit her? Don’t give me a quick answer. Take a good long look and think about it.”