“What do you want, Rufus?”
“Me?”
“You, boy,” she said, tartly. “What do you want with me? Or are you just practicing your lines, in case some country girl comes to work here?”
“Right now, what I want is for you to be a little curious about that man in 809.”
“What for?”
“I got a feeling about him, that’s all.”
“I got a feeling, too,” Rosa Mae said, smiling. “I got a feeling that Rufus Hightower thinks there might be some green on the scene.”
“Where you learn to talk like that, girl?” Rufus said, an undercurrent of anger in his voice.
“I been around men think they slick since I first grew these,” she said, putting two fingers under her left breast and pushing up just enough to make it bounce sightly. “And I’m a real good listener.”
“Rhyme ain’t worth a dime,” Rufus told her, winking. “But I got a pound I could put down, you want to look around.”
“You so cute.” Rosa Mae giggled. “But I can’t buy new shoes with a promise.”
She held out her hand, palm-up. Rufus handed over a five-dollar bill, watched it disappear into her bra.
“Either the man had some friends come and visit, or he’s a big drinker,” Rosa Mae said. “That bottle of whiskey he’s got in his room’s been hit plenty. But he don’t keep himself like a drinking man.”
“What do you mean?”
“A drinking man, specially one that drink in the morning, he don’t keep himself nice. This one, all his clothes hanging up in the closet, neat as a pin. I got nothing to do in his bathroom, either. Most of the time, a man checks into a hotel, it’s like he thinks he got a wife with him, mess he leave everyplace. Not this one. It’s like he cleans up behind himself.”
“Next thing, you gonna tell me he makes his own bed.”
“He don’t make the bed, but he sure do strip it down,” Rosa Mae said. “Right down to the mattress. Takes the pillowcases off, too.”
“Yeah? Well, what’s in his suitcases?”
“I don’t be opening nobody’s suitcases, Rufus.”
“No, no, girl. I meant, he leave them open, right?”
“He left one of them like that,” the young woman acknowledged. “Nothing in there but clothes. I didn’t look in the bureau, but he got all his shaving stuff and the like in the bathroom.”
“The man say anything to you?”
“This morning, he did. There’s no sign on his door, it’s after eight, I figure he’s out working so I let myself in. He’s just sitting there, in the big chair, reading the paper. I tell him I can come back later, when he’s out, but he tells me, just go ahead.”
“I know you-all said something besides that, Rosa Mae.”
“He just… polite, is all. A real gentleman. Some of the men that stay here, they like watching me clean up their rooms. I bend over to make the bed, I can feel their eyes. This man, he wasn’t nothing like that.”
“Maybe he’d like old Carl better than you,” Rufus said, grinning.
“You believe that, you three kinds of fool, Rufus,” she said, turning to go.
Rufus watched Rosa Mae walk down the hall. The exaggerated movement of her buttocks under the loose-fitting uniform was a lush promise, wrapped in a warning.
1959 September 30 Wednesday 11:45
“Yes?” Cynthia’s voice on the phone was clear and clipped, just slightly north of polite.
“May I speak to Mr. Beaumont, please?”
“Who should I tell him is calling?”
“I’m the man he sent for. I believe he’ll-”
“Call back in ten minutes,” the woman’s voice said. “This same number.”
1959 September 30 Wednesday 11:50
Rufus ambled over to the pay phone in the basement, dropped a slug in the slot, and dialed a local number.
“What?” a male voice answered.
“This be Rufus, sir,” Rufus said, thickening his long-since-outgrown Alabama accent and introducing a thread of servility into his voice. “I calling like you said.”
“Yeah?”
“The man, he a drinker, sir. Big drinker.”
“Can he hold it?”
“Seem so, sir. But ah cain’t say fo’ sure, ’cause he might be one of those, sleeps it off.”
“What’s he driving?”
“Got nothing out back in the lot, boss. And there ain’t no plate number on the books from when he signed in.”
“He didn’t come in on the bus,” the voice said, brawny with certainty. “I need to know what he’s riding, understand?”
“Yes, sir. You know Rufus. I got peoples all over the place. I finds out for you.”
“All right. He ask anyone to bring him anything?”
“Not no girl, if that what you mean, sir.”
“Stop fucking around,” the voice said, “and just tell me what I’m paying you for, understand?”
“Yes, sir. I wasn’t… I mean, no, sir, the man don’t ask me for nothing. Not none of the other boys, neither. ’Cept for a bottle of whiskey.”
“Get me that car, understand?” the voice said.
“I-” Rufus started to reply, then realized the connection had been cut.
Yassuh, massah, Rufus said to himself, twisting his lips into something between a snarl and a sneer.
1959 September 30 Wednesday 11:56
“He wants to see you,” Cynthia told Dett on the phone. “Do you have transportation?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“A car.”
“Yes,” the woman said, without a trace of impatience. “What kind of car? Year and model. And the license plate, too, please. The guard at the gate will need this to pass you through.”
“A 1949 Ford, kind of a dull-blue color. The plate is: Ex, Oh, Bee, four, four, four.”
“All right, let me give you the directions. Please be here by two.”
1959 September 30 Wednesday 12:11
Dett slid the locked attaché case under the bed. From inside his Pullman, he removed a sculpture made of gnarled roots wrapped around a pair of doll’s hands, clasped together in prayer by a single strand of rusty barbed wire. He placed this so it would greet anyone who opened the suitcase.
Dett shrugged into his overcoat, worked his shoulders in a slight circular motion until he was satisfied with the kinetic fit, then left the room.
He answered, “Good afternoon to you, too,” to the elevator operator, deposited his key with the desk clerk, and walked out into the fall sunlight, eyes slitted against the glare.
Two blocks away, Dett hailed a passing cab. It deposited him in front of a seedy pawnshop just over a mile away.
Dett entered the pawnshop, pretended to examine a display of rings in a glass case while a man in a green eyeshade completed a transaction. As the customer moved off, clutching a few bills and a pawn ticket, Dett caught a nod from the proprietor and moved toward the end of the long counter. A buzzer sounded. Dett lifted the hinged portion of the counter and walked past a half-open bathroom door to a large storeroom, stocked floor-to-ceiling with goods: musical instruments, appliances, rifles, and hundreds of smaller items. The back door opened into a narrow paved lot, surrounded by a gated chain-link fence, topped with concertina wire.
Dett closed the door behind him, took a set of keys from his coat pocket, and walked over to a faded blue ’49 Ford with a primered hood and chromed dual exhausts. The coupe had a slight forward rake, because the rear tires were larger than the fronts. Dett opened the door, climbed behind the wheel, and started it up, frowning at the engine noise.
He slipped the lever into first, let out the clutch, and pulled out of the lot.
1959 September 30 Wednesday 12:56
“He should be here pretty soon, Beau,” Cynthia said.
“Good,” Beaumont grunted, concentrating on shaving, using a pearl-handled straight razor against the grain.