Barter was standing just outside the cabin door, a leer on his face. The leer made me wonder just how long he’d been standing there.
‘All tucked in?’ he asked, one eyebrow raised.
‘All tucked in,’ I said curtly, and I closed Ann’s door.
‘Your cabin’s ready now,’ he said. I walked across the narrow gravel driveway which separated 12 and 13. Barter had left the light on, and I could see the clean towels he’d put on the rack near the sink.
‘Are those showers working?’ I asked.
‘Running water all the time,’ Barter said proudly.
‘Good. I’ll take one and then turn in.’
‘Suit yourself,’ he said. He paused, then added, ‘Wear a robe to and from the shower, will you? I have other guests.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I usually run around stark naked.’
‘Huh?’ Barter asked.
‘Singing Christmas carols,’ I added.
‘Well,’ Barter said, completely unfazed by my high-handed attempt at wit, ‘here you got to wear a robe.’
‘It won’t be easy,’ I said, and I left him worrying that one while I went to the car. I took my valise from the back seat, and I took O’Hare’s .32 from the glove compartment. Then I looked up and went back to number 12. Barter was gone. A light burning in the office told me where he was. I went into the cabin, closed the door, undressed, and then took a robe from the valise. I picked up a bar of soap from the sink, a towel from the rack, and then I put on a pair of loafers and started for the shower. The office light was out now, and there was hardly any moon. I found my way along the gravel path as best I could.
The shower was a simple wooden coffin set on end. I opened the door, took off the robe and hung it outside with the towel, and then backed off while I experimented with the water. The cold water was frigid. The hot water was cold. I left the cold water off entirely, turned on the hot, and planned to make this a really quick wash. I was under the shower for about two minutes when I heard a truck starting in the woods somewhere behind the motel.
The sound was unmistakably that of a truck, and I remember wondering what a truck was doing in the woods at that hour of the morning, but I didn’t give it too much thought. The truck hit the gravel and did a little maneuvering, and then it stopped and I heard a few doors slamming, and a few whispered voices, and then the truck headlights splashed across the door of the shower, illuminating the booth for just a moment. The driver threw the truck into second, navigating the small rise leading to the road, and then the wheel noises told me the truck had left the motel gravel for the dirt road. I kept listening. In a few minutes, the engine sound was just a hum, and then it faded completely.
I rinsed off all the soap, opened the door a crack and pulled in the towel. There was a nip in the air, and the shower booth collected every draft in the neighborhood and left me shivering. I dried myself quickly and then pulled in the robe and got into it. I put on my loafers then, picked up the bar of soap and headed back for number 12. There wasn’t a light burning anywhere in the motel. On impulse, I stopped at cabin number 13, half hoping Ann had awakened and would feel like talking a little. From outside the door, I whispered, ‘Ann?’
There was no answer. I opened the door a crack and poked my head into the darkness. I couldn’t even see the bed, no less Ann.
‘Ann?’ I whispered again.
Again, there was no answer. Gently, I closed the door and walked across the driveway to my own cabin. I opened the door, reached inside for the light switch, and turned it on.
I was closing the door behind me when I saw the girl on the bed.
Chapter four
You get used to hookers in the 23rd Precinct.
You get used to them because they’re a part of the scenery. They roam all over the precinct. They sit in bars, and they stand on street comers or in hallways, and after a while you get to know everyone who’s hustling. ‘Hello, Ida,’ you’ll say, or ‘Hello, Fritzie’, or like that. You watch them to make sure they don’t hustle in the bars because you can revoke a man’s license for that. You watch them, too, to make sure their old man isn’t a mugger who’s just looking for a sailor from downtown, a john with a few sheets to the wind. Prostitution in our city isn’t government-protected the way it is in some places. But the vice cops don’t always overexert themselves and a lot of policemen feel that sex is a thing best let alone.
The hookers in the 23rd Precinct don’t look at all like movie versions of ‘loose women’. They don’t wear skin-tight satin dresses, and they don’t plaster make-up all over their faces, and they don’t swing red purses, and they very rarely walk with suggestive wiggles. They’re usually pretty conservatively and stylishly dressed. They wear lipstick and once in a while some face powder. Generally, the younger ones look like clean-cut high school girls except when they’re dressed up to visit a friend downtown, on which occasions they accumulate years with the high-heeled pumps they don. Sex with the hookers in the 23rd is a business. You may find their talk a little rough because they speak of their business in terms which have become connected with it over the years — but only among themselves. With their gentlemen friends, their sex talk is usually refined and probably educational.
I only mention the hookers in my precinct to point up a comparison.
The girl on my bed, you see, in cabin number 12 at Sullivan’s Point was obviously a hooker.
She was a redhead.
Her face was ghastly white with the covering layers of make-up it carried.
Her lips were a garish red, the lipstick extended above and beyond the lip line to exaggerate the size of her mouth.
Her dress was extremely low cut, and it was obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra.
The dress was purple. It was not lavender, not violet, but purple. The brightest, gaudiest, shiniest purple I’d ever seen in my life.
Her legs were crossed, and the dress was pulled to a few shades above her knees.
She wore no stockings.
She wore black patent high-heeled pumps with ankle straps.
She jiggled one foot, and there was a gold ankle bracelet on that foot.
If she was more than seventeen years old, I’d have been willing to eat all of Mike Barter’s gravel driveway.
We looked at each other for a few minutes, and then she said, ‘Hi.’ She drew out the word, gave it a throaty sound, tried to pack into that single word all the allure of Cleopatra floating down the Nile on a barge.
‘You’ve got the wrong cabin, haven’t you?’ I said.
‘Have I?’ she asked. She was still the femme fatale, throwing her curves with all the subtlety of a Little League pitcher.
‘I think so,’ I answered. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t know what or who this little girl was, and I didn’t particularly care. I was sleepy. I wanted to go to bed. Alone.
‘I don’t think so,’ she answered.
‘Well, I’d enjoy kicking the problem around with you,’ I said, ‘but I’m really too tired to argue.’
‘Would you enjoy kicking it around with me?’ she asked, a knowing smile on her mouth.
‘I think the best way to solve this,’ I said, ‘is to run up to the office a minute. If you wandered into the wrong cabin...’