I walked away hoping they'd choke on it.
Martha Porter was an oversize female in her late fifties. She wore a size dress that matched her age and still she peeked out in places. What hair wasn't yanked back in a knot straggled across her face and down the nape of her neck, and she was holding the broom ready to use it as a utensil or a club.
"You looking for a room or a girl?" she said.
I let a ten-spot talk for me. "I saw the girl. Now I want to see the room."
She grabbed the bill first. "What for?"
"Because she copped a wad of dough and some important papers from the last place she worked and I have to find it."
She gave me an indifferent sneer. "Oh, one of them skiptracers. Well, maybe the papers is there, but you won't find no dough. She came here with the clothes on her back and two bucks in her pocketbook. I took the two bucks for room rent. Never got no more from her neither."
"Where'd she come from?
"I don't know and I didn't ask. She had the two bucks and that's what the room cost--in advance, when you don't have no bags."
"Know her name?"
"Why don't you grow up, mister! Why the hell should I ask when it don't mean nothing. Maybe it was Smith. If you want to see the room it's next floor up in the back. I ain't even been in there since she got killed. Soon as I seen her face in the papers I knew somebody would be around. Them broads give me a pain in the behind."
The broom went back to being a broom and I went up the stairs. There was only one door on the landing and I went in, then locked it behind me.
I always had the idea that girls were kind of fussy, even if they were living in a cracker barrel. Maybe she was fussy at that. It was a sure thing that whoever searched the room wasn't. The bed was torn apart and the stuffing was all over the place. The four drawers of the chest lay upside down on the floor where someone had used them as a ladder to look along the wall molding just below the ceiling. Even the linoleum had been ripped from the floor, and two spots on the wall where the plaster had been knocked off were poked out to let a hand feel around between the partitions. Oh, it was a beautiful job of searching, all right. A real dilly. They had plenty of time, too. They must have had, because they would have had to be quiet or have the young elephant up here with the broom, and the place wouldn't have looked like that if they had been hurried.
One hell of a mess, but I started to grin. Whatever caused the wreckage certainly wasn't found, because even after they had looked in the obvious places they tore apart everything else, right down to the mouse-hole in the baseboard.
I kicked aside some of the junk on the floor, but there wasn't much to see. Old magazines, a couple of newspapers, some underwear and gadgets that might have been in the drawers. What had once been a coat lay in strips with all the hems ripped out and the lining hanging in shreds. A knife had been used on the collar to split the seams. On top of everything was a film of dust from a spilled powder box, giving the place a cheaply perfumed odor.
Then the wind blew some of the mattress stuffing in my face and I walked over to close the window. It faced on a fire-escape and the sash had been forced with some kind of tool. It couldn't have been simpler. On the floor by the sill was a white plastic comb. I picked it up and felt the grease on it. A few dark hairs were tangled around the teeth. I smelled it.
Hair oil. The kind of hair oil a greaseball would use. I wasn't sure, but there were ways of finding out. The hag was still in the corridor sweeping when I went out. I told her somebody had crashed the place before I got there and liked to knock it apart. She gave one unearthly shriek and took the steps two at a time until the building shook.
It was enough for one day. I went home and hit the sack. I didn't sleep too well, because the redhead would smile, kiss her finger and put it on my cheek and wake me up.
At half-past six the alarm went off with a racket that jerked me out of a wild dream and left me standing on the rug shaking like a kitten in a dog kennel. I shut it off and ducked into a cold shower to wash the sleep out of my eyes, then finished off the morning's ceremonies with a close shave that left my face raw. I ate in my shorts, then stacked the dishes in the sink and laid out my clothes.
This had to be a new-suit day. I laid the tweeds on the bed and, for a change, paid a little attention to the things that went with it. By the time I had climbed into everything and ran a brush over my shoes I even began to look dignified. Or at least sharp enough to call on one of the original Four Hundred.
I found Arthur Berin-Grotin's name in the Long Island directory, a town about sixty miles out on the Island that was a chosen spot for lovers, trapshooters and recluses. Buck had my car gassed up and ready for me when I got to the garage, and by the time nine-thirty had rolled around I was tooling the heap along the highway, sniffing the breezes that blew in from the ocean. An hour later I reached a cut-off that sported a sign emblazoned with Old English lettering and an arrow that pointed to Arthur Berin-Grotin's estate on the beach.
Under the wheels the road turned to macadam, then packed crushed gravel, and developed into a long sweep of a drive that took me up to one of the fanciest joints this side of Buckingham Palace. The house was a symbol of luxury, but utterly devoid of any of the garishness that goes with new wealth. From its appearance it was ageless, neither young nor old. It could have stood there a hundred years or ten without a change to its dignity. Choice fieldstone reached up to the second floor, supporting smooth clapboard walls that gleamed in the sun like bleached bones. The windows must have been imported; those on the south side were all stained glass to filter out the fierce light of the sun, while the others were little lead-rimmed squares arranged in patterns that changed from room to room.
I drove up under the arched dome of a portico and killed the engine, wondering whether to wait for a major-domo to open the door for me or do it myself. I decided not to wait.
The bell was the kind you pull--a little brass knob set in the door-frame--and when I gave it a gentle tug I heard the subtle pealing of electric chimes inside. When the door opened I thought it had been done by an electric eye, but it wasn't. The butler was so little and so old that he scarcely reached above the door-knob and didn't seem strong enough to hold it open very long, so I stepped in before the wind blew it shut, and turned on my best smile.
"I'd like to see Mr. Berin-Grotin, please."
"Yes, sir. Your name, please?" His voice crackled like an old hen's.
"Michael Hammer, from New York."
The old man took my hat and led me to a massive library panelled in dark oak and waved his hand towards a chair. "Would you care to wait here, sir. I'll inform the master that you have arrived. There are cigars on the table."
I thanked him and picked out a huge leather-covered chair and sank into it, looking around to see how Society lived. It wasn't bad. I picked up a cigar and bit the end off, then looked for a place to spit it. The only ashtray was a delicate bowl of rich Wedgwood pottery, and I'd be damned if I'd spoil it. Maybe Society wasn't so good after all. There were footsteps coming down the hall outside so I swallowed the damn thing to get rid of it.
When Arthur Berin-Grotin came into the room I stood up. Whether I wanted to or not, there are some people to whom you cannot help but show respect. He was one of them. He was an old man, all right, but the years had treated him lightly. There was no stoop to his shoulders and his eyes were as bright as an urchin's. I guessed his height to be about six feet, but he might have been shorter. The shock of white hair that crowned his head flowed up to add inches to his stature.
"Mr. Berin-Grotin?" I asked.