He laughed as he closed it. As I went along the narrow hall I could hear the distant sound of his laughter. I walked across the floor, out the side door and climbed into my coupe. The old man had finished picking up the shattered glass.
The rain had stopped and I clicked on the wipers long enough to dash the standing drops from the windshield. My foot was shaking so badly that I fed the gas raggedly, clashing the gears as I drove out of the lot...
From my apartment I phoned the office and told Mr. Hodges that I had seen the doctor and that he had ordered me to stay in bed for two days. Mr. Hodges was very pleasant about it. After I hung up, I went into the kitchenette, mixed myself a stiff drink and downed it. The warmth spread through me, but it didn’t touch the ice chips in my heart.
How do you dress to find a man to be killed? Where do you go? Sam had mentioned River Street. I glanced at my watch. Four in the afternoon. Time to get dressed for death, to find a room, to have just enough to drink so that I could be hard and cold.
I looked over my clothes and picked a skirt that had shrunk during drycleaning. It would fit too tightly. Mesh stockings. Heels that were too high for comfort. A blouse that was frilly and cheap.
I spent a long time over the makeup. In the back of the bureau drawer I found the lipstick that was too deep. With it, I enlarged my lips, smearing it on heavily. Blue eye shadow. Black smeared on my lashes so thick that it left little beads on the end of each eyelash. I put on dangling earrings.
In the back of my closet was a cheap fibre suitcase that I had bought in a Chicago drugstore when my luggage had been stolen. I filled it with underthings that I had meant to throw away, but had forgotten. Another cheap blouse. Junk jewelry.
At five I took the phone off the hook, locked the apartment and caught a taxi at the corner. The driver looked me over appreciatively and said, “Let’s make it a nice long ride, honey.”
“Corner of River and State,” I ordered.
The evening traffic was heavy. The driver was so busy trying to turn his head so that he could see my legs that twice we nearly piled into the back end of the car ahead.
River Street parallels the dock area. It is a street of small dives, missions, eroded hotels. State is the one decent street that cuts across it. It was heavy dusk when the driver let me out in front of the drugstore on the corner. I tipped him a quarter and he wanted me to have a beer with him. I walked off through the evening crowd, heading down River Street. I had to find a hotel where they weren’t too particular.
I found it in the third block. Hotel Barton. Lobby one flight up. Rooms from one dollar.
The dim stairway smelled of dust and disinfectant, disease and poverty, perfume and gin. The small lobby was brilliantly lighted. An old man with a stubbled face sat asleep in a worn leather chair, a frayed newspaper across his chest. A battered table held stacked religious tracts. The rug was worn down through the faded rose pile to the brown strings that held it together.
A very thin, very sallow young man leaned with sharp elbows on the old desk and watched me as I walked across from the head of the stairs. I lifted my chin, smiled at him and walked with an exaggerated sway.
He looked at me with unblinking dark eyes. His white shirt was damp under the armpits and his lean fingers were dirty across the knuckles.
“I want to rent a room,” I told him.
“Room with a shower. Buck seventy-five. In advance.”
I paid him. He opened a book in front of me, handed me a pencil and pointed to a vacant line with a dirty thumb. Lorene Vernon, I wrote.
He slapped a key on the counter. “One eleven, Lorene. Right through that arch over there and down the hall. Next to the last one on your right. Pay every day in advance.”
The key was fastened to a piece of greasy wood almost a foot long. I picked up the suitcase, walked down the hall.
I unlocked my door. The room was about ten by ten. One smeared window looked out across an airwell. There was a cheap maple bureau, chair, bed and bench. The lace curtains were torn and yellow with age. There was a strip of pale blue linoleum instead of a rug. The plaster walls were off-white.
One door opened into a shallow closet. The other opened into a tiny bathroom with stained plumbing, chipped fake tile and a naked overhead bulb. The only light in the bedroom was a bedside lamp in maple with a cardboard parchment shade with a silhouette of a ship in full sail. I sat on the bed and stared with unseeing eyes at the dusty floor beyond the strip of blue linoleum.
I sat in the room until after seven and then went out and ate in a small restaurant. I ate at the counter and realized that I was stalling over the food, dreading the actual moment when I’d have to begin my hunt for the nameless man who would, in the newspapers, become the man who had killed the old watchman at the coal company.
I was the pointing finger of death. The man I found would die. Outside the restaurant the coarse night life of the forty blocks along the river was beginning to roar. The juke boxes blared in the little joints.
After I paid the check, I walked out onto the sidewalk and headed down River Street. The three blocks near State were dotted with places that were large and noisy. I knew that I’d find my quarry in a quieter spot. Further along River the bright lights dimmed, the neon fizzed and crackled, the sidewalks were littered with filth.
Gradually I slowed my steps. Someplace here he would be, the lonesome man I would select for death.
There wasn’t much traffic on River Street. A junk wagon went slowly by, a man hunched on the high seat, the hooves of the swaybacked horse making a clop, clop sound. Across the street from me a harsh bulb illuminated a black and white sign which said, Jesus Saves!
I glanced into the smeared window of a small bar. Four men stood at the bar. They were fairly well dressed. The bartender wore a clean white jacket. I had to walk further down River.
I heard a woman scream and I looked up at the black dead windows over the darkened store fronts. A woman was screaming in the dark. So what? All over the world women screamed.
My heels made a slow rhythmic beat against the dark pavement. I couldn’t spend time worrying about a scream. I was worrying about death. I was an angel of death, and I walked the night streets of a great city looking for a man I would turn chill with my touch; looking for man-eyes that, because of me, would gaze sightless at the stars.
Chapter Two
Eeny Meeny Miney Moe
The soaped sign on a cracked window said, Bar whiskey — 1½ ounce shot — 14c. I went up the two stone steps, pushed the door open and walked into the place. It wasn’t a place where women go. I felt that at once. There was no music, no heat, little light.
Two dark men stood at the bar. One turned and stared at me with a soundless whistle. The bartender, a vast broken man with dirty white hair paused for a moment, then continued wiping a glass on a torn towel.
Beyond the bar were circular tables and broken chairs. The room was filled with a vast silence. The silence of a tomb in which the not-yet-dead were buried, where they waited patiently for the death that would come.
One of the tables was empty. I sat down and the men at the other tables looked vaguely at me and looked away.
The room stank of unwashed bodies. It was here that I would find my prey.
The bartender came from behind the bar, looked down at me over the bulk of his huge belly. “We don’t want no trouble.”
“Bring me a bottle of beer. I don’t want trouble. I just want beer.”
He sighed, turned away and came back with an opened bottle and a water-spotted glass. He set them on the table, showed no glimmer of interest as I gave him a quarter and said, “Thank you very much.”