The clerk on duty was an egg-headed man with no interest in me or in anything else. He wore parts of a white linen suit and he yawned as he handed me the desk pen and looked off into the distance as if remembering his childhood.
The hop and I rode a four by four elevator to the second floor and walked a couple of blocks around corners. As he walked it got hotter and hotter. The hop unlocked a door into a boy’s size room with one window on an airshaft. The air-conditioner inlet up in the corner of the ceiling was about the size of a woman’s handkerchief. The bit of ribbon tied to it fluttered weakly, just to show that something was moving.
The hop was tall and thin and yellow and not young and as cool as a slice of chicken in aspic. He moved his gum around in his face, put my bag on a chair, looked up at the grating and then stood looking at me. He had eyes the color of a drink of water.
“Maybe I ought to have asked for one of the dollar rooms,” I said. “This one seems a mite close-fitting.”
“I reckon you’re lucky to get one at all. This town’s fair bulgin’ at the seams.”
“Bring us up some ginger ale and glasses and ice,” I said.
“Us?”
“That is, if you happen to be a drinking man.”
“I reckon I might take a chance this late.”
He went out. I took off my coat, tie, shirt and undershirt and walked around in the warm draft from the open door. The draft smelled of hot iron. I went into the bathroom sideways—it was that kind of bathroom—and doused myself with tepid cold water. I was breathing little more freely when the tall languid hop returned with a tray. He shut the door and I brought out a bottle of rye. He mixed a couple of drinks and we made the usual insincere smiles over them and drank. The perspiration started from the back of my neck down my spine and was halfway to my socks before I put the glass down. But I felt better all the same. I sat on the bed and looked at the hop.
“How long can you stay?”
“Doin’ what?”
“Remembering.”
“I ain’t a damn bit of use at it,” he said.
“I have money to spend,” I said, “in my own peculiar way.” I got my wallet unstuck from the lower part of my back and spread tired-looking dollar bills along the bed.
“I beg yore pardon,” the cop said. “I reckon you might be a dick.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “You never saw a dick playing solitaire with his own money. You might call me an investigator.”
“I’m interested,” he said. “The likker makes my mind work.”
I gave him a dollar bill. “Try that on your mind. And can I call you Big Tex from Houston?”
“Amarillo,” he said. “Not that it matters. And how do you like my Texas drawl? It makes me sick, but I find people go for it.”
“Stay with it,” I said. “It never lost anybody a dollar yet.”
He grinned and tucked the folded dollar neatly into the watch pocket of his pants.
“What were you doing on Friday, June 12th?” I asked him. “Late afternoon or evening. It was a Friday.”
He sipped his drink and thought, shaking the ice around gently and drinking past his gum. “I was right here, six to twelve shift,” he said.
“A woman, slim, pretty blonde, checked in here and stayed until time for the night train to El Paso. I think she must have taken that because she was in El Paso Sunday morning. She came here driving a Packard Clipper registered to Crystal Grace Kingsley, 965 Carson Drive, Beverly Hills. She may have registered as that, or under some other name, and she may not have registered at all. Her car is still in the hotel garage. I’d like to talk to the boys that checked her in and out. That wins another dollar—just thinking about it.”
I separated another dollar from my exhibit and it went into his pocket with a sound like caterpillars fighting.
“Can do,” he said calmly.
He put his glass down and left the room, closing the door. I finished my drink and made another. I went into the bathroom and used some more warm water on my torso. While I was doing this the telephone on the wall tinkled and I wedged myself into the minute space between the bathroom door and the bed to answer it.
The Texas voice said: “That was Sonny. He was inducted last week. Another boy we call Les checked her out. He’s here.”
“Okay. Shoot him up, will you?”
I was playing with my second drink and thinking about the third when a knock came and I opened the door to a small, green-eyed rat with a tight, girlish mouth.
He came in almost dancing and stood looking at me with a faint sneer.
“Drink?”
“Sure,” he said coldly. He poured himself a large one and added a whisper of ginger ale, put the mixture down in one long swallow, tucked a cigarette between his smooth little lips and snapped a match alight while it was coming up from his pocket. He blew smoke and went on staring at me. The corner of his eye caught the money on the bed, without looking directly at it. Over the pocket of his shirt, instead of a number, the word Captain was stitched.
“You Les?” I asked him.
“No.” He paused. “We don’t like dicks here,” he added. “We don’t have one of our own and we don’t care to bother with dicks that are working for other people.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That will be all.”
“Huh?” The small mouth twisted unpleasantly.
“Beat it,” I said.
“I thought you wanted to see me,” he sneered.
“You’re the bell captain?”
“Check.”
“I wanted to buy you a drink. I wanted to give you a buck.
Here.” I held it out to him. “Thanks for coming up.”
He took the dollar and pocketed it, without a word of thanks. He hung there, smoke trailing from his nose, his eyes tight and mean.
“What I say here goes,” he said.
“It goes as far as you can push it,” I said. “And that couldn’t be very far. You had your drink and you had your graft. Now you can scram out?”
He turned with a swift tight shrug and slipped out of the room noiselessly.
Four minutes passed, then another knock, very light. The tall boy came in grinning. I walked away from him and sat on the bed again.
“You didn’t take to Les, I reckon?”
“Not a great deal. Is he satisfied?”
“I reckon so. You know what captains are. They have to have their cut. Maybe you better call me Les, Mr. Marlowe.”
“So you checked her out.”
“No, that was all a stall. She never checked in at the desk. But I remember the Packard. She gave me a dollar to put it away for her and to look after her stuff until train time. She ate dinner here. A dollar gets you remembered in this town. And there’s been talk about the car bein’ left so long.”
“What was she like to look at?”
“She wore a black and white outfit, mostly white, and a panama hat with a black and white band. She was a neat blonde lady like you said. Later on she took a hack to the station. I put her bags into it for her. They had initials on them but I’m sorry I can’t remember the initials.”
“I’m glad you can’t,” I said. “It would be too good. Have a drink. How old would she be?”
He rinsed the other glass and mixed a civilized drink for himself.
“It’s mighty hard to tell a woman’s age these days,” he said. “I reckon she was about thirty, or a little more or a little less.”
I dug in my coat for the snapshot of Crystal and Lavery on the beach and handed it to him.
He looked at it steadily and held it away from his eyes, then close.
“You won’t have to swear to it in court,” I said.
He nodded. “I wouldn’t want to. These small blondes are so much of a pattern that a change of clothes or light or makeup makes them all alike or all different.” He hesitated, staring at the snapshot.
“What’s worrying you?” I asked.