“I’ll see it,” I said. “Even if I have to get a hinge screwed to my neck. What does this Flack look like?”
“Well,” she said, “he’s a little squatty number, with a bit of a mustache. A sort of chunky type. Thick-set like, only not tall.” Her fingers moved languidly along the counter to where I could have touched them without jumping. “He’s not interesting,” she said. “Why bother?”
“Business,” I said, and made off before she threw a half-nelson on me.
I looked back at her from the elevators. She was staring after me with an expression she probably would have said was thoughtful.
The porter’s room was halfway down the corridor to the Spring Street entrance. The door beyond it was half open. I looked around its edge, then went in and closed it behind me.
A man was sitting at a small desk which had dust on it, a very large ashtray and very little else. He was short and thickset. He had something dark and bristly under his nose about an inch long. I sat down across from him and put a card on the desk.
He reached for the card without excitement, read it, turned it over and read the back with as much care as the front. There was nothing on the back to read. He picked half of a cigar out of his ashtray and burned his nose lighting it.
“What’s the gripe?” he growled at me.
“No gripe. You Flack?”
He didn’t bother to answer. He gave me a steady look which may or may not have concealed his thoughts, depending on whether he had any to conceal.
“Like to get a line on one of the customers,” I said.
“What name?” Flack asked, with no enthusiasm.
“I don’t know what name he’s using here. He’s in Room 332.”
“What name was he using before he came here?” Flack asked.
“I don’t know that either.”
“Well, what did he look like?” Flack was suspicious now. He reread my card but it added nothing to his knowledge.
“I never saw him, so far as I know.”
Flack said: “I must be overworked. I don’t get it.”
“I had a call from him,” I said. “He wanted to see me.”
“Am I stopping you?”
“Look, Flack. A man in my business makes enemies at times. You ought to know that. This party wants something done. Tells me to come on over, forgets to give his name, and hangs up. I figured I’d do a little checking before I went up there.”
Flack took the cigar out of his mouth and said patiently: “I’m in terrible shape. I still don’t get it. Nothing makes sense to me any more.”
I leaned over the desk and spoke to him slowly and distinctly: “The whole thing could be a nice way to get me into a hotel room and knock me off and then quietly check out. You wouldn’t want anything like that to happen in your hotel, would you, Flack?”
“Supposing I cared,” he said, “you figure you’re that important?”
“Do you smoke that piece of rope because you like it or because you think it makes you look tough?”
“For forty-five bucks a week,” Flack said, “would I smoke anything better?” He eyed me steadily.
“No expense account yet,” I told him. “No deal yet.” He made a sad sound and got up wearily and went out of the room. I lit one of my cigarettes and waited. He came back in a short time and dropped a registration card on the desk. Dr. G. W. Hambleton, El Centro, California was written on it in a firm round hand in ink. The clerk had written other things on it, including the room number and daily rate. Flack pointed a finger that needed a manicure or failing that a nailbrush.
“Came in at 2.47 P.M.,” he said. “Just today, that is. Nothing on his bill. One day’s rent. No phone calls. No nothing. That what you want?”
“What does he look like?” I asked.
“I didn’t see him. You think I stand out there by the desk and take pictures of them while they register?”
“Thanks,” I said. “Dr. G. W. Hambleton, El Centro. Much obliged.” I handed him back the registration card.
“Anything I ought to know,” Flack said as I went out, “don’t forget where I live. That is, if you call it living.”
I nodded and went out. There are days like that. Everybody you meet is a dope. You begin to look at yourself in the glass and wonder.
9
Room 332 was at the back of the building near the door to the fire escape. The corridor which led to it had a smell of old carpet and furniture oil and the drab anonymity of a thousand shabby lives. The sand bucket under the racked fire hose was full of cigarette and cigar stubs, an accumulation of several days. A radio pounded brassy music through an open transom. Through another transom people were laughing fit to kill themselves. Down at the end by Room 332 it was quieter.
I knocked the two longs and two shorts as instructed. Nothing happened. I felt jaded and old. I felt as if I had spent my life knocking at doors in cheap hotels that nobody bothered to open. I tried again. Then turned the knob and walked in. A key with a red fiber tab hung in the inside keyhole.
There was a short hall with a bathroom on the right. Beyond the hall the upper half of a bed was in view and a man lay on it in shirt and pants.
I said: “Dr. Hambleton?”
The man didn’t answer. I went past the bathroom door towards him. A whiff of perfume reached me and I started to turn, but not quickly enough. A woman who had been in the bathroom was standing there holding a towel in front of the lower part of her face. Dark glasses showed above the towel. And then the brim of a wide brimmed straw hat in a sort of dusty delphinium blue. Under that was fluffed-out pale blond hair. Blue ear buttons lurked somewhere back in the shadows. The sunglasses were in white frames with broad flat side bows. Her dress matched her hat. An embroidered silk or rayon coat was open over the dress. She wore gauntleted gloves and there was an automatic in her right hand. White bone grip. Looked like a .32.
“Turn around and put your hands behind you,” she said through the towel. The voice muffled by the towel meant as little to me as the dark glasses. It was not the voice which had talked to me on the telephone. I didn’t move.
“Don’t ever think I’m fooling,” she said. “I’ll give you exactly three seconds to do what I say.”
“Couldn’t you make it a minute? I like looking at you.”
She made a threatening gesture with the little gun. “Turn around,” she snapped. “But fast.”
“I like the sound of your voice too.”
“All right,” she said, in a tight dangerous tone. “If that’s the way you want it, that’s the way you want it.”
“Don’t forget you’re a lady,” I said, and turned around and put my hands up to my shoulders. A gun muzzle poked into the back of my neck. Breath almost tickled my skin. The perfume was an elegant something or other, not strong, not decisive. The gun against my neck went away and a white flame burned for an instant behind my eyes. I grunted and fell forward on my hands and knees and reached back quickly. My hand touched a leg in a nylon stocking but slipped off, which seemed a pity. It felt like a nice leg. The jar of another blow on the head took the pleasure out of this and I made the hoarse sound of a man in desperate shape. I collapsed on the floor. The door opened. A key rattled. The door closed. The key turned. Silence.
I climbed up to my feet and went into the bathroom. I bathed my head with a towel from the rack soaked with cold water. It felt as if the heel of a shoe had hit me. Certainly it was not a gun butt. There was a little blood, not much. I rinsed the towel out and stood there patting the bruise and wondering why I didn’t run after her screaming. But what I was doing was staring into the open medicine cabinet over the basin. The upper part of a can of talcum had been pried off the shoulder. There was talcum all over the shelf. A toothpaste tube had been cut open. Someone had been looking for something.