Lawrence Block - A Ticket To The Boneyard

"You know this man," the clerk said to one of them. "Stayed here over the summer. What was the name he called hisself?"

The man he'd asked took the sketch and held it so the light fell on it. "This ain't a photograph," he said. "This is like a picture somebody drawn of him."

"That's right."

"Yeah, I know him," he said. "Looks just like him. What name was you calling him?"

"Motley. James Leo Motley."

He shook his head. "Wasn't no Motley. Wasn't no James anything."

He turned to his friend. "Rydell, what was this dude's name? You remember him."

"Oh, yeah," Rydell said.

"So what was his name?"

"Looks just like him," Rydell said. "On'y his hair was different."

"How?"

"Short," Rydell told me. "Short on top, on the sides, short all over."

"Real short," his friend agreed. "Like maybe he used to be someplace where they give you a real short haircut."

"Where they just use that old clippers," Rydell said, "and all's they do is buzz you up one side of your head and down the other. I swear I'd know his name. If I was to hear it I'd know it."

"So would I," the other man said.

"Coleman," Rydell said.

"Wasn't Coleman."

"No, but it was like Coleman.Colton? Copeland!"

"Think you're right."

"Ronald Copeland," Rydell said triumphantly. "Reason I said Coleman, you know that actor, used to be, name of Ronald Colman? Dude here was Ronald Copeland."

And, amazingly, his name was in the book, with a check-in date of July 27, twelve days after he cleared the gate at Dannemora. For previous address he'd put Mason City, Iowa. I couldn't imagine why, but I dutifully noted it in my notebook.

They had an odd system of record-keeping at the Benjamin Davis, and there was no indication in the book of his date of departure. The clerk had to consult a card file to find that out. It turned out he'd been there exactly four weeks, checking out on the twenty-fourth of August. He had not left a forwarding address, and the desk clerk couldn't recall that there'd been anything that needed forwarding, or that he'd received any mail during his stay, or had any callers.

None of them could recall a conversation with him. "Man kept to hisself," Rydell said. "Time you'd see him, he'd be going to his room or out to the street. What I'm saying, he was never just standing around talking to you."

His friend said, "Something about him, you didn't start up no conversation with him."

"Way he looked at you."

"Hell, yes."

"He could look at you," Rydell said, "and it was like you'd get a chill. Not a hard look, neither, or a dirty look. Just cold."

"Ice-cold."

"Like he'd kill you for any reason at all. You want my opinion, man's a stone killer. I didn't never know nobody looked at you like that and wasn't."

"I knew a woman once had that kind of look," his friend said.

"Shit, I don't want to meet no woman like that."

"You didn't want to meet this one," his friend said. "Not on the shortest day of your life."

We talked some more, and I gave them each a card and told them it would be worth something to know where he was now, or if he turned up again in the neighborhood. Rydell offered the opinion that the conversation we'd just had ought to be worth something already, and I wasn't inclined to argue the point. I gave ten dollars to each of them, him and his friend and the desk clerk. Rydell allowed as to how it might have been worth more than that, but he didn't seem surprised when that was all he got.

"You see those dudes on the TV," he said, "and they be passing out twenty dollars here, twenty dollars there, 'fore nobody even tells 'em anything. Why is it you never see no dudes like that around here?"

"They spend all their money," his friend said, "before they get this far uptown. This gentleman here, this gentleman's a man knows how to pace hisself."

I paced myself all up and down Broadway, and that was the only time I had occasion to hand out any money. It was also as close as I came to getting a lead, and I suppose it was progress of a sort. I could place him with certainty in New York for four weeks ending August 24. I had an alias for him, and had the inferential evidence that he was dirty. If he was clean, what did he need with an alias?

More important, I'd established that Galindez's drawing was recognizably close to Motley's present appearance. His hair had been shorter, but by now his prison haircut would have grown out. Then too, he might have sideburns or facial hair, but he very likely didn't; he hadn't had them before he went away, and he hadn't started growing them by the time he checked out of the Davis, six weeks after they let him out of prison.

By the time I made the circle back to the Bretton Hall my legs were feeling the mileage. And that was the least of it. That kind of legwork takes its toll. You have the same conversation with dozens of people, and most of the time it's like talking to plants. The only bright spot that day had come at the Benjamin Davis, with a long dry spell before it and a longer drier one after. That was typical. When you make rounds like that — knocking on doors, cops call it, but on this occasion I'd had no doors to knock on — when you do this, you know you're wasting at a minimum ninety-five percent of your time and effort. There doesn't seem to be any way around this, because you can't do the useful five percent without the other. It's like shooting birds with a scattergun. Most of the pellets miss, but you don't mind as long as the bird falls. And you couldn't expect to bring him down with a.22. He's too small, and there's too much sky around him.

Still, it takes it out of you. I took the bus and went back to my hotel room and turned on the television. There was a late college game underway, two Pac-10 teams, and one of them had a quarterback who was being hyped for the Heisman Trophy. I sat down and started watching, and I could understand what the fuss was about. He was a white boy, too, and big enough for pro ball. Something gave me the feeling that his income over the next ten years was going to be higher than mine.

I must have dozed off watching, because I was having some kind of dream when the phone rang. I opened my eyes, turned the sound down on the TV, and answered the phone.

It was Elaine. She said, "Hi, sweetie. I called earlier but they said you were out."

"I didn't get a message."

"I didn't leave one. I just wanted to thank you and I didn't want to do that by message. You're a sweet man, but I suppose everybody tells you that."

"Not quite everybody," I said. "I talked to dozens of people today and not one of them told me that. Most of them didn't tell me a thing."

"What were you doing?"

"Looking for our friend. I found a hotel where he spent a month after he got out of prison."

"Where?"

"A flop in the West Nineties. The Benjamin Davis, but I don't think you'd know it."

"Would I want to?"

"Probably not. Our sketch is good, I managed to establish that much, and it may be the most important thing I learned today."

"Did you get the original back?"

"You still want it, huh?"

"Of course I do. What are you doing tonight? Do you want to bring it over?"

"I've got some more legwork to do."

"And I bet you give great leg, don't you?"

"And I want to get to a meeting," I said. "I'll call later, if it's not too late. And maybe I'll come by, if you feel like late company."

"Good," she said. "And Matt? That was sweet."

"For me, too."

"Did you used to be such a romantic? Well, I just wanted you to know I appreciate it."

I put the phone down and turned the sound up. The game was well into the fourth quarter, so I'd evidently been asleep for a while. It was no contest at this stage, but I watched the rest of it anyway, then went out to get something to eat.