Irwin Shaw: Nightwork

There was a medium-sized but expensive-looking leather suitcase open on the little desk. A worn wallet lay next to it and a gold money clip, with some bills in it. In the bag three clean shirts were to be seen, neatly folded.

Strewn on the desk were some quarters and dimes. I counted the money in the clip. Four tens and three ones. I dropped the clip back on the desk and picked up the wallet. There were ten, crisp, new, hundred-dollar bills in it. I whistled softly. Whatever else had happened that night to the old man, he had not been robbed. I put the ten bills back into the wallet and carefully placed it back on the desk. It never occurred to me to take any of the money. That was the sort of man I used to be. Thou shalt [4]not steal. Thou shalt not do a lot of things.

I glanced at the open suitcase. Along with the shirts there were two pairs of old-fashioned button shorts, a striped necktie, two pairs of socks, some blue pajamas. Whoever he was, number 602 was going to stay in New York longer than he had planned.

The corpse on the floor oppressed me, made uncertain claims on me. I took one of the blankets from the bed and threw it over the body, covering the face, the staring eyes, the mutely shouting lips. I felt warmer, death now only a geometric shape on the floor.

I went back to the corridor to get the cardboard tube. There were no labels or addresses or identification of any kind on it. As I carried it into the room, I saw that the heavy brown paper had been torn raggedly away from the top. I was about to put it on the desk, next to the dead man’s other belongings, when I caught a glimpse of green paper, partially pulled out of the opening. I drew it out. It was a hundred-dollar bill. It was not new like the bills in the wallet, but old and crumpled. I held the tube so that I could look down into it. As far as I could tell, it was crammed with bills. I remained immobile for a moment, then stuffed the bill I had taken out back in and folded the torn brown paper as neatly as I could over the top of the tube.

Holding the tube under my arm, I went to the door, switched off the light, stepped out into the corridor and turned the pass-key in the lock of room number 602. My actions were crisp, almost automatic, as though all my life I had rehearsed for this moment, as though there were no alternatives.

I took the elevator down to the lobby, went into the little windowless room next to the office, using the key. There was a shelf running along above the safe, piled with stationery, old bills, ragged magazines from other years that had been recuperated from the rooms. Pictures of extinct politicians, naked girls who by now were no longer worth photographing – the momentarily illustrious dead, the extremely desirable women, monocled assassins, movie stars, carefully posed authors – a jumble of recent and not-so-recent American miscellany. Without hesitation I reached up and rolled the tube back toward the wall. I heard it plop down onto the shelf, out of sight, behind the dog-eared testimony of scandals and delights.

Then I went into the lighted office and called for an ambulance.

After that I sat down, finished unwrapping my sandwich, opened the bottle of beer. While I ate and drank, I looked up the register. Number 602 was, or had been, named John Ferns, had booked in only the afternoon before, and had given a home address on North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.

I was finishing my beer when the bell rang and I saw the two men and the ambulance outside. One of them was in a white coat and was carrying a rolled up stretcher. The other was dressed in a blue uniform and was carrying a black bag, but I knew he wasn’t a doctor. They don’t waste doctors on ambulances in Manhattan, but dress up an orderly who is something of a medical technician and good enough to give first aid and who can usually be depended upon not to kill a patient on the spot. As I was opening the door, a prowl car drove up and a policeman got out.

“What’s wrong?” the policeman asked. He was a heavy-set, dark-jowled [5]man, with unhealthy rings under his eyes.

“An old man croaked upstairs,” I said.

“I’ll go along with them, Dave,” the policeman said to his partner at the wheel. I could hear the car radio chattering, dispatching officers to accidents, cases of wife beating, suicides, to streets where suspicious-looking men had been reported entering buildings.

Calmly, I led the group through the lobby. The technician was young and kept yawning as though he hadn’t slept in weeks. People who work at night all look as though they are being punished for some nameless sin. The policeman’s shoes on the bare floor of the lobby sounded as though they had lead soles. Going up in the elevator nobody spoke. I volunteered no information. A medicinal smell filled the elevator. They carry the hospital with them, I thought. I would have preferred it if the prowl car hadn’t happened along.

When we got out on the sixth floor, I opened the door to 602 and led the way into the room. The technician ripped the blanket off the dead man, went over him, and put his stethoscope to the man’s chest. The policeman stood at the foot of the bed, his eyes taking in the lipstick-smeared sheets, the bag on the desk, the wallet and money clip lying next to it. “Who’re you. Jack?” he asked me.

“I’m the night clerk.”

“What’s your name?” The way he asked was full of accusation, as though he was sure whatever name I gave would be a false one. What would he have done if I had answered, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings”? Probably taken out his black book and written, “Witness asserts name is Ozymandias. Probably an alias.” He was a real night-time cop, doomed to roam a dark city teeming with enemies, ambushes everywhere.

“My name is Grimes.” I said.

“Where’s the lady who was here with him?”

“I have no idea. I let a lady out around one o’clock. It might have been this one.” I was surprised that I wasn’t stuttering.

The technician stood up, taking the stethoscope plugs out of his ears. “DOA.” he said flatly.

Dead on arrival. I could have told that without calling for an ambulance. I was discovering that there is a lot of waste motion about death in a big city.

“What was it?” the cop asked. “Any wounds?”

“No. Coronary, probably.”

“Anything to be done?”

“Not really,” me technician said. “Go through the motions.” He bent down again, rolled back the dead man’s eyelids and peered into the rheumy eyes. Then he felt around the throat for a pulse, his hands gentle and expert.

“You seem to know what you’re doing, friend,” I laid. “You must get a lot of practice.”

“I’m in my second year in medical school,” he said. “I only do this to eat.”

The policeman went over to the desk and picked up the money clip. “Forty-three bucks,” he said. “And in the wallet—” His thick eyebrows went up as he inspected it. He took out the bills and riffled them. counting. “An even grand,” he said.

“Holy man!” I said. It was a good try, but from the way the cop looked at me, I wasn’t fooling him.

“How much was there in it when you found him?” he asked. He was not a friendly neighborhood cop. Maybe he was a different man when he was on the day shift.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said. Not stuttering was a triumph.

“You mean to say you didn’t look?” – “I didn’t look.”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Why what?” This was a good time to look boyish.

“Why didn’t you look?”

“It didn’t occur to me.”

“Yeah,” the cop said again, but let it go at that. He rimed the bills again. “All in hundreds. You’d think a guy with that much dough on him would pick a better place to knock it off than a creep joint like this.” He put the bills back into the wallet. “I guess I better take this into the station,” he said. “Anybody want to count?”