Lawrence Block: Chip Harrison Scores Again

He scratched his head and said, “Why?”

“Because I need a place to stay.”

“But you asked—”

“The Y,” I said. He was still puzzled. “The YMCA,” I said.

“Oh, the YMCA. Let me just think. I believe they have one over to Savolia, but I couldn’t say for sure.”

“How far is that?”

“Oh, I guess I’d put it at twenty-eight miles. Say thirty at the outside.”

There was a hotel in Bordentown, he told me. It was called the Bordentown Hotel, which seemed logical enough, and it was on Main Street, which wasn’t all that much of a surprise either. Salesmen would stay there, if they had to be in Bordentown overnight, and if they wanted to save money, because those motels over on the highway all ranged from eight to twelve dollars a room, whereas you could stay at the hotel for five dollars, or seven-fifty with a private bath. And then there were some single people who lived there year-round, widowers for the most part, and they paid by the month, which made it considerably cheaper.

“Of course you wouldn’t be wanting to spend a month in Bordentown,” he said.

I had the feeling he might be right. Anyway, I couldn’t afford to pay by the month. I couldn’t even afford to pay by the night. I asked if there were any less expensive places. He said there were some women who took in tourists for two or three dollars a night, but it was too late to go knocking on their doors.

“How would it be if I slept in the back here?” I suggested. “It would just be for tonight.”

“Company wouldn’t allow that.”

I said I wouldn’t tell them if he didn’t, but he didn’t even bother answering that. He didn’t get exactly hostile, just sort of turned away. I had the feeling that he didn’t see much point in wasting any more time on me, and I could understand his point of view.

I must have spent half an hour walking through the main part of town, and that was enough to cover it pretty thoroughly. There really wasn’t a lot there. It was about then that I started wondering if coming to Bordentown might not have been something of a mistake. Of course, it was the middle of the night. You couldn’t really expect a small town to be lit up like Times Square.

Until now, though, I had been very much into the idea of going to Bordentown. The weirdness of it, finding the bus ticket and using it, had a special beauty of its own. In the normal course of things I might have spent the last few hours of the bus trip thinking about what I would do after I got off the bus, making plans and working things out in my mind. But you know how I spent the last few hours of the bus trip. I spent the last few hours of the bus trip with Willie Em, and the company of Willie Em tends to make one live very much in the Now.

As a matter of fact, the memory of Willie Em tends to make one live very much in the Past, and while I walked around downtown Bordentown, such as it was, I found myself thinking as much about her as about my future. I couldn’t really get into anything like long-term planning at all. Just short-term goals, like getting a place to sleep and finding some kind of job, were the only things I could really handle.

The place to sleep was the hard part. At that hour it seemed impossible. The only place I could go was the hotel, and I couldn’t afford it. If I had only had a suitcase it would have been all right, because I could tell them I was staying for a week, and if things went well I would have enough money at the end of the week to pay what I owed. On the other hand, if things went badly I could leave them the suitcase at the end of the week and go someplace else, and all that would mean was that I could never go back to Bordentown again, which didn’t sound that terrible anyway.

No suitcase, though. Nothing but the clothes on my back, which had seen cleaner days. So any hotel would be sure to ask for cash in advance. The fact that I was poor but honest wouldn’t help. They’d rather have someone who’s rich but crooked.

It’s funny how problems solve themselves, though, when you just let things happen. I had more or less resigned myself to finding some diner and sitting up drinking coffee until morning, at which time I could get some old lady to rent me a room that I could afford, when I got a place to sleep that didn’t cost me a dime.

The Bordentown Jail.

I was walking along when this car pulled up and a voice said, “Git over here, boy.” And when I got over there I knew who the guy was without him saying another word. I recognized him right away from all those Dodge commercials.

He never did advise me of my rights, but I don’t guess he had to because he never exactly arrested me, either. He just told me to get in the car with him, and he drove over to a little concrete block building a few blocks from where he picked me up, and he asked me a lot of questions and took my fingerprints and put me in a cell. He took my belt and my shoelaces and my comb. I was getting sick of losing combs, and I hadn’t been eating much lately and my pants, without the belt, tended to fall down a lot. But I didn’t complain.

I didn’t complain about any of this, actually. I was at a tremendous psychological disadvantage, especially when he made me empty my pockets and I had to take out that pair of undershorts and put them on the desk. Maybe some people can do that without feeling stupid. Not me.

He said, “No identification, no visible means of support, no clothing. You say you’re from New York, boy? What you think you’re doing here?”

I don’t remember what I said.

“You an agitator? Come down to make trouble? Or a runaway? You wanted up North? Get your prints and description to Washington and see if there isn’t somebody looking for you.”

There was something about the way the cell door closed that left me feeling it would never open again. I walked around the cell, which was a lot like walking around Bordentown except that it didn’t take quite so long. There was a kind of a toilet, which I’m just as glad I didn’t have to use, and a corn husk mattress that was more comfortable than it looked.

During the summer some of my fellow apple-knockers had told me stories about Southern jails. About getting caught in a speed trap and being fined the amount they had on them, and then winding up on the chain gang on a vagrancy charge because they didn’t have any money. About trying to hitchhike through Georgia and getting sentenced to three months of chopping weeds with a road crew.

I remembered all this now, and I really didn’t think I was going to get much sleep. But I must have been more exhausted than I realized.

I woke up when the sun came through the bars. I just lay there for about an hour before the Sheriff turned up, trying to put together pieces of a story that would keep me off the chain gang.

At first I decided to tell him the truth. I must have read a hundred murder stories where some poor idiot is suspected of a crime, and if he had just played things absolutely straight from the beginning it would have worked out with no trouble, but instead he tells one little lie or holds something back and gets in deeper trouble, until he has to go out and find the real killer himself. Of course, if he played things absolutely straight there wouldn’t have been any book, so I can understand why writers do it that way, but the moral always seemed to be that the truth shall make you free.

But it seemed to me that the truth in my case would make me very much unfree. In the first place, nobody was going to believe it. If I said I found a wallet that somebody had already stolen, anyone with half a brain would decide that I had stolen it. And if I said I came to Bordentown because I had a ticket that made it a toss-up between Bordentown and Boston, and Bordentown was warmer, and I didn’t want to spit in the face of destiny, and how one Mary Beth could lead to another, well, all that would do was keep me off the chain gang and land me in the insane asylum.