Stuart Kaminsky - He Done Her Wrong

“Grayson,” I stopped her. “First name?”

“Talbott,” she said. “Talbott Grayson. Hell of a name, but we get a lot of guys want to be actors and make up all kinds of crazy-ass names. Know what I mean?”

I knew this time. He had taken the names of the two men he planned to kill.

“Is he in now?” I said, putting on the friendly grin meant to calm people, but which usually had the opposite effect.

“Don’t know,” she said. “Don’t even remember what he looks like. So many come through. He’s in three D. You going up?”

“I’m going up,” I said. “You want to give me a passkey?”

“I don’t know,” she said, cautiously hiking up her sweater to reveal knobby elbows.

“Suit yourself,” I shrugged. “I can kick the door down. Or you can come with me. It might get a little pushy, so if you come, just stand back.”

“I’ll stay here. Got to watch the desk,” she decided, handing me the key. “Bring it right back, and if you got to take him out, take him real quiet.”

“Real quiet,” I said.

I found the stairway, a dark, narrow gangway, and hurried up. My head was beating and I reached up to touch my bandage, fearing that it was coming off. I owed Ressner something.

Three D was at the end of a hall that smelled stale and a little wet.

I knocked, prepared to imitate the woman at the desk, the mailman, or General Wainwright. It would come to me when Ressner answered. I gripped the.38 in my pocket and knocked again. No answer. The key fit perfectly and turned easily.

“Mr. Talbott?” I squeaked, trying to do Butterfly McQueen in Gone with the Wind . No answer. I pulled the gun out, ready to give Ressner an airing, but it was clear that he wasn’t there. There really wasn’t anyplace to hide. There was one small room and a clearly visible little bathroom. It was typical prewar furnished with a bed in the corner that could look a little like a couch if the thick flower spread was put on just right, which it wasn’t, a chair with a wild spring ready to goose the guest, a small table, a battered dresser, and a painting on the wall of an Oriental woman dancing with a fan in front of her nose.

The place looked empty. Drawers were open, tin wastebasket on its side. I moved to the little table, where I could see a piece of paper with some writing on it. My guess, as I took the few steps to the table, was that I’d wind up warning the woman at the desk and then come back up here to wait out the day and night in the hope that Ressner would show again, though it didn’t look likely. Then I read the note:

TOO LATE, PETERS. TRY AGAIN. I’M JUST A LITTLE AHEAD OF YOU.

I put my gun in my pocket, folded the note, put it in another pocket, and went through the wastebasket. Nothing there.

I left the room and went back down the stairs.

“Not there?” hoarse-whispered the wiry woman, pointing up with her cigarette.

“No,” I said, throwing her the key and hurrying across the lobby.

“What do I do if he comes back?” she continued to whisper.

“He’s not coming back,” I said.

I breathed deeply when I got outside, looked up at the spring sun, and felt great. I was on my way beyond Fresno.

I stopped to get gas at a Sinclair station before I left L.A. and got a dirty look from an attendant with a Deep South accent when the Ford only took two gallons.

There was nothing much to take my mind off the pain in my scalp except the light morning traffic and my right-handed playing with the radio. Once I’d cleared town and hit 43, static hummed instead of spitting, and once, I actually got the faint murmur of a station.

A hellfire and dammit-all preacher warned me and the rest of the coast that we’d better mend our ways fast if we were going to have the moral stamina to fight off the Japanese. He pronounced stamina in three distinct syllables: sta-min-nuh. He was all I could get, so I let him keep me company, quoting from the Bible all the way to Corcoran.

I had a chicken sandwich and some war talk at the Elite Roadside Diner. The war talk was depressing, the chicken sandwich decent when washed down with the Elite’s homemade orange drink.

The overtoothed guy who gave me the orange drink asked about my head, and I told him I’d got drunk and tried to ram down a door. This seemed reasonable to him.

Back on the road, the Bible belter deserted me. His voice had begun to give out, and he turned the microphone over to a woman who began to confess her sins to accompanying organ music. Her list was amazingly long and lacking in detail. After twenty miles, somewhere near Selma, the station began to fade, and my head began to crackle with static, which worried me, since I had turned off the radio. The sun was still up, bouncing out towards the ocean beyond the hills. I decided to stop for the night and tackle Winning in the morning. The problem was that I couldn’t find an auto court for another ten miles, and the one I did spot was a series of gray wooden outhouses with a sign saying FREE RADIO. I pulled into the sandy driveway of Rose’s Rodeo Auto Hotel, got out, stretched my legs, and went in to see if there were any vacancies. I expected to have my choice.

Rose herself, a smiling balloon of a woman, sat perched on a little stool in front of the counter.

“Room, beer, information, or gas?” she asked.

“All of them,” I answered. She eased herself off the stool, waddled behind the counter, reached down, and came up with a cold Falstaff. She popped the cap and handed it to me, and I held it away while the foam eased down. It tasted fine.

“You can have cabin four,” she said. “Or one, two, three, or six. Believe it or not, someone’s already in five. Whatever business we get will be coming in later tonight. Going north or south?”

“Up near Clovis,” I said. “Place called the Winning Institute. Heard of it?”

“Think so,” said Rosie, opening her own bottle, which dripped foam over her fat wrist. “Big ugly fella of a place with teeth.”

“Sounds like the fella,” I said, downing some beer, which made my head throb.

“You got a relative up there?” she said.

“No, just some business.”

“Something wrong with your head?” she tried, pointing at my head with her bottle in case I didn’t know where my head was.

“Yeah, but nothing I need a headshrinker for. Had a little accident. I’m a salesman. Sell tongue depressors, bandages, stuff like that. Hard to get the products. Military takes most of it.”

“I can imagine,” said Rose, finishing her beer. “You got luggage?”

“Sure,” I said, finishing off the beer and putting the empty on her desk. “I’ll get it out of the trunk later, and I’ll get my gas in the morning.”

“Cash up front,” she said, holding out the registration book, which she turned toward me. “Nothing personal.”

“Good business,” I said, picking up the pen and signing in as Cornel Wilde.

She looked at the signature upside down.

“You ain’t Cornel Wilde,” she said, stifling a burp.

“Not the actor,” I chuckled. “That’s my real name. Quite a burden for a tongue depressor salesman. People let me in, expecting to see a movie star. I’ve thought of changing my name, but what the hell, I had it first.”

“I get your point. Three bucks cash plus twenty cents for the beer. You want another just to keep me company, it’s free.”

I pulled out my wallet, tried not to look at my dwindling cash supply, and gave her three bucks. I pulled the change out of my pocket and asked her where a good place might be for dinner.

“Not within twenty miles of here, but you’re welcome to eat with me in back about eight, or go four miles down the road to Ed Don’s. He runs a beanery attached to his gas station.”