Bill Pronzini - Bindlestiff

“That’s right,” the clerk said. “Now I remember.” He wasn’t looking at me anymore. His eyes were all over the money; I could feel them like crawling things on the back of my hand. “Fella looked like that come in Tuesday evening and took a room.”

“Was he alone?”

“Yeah. Alone.”

“What name did he register under?”

The clerk did not have to consult his book. “Smith,” he said. “Mr. Smith, from Sacramento.”

“Did he just stay the night, or what?”

“No. Paid two nights in advance.”

“Then he hasn’t checked out yet?”

“Far as I know, he’s still up in his room. Far as I know, he ain’t been down since he registered.”

“What room is he in?”

“Six. Second floor, rear.”

“I’m going up for a little talk with Mr. Smith,” I said. “But you don’t know that. So you can’t call up and let him know I’m coming, now can you?”

“I don’t know nothing,” the clerk said. “I told you, mister, my memory ain’t what it used to be.”

I took my hand off the fiver and moved toward the stairs at the rear. I didn’t see him snatch up the bill, but I heard him do it and I heard him smack his lips. It was like listening to a carrion bird swoop down on the carcass of a small animal.

The second-floor hallway was dim and quiet and had the same dust-and-disinfectant smell of the lobby. The first door I came to was standing open, and when I passed it I glanced inside automatically, the way you do. A frowsy brunette in her middle thirties was sitting on the end of the bed, clad in an old Hawaiian muu-muu. One foot was propped against a chair, so that the muu-muu bunched up to reveal a lot of flabby white thigh; she was painting her toenails blood-red.

She saw me and paused, and she must have hopped up immediately as I passed. I had only taken a half dozen more strides along the hallway when I heard her call behind me, “Hey there, sugar,” in a voice that sounded as if it had been marinating in a vat of bourbon. When I turned she was leaning against the door jamb, one hand resting on an outthrust hip; the pose was as old as time, and so was the smile on her bright red mouth. “What’s your hurry?”

“I’m here on business,” I said.

She laughed. “That makes two of us, sugar. Come on in when you’re through and we’ll get acquainted.”

“I don’t have the time. Thanks anyway.”

“Special rate for big guys like you.”

“Uh-uh. Sorry.”

I pivoted away and went on down the hall, looking at the numerals on the closed doors. When I got to the one with 6 on it I moved up close and put my ear against the panel. There wasn’t anything to hear. I rapped on the wood and called out, “Mr. Smith?”

No answer.

I knocked again, waited through another fifteen seconds of silence, then reached down and tried the knob. Locked-what else? “Mr. Smith? You in there?”

“He’s in there, all right,” the pudgy hooker said. She hadn’t gone back inside her room; she was still leaning back there against the jamb, watching me. “But he ain’t gonna open the door.”

“No? Why is that?”

She came down to where I was, making a little production out of it, like a stripper coming down a burlesque-house runway. “How come you want him?” she asked in an undertone. “Don’t tell me you’re the Man?”

“The Man” was what street people called a pusher, a dealer in drugs. “No,” I said.

“I didn’t think so. You ain’t a cop either; I can spot a cop with my eyes shut.”

Sure you can, honey, I thought. She was so good at spotting cops, she probably had an arrest record as long as a bad novel.

“So what do you want with that grubby little shit in there?” she asked. “If his name is Smith, mine’s Bo Derek.”

“It’s a private matter.”

“Yeah, sure. Well, he ain’t gonna answer the door, like I said. But if you want to get in there and wake him up I can help you out.”

“How?”

“The door locks in this fleabag are all the same. You got a key to one room, you got a key to all of ’em.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep. You can use my key, sugar.”

“How much?”

“Ten bucks.” She grinned and stroked her hip suggestively. “Put another twenty with it and you can use me too.”

Everybody had a hand out these days; money was everything, money was life itself, and nobody seemed to much give a damn how he got it. The “Screw-’em-all-except-me” philosophy was becoming universal. These were hard times, all right. If you didn’t watch out for your own ass, nobody else was going to do it for you.

I got a sawbuck out of my wallet, waggled it in front of her nose, and said cynically, “The key, sugar. Just the key.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” she said, and I thought: The hell I don’t. But she turned back toward her room, disappeared inside for a few seconds, reappeared carrying the key. I let her have the ten in exchange for it, slid the key into the latch, turned it until the tumbler clicked, and then withdrew it and gave it back to her.

“So long,” I said. “Have a nice day.”

“You too, sugar.”

She returned to her room, jiggling her fleshy hips to let me see again what she thought I was missing. I waited until she went inside and shut the door; then I faced number six. And rotated the knob and shoved the door inward, cautiously, hanging back on the balls of my feet just in case.

But I didn’t think there was going to be any trouble-and there wasn’t. He was sprawled on his back on the bed, a skinny kid of about twenty-five with sallow skin, a concave chest, pipestem legs, and filthy yellow hair that lay in long matted ropes over the pillow. Even though he was conscious and his eyes were staring straight at me, he didn’t know I was there. He didn’t know he was there either: he was about as stoned as you can get. Little giggles came out of him like invisible bubbles out of one of those kids’ soap toys. The room was hot and sticky and foul with the sweet-acid smell of marijuana.

I shut the door, breathing shallowly through my mouth, and went over to a window that looked out on an airshaft and opened it to let in some fresh air. Then I moved over by the bed. The ashtray on the nightstand was full of roach butts, and there were two fresh joints in an empty can of Prince Albert tobacco. The way it looked, he’d managed to sell the stolen lantern and tools, scored a load of grass from one of the local suppliers, and come here to do some solo flying; that would explain why he hadn’t left the room for two days, why he’d paid for both days in advance.

But judging from the number of butts in the ashtray, and how stoned he was, he’d been smoking something stronger than plain grass. Marijuana soaked in angel dust, probably, I thought. Angel dust was a chemical compound called PCP, an animal tranquilizer, and it was not very expensive. What it was was dangerous. People had suffered brain damage and any number of other side-effects from taking it.

That didn’t stop dopers like this one from using it, though, because it was supposed to give you a terrific high. They were the new lost generation, these kids, drifting from one place to another, looking for something they’d never find in a hazy half-world of drugs and dreams. Highs were all that mattered to them; escape from a reality they feared or hated or were bewildered by. Only they never got high enough, because there wasn’t anything on this earth that could elevate them to where they wanted to be. And sooner or later, if they didn’t get help or wise up on their own, they would take a trip-real or drug-induced-that they wouldn’t come back from.

The kid wasn’t wearing anything except a pair of dirty shorts; his pants were on the floor, along with his sheepskin vest and a pair of heavy motorcycle boots. I picked up the pants, found a wallet in one of the back pockets. There was no money in it, but it did contain a California driver’s license with his picture on it. He had to carry the ID in case the police rousted him, because without it he’d be arrested on the spot. The license said that his name was Stanley McGhan and that once upon a time he had lived in El Cajon, down by San Diego.