Уильям Макгиверн: The Big Heat

Lewis looked relieved. “Why sure, sure. It was just last night. Right out of the blue she says she wants to be paid off. Well, they don’t owe me nothing but a night’s work, that’s what I say. So I says, ‘Okay, okay, Lucy, if that’s the way you want it, the best of luck to you.’ I paid her off and she left. Just like that.”

“What time was it? Give it to me in order, as nearly as you can.”

“Okay, I’ll try.” Lewis narrowed his eyes. “She went out for dinner at ten-fifteen, ten-thirty, something like that. It was after she got back that she told me about quitting, so that would be around eleven-thirty.”

“Was she alone when she left and came back?”

“Honest to God, I don’t know. She was alone when she talked to me about quitting. ‘Mr. Lewis I’m quitting,’ she said, ‘and I want you to pay me off.’ ‘Where you going?’ I ask. ‘South,’ she says. How about that?” Lewis said, emphasizing the question by stamping sharply on the floor with an Adlerized foot. “Me, the fattailed money-bags, so they say, stuck here while a little bird like Lucy flies South. Capitalism, you can have it, I say frequently. Well, I paid her off, and off she goes. That’s all I know. Is the kid in some trouble?”

“Not that I know of,” Bannion said. “Where does she live?”

Lewis shrugged his shoulders and looked blank. “You got me! I should know, but I don’t. You know, Inspector, them kids drift in and out like the tide. I mean, facts are facts, and most of them haven’t got much more than a suitcase full of clothes between them and a charity ward. They drift, you know how it is. Nobody gives a damn about ’em, it’s a fact. Lucy might be on her way to Miami, and she might walk in tomorrow and want her job back. That’s the way it is.”

Bannion nodded, frowning. Wind forced its way under the double doors of the lobby, squeezed through the sides, and churned dust and tobacco along the wooden floor, tugged insistently at the frayed corners of garish, girl-adorned posters. “Yes, that’s the way it is,” he said. “Did she have any friends here among the other girls who would know where she lives?”

“That’s a thought,” Lewis said, snapping his fingers. “We’ll go next door and see Elsie. They were pretty close. She and Lucy were always clubby.” He laughed, taking Bannion’s arm. “If they weren’t both nuts about me I’d swear they were queer as three dollar bills.”

Elsie was a tall, friendly blonde, with deep purple hollows under her eyes. She knew where Lucy lived, or had lived: The Reale Hotel, on Spruce below Sixth.

“I hope she’s not in trouble,” she said. “Lucy is a nice kid.”

“No, this is just routine,” Bannion said.

“Ah, you guys always say that, whether it’s arson or stealing an atom bomb,” Elsie said dubiously. “Anyway, I hope you mean it this time.”

“I do, really,” Bannion said. “Thanks, Elsie.”

Bannion took a cab to the Reale, a third-class hotel with a bravely clean lobby. He explained who he was and what he wanted to the desk clerk, a young man who wore horn-rimmed glasses and had an alert, inquiring manner.

“Miss Carroway checked out last night, sir,” he said. “I was on duty and remember the time. It was twelve forty-five.”

“Was she alone?”

“No, she was with a gentleman.”

“I see.” Bannion lit a cigarette as a tired-looking man in his fifties got his key, asked without hope for mail, and went slowly to the elevator. “I wish you’d tell me as much as you can about him,” Bannion said. “Did they come in together? Start there and let me have it all.”

“Very well.” The clerk frowned slightly and pinched his thin nose. “They did come in together. Miss Carroway asked for her key and told me she was checking out and to have her bill ready when she came down. The gentleman stood behind her, about six feet away, I’d judge, but looking away from me so that all I saw was his profile.”

The clerk paused, and Bannion let him take his time. He was a good witness, with an eye for details.

“Miss Carroway and the gentleman took the elevator up to her room,” the clerk said. “Normally, that’s against our rules, but in this case, since she was leaving, I thought, well—” He shrugged slightly. “It’s not the best hotel in the world, but we do try to maintain certain standards. At any rate, they were down within ten or fifteen minutes. Miss Carroway paid her bill, it was for only three days, and then she left. I think the gentleman had a car because there’s no trolley on Spruce Street any more, and the nearest cab stand is almost half a mile from here.”

“She didn’t make a phone call here?”

The clerk looked apologetic. “I’d forgotten that. Yes, just before she left she used the public phone here in the lobby.”

“What did her friend do while she made the call?”

“Let me see: He went with her to the booth and waited there, I believe.”

“Did she close the door of the booth?”

The clerk smiled helplessly. “I’m afraid I didn’t notice. No, wait a minute. It must have been open because I heard her talking. It’s funny how things come back to you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, one thing suggests another. What did she say?”

“I wasn’t listening, you understand. It — her voice, I mean — was just like a noise, like music in the background. But she did say something about twenty dollars. I don’t know how that fitted into the conversation, however.”

“Twenty dollars, eh?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Now, what did this fellow look like?”

“He was a big man,” the clerk said thoughtfully. “Not as big as you are, but pretty big. He wore a camel’s hair coat, and his hair, what I could see of it, looked dark. He had on a white fedora, you see. His complexion was dark, and he had a rather large nose. That’s pretty general, I guess, but it’s the best I can do,”

“It’s very good,” Bannion said. “Thanks very much. Could you recognize a picture of the man?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Okay, I may stop back one of these days. Thanks again.”

Outside, Bannion turned his collar up against the wind and walked west on Spruce Street. It was a long hike back to the Hall, seven to Broad Street, and three more over to Market, but he could use the time to sort out what he’d learned. It wasn’t much, actually; unless something else happened he was at a standstill. But Bannion had a curious feeling that something else was going to happen.

As Bannion entered the Homicide Bureau Neely winked at him and nodded toward the door of Lieutenant Wilks’ anteroom. “You’ve been paged on the quarter hour,” he said.

“Damn, that’s too bad,” Bannion said, returning the wink. He tossed his hat and coat on a desk and walked into the Lieutenant’s reception room, where a uniformed cop, assigned to duty as Wilks’ secretary, was busy at a typewriter.

The cop said, “The Lieutenant’s expecting you, Sarge, go right in.”

“Thanks.”

Wilks was seated behind his desk, a tall, sparely built man in his early fifties, looking very trim and fit in the tailored uniform he wore in preference to street clothes. The room was unpleasantly cold; Wilks believed in the austere, vigorous life and except on the worst days of winter his windows were always flung open. He was also a cold-bath and long-hike type. “Sit down, Dave,” he said, nodding at the chair beside his desk. “You’ve got me in trouble, so let’s get it straightened out.” Wilks affected the manner of a martinet; he talked forcefully and briefly, although not always with point, and had cultivated a stem, uncompromising glare. He was a driver, fairly smart about police work, but more valuable to the department as a distinguished, confidence-evoking figurehead. Wilks was excellent at banquets, Rotary luncheons, and women’s clubs; his ascetic, cold-nipped face, and his trim body, the result of diet, exercise and a good tailor, were enough to diminish any doubts about the efficiency of the police department. The role had more or less been wished on him; whether he enjoyed it, Bannion didn’t know.