Росс Макдональд - Meet Me at the Morgue

I rang the handbell at the abandoned desk. From the dark bowels of the building, a little man in a faded blue uniform came trotting. His tight round stomach poked out gnomishly under the tunic.

“Desk-clerk’s gone to lunch. You want a room?” Under the pillbox hat, the hair was sparse and faded brown, the color of drought-killed grass.

“Your name Sandy?”

“That’s what they call me.”

He looked me over, trying to place me, and I returned the look. I guessed that he was a jockey grown too heavy to ride. He had the bantam cockiness, the knowing eyes, the sharp, strained youthfulness that had never dared to let itself mature. Money would talk to him. Probably nothing else would.

“What’s your business, mister? You got to talk to the manager if you’re selling. He’s not here.”

“I’m looking for a friend of mine. He carries a small black suitcase.”

Boredom glazed his eyes. “Lots of people carry small black suitcases. The woods is full of them.”

“This particular one was left at the station newsstand this morning. You picked it up about eleven o’clock.”

“ I picked it up? Not me.” Leaning on the desk, he crossed his stubby legs and looked up at the ceiling.

“Joe Trentino recognized you.”

“He’s seeing better lately? Nuts.”

I didn’t have money to use on him. Fear would have to do. “Listen to me, Sandy. That suitcase was hot. The longer you won’t talk, the deeper you’re in.”

“Who you kidding?” But his gaze came down from the ceiling, met mine, and sank below it. “You a cop?”

“Close enough. That suitcase contained evidence of a felony. Right now you’re an accomplice after the fact.”

I watched fear grow in him like a sudden chill pinching his mouth and nostrils. “I handle a lot of suitcases. How do I know what’s in them? You can’t pin nothing on me.” His mouth stayed open, showing broken teeth.

“You’re either an accomplice or a witness.”

“You can’t bum-rap me,” his fear chattered.

“Nobody’s trying to, Sandy. I don’t want your blood. I want your information. Is my friend staying here?”

“No,” he said. “No, sir. You mean that one that sent me for the black suitcase?”

“That’s the one. Did he pay you to keep quiet about it?”

“No, sir. He overtipped me, that’s all. I figured there was something out of line. I don’t mean illegal , nothing like a felony. It’s just most of the customers nowadays you got to use a chisel to peel a nickel off their palms. He slipped me two bucks for walking across the street.”

“Tell me about him.”

“I thought he was going to register when he came in, that he was just off the train. No luggage, though. He told me he left his suitcase at the station, told me where it was.” He held out his hands, palms upward. “What should I do, tell him I was too ritzy to tote a bag? Could I know it was hot?”

“He also told you not to speak to Joe at the newsstand. Didn’t he?”

Sandy looked everywhere but at me. The dismal surroundings seemed to sadden him. “I don’t remember. If he did, I must have figured it was a gag of some kind. What did Joe say?”

“Just what he heard. You do the same. Except that you have eyes.”

“You want a description?”

“As full a one as you can give me.”

“Is this going into court? I wouldn’t make a good witness in court. I’m nervous.”

“Quit stalling, boy. You’re one step away from being booked yourself. He paid you more than two dollars, and you knew very well it wasn’t legit.”

“Honest to God, cross my heart.” His finger crossed and recrossed his faded blue breast. “Two bucks was all it was. Would I risk a felony rap for a lousy two bucks? Do I look gone in the upper story?”

“I won’t answer that one, Sandy. You are if you won’t talk.”

“I’ll talk, don’t worry. But you can’t make me say I knew. I didn’t. I still don’t. What was it, stolen goods? Marijuana?”

“You’re wasting time. Let’s have a complete description.”

He took a deep breath. It wheezed in his throat and swelled his chest out like a pouter pigeon’s. “Okay, I said I’d co-operate, that’s my policy. Let’s see, he was about your size, maybe a little shorter. Definitely fatter. A pretty ugly puss, if you ask me, I should of known he was a hustler. Whisky eyes – you know what I mean? – a sort of pinky blue color. Bad complexion, kind of pockmarked around the nose. He was pretty well dressed, though, a sharp dresser. Brown slacks and light tan jacket, yellow sport shirt. I like good clothes myself. I notice clothes. He had these two-tone shoes, brown and doeskin or whatever they call it. Real sharp.”

“A young man?”

“Naw, I wouldn’t call him young. Middle-aged is more like it, maybe in his fifties. One thing I noticed about him. He had a hat on – brown snap-brim – but under it I think he was wearing a toupee. You know how they look at the back, sort of funny around the edges, like they didn’t belong to the neck?”

“You have eyes all right. What color?”

“Brown, sort of a dark reddish brown.”

“Over-all impression?”

“I tabbed him strictly from hunger, but putting on a front. You follow me? We see a lot of them: actors and pitchmen out of a job, ex-bookies peddling tips from the horse’s brother – that sort of stuff, with barely one nickel to rub against another, but keeping the old front up. When he slipped me folding money, you could have knocked me over with a bulldozer.”

“Did he pay you before or after?”

“One buck when he sent me, the other when I came back. He was waiting on the veranda when I came back. What was in that suitcase? It didn’t feel heavy to me.”

“I’ll tell you when I find out. Where did he go with it?”

“He marched off down the street. I thought he was going to register–”

“You said that. Which way?”

“Across the railroad tracks.”

“Come out and show me.”

He followed me to the veranda steps, and pointed west towards the harbor:

“I didn’t wait to see where he went. He just started walking that way. He walked as if his feet hurt him.”

“Carrying the suitcase?”

“Yeah, sure. But now you mention it, he had a topcoat with him. He carried the suitcase under his arm, with the topcoat kind of slung over it.”

“Did he cross the street?”

“Not that I saw. He didn’t go back to the station, anyway.”

I thanked him and went west.

The bellhop’s story, true or false , had touched an internal valve that charged my blood with adrenalin. I walked quickly across the railroad tracks, with no definite idea of where I was going. All I had was a good description and a couple of fairly rickety assumptions.

One was that the quarry wouldn’t have gone far on the open street with the black suitcase under his arm. If he had stepped into a waiting car and left town immediately, there wasn’t much I could do by myself. As if to emphasize the point, a cruising prowl car passed me slowly. A plainclothesman I didn’t recognize lifted his hand to the window.

The anomaly of my position, halfway between policeman and civilian, hit me hard. I felt a powerful impulse to break my word to Johnson, stop the car, set off an all-points alarm. The moment passed. The prowl car drove out of hearing, dragging the impulse with it. I had to act within the limits Johnson had imposed, or not act at all.

It was nearly two by my watch, almost three hours since the double play with the suitcase. But there was a chance that my man was still in town. Though I assumed as a matter of course that he came from out of town, he had probably spent the night here, since the ransom letter had been mailed the day before. If he had, he had probably stayed fairly close to the station. And there was a chance in a hundred, perhaps one in fifty, that he was holed up in one of the waterfront hotels, waiting for night.