Стюарт Стерлинг - Down Among the Dead Men

He went out into the hall, looked at the number on the door. It was 5. He turned the key in the lock, put the key ring in his pocket.

Below, in the barroom, the juke-box was rumbling boogie-woogie. Upstairs, the lights were on again. He considered the advisability of going down to locate the master switch that must have been pulled, decided it would waste time.

He moved along the hall, toward the head of the stairs. The office was on a landing one step below the second-floor level; he could see the green-painted “desk,” the open register and the keyrack. Someone was moving around, out of sight.

He dug the .38 out of its armpit holster, stepped quietly around the jamb of the door.

An enormous Negress in a shapeless dress and loose straw slippers on her feet sat in a low rocker, tapping her feet on the floor to the rhythm of the juke-box below. There was a knitting bag on the floor beside her, a nearly finished sweater in her lap.

She rolled her eyes at the gun but didn’t get up or stop rocking. “Shah! Put that thing away. Ain’t no call for we’p’n’s, up heah, mister. Down below, maybe yu need fiah-ahms. But not on the second flo’. This my flo’. I don’t allow no disturbances of the peace, up heah.”

Koski holstered the pistol. “You the night clerk?”

“I’m Dora. I run this place. Day an’ night. I mean I run it. You want a room fo’ tonight?”

His grin was a little lopsided on account of a swollen lip. “I want some information.”

She stopped rocking but went on knitting. “That’s about the scahsest thing they is aroun’.”

He leaned against the desk. “I’m not hard to satisfy. Let’s start with the occupant of Room Five, yesterday.”

Dora got up, laid her knitting bag on the chair, put the sweater on top of it. “Dick, ain’t yuh? New one, roun’ here?”

“Not too new. I won’t stand for a brush-off, anyway. What about the guy in Five?” He reached for the register, flapped over the pages.

“I don’ know nothing ’bout Room Five.” She clopped around behind the desk with short, wary steps.

“Dommy says different.”

“I ain’t heah him say so.”

The only entry against the fifth numeral for Sunday was a carelessly printed MR. & MRS. T. JOSLIN. The name probably wouldn’t mean anything, anyway, he knew. Nobody gave his right name in a dive like this.

“You were supposed to change the sheets and pillowslips in there. Weren’t any sheets to change. You saw the mattress. You know what happened.”

She eyed him stolidly. “You gonna run me in? You know I ain’t goin’ to do no squawkin’.”

“You don’t understand the set-up, Dora.” He rested his right elbow on the counter; it lessened the pain in his side. “Your boss is in wrong. Up to here.” He touched his neck. “I had to flatten him; I’ll have to book him. Any number of charges — obstructing an officer, Sullivan violation, assault with intent to kill — enough to put him on a state diet long enough to thin him down quite a lot. He’ll be in the lineup in the morning. The payoff boys over at the station won’t burn their fingers on him now.”

“Ain’t goin’ singe none of my hair, neither. Keepin’ my mouth shut ain’t never got me in no mess.”

“Going to get you in one, now. Person who fails to report a murder to the police can be charged as accessory.”

“Don’t high-jive me. I minds my own business strickly—”

“Pretty puking business. Covering up for a killer who saws his victim’s head off.”

The Negress slapped a hand up to her lips. “Yu lyin’! To sca’h me!”

“Grab your coat. We’ll hop over to the morgue. I’ll show it to you.”

“Was that what happen? Hones’ to Moses?”

“Cut up in hunks. Like a side of beef. Wrapped in pieces torn off the sheet. Heaved in the river. Haven’t found all of it yet.”

Dora wrinkled her nose. “Wouldn’t want nobody to think I got any truck with that beheadin’ stuff.”

“All right. Talk.”

“I don’t know nothin’, hardly.”

“Maybe it’ll be enough.” His finger tapped the register. “What’d this Joslin look like?”

“Now you problems me. Man who pays me fo’ Five look like a sailor. He wear glasses.”

Koski dragged a description out of her, piecemeal. It corresponded roughly with Ansel’s age, height, weight and coloring. The man had checked in around three-thirty Sunday afternoon, with a blonde girl and a black suitcase.

“But he don’ sign in. He’s s’pose to. He say he do so. But he don’.”

“How’d he get by you?”

“I’m down th’ hall gittin’ sheets out the closet. He come in from the office with this girl an’ the bag. He got his money in his han’; he give it to me an’ say he sign the book. But when I go look, he ain’ done so. I figure on makin’ him do it when he come out — but I don’ see him come out.”

“You don’t know how long they stayed in. there?”

“I ain’ seen neither him or her go out. But I don’ think he stay long.”

“You find the door of Five unlocked?”

“Uh, uh. But I see some other man come out.” She craned her neck to see past Koski, into the hall. “Them gals ain’t puhmitted to stay in no room twice on one pay. Boss, he persist agains’ it.”

“This other man a sailor, too?”

“I couldn’ tell nothin’ ’bout him; he got a cloth wrap’ all roun’ his face.”

“Bandage.”

“Must been.”

“How you know the blonde was still in there?”

“Don’ know, pos’tive. Ain’t many men comes up heah for no otheh reason, excep’ cravin’ female comp’ny. An’ when I asks him what business he got in Five when he ain’ paid me, he just laugh kind of as if I knows why he in there. So he reach in his pocket; give me some money. I make him go sign on the register heah. So they ain’t no need to say nothin’ ’bout it to the boss.”

“Especially since you got paid double, hah?” Koski tried to synchronize the crime. Gjersten had been back on board the yacht at five-thirty or so. The killing in Room Five must have been done after that. “What time’d you see this other man?”

“ ’Round nine, I put it. I jus’ finish my suppah. I eats late Sundays.”

“Didn’t you think there was something funny about a bird with a bandaged face... coming out of another man’s room?”

“Didn’ ponder it so much, right then. Sees plenty peculiar things ’round this place. But when I find them sheets an’ pillahcases gone an’ all that blood sticky on that mattress, I say to myself, ‘Them white folks been cuttin’ each other up. But they ain’t no remains lyin’ dead aroun’ so mos’ likely nobody got hurt fatal.’ ”

“You knew somebody’d been killed, all right. Must have been enough blood for a slaughterhouse, even after the murderer’d sopped it up with the sheets and drained it down the washbowl. When’d you get in the room?”

“This mornin’. Monday mornin’. Wasn’t no more need for the room las’ night; we had plenty empties. Anyhow, I ain’t suppose to clean up without I find the key on the hook.” She curved a thumb toward the numbered board. “Man might been sleepin’ off a load, way he was hollerin’ an’ carryin’ on las’ night.”

“He was yelling? When was this? Why the hell didn’t you say so...!”

“Shah. Ain’ nothin’ special ’bout singin’ in this shebang. Man puts down some of that mule-hoof they pour over that bar, he feels like hollerin’.”

“What was he singing?”

“Differen’ things. Like men off ships do. One I hear befo’.” She threw back her head, set her arms akimbo, sang in a rich, easy contralto: