Ed McBain - He Who Hesitates

1

When he awoke, the windows were rimmed with frost and the air in the room was bitter cold. He could not remember where he was for a moment. His bedroom back home was always cold on a winter's morning, but this was not his bedroom, and for a moment he grappled with its alien look and then remembered he was in the city. He got out of bed in his underwear and walked swiftly across the wooden floor to where he had put his clothing on a chair the night before.

The room was sparsely furnished. A bed was against one wall, a dresser on the wall opposite. There were two chairs in the room: the wooden one over which his clothes were hanging, and a stuffed easy chair near the curtained window. There was a sink in the comer, but the bathroom was in the hallway. He sat on the wooden chair as he tied his shoes, and then walked quickly to the sink, where he began washing. He was a huge man, six feet five inches tall and weighing two hundred and ten pounds. His hands were immense, brown and calloused like a farmer's. He soaped his face, and then scooped up water from the sink, splashing it onto his massive nose and high, chiseled cheekbones, his full mouth and roughhewn chin. He rinsed the soap away from his eyes and then opened them and stared at himself in the mirror for just a moment. He reached for the towel and dried himself.

He supposed he should go to the police.

God it was cold in this room.

He wondered what time it was.

He walked swiftly to the chair and pulled on his shirt and buttoned it, and then slipped his tie under the frayed collar without tying it, just letting the ends hang loose on his shirt front, putting his heavy tweed jacket over it, and then crossing his long arms in front of him and slapping his sides to generate a little warmth in his body. He went to the window and pulled back the yellowed lace curtain and looked down past the FURNISHED ROOMS sign to the street two stories below, trying to determine the time by the number of people awake and moving around.

The street was empty.

He knew he should go to the police, but he didn't want to go barging in there at six o'clock in the morning — well, it was probably later than that. If it was only six, it'd be dark out there, wouldn't it? The street was empty only because it was so damn cold, that was all. He wouldn't be surprised if it was nine, maybe ten o'clock already. He let the curtain fall and then walked to the closet and opened it. A small and very old suitcase rested on the floor of the closet. The suitcase belonged to his mother and there was a single sticker on it, a yellow and green one with the words NIAGARA FALLS, NEW YORK in a semicircle and a painting of the falls in white and blue in the middle of the sticker. She had gone there on her honeymoon. This was the only piece of luggage she had ever owned, and she gave it to him each time he came into the city to sell the woodenware. He usually came maybe three, four times a year. This was the first time he'd come in February.

He remembered all at once that tomorrow was Valentine's Day.

He would have to send his mother a card.

He took his heavy green overcoat out of the closet, the one he always wore to the city during the winter months, and carried it over to the bed, dropping it there. He went to the dresser and picked up his small change, which he put into the right-hand pocket of his trousers, and then picked up his wallet, looked into it, and then removed the money he had got yesterday for the woodenware. He counted the money again — it was exactly a hundred and twenty-two dollars — and then put it back into the wallet and went to the bed again, and picked up his coat, and put it on, his massive shoulders shrugging into the air as he performed the operation.

He buttoned the coat, then walked back to the sink and looked at himself in the mirror again. He looked all right. He didn't want the police to think no bum was walking in there.

He wondered where the police station was.

He would have to ask the landlady, what was her name?

If she was awake.

He was hungry too. He'd have to get him some breakfast before he went to the police.

He wondered if he should pack the few things he'd put in the dresser or wait until later. He supposed it would be all right to pack them later. Maybe he ought to mail the money to his mother, though. That represented a lot of work, that hundred and twenty-two dollars, a lot of work. And it had to last until maybe April or May when he'd be coming to the city again — well, when his brother would be coming, anyway. Yes, he'd pack later.

He went out of the room, locking the door behind him, and went down the steps to the first floor. The linoleum on the stair treads was old and worn; he had noticed that when he'd taken the room two nights ago. But the reason he'd come all the way uptown here for a room was because he knew it'd be a lot cheaper than a hotel. So he wasn't about to start complaining about the worn linoleum, hell with that. So long as the bed was all right and didn't have anything crawling in it, why that was good enough for him. He was only paying four dollars a night for the room, you couldn't do much better than that unless you wanted to go down to Skid Row, he wasn't about to go sleeping with a bunch of drunken bums.

The landlady's apartment was on the ground floor at the end of the hall. The hall smelled nice and clean, she'd been scrubbing it on her hands and knees the day he'd taken the room, that was Tuesday. He'd known right off it was going to be a clean place without any bugs in the bed, that was the important thing, the bugs. Don't take no bed with bugs in it, his mother had said. He didn't know how you could tell if a bed had bugs in it until you got into the bed with them, and then it was probably too late to do anything about it, they'd eat you alive. But he figured the smell of that disinfectant in the hallway was a sure sign this lady was clean. She probably used something on the coils of the bedspring too, that was where the bugs hid. His mother always washed out the bedspring coils back home with a toothbrush and ammonia, he didn't know why ammonia, but he supposed it killed anything that was in there. Sometimes she sprayed them, too, with some kind of bug killer. She was very clean.

He wished he knew what time it was because he didn't want to get the landlady out of bed if it was too early in the morning. Well, he had to tell her he was leaving today, anyway, settle up with her. He lifted his hand and tentatively knocked on the door.

"Who is it?" she said.

Good. She was awake.

"It's me," he answered. "Mr. Broome."

"Just a minute, Mr. Broome," the landlady answered. He waited while she came to the door. Somewhere in the building, upstairs, he heard a toilet flush. The door opened.

"Good morning," he said.

"Good morning, Mr. Broome," the landlady said. Dougherty, that was her name. Agnes Dougherty, he remembered now.

"I hope I didn't wake you up, Mrs. Dougherty," he said.

"Nope, I was just having my breakfast," she answered. She was a small, thin woman wearing a faded wrapper imprinted with primroses. Her hair was in curlers. She reminded him of his mother, small like that. Don't ask me how I ever give birth to a young horse like you, his mother always said. It was kind of funny, when you thought of it, her so small.

"What was it you wanted, Mr. Broome?"

"Well, I'll be leaving today, and I thought—"

"Oh, so soon?"

"Well, I finished what I had to do here, you know, so—"

"What was that, Mr. Broome? Come in, won't you, have some coffee with me."

"Well, ma'am—"

"Come in, come in," she said in a perky sort of bright cheerful voice; she was really a very nice little lady.

"Okay," he said, "but only 'cause I have to come in anyway to settle up with you."

He went into the apartment and she closed the door behind him. The apartment smelled as clean as the hallway did, with the same strong disinfectant smell. The kitchen linoleum had been scrubbed bare in spots, so that the wooden floor beneath it showed through, and even the wood in those spots had been scrubbed almost white. A clean oilcloth with a seashell pattern covered the kitchen table.