Michael Dibdin - Dark Specter

“I’ll swing by there,” said Freeman, happy to have an excuse to stay out of the office. Anything beat riding a desk all day.

He shoved a Reba McEntire tape into the deck and cruised up Piedmont. One block before the corner of McGill, a Toyota four-by-four coming out of a side street did a California stop, then swung right across the oncoming traffic into the turn lane, forcing Freeman to brake sharply and thereby miss the light. He leaned out the window and gave the elderly Chinese driver an emphatic number one, but she didn’t notice that either, of course.

The Central Hotel was on Peachtree, a five-story block of fancy brickwork with white bay windows overlooking the interstate. It would have been demolished years before, except for a political dispute over the future use of the land. Freeman got out of the truck and field-stripped his cigarette, just like his daddy taught him to when they were out hunting. The lobby smelled of sweat and smoke and failure. A cadaverous bald man peered out over the desktop. Freeman shoved his ID in the guy’s face.

“Detective Freeman, homicide. One of your guests ended up catching a bullet last night.”

A perfect, comic-book curve of a smile split the man’s soft beardless face like a ripe fruit.

“Exit only!” he said softly. “Ped Xing!”

Charlie Freeman peered at him.

“Yeah,” he said. “So anyway, he’s hovering between life and death like they say over at Grady and I’m here to find out who the hell he is plus any other details that might rise to the surface, you with me?”

The man’s smile grew even wider.

“Wrong way!” he whispered.

“I see the register? Guy was in 412.”

The bald man stood up. His smile had completely vanished. He reached toward a bank of numbered pigeonholes, with hooks for keys, drew a slip of thin cardboard from the opening marked 412 and laid it on the counter. It was only now that Freeman noticed that the man’s right hand was a shriveled knob, a vestigial thumb drooping at an angle.

He picked up the card. It had spaces marked “Name,” “Address” and “Rate.” Underneath was written ROOM MUST BE PAID FOR IN FULL BY 12 NOON-NO CREDIT CARDS-NO OUT-OF-STATE CHECKS. The occupant of Room 412 was registered as William Hayley of Grand Rapids, Michigan, no street address. He had checked in on the ninth and had paid the $55 in cash for three days running, the last time being the previous morning. Charlie Freeman pushed the card back. The man behind the desk was gazing at him with a look of utter despair.

“It’s past noon,” said Freeman, “and this guy didn’t cough up his fifty bucks. I guess I’ll go check out the room. You got a pass key, something?”

The man extended his deformed hand toward the registration card. Grasping the edge with his dwarf thumb, he flicked the card away to reveal a flat metal key. Freeman looked at it with a frown. He was certain the key hadn’t been there before. When he looked up, the clerk’s uncanny smile was back in place, his whole face beaming with barely contained glee. He reached out suddenly and laid his stump on Freeman’s arm.

“Pass with care!” he said with a stifled giggle.

Charlie Freeman nodded.

“Thanks, buddy. And listen, they ever get around to tearing this place down, give me a call. Maybe I can fix you up with a job as a street sign.”

The fourth floor of the hotel consisted of a single corridor running the length of the building. Room 412 was halfway along on the right. Charlie Freeman knocked perfunctorily, then unlocked the door and stood looking around. The air was hot and stale. Greasy light filtered in through the window. The bed was unmade, and there was a pile of clothes on the floor, a T-shirt, jeans, a pair of basketball shoes. On a shelf above the sink lay a toothbrush and a comb. There was a book beside the bed. Freeman picked it up and flipped through several pages. Poetry, it looked like.

In the corner of the room, half hidden by the folds of the drape, was a wastebasket. Freeman poured the jumble of paper coils and twists out on to the table. Half the stuff was wrapping. Untwisting the rest, he finally found a till receipt for a suit, shirt, tie and shoes, dated two days previously. He bundled up the wrappings, clothes and book in a blue plastic tote bag he found in the closet. Down in the lobby, the guy at the desk was gazing up at the ceiling with a beatific smile.

“Seeing as Mr. Hayley won’t be coming back here for some considerable time, if ever, I’m taking his personal belongings for safekeeping,” Freeman told him. “You need my John Hancock anywhere?”

The bald man transferred his gray eyes to Freeman’s face. They were as blank as if he had never seen him before. Then he winked conspiratorially.

“Walk don’t walk!” he breathed.

Freeman started to say something, then shook his head and walked out. An elderly black, his skin tough as an alligator hide, was standing on the sidewalk holding a sign that read GOD HATES GAY PRIDE.

“Seek ye the Lord,” he told Charlie Freeman in a voice devoid of all conviction.

Freeman unlocked his truck and slung the tote bag on the passenger seat.

“I already found Him,” he said. “And I got bad news for you, gramps. He’s a switch-hitter Hisself”

Singing along in a penetrating baritone to Reba’s “The Greatest Man I Never Knew,” he drove up Peachtree as far as the ornate fantasia of the Fox Theater, then swung right on the avenue which had once divided north Atlanta from south, white from black. The sun showed pale in the sky, high behind a veil of haze. Must have been in the mid-nineties, easy.

The A-1 Motel was four blocks along, a fifties sprawl of two-story rooms and cabins surrounding a large parking lot. Charlie Freeman pulled in and killed both the engine and Reba McEntire, who was instantly replaced by a barrage of thrash rock from a trio of baseball-capped dudes taking their ethnic briefcase for a stroll. Freeman picked a large manila envelope out of the file lying on the floor and heaved himself out of the truck.

“We’re full,” called a male voice as he entered the reception area. The sound of sports commentary rumbled in the background.

“Sign says there’s vacancies,” shouted Freeman.

“It’s broke.”

Charlie Freeman looked around at the bulging walls, the fake antebellum furniture, the cases of plastic flowers, the green globs of goop circulating in a huge lava lamp. A man appeared in the open doorway behind the counter. He was wearing a Braves cap, a T-shirt and shorts. His face was pudgy and pugnacious, the skin riddled with broken veins.

“We’re full,” he said, as if for the first time.

“You the manager?”

The man’s glaucous gray eyes curled up the way slugs do when you salt them.

“This about the fire code? I told the guy already, we’re going to upgrade same time we do the roof, right? Damn, all we’re trying to do here is turn a buck and promote tourism.”

Charlie Freeman laid his ID on the counter and extracted two glossy six-by-eights from the manila envelope.

“I’d just like for you to take a gander at these pictures, tell me if you ever saw either of these individuals, then I’ll let you get back to the game.”

The manager picked up the photographs.

“Damn, looks like they had a rough night,” he remarked lightly. “I seen this one here. He in some sort of trouble?”

“He’s dead,” said Freeman.

The manager’s eyes widened.

“Dead? Damn.”

“When did he check in?”

The manager tapped at a computer keyboard.

“He was in 118, right?” he murmured. “Arrived the tenth.”

“Name?”

“John Flaxman.”

“Address?”

“Didn’t give none. But I got some scoop on his girlfriend, if that’s any use to you.”