saw them together once. And Gert says he’s got a familiar look about him.”
“I’ll borrow this one,” I said, picking one up. “See you when I see you.”
The Gresham’s lobby had changed some since Rudyard Whelkin had described it to me over the phone. Carolyn was gone and so was the shopping bag lady. There was a junkie nodding on a bench, but he didn’t look Eurasian to me. Perhaps he’d taken over when the Eurasian went off duty.
The phone Whelkin had used was in use now. An immense woman was talking on it. Too large for the booth, she was standing outside it and bellowing into the mouthpiece, telling someone that she had paid back the money, that she didn’t owe nothing to nobody. Her presumptive creditor was evidently hard to convince.
The little man behind the desk possessed a skin the sun had never seen. He had tiny blue eyes and a small and virtually lipless mouth. I showed him the picture I’d taken from Carolyn. He gave it a long and thoughtful took, and then he gave that same long and thoughtful look to me.
“So?” he said.
“Is he in?”
“No.”
“When did he leave?”
“Who remembers?”
“I’d like to leave him a message.”
He handed me a pad. I had my own pen. I wrote Please call as soon as possible and signed it R. Whelkin, not to be cute but because it was the only name I could think of other than my own. A cinch he wasn’t using it here, anyway.
I folded the slip, passed it to the clerk. He took it and gazed blankly at me. Neither of us moved. Behind me, the immense woman was announcing that she didn’t have to take that kind of language from nobody.
“You’ll want to put the message in his box,” I said.
“In a while.”
Now, I thought. So I can see what room he’s in.
“I better do it soon,” he went on, “before I forget who the message is for. You didn’t put his name on it, did you?”
“No.”
“Come to think of it, who is it for?”
“You got no call to call me that,” the large woman said firmly. “A name like that, I wouldn’t call a dog by a name like that. You watch what you call me.”
The desk clerk had wispy eyebrows. I don’t suppose they’d have been equal to their God-given task of keeping perspiration from dripping into his eyes, but it probably didn’t matter because he probably avoided ever working up a sweat. He had enough eyebrows to raise, though, and he raised them now. Eloquently.
I put a twenty-dollar bill on the counter. He gave me a key to Room 311. Fifteen minutes later, on my way out, I gave it back to him.
The large woman was still on the phone. “Talk about a snotass,” she was saying, “I’ll tell you who’s a snotass. You’re a snotass, if you want my opinion.”
Back in the Pontiac, back downtown again. God, was there no end to this? Back and forth, to and fro, hither and yon, pillar to post. Interminable.
The lot on Nassau Street was still unattended. A sign informed me it was illegal to leave a car there under such circumstances. It was not an illegality I could take too seriously at the moment. Violators, the sign assured me, would be towed at the owner’s expense. It was a risk I was prepared to run.
I found a phone, dialed WOrth 4-1114. I didn’t expect anyone to answer and nobody did.
I walked down to Pine Street and east to the building Prescott Demarest had emerged from hours earlier. (Hours? Weeks of subjective time.) Now only half as many windows showed lights as had done so earlier. I wished for a clipboard or a briefcase, something to make me look as though I belonged.
The lobby attendant was dozing over a newspaper but he snapped into consciousness as I entered the building. He was an older man with a tired face, probably eking out a pension. I walked toward him, then halted in mid-stride and let myself be overcome by a coughing fit. While it subsided I checked the building directory on the wall and picked out a likely firm for myself.
“Bless you,” the old man said.
“Thanks.”
“You want to watch that cough.”
“It’s the weather. Nice one day and nasty the next.”
He gave me a knowing nod. “It didn’t used to be like this,” he said. “Weather was always something you could count on, and now everything’s changed.”
I signed in. Name—Peter Johnson. Firm—Wickwire and McNally.