Memory (Hard Case Crime) (7 page)

“If you don’t want trouble, buddy, you’ll take off right now. Or you want me to call the cops?”

“Don’t you feel bad about this?” Cole asked him.

“I’m just doing my job.”

“You’re like the girl,” said Cole, and that ended it as far as he was concerned. He went over and picked up his luggage and went outside and down the slate steps.

It was quarter after two now. He had to be to work at four o’clock. He went along, walking toward downtown, thinking that, and was suddenly afraid that by four o’clock he would have forgotten. If he concentrated on getting a room someplace else, he might forget about the job, and he couldn’t let that happen.

The thing to do was go to the bus depot and check his luggage, and then stay near the tannery till four o’clock. After work he could go find a new place to stay. He could probably come back here then, the other clerk would be on duty, but he didn’t want to come back to this hotel any more. He’d find someplace else to live; he knew now that he would probably have to stay here two or three weeks.

The work was hard, and he enjoyed it for that. He lifted heavy boxes, carried them to a prescribed place, and put them down again. He didn’t know what was in the boxes, and he didn’t care. For a while, after the dinner hour, they unloaded a railroad boxcar on a siding next to the loading platforms. For that operation, a thing like a conveyor belt was brought out. It consisted of lengths shaped like ladders, but with very many rungs all close together, and with freely-spinning white metal wheels on all the rungs. Six-foot lengths of these were attached together, on legs, with one end in the boxcar and the other end across the loading platform and inside the building itself. The end in the boxcar was slightly higher, so there was an incline. Cole and three others worked in the boxcar, which was full of cardboard cartons about the size of a beer case. Lift a carton, carry it over to the conveyor, set it down, and give it a shove. With the first shove, and the incline, the carton would roll across the open space between boxcar and building, through the wide doorway, and inside, where someone would take it off and put it on the new stack that was abuilding. Cole worked in the boxcar for nearly three hours, and he liked that part best. He enjoyed pushing the cartons along on their journey into the building.

He hadn’t forgotten to come to work, though the idea of it had frightened him. Between the time he’d left the hotel and the time he reported to work, he stayed close to the tannery. After spending a quarter to check his luggage in the bus depot, he strolled down to the bridge, and leaned on the brick railing there, looking down at the black water for quite a while. Then he walked all around the tannery buildings, trying to get familiar with the surroundings. He wanted to impress the tannery on his memory, and particularly the building where he was supposed to work.

When his watch told him it was five minutes to four, he went into Building 3 and looked at the cards stacked under the time clock. There was one there with his name on it, and he took it out and stood looking at it, musing. There was no one else around the time clock and when he looked up at it he saw why. It was five minutes slow, and said ten minutes to four. It didn’t matter; he struck the card into the slot anyway. The card was punched with the time, and the clock rang a bell. He put the card back where he’d found it, and went over to the cubicle where he’d talked to the fat man, whose name he couldn’t now remember. There was only one name he could remember from all the names he’d come across today, and that was Warren H. McEvoy. He remembered that name, but he couldn’t remember who it was. The Union Steward, or the man in the Finance Office, or somebody else.

The fat man greeted him warmly, and a few minutes later introduced him to Black Jack Flynn. “Cause there’s two Jack Flynns here,” he said. “Black Jack and Little Jack.”

“No relation,” said Black Jack Flynn. He was a huge, muscular man with a smiling face, the kind of man who would drink a lot of beer and shoot darts very well. He was Section Supervisor on the four-to-midnight shift.

Then the work started, and it was hard and pleasurable. Pleasurable both because it forced him to use his body, and because it made no demands on his mind. At seven-thirty, his supper hour came, and while the others opened paper bags or lunch buckets Cole went downtown and had a hamburger and a cup of coffee. That was all he intended to have, but the work had given him an appetite, so he had a piece of apple pie, too. The bill came to sixty-five cents, and he left no tip. On the way back to work he counted his remaining money, and he had three dollars and forty-seven cents.

In a lull after the boxcar had been unloaded, he went to Black Jack Flynn and said, “They tell me I won’t get any money till next Friday.”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t have any money at all. Three dollars, that’s all. How can I get some money, for food and a room?”

“Jesus, buddy, I don’t know. You might try Artie Bellman over there. He sometimes loans money, five for four.” Flynn pointed him out.

Cole went over to Artie Bellman and said, “Mister Flynn told me you sometime loan money.”

“You strapped?” Bellman was short and wiry, with a pinched face. He looked as though he could move very fast.

Cole said, “Yes. I need money for food and a room.”

“How much?”

“I won’t get any money till next Friday.”

“So how much?”

Cole thought about it. Two dollars a day for food, say. Three dollars a day for a room. Ten days till next Friday. “Fifty dollars,” he said.

Bellman shook his head. “Too much,” he said. “I can let you have thirty. Make it thirty-two.”

“All right.”

“What you got for security? You got a watch?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s see it.”

Cole took off his watch, and showed it to him. Bellman took it and studied it, dubiously. “I don’t think I could get thirty for it,” he said, “but what the hell. Let’s sign the paper.”

Bellman led the way to the office cubicle, and inside. There was no one in here now, and Bellman got a sheet of paper and a pen from one of the desks. “You write it,” he said. “It’s got to be in your handwriting.”

“All right.”

“Write, ‘IOU forty dollars, to be paid ten dollars a payday.’ And sign your name.”

“Forty dollars?”

“Five for four. Didn’t they tell you? You get thirty-two, you pay back forty.”

“Oh.” Cole wrote it, and signed it. He was thinking that he wouldn’t be here more than two or three paydays anyway, so Bellman would be lucky to get the money back he was loaning, much less the interest. Cole felt no compunction about it; Bellman was loaning money, but Bellman was a usurer and Cole was feeling the atavistic revulsion toward the usurer. He needed Bellman’s money, and was grateful to get it, but wouldn’t feel badly about cheating Bellman out of his profit.

Bellman took the paper and put it in his pocket. He already was wearing Cole’s watch. He took out his wallet, and gave Cole two tens, one five, and seven ones. “See you payday,” he said.

“I won’t get any pay this week.”

“I know.”

Then they went back to work.

When Cole punched the time clock on his way out, his card read 12:02. He put it back in its place, in alphabetical order with the other cards there, and walked out of the building.

His clothing hadn’t been right for the work. He’d taken off his tie and suitcoat, but he’d still been working in his white shirt and suit trousers. Tomorrow he would wear his slacks and a sport shirt. And he would buy some bread and cold cuts to keep in his room, and make sandwiches to take to work. It would be cheaper than going out.

He’d forgotten he wasn’t staying at the Wilson Hotel any more, but when he started across the intersection where he should turn right to go to the bus depot he suddenly remembered. He stopped in the middle of the street, flushing with embarrassment and anger. He remembered the young clerk now, and the stupid series of events. He shouldn’t have let it happen. He was very tired now, after working, and he shouldn’t now have to go look for a room.

He turned and walked down to the bus depot, and looked at the locker key to find out what number his locker was. He reclaimed his luggage and then turned to the counter. An elderly man without teeth was sitting on a high stool behind it, reading a comic book spread open on the counter in front of him.

Cole said, “Excuse me. Can you tell me where I can find an inexpensive room at weekly rates?”

“What’s that?”

Cole repeated it, a little louder, and the old man said, “Wilson Hotel.”

“No, not there. Someplace else. Is there anything near the tannery?”

“Everything’s near the tannery, sonny. Don’t you smell it?”

“Yes.”

“Wilson too cheap for you?”

“No. I want something cheap.”

“We don’t have no YMCA. Try the Belvedere.”

Cole got directions to the Belvedere—it was about a block beyond the Wilson—thanked the old man, and carried his luggage out to the street. He was very tired now, and as he walked along, carrying his suitcase and canvas bag, he kept yawning. He couldn’t cover his mouth when he yawned, because of the luggage he was carrying. He tried ducking his head instead, but that constricted his jaw when it wanted to yawn wide, and made his neck and jaw ache, so he just walked along with his head up, yawning.

He found the Belvedere, and was afraid at first it would be too expensive, because it had a canopy over the sidewalk, from the curb to the entrance. But then he saw that the canopy was very old, and so was the building. It might at one time have been moderately expensive, but no longer. It was a decaying pile of stone, looking as though it were settling back into the earth like an old German castle.

There was a real lobby here, very small, with a real hotel desk, also very small. A man in a thick moustache and a yellow suit was on duty, and Cole asked him, “What are your weekly rates?”

“Single?”

“Yes.”

“Kitchen privileges? Telephone? Private bath?”

Cole said no to everything, not paying attention. If it was extra, he didn’t want it.

The clerk said, “You can have a single for seventeen-fifty a week. Payment in advance.”

“All right.”

He gave the clerk Bellman’s two tens, and got two singles and two quarters in exchange. The clerk gave him a key, and instructions on finding his room and the communal bathroom. Cole went up the stairs to the third floor, found his room, and went in. It was smaller than the room at the Wilson, and maybe even older. He put down his suitcases, stripped, turned off the light, and went to bed. He had no trouble at all in going to sleep.

There was no sunlight in his room when he woke up; the window faced the wrong way. He got up and dressed and went down the hall to the bathroom to wash. He had no towel, and there was no towel in the bathroom. He used toilet paper to dry his face and hands, which he’d had to wash without soap. He went back to the room and unpacked, putting his belongings in the dresser. He still had the key from the Wilson Hotel, and he was surprised to find it in his pocket, surprised that the young clerk hadn’t thought to get it back from him. But the clerk had been thinking too much of his own enjoyment. Cole opened the window and threw the key out. His window faced to the rear; a scrubby lot and, beyond that, the narrow curving Swift River.

He wore his slacks today, and a sport shirt, and the sweater. He put all his money, seventeen dollars and ninety-seven cents, in his pockets, and then he left his room.

He spent money like a miser. He had the cheapest breakfast at the diner, two hotcakes and orange juice and coffee, forty-five cents. Then he did his shopping, buying only what was absolutely necessary. He thought of buying a towel, but decided he could keep on using the toilet paper for the short time he’d be staying in this town. He did buy a cake of soap and a nineteen cent ballpoint pen and a twenty cent pad of lined paper, plus a loaf of bread and a package of cheese and a package of baloney. It all cost him a dollar ninety-three, and he carried his purchases back to his room in a brown paper bag. There were two smaller paper bags inside the big paper bag, and he saved these to carry his dinner in. He put the bread and cheese and baloney on the windowsill, outside the window, put the soap in a dresser drawer, and sat down on the bed with the ballpoint pen and the pad of paper.

The first thing he did was write a note:

GO TO WORK AT TANNERY AT FOUR O’CLOCK EVERY DAY EXCEPT SUNDAY

He fastened this piece of paper to the nail holding the list of hotel rules to the door, the paper lying over the framed rules. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed again, and started a second sheet of paper.

He was trying to help his memory, get it working again. He thought back to New York, trying to remember the names and the faces and the places. Every scrap he found he would write down, and then later he could go over what he had written and try to add to it. If his memory wouldn’t work right inside his head, maybe he could carry an extra memory around with him on pieces of paper.

The first face that came into his mind was narrow and intense, male, with high cheekbones and unkempt black hair. He concentrated and concentrated, and put a name to the face. Nick. Not the last name, that wouldn’t come. He thought it started with R, but he wasn’t sure.

He wrote the name down. Then he looked at it, his head cocked to one side. It was just a name on a piece of paper, not a memory at all. He could write any name down, and it would mean just as much. He needed something else, something to jog his memory in case he should ever look at this piece of paper and not know the meaning of the name Nick.

Thinking about it, another name came into his head.
The Caricature
. That was a coffee shop in the Village, and he had been there with Nick, once or several times. Or he had been there when Nick had been there. So he wrote CARICATURE after the name, with a double-headed arrow between the two. He spent a while trying to remember the name of the street the Caricature was on, but he couldn’t get it.

He spent a long while sitting on the bed, occasionally writing something else down on the paper, and when he was finished he had a list seven lines long, and on all of the lines at least two names with an arrow between.