After the First Death - Lawrence Block [48]
I said, “Nice night.”
“Uh-huh. But a little cold.”
“You ought to put that coat on.”
“I know, but I hate the way I look in it.” Her eyes reached for mine, caught hold. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know. I think around three-thirty.”
“Pretty late.”
“Uh-huh.”
I lit a cigarette. I shifted stupidly from one foot to the other. I said, the words oddly spaced, “Do you want to go out?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.”
She tossed her own cigarette aside. “How much will you give me?”
I shrugged.
“Will you give me twenty?”
“All right.”
Her face, small and birdlike, suddenly lost its tension and relaxed into a quick smile. She moved forward from the shadows and took my arm. She asked if I had a room we could go to. I said that I didn’t Wasn’t I staying at a hotel? I said I was staying with a friend.
“There’s a hotel a few blocks from here where they know me,” she said. “We shouldn’t have any trouble getting in. The night man knows me. You mind walking a couple blocks?”
I had a sinking feeling that she was going to lead me to the Maxfield. I asked where the hotel was.
“Forty-fifth Street.”
The Maxfield was on Forty-ninth. I said it was okay, and we crossed Seventh and Broadway and headed downtown. We turned the comer of Forty-fifth Street and she made me wait in a doorway to make sure we were not being followed. I waited while she returned to the corner and checked. She was visibly relaxed again when she returned to me.
“If there are any police back there,” she said, “then they’re invisible. What’s your name?”
“Doug.”
“Mine’s Jackie.”
“Like Jackie Kennedy?”
“Yeah.” She squeezed my hand. “Jacqueline,” she said. “You figure she’ll sue me for having the same name?”
“I don’t think so.”
“People get on your back for all kinds of reasons. Like when I had to check for police, that they might be following us. I didn’t mean to leave you standing there like that.”
“Oh, that’s all right.”
“But it has been very warm here lately. A lot of arrests, you know. Ever since the killing.”
The angel had brought it up herself. “I read about it.”
“It’s a scary thing. You never know who you’re going with, you just go and hope it’ll be a nice guy. Like you seem like a nice guy to me. I like uniforms.”
“Even on cops?”
She laughed, delighted. “Except on cops,” she said. “What are you in, Doug, the Army or the Air Force?”
“Army.”
“I suppose I should be able to tell, but I don’t know the difference in the uniform. Were you overseas?”
I made up some fort that I was stationed at. I don’t. remember it She asked something else, and I passed the question and asked her if she had known Robin Canelli.
“I knew Robin very well,” she said.
“Were you out that night?”
“Yeah.” She sighed, and squeezed my arm tighter. “it’s just across Eighth Avenue on the right You see it? Hotel Claypool.”
“I see it.”
At the corner she said, “Yeah, I was out that very night. It was Saturday night, I was out. It could of been me. The next few days after I heard what happened I couldn’t eat I couldn’t go out nothing. All I could think of was it could of been me. You just never know what you’re getting.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And, you know, you’re all alone in the room with a man, and what are you going to do? I never had anybody like that. Of course I didn’t otherwise I wouldn’t be here. But some strange men. A lot of them who want to slap a person around and other things like that Strange. I wonder what makes a person that way?”
The desk clerk at the Claypool looked like that actor who always plays the terrified bank teller in holdup movies. His eyes bulged behind huge glasses. I gave him $5.25 for the room and the tax and signed the card Major & Mrs. Douglas MacEwan. He gave me the key and left us to find the room on our own.
It was a flight up. There was an elevator but we took the stairs. The room was small, with a bed and a dresser and a sink and a chair, nothing else. A card on the dresser