After the First Death - Lawrence Block [61]
We gave the hotel ten minutes to forget us. Then she nodded shortly and opened the door, and we went back to the staircase and up a flight and found Room 305. I listened at the door and couldn’t hear anything. I tried the knob. The door was locked.
Jackie knocked. There was no answer and she knocked again, louder. A muffled voice wanted to know who the hell it was.
“Dolores.”
“What is it?”
“Lemme in, it’s important.”
There was slow movement within the room, approaching footsteps, then the snick of a bolt being drawn back The door eased open a few inches, and he said, “What the hell, you’re not—”
I put my shoulder into the door and it flew backward, taking him with it. We went in after him. The roundfaced man had described him perfectly. There could be no mistake, he was the one. He was wearing dirty underwear, and he had needle tracks all over both arms and legs.
He looked at my uniform and he looked at Jackie and he was lost. “Whatever your thing is,” he said, “you got the wrong boy. I don’t get it at all.”
“Albert Schapiro,” I said. Phillie.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Who paid you to kill her, Phillie?”
“Kill?” His face said he didn’t understand a bit of it “I never killed nobody. Not ever.”
“And you never saw the watch?”
“What are you talking about?”
I let him see the watch. He stared at it, and he did not quite manage to hide the recognition in his eyes, and then he looked at my face and saw my face instead of my uniform, and this time he didn’t even try to keep it a secret. He said, “Oh, Jesus Christ, it’s you,” and he shoved Jackie into me and started for the door.
I got Him by the arm. I yanked the arm and he spun toward me, off balance, and I let go of his arm and hit him in the face. He yelped and fell back. I grabbed the front of his undershirt with my left hand and drew him close, and I hit him in the face with my right hand. I hurt my hand but I didn’t notice it. I just kept hitting him, and he went down and I landed on top of him, and I kept on hitting him until Jackie managed to drag me away from him. My hand was bloody, I’d cut it on his teeth, and there was more blood from his broken nose. Jackie bolted the door and made me wash my hand in the sink and we waited for Phillie to wake up.
When he came to, Jackie soaked a pillowslip in the sink and cleaned up his face for him. He was in bad shape. The nose seemed to be broken, and his mouth was a mess. I had knocked two teeth out. Now, with the rage cooled, I felt oddly embarrassed by the violence.
He said, the words warped by the missing teeth, “You don’t have to play so fucking rough. You coulda killed me.”
“Like you killed the girl.”
“I never killed nobody. You can beat me up all day long, it don’t matter. I never killed nobody and I’ll never say different.”
“You were in the hotel room.”
“I shoulda thrown that fucking watch in the river. Ten bucks and I got a broken face and more troubles. Yeah, I was in the room. By the time I got there the chick was dead and you were out cold.”
“You’re lying.”
“The hell I am. I thought you were both dead. The first I looked, I saw the two of you, I almost fell out. I wanted to get away from there.”
“Why didn’t your?”
He looked at Jackie. “She’s a user, isn’t she? Ask her.”
Jackie said, “Why were you in that hotel?”
“I was boosting, what do you think? Those hotels, they get a lot of drunks who leave their doors open. They forget to lock them. I was up tight, I was boosting. Is that a crime?”
The question was too silly to answer.
“Jesus, my nose.” His fingers patted it gentry. “You broke my nose.”
“How