“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 advised that television sets were available. I wondered if anybody ever wanted one.
It’s a clean place,” Jackie said. It did seem better than most of the hooker hotels. She switched on the overhead light a dangling bare bulb, and closed and latched the door. She turned to me, and I looked at her face and tried to guess how old she might be. She had old eyes, and the skin around them was drawn and sallow, but her mouth looked young and her face unlined. Late twenties, early thirties.
“I’ll have to ask you for the twenty dollars now,” she said.
I found a twenty dollar bill and gave it to her. I was running low on money. The sailors and Doug had provided me with operating capital, but it wouldn’t last forever. At twenty dollars an interview, I wouldn’t be able to ask very many whores what they knew about Robin Canelli.
“Thank you,” she said.
She put the bill in her purse, put the purse on the chair, draped the raincoat over the purse, and turned to smile at me. Her fingers, trained by frequent practice, worked the buttons of her blouse. “You can get undressed now, honey.”
I sat down on the bed and took a lot of time unlacing my shoes. I kept a careful eye on her to make sure she was undressing. Sometimes a hooker will wait until a John is undressed, then bolt with his money, figuring he can’t chase her without any clothes on. But she was playing the game honestly. She took off blouse and bra and skirt She was not wearing a slip, just a pair of white nylon panties, torn on the side. She took these off, too, and I looked at her.
Very slender. Thin in the wrists and ankles. Fragile. A good trim bottom, and breasts that were small but nicely shaped and firm. Economical breasts, an economical body. All things in moderation, nothing to excess.
I wanted her.
Which was absurd, but undeniable. I had both shoes off now. She leaned against the dresser, lit a cigarette, watched me patiently.
I said, “I don’t suppose you actually saw this Robin girl get picked up by the killer, did you?”
“Why?”
“I just wondered.”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t even like to think about it. It gives me the shakes.”
“I can imagine. Then you did see him?”
“Who?”
“The killer.”
“No, I didn’t I think I was with somebody at the time.”
“Oh.”
She moved closer to me. I was on my feet now, unbuttoning my shirt. I suppose in the army they call it a blouse or a tunic. I was unbuttoning my shirt, and trying not to notice the closeness of her, the pale skin, the needle marks on the upper arms.
“The way you talk, you sound more interested in Robin than me.”
“Oh, I was just interested.”
“Uh-huh. Aren’t you gonna take your hat off?”
She reached out a hand, took off the dress cap. I started to smile, and then I saw the change in her eyes and my own smile died. She took a step backward, looked at me, looked past me at the closed door.
I said, “Take it easy, Jackie.”
“You’re him.”
“Jackie—”
“Oh Jesus God.”
“I’m not going to—”
“You cut your hair but it’s you. Oh Jesus God in Heaven. Oh my God.”
One hand was at her side, the other at her throat, as if to ward off the knife I did not have. Her face was absolutely bloodless. I have never seen anyone so profoundly naked.
“I won’t hurt you.”
If she heard me she gave no sign of it. She stood, quite frozen, and then after a moment her little hand fell in slow motion from her throat to her side. She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes.
She said, “You want to kill me, do it now. I could stand it now, I don’t care, I’m not afraid. You want to kill me, do it now.”
17
I GOT HER PURSE FROM THE CHAIR, OPENED IT, TOOK OUT MY twenty. She watched without a word as I did this. I closed the purse and put it down on the chair. I got onto the bed and moved over against the wall to leave her access to the door. She looked at the chair and at the door and at me.
“Jackie.”
She waited.
“You can put your clothes on. I won’t touch you. You can get dressed, and if you want you can leave. Or you can get dressed and sit down and let me talk for a few minutes, and if you do that you can have the twenty dollars back. Either way you walk out of here. I’m not a killer.”
“You say.”
“I never killed anyone.”
“I know you’re him. I got eyes.”
“I’m Alex Penn, yes.”
“First that other girl, and then Robin—”
“I never hurt either of them.”
“You say.”
I pointed to the chair. “First get your clothes on. Then you can decide whether or not you want the twenty dollars. If you’d rather leave, you don’t even have to run. You can walk out.”
“I don’t—”
“Get dressed.”
She went over to the chair and began dressing. I ignored her and put my shoes on again and rebuttoned my shirt. She dressed even more speedily and economically than she undressed. When she finished she turned to me. She looked as though she was hunting for words.
I got out the twenty and handed it to her. She shook her head and took a step backward. I shrugged and set the twenty down on top of the bed.
“You keep the money,” she said.
“Suit yourself.”
“I don’t want it now.” She got a cigarette but couldn’t get the match lit. I got to my feet and scratched a match for her. She was afraid to come to me for the light, and I saw her fear and smiled at it, and that put her a little at ease. She drew deeply on the cigarette, let the smoke out in a sigh.
“You want to talk about something.”
“
That’s right.”
“That’s what you picked me up for, to talk. About Robin.”
“Right.”
She thought about this. “You didn’t kill Robin.”
“No.”
“Or anybody else, that’s what you said, Doug. Oh, look at that, I called you Doug. Not that I ever figured it was your name. I don’t suppose anybody gives his straight name to a girl. But you need something to call a person, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“What do I call you? Alexander?”
“Just Alex.”
“Alex. I like that Alex.” She savored the name, then abruptly remembered what we were here for. “If you didn’t kill Robin,” she said, “then who did?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“But you went out with her that night, didn’t you? To the Maxfield?”
I gave her a capsule version of what had happened that night and the following morning. I told her briefly how memory had returned, how I knew with complete assurance that another hand had wielded the knife and left me to take the blame. She listened to every word and her eyes never left my face.
When I ran out of words we stood there in that little room and looked at each other for a long time.
Until finally she said, “You want to know something crazy? I believe you.”
No one had said that before.
We caught a taxi on Eighth Avenue. She had said that we couldn’t stay in the hotel, that it was not safe. “I have a place uptown that’s safe. God, I must be crazy. I have an apartment on Eighty-ninth Street, I never take anyone there.” So we left the hotel and took a cab, and in it I sat so that the driver could not catch my face in his mirror. She gave him the address, and he read us as a soldier and a whore on the way to a bed, and we sat in stony silence until the cab dropped us on Eighty-ninth Street between Columbus and Amsterdam.
When he pulled away, properly paid and tipped, she took my arm. “It’s a block from here, toward the park. In case he remembers your face later, this way he won’t know the address.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
We walked to her building, a brownstone in a row of brownstones. Her apartment was on the third floor. We climbed stairs, and she opened the door with a key. When we were inside she locked the door and set the police lock, a steel bar set into a plate on the floor and angled against the door.
“I don’t drink, so I don’t keep anything around. I could make some coffee.”
“Oh, don’t bother “
“Sure, I’ll make us both some coffee. Sit down, I’ll make the coffee.”
She went into the kitchen and I heard water running. I wandered around the living room. The furniture was old and the rug worn, but the pieces were comfortable together. I walked to the window. It faced out on a blank wall, an air shaft, but I pulled the shade anyway.
“The water’s up,” she said. “I only have instant, I hope it’s all right“
“Instant is fine.”
“Cream and sugar?”
“Just black is fine.”
“You’re like me, but I always put in an icecube so it cools faster. You want an icecube?”
“I’ll try it.”
We settled down on the couch with cups of black coffee. She curled her thin legs under her, and I caught an instant of déjà vu. It took a minute to identify it and then I remembered how Linda had curled herself into the identical position two nights back.
She said, Tve been here almost three years. I never brought anyone here before. Not even when it’s been very warm and the hotels just won’t let anybody in, not even girls they know well. I would always find a hotel in some other neighborhood where I could get in, maybe Twenty-third Street. Or I would just not work that night but I would never bring a trick here, not once.”
“I appreciate it.”
“But you’re not safe around Times Square, you know. I think the uniform is a very good idea, but even so someone is gonna recognize you sooner or later. Here, nobody knows you’re here. Except me.”
I lit us each a cigarette.
“Cause once the cops get you, you’re dead.”
“I know it”
“I wish I could say that I saw something, like somebody following you and Robin to the Maxfield. But I didn’t even see you pick her up. I was with somebody.”
“You told me.”
“Well, at the time I would of told you that anyway. Not to get involved, you understand?” She sipped her coffee. “Do you have any idea who did it? Any suspects?”
“Nothing much.”
“Tell me.”
So I did. I gave her the unabridged edition this time, all of it, front to back. She was the first person to hear the whole thing, and it did me good to tell it. She was just the right kind of sounding board. She stayed with every word, nodding to show that she was following me, interrupting now and then when she wanted a point cleared up. Linda disgusted her, MacEwan appalled her, and the problem of finding out who did what appeared to intrigue her.
She didn’t think much of my idea of picking up a girl and asking her questions. “No one would tell you anything,” she said. “They’d just run.”
“You didn’t run.”
“Well, I told you I was crazy.” She considered that. “What happened was I decided to trust you.”
“I trust you, too.”
“What’s to trust? What could I do to you?”
“Call the police.”
“Me?” She laughed. “The police and I”—holding up two fingers pressed together—“are not exactly like this.”
“Even so.”
“I hate to tell you this, I’m not proud of it, but I’ve been arrested. I’ve been in jail. Not just once. A few times.”
“That must be rough.”
“Rough! You know the House of Detention? In the Village?”
“I know where it is.”
She turned her eyes away. “I shouldn’t mention it. You can’t think much of me.”
“I was inside just once, but for a lot longer than you.”
“It’s different.”
“Maybe in some ways. I think I understand you better than you think, Jackie. You don’t have to worry about what you say to me.”
Long silence. Then, “There’s worse.”
“Oh?”
“Well, you probably know it already. One of the reasons I couldn’t stay at the hotel forever, I had to come back here.”
During the past few minutes her eyes had been running, and she had been sniffing nervously. I knew what was coming.
“You saw my arms.”
“Sure.”
“Well, then, you know.”
“Sure. You use stuff.”
“Yeah.”
“So?”
A longer silence this time. Then, “I have to fix now. I don’t want you to see me. It would make you sick.”
“No, it wouldn’t”
“I don’t mean sick, I mean you wouldn’t like me, seeing it. I want to go in the other room.”
“All right.”
“Alex?”
“What?”
“I’ll just be a minute.”
“All right.”
“You’ll stay here? You won’t leave? Because I think maybe I can help you. I mean finding out who did it. You won’t go?”
“Where would I go?”
“I don’t know. Away, I guess.”
“I won’t go anywhere.”
“Good.” She was rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. She got to her feet and walked quickly out of the room. “I’ll be right back, Alex. I won’t be more than a minute, I’ll be right back.”
18
THE CHANGE WAS INSTANTLY VISIBLE WHEN SHE RETURNED, IT was much more than a matter of pupil dilation. Her face, nervous and animated before she fixed, was now profoundly relaxed. She walked slowly, as if with cushioned feet, and her shoulders drooped. She sat on the couch, her feet out in front of her, and said, “Too br
ight, too bright,” and I went around turning off lights.
After awhile she said, “I was off for a whole year. I wasn’t working. There was this man. He lived in Scarsdale. Do you know where that is?”
“Yes.”
“I was never there. Is it nice?”
“Yes.”
“He was married. He paid for my apartment and gave me money, and I didn’t see anybody else. I saw him during the day, or sometimes he would stay over.” She closed her eyes. Her cigarette burned down, and I took it from between her fingers and put it out. Then she opened her eyes and looked at me. “I was in love with him,” she said.
Her voice was very soft and she spoke slowly, levelly. Only her lips moved. Before she had talked with her hands, but now they remained still in her lap.
“An hour here, an hour there. And during the summer he always took his wife to Europe for two months. He would send the children to a camp in New England and take his wife to Europe, every summer. So this one summer, when we were seeing each other, he was going to give me a trip. He would let me buy a new wardrobe and he would arrange a trip for me to Puerto Rico. He would take care of the hotel and the airplane ticket and everything, you know?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I was very excited about this. Are you from New York, Alex?”
“No.”
“Where?”
“Ohio.”
“Is it nice there?”
“Not especially.”
“Oh. But I’m from New York, see, and I was never anyplace. Always here in New York. So I was very excited about the trip, and I started shopping for clothes, and then this man explained to me that his business was bad and he couldn’t afford to pay for the trip. He could give me some money, but not enough for the trip.” The eyes closed again. I smoked half a cigarette, and then, eyes still shut, she said, “He could still send his kids to that camp and take his wife to Europe, but he couldn’t afford the trip for me. See?”
“I see.”
“So I was very hurt, Alex, and when he came back from Europe I didn’t live there any more. I started working again, tricking, and I started using stuff again, and I stopped being in love with him, and when he came back I didn’t live there any more.”
She fell silent again. I looked at her and wanted to touch her face.