Nightwork

by Irwin Shaw

  “That’s the address he registered under.”

  “You come and tell that to the police. They were in here for an hour this morning. And there were two characters in here asking for him, and if they weren’t packing guns I’m Miss Rheingold of 1983. They talked to me as if I was hiding the sonofabitch or something. They asked me if the guy left a message for them. Did he leave a message?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Well, they want to talk to you.”

  “Why me?” I asked, although I knew why.

  “I told them the night man found the guy. I told them you’d be in at eleven P.M., but they said they couldn’t wait that long, what was your address. Grimes, do you know that nobody in this goddamn hotel knows where you live? Naturally, those two fuckers wouldn’t believe that. They said they’re coming back here at three o’clock and I’d better damn well produce you. Scary. They weren’t any small-time hoods. Short hair, dressed like stockbrokers. Quiet. Like spies in the movies. They weren’t kidding. Not at all kidding. So you be here. Because I’m going to be out on a long, long lunch.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Mr. Drusack,” I said smoothly, enjoying a conversation with the manager for the first time since I started working for him. “I called to say good-bye.”

  “What do you mean, good-bye?” Drusack was really shouting now. “Good-bye, good-bye, who says good-bye like that?”

  “I do, Mr. Drusack. I decided last night I don’t like the way you run your hotel. I’m quitting. …I have quit.”

  “Quit! Nobody quits like that. For Christ’s sake, it’s only Tuesday. You got things here. You got a half bottle of bourbon, you got your goddamn Bible, you …”

  “I’m donating it to the hotel library,” I said.

  “Grimes,” Drusack roared. “You can’t do this to me. I’ll have the police bring you in. I’ll …”

  I put the telephone gently down on its cradle. Then I went out to lunch. I went to a good seafood restaurant near Lincoln Center and had a large grilled lobster that cost eight dollars, with two bottles of Heineken.

  As I sat there in the warm restaurant, eating the good food and drinking the imported beer, I realized that it was the first moment since the whore had come running down from the sixth floor of the hotel that I had time to think about what I was doing. Everything up to now had been almost mechanical, act following act unhesitatingly, my movements ordered and precise, as though I had been following a program learned, assimilated, long ago. Now I had to make decisions, consider possibilities, scan the horizon for danger. Even as I was thinking this, I saw that something in my subconscious had made me choose a table where I could sit with my back against the wall, with a clear view of the entrance to the restaurant and of everybody who came in. I was amused by the realization. Given half a chance, every man becomes the hero of his own detective story.

  Amusement or not, the hour had come to take stock, think about my position. I could no longer depend on simple reflexes or on anything in my past to guide me for the future. I had always been completely law-abiding. I had never done anything to make enemies. Certainly not enemies like the two men who had frightened Drusack that morning. Naturally, I thought, men who came to a hotel where they expected to receive a hundred thousand dollars in cash from someone who was registered most probably under a false name and certainly with a false address might very likely be carrying guns or at least look like men who were in the habit of carrying guns. Drusack might have been a little hysterical that morning, but he was no fool and he had been in the hotel business a long time and had a feeling about who meant trouble when he arrived at the front desk and who didn’t. Drusack couldn’t possibly know just what trouble the two men represented and in all probability would never know.

  One thing was sure, or almost sure—the police wouldn’t be brought in, although an individual crooked policeman here or there might be in on it. So I wouldn’t have that to worry about. There was no possibility that the man who had registered under the name of John Ferris and the two men who had come to meet him at the hotel were engaged in a legal business transaction. It had to be bribery of some sort, a payoff, blackmail. This was when the scandals of the second Nixon Administration were just beginning to surface, when we all discovered that perfectly respectable people, pillars of the community, had developed the habit of secretly carrying huge sums of money around in attaché cases and stuffing hundreds of thousands of dollars in office desks, so it didn’t occur to me, as it could have later, that I might have stumbled on an amateurish and comparatively undangerous political technique. What I had to deal with, I was sure, was grim professionalism, men who killed for money. Like spies in the movies, Drusack had said. I discounted that. I had seen the body.

  Gangsters, I thought. The Mob. Despite the occasional movies and magazine pieces about the underworld I had seen and read, like most people, I had only the vaguest notion of what was meant by the Mob and a perhaps exaggerated respect for its omnipotence, its system of intelligence, its power to seek out and destroy, the lengths it was likely to go to exact vengeance.

  One thing I was sure of. I was on its side of the fence now, whoever it might turn out to be, and I was playing by its rules. In one moment in the tag end of a cold winter night, I had become an outlaw who could look only to himself for safety.

  Rule one was simple. I could not sit still. I would have to keep moving, disappear. New York was a big city and there were undoubtedly thousands of people hiding out in it successfully for years, but the men who even now were probably on my trail would have my name, my age, a description of my appearance, could, without too much trouble and with a minimum of cunning, discover where I had gone to college, where I had worked before, what my family connections were. Lucky me, I thought, I am not married, there are no children, neither my brothers nor my sister have the faintest notion of where I am. Still, in New York, there was always the chance of running into someone I knew, who would somehow be overheard saying the wrong thing to the wrong man.

  And just this very morning, there was the bellboy. I had made my first mistake there. He would remember me. And from the look of him, he would sell his sister for a twenty-dollar bill. And the bookie in the hotel. Mistake number two. I could easily imagine what sort of connections he had.

  I didn’t know what I was eventually going to do with the money now lying in the hush of the vault, but I certainly intended to enjoy it. And I wouldn’t enjoy it in New York. I had always wanted to travel, and now traveling would be both a pleasure and a necessity.

  Luxuriously, I lit a cigar and leaned back in my chair and thought of all the places I would like to see. Europe. The words London, Paris, Rome rang pleasantly in my mind.

  But before I could cross the ocean I had things to do, people to see, closer to home. First I would have to get a passport. I had never needed one before, but I was going to need one now. I knew I could get it at the State Department office in New York, but whoever might be looking for me could very well figure out that that would be the first place I would go and could be there waiting for me. It was an outside chance but I was in no mood to take even that.

  Tomorrow, I decided, I would go to Washington. By bus.

  I looked at my watch. It was nearly three o’clock. The two men who had confronted Drusack that morning would be approaching the St. Augustine, eager to ask questions and no doubt with the means to compel answers. I flicked the ashes off the end of my cigar and smiled gently. Why, this is the best day I’ve had in years, I thought.

  I paid my bill and left the restaurant, found a small photographer’s shop and sat for passport photos. The photographer told me that they would be ready at five thirty, and I spent the time watching a French movie. I might as well start getting used to the sound of the language, I thought, as I settled comfortably in my seat, admiring the views of the bridges across the Seine.

  When I got back to my hotel with the photographs in my pocket (I looked boyish), it was nearly six
o’clock. I remembered the bookie and went into the bar to look for him. The bookie was in a corner, alone, sitting at a table, drinking a glass of milk.

  “How’d I do?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding?” the bookie said.

  “No. Honest.”

  “You won,” the bookie said. The silver dollar had been a reliable omen. Speak again, Oracle. My debt to my man at the Hotel St. Augustine was reduced by sixty dollars. All in all a useful afternoon’s work.

  The bookie did not look happy. “You came in by a length and a half. Next time tell me where you get your information from. And that little shit, Morris. You had to let him in on it. That’s what I call adding insult to injury.”

  “I’m a friend of the working man,” I said.

  “Working man.” The bookie snorted. “Let me give you a piece of advice, brother, about that particular working man. Don’t leave your wallet where he can spot it. Or even your false teeth.” He took a few envelopes out of his pocket, shuffled through them, gave me one and put the rest back in his pocket. “Thirty-six hundred bucks,” the bookie said. “Count it.”

  I put the envelope away. “No need,” I said. “You look like an honest man.”

  “Yeah.” The bookie sipped at his milk.

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “I can only stand so much milk,” the bookie said. He belched.

  “You’re in the wrong business for a man with a bad stomach,” I said.

  “You can say that again. You want to bet on the hockey game tonight?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m not really a gambling man. So long, pal.”

  The bookie didn’t say anything.

  I went over to the bar and had a Scotch and soda, then went out into the lobby. Morris, the bellboy, was standing near the front desk. “I hear you hit it big,” he said.

  “Not so big,” I said airily. “Still, it wasn’t a bad day’s work. Did you take my tip?”

  “No,” the bellboy said. He was a man who lied for the sheer pleasure of lying. “I was too busy on the floors.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “Better luck next time.”

  I had a steak for dinner in the hotel dining room, and another cigar with the coffee and brandy and then went up to my room, undressed, and got into bed. I slept without dreaming for twelve hours and woke up with the sun streaming into the room. I hadn’t slept that well since I was a small boy.

  5

  IN THE MORNING I PACKED my bags and carried them myself to the elevator. I didn’t want to have any more conversations with Morris, the bellboy. I checked out, paying with some of the money I had won on the second race at Hialeah. Under the hotel canopy I looked around carefully. There was nobody as far as I could see who was waiting for me or who might follow me. I got into a cab and drove to the bus terminal where I could board a bus to Washington. Nobody would dream of looking in a bus terminal for a man who had just stolen a hundred thousand dollars.

  I tried the Hotel Mayflower first. As long as I was in Washington I thought I might as well take the best of what the city had to offer. But the hotel was full, the man at the desk told me. He gave me the impression that in this center of power one had to be elected to a room by a large constituency, or at least appointed by the President. I resolved to buy a new overcoat. Still, he was polite enough to suggest a hotel about a mile away. It usually had rooms, he said. He said it the way he might of said of an acquaintance that he usually wore soiled shirts.

  He turned out to be right. The building was new, all chrome and bright paint and looked like a motel on any highway in America, but there were vacancies. I registered under my own name. In this city, I felt, I didn’t have to go to extreme lengths to remain anonymous. Remembering what I had heard about crime in the streets of the capital, I prudently put my wallet in the hotel’s vault, keeping out only a hundred dollars for the day’s expenses. Avoid the chambers of the mighty. Danger lurks at their doorsteps. The Saturday night special lays down the final law.

  The last time I had been in Washington had been when I’d flown a charter of Republicans down from Vermont for the inaugural of Richard Nixon in 1969. There had been a lot of drinking among the Republicans on the plane, and I had spent a good part of the flight arguing with a drunken Vermont State Senator who had been a B-17 pilot during World War Two and who wanted to be allowed to fly the plane after we crossed Philadelphia. I hadn’t gone to the Inaugural or to the ball for which the Republicans had found me a ticket. At that time I considered myself a Democrat. I didn’t know what I considered myself now.

  I had spent the day of the Inaugural at Arlington. It seemed a fitting way to celebrate the installation of Richard Nixon as President of the United States.

  There was a Grimes buried in the cemetery, an uncle, who had died in 1921 from the effects of a dose of chlorine gas in the Argonne Forest. Myself, I would never be buried in Arlington. I was a veteran of no wars. I had been too young for Korea and by the time Vietnam came around I was set in the job with the airline. I had not been tempted to volunteer. Walking among the graves, I experienced no regret that I finally would not be laid to rest in this company of heroes. I had never been pugnacious—even as a boy I had had only one fistfight at school, and, although I was patriotic enough and saluted the flag gladly, wars had no attraction for me. My patriotism did not run in the direction of bloodshed.

  When I went out of the hotel the next morning, I saw there was a long line of people waiting for taxis, so I started to walk, hoping to pick up a taxi along the avenue. It was a mild day, pleasant after the biting cold of New York, and the street I was on gave off an air of grave prosperity, the passersby well-dressed and orderly. For half a block I walked side by side with a dignified, portly gentleman wearing a coat with a mink collar who looked as though he could well be a Senator. I amused myself by imagining what the man’s reaction would be if I went up to him, fixed him, like the Ancient Mariner, who stoppeth one of three, and told him what I had been doing since early Tuesday morning.

  I stopped at a traffic light and hailed a cab which was slowing to a stop there. It was only after the cab had come to a halt that I saw that there was a passenger in the back, a woman. But the cabby, a black man with gray hair, leaned over and turned down the window. “Which way you going, mister?” the cabby asked.

  “State.”

  “Get in,” the cabby said. “The lady is on the way.”

  I opened the back door. “Do you mind if I get in with you, ma’am?” I asked.

  “I certainly do,” the woman said. She was quite young, no more than thirty, and rather pretty, in a blonde, sharp way, less pretty at the moment than she might ordinarily have been, because of the tight, angry set of her lips.

  “I’m sorry,” I said apologetically and closed the door. I was about to step back on the curb when the cabby opened the front door. “Get in, suh,” the cabby said.

  Serves the bitch right, I thought, and, without looking at the woman, got in beside the driver. There was a bitter rustle from the back seat, but neither the cabby nor I turned around. We drove in silence. When the cab stopped in front of a pillared government building, the woman leaned forward. “One dollar and forty-five cents?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the cabby said.

  The woman yanked open her purse, took out a dollar bill and some change, and put it down on the back seat. “Don’t expect to find a tip,” she said as she got out. She walked toward the big front doors, her back furious. She had nice legs, I noted.

  The cabby chuckled as he reached back and scooped up his fare. “Civil servant,” he said.

  “Spelled c-u-n-t,” I said.

  The cabby chuckled again. “Oh, in this town you learn to take the fat with the lean,” he said.

  As he drove, he shook his head, chuckling to himself, over and over again.

  At State, I gave the man a dollar tip. “I tell you, suh,” the cabby said, “that little blonde lady done made my day.”

&nbs
p; I went into the lobby of the building and up to the information desk.

  “I’d like to see Mr. Jeremy Hale, please,” I said to the girl at the desk.

  “Do you know what room he’s in?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  The girl sighed. Washington, I saw, was full of tight-assed women. While the girl thumbed through a thick alphabetical list for Jeremy Hale I remembered how I had once said to Hale, long ago, With a name like that, Jerry, you had to wind up in the State Department. I smiled at the memory.

  “Is Mr. Hale expecting you?”

  “No.” I hadn’t spoken to Hale or written him in years. Hale certainly wasn’t expecting me. We had been in the same class at Ohio State and had been good friends. After I took the job in Vermont we had skied together several winters, when Hale wasn’t on a post overseas.

  “Your name, please?” the girl was saying.

  I gave her my name and she dialed a number on the desk telephone.

  The girl spoke briefly on the phone, put it down, scribbled out a pass. “Mr. Hale can see you now.” She handed me the pass and I saw she had written on it the number of the room I was to go to.

  “Thank you, miss,” I said. Too late, I saw the wedding ring on her finger. I have made another enemy in Washington, I thought.

  I went up in the elevator. The elevator was nearly full, but it rose in decorous silence. The secrets of state were being well-guarded.

  Hale’s name was on a door that was exactly the same as a long row of identical doors that disappeared in diminishing perspective down a seemingly endless corridor. What can all these people possibly be doing for the United States of America eight hours a day, two hundred days a year? I wondered, as I knocked.

  “Come in,” a woman’s voice called.

  I pushed the door open and entered a small room where a beautiful young woman was typing. Good old Jeremy Hale.

  The beautiful young woman smiled radiantly at me. I wondered how she behaved in taxicabs. “Are you Mr. Grimes?” she said, rising. She was even more beautiful standing up than sitting down, tall and dark, lissome in a tight blue sweater.