“I couldn’t agree more,” the desk clerk said. “In fact, I’m somewhat of a physical-culture enthusiast myself.”
Dett nodded slightly, as if acknowledging the obvious. “This area,” he asked, “it’s safe at night?”
“This part of town? Absolutely! Now, there are some sections I certainly wouldn’t go myself, even in broad daylight. I’m sure you know what I mean . . . ?”
“Sure.”
“So long as you stay within, oh, a ten-block radius, I’d say, you’ll find Locke City a wonderfully quiet town,” Carl said, smoothly.
* * *
1959 September 29 Tuesday 22:28
* * *
Dett strolled the broad avenue at a leisurely pace, his eyes on
the passing traffic. In the time it took him to cover a half-dozen blocks, he spotted two police cars—black ’58 Ford sedans with white doors and roofs—blending unaggressively with the traffic flow. Guard dogs, big enough to send a message without barking.
A message received, Dett noted. The wide, clean sidewalk was devoid of loiterers. No hookers looking for trade, no teenage punks leaning against the buildings, no panhandlers. Nothing but respectably dressed citizens, mostly in couples, and very few of those.
Dett stayed in motion, all the while watching, clocking, measuring. He walked down a side street, then turned into an alley opening. When that dead-ended, he retraced his steps, noting how deserted the whole area had suddenly become. He glanced at his watch: ten-fifty-seven. Somewhere in this town, action was probably just getting started, he thought. But not around here . . .
Relying on his memory of the street map, Dett found his way to the office building he had observed from his hotel window. Positioning himself so that he could view the back of the hotel, he noted the absence of fire escapes. He turned a corner and checked again. Sure enough, each floor had a fire exit at the end of the corridor, on either side, leading to a series of metal staircases that formed a Z-pattern all the way down to the second floor. The final set of stairs would have to be released manually.
Dett turned slowly, scanning the area. His eyes picked up another alley opening, halfway down the block. They can’t all dead-end, he thought to himself, moving deliberately through the darkness, eyes alert for trail markers.
As Dett entered the alley, blotchy shadows told him that a source of light was somewhere in the vicinity. Maybe a streetlight positioned close to the other end? As he neared what he sensed to be the exit, the red glow of a cigarette tip flashed a warning. Dett took a long, shallow breath through his nose, sending a neural message to his neck and shoulder muscles to relax, deliberately opening receptor channels he trusted to watch his back.
He slowed his pace imperceptibly, and casually slipped his right hand into his pants pocket.
Two of them, Dett registered. As he got closer, his sense-impression was confirmed. They were in their late teens or early twenties; one, the smoker, sitting on a wooden milk crate, the other leaning against the alley wall, arms folded across his chest. Jackrollers, Dett said to himself. Must be a bar just around the corner, and some of the drunks use this alley as a shortcut.
Twenty yards. Ten. Dett kept coming, not altering his pace or his stance. His ears picked up the sound of speech, but he couldn’t make out the words. The man on the milk crate got to his feet, and the two of them moved off in the opposite direction, just short of a run.
Either they only work cripples, or they’re waiting for me just around the corner, one on each side of the alley, Dett thought. He spun on his heel and went back the way he had entered, still walking, but long-striding now, covering ground. At the alley entrance, Dett turned to his left, walked to the far corner, then squared the block, heading back toward where the alley would let out.
The sidewalk was dark except for a single streetlight only a few feet from the mouth of the alley—it seemed to know it was surrounded, and wasn’t putting up much of a fight. Dett crossed the street and walked on past. Not a sign of the two men.
He was nearly at the end of the long block when he noticed a faded blue-and-white neon sign in a small rectangular window. Enough of the letters still burned so Dett guessed at “Tavern,” but the rest was a mystery he wasn’t interested in solving.
Dett spent the next hour walking the streets, noting how many of the buildings seemed empty and abandoned.
* * *
1959 September 30 Wednesday 07:06
* * *
“He came back in around one in the morning,” Carl said. He was in the breakfast nook of a modest two-story house that occupied the mid-arc plot of a gently curving block, seated at a blue Formica kitchen table on a chair upholstered in tufted vinyl of the same shade.
“Your shift—your extra shift, I might add—was almost done,” a woman said, over her shoulder, focusing on her breakfast-preparation tasks. She was tall, fair-skinned, with sharp features and alert eyes, her white-blond hair worn in a tight bun.
“Not really,” Carl said, bitterly. “You know how Berwick is. Expecting him to come in on time . . .”
“Well, Carl, he may not last. They all seem to come and go.”
“He’s been there almost two years.”
“Still . . .”
“Mother, you don’t understand. It’s not just that he’s always late, it’s that he’s so . . . arrogant about it. As if he knows I’d never say anything to the manager about him.”
“Well, that’s not your way, Carl. You were not raised to be a talebearer.”
“Well, still, there’s plenty I could tell Mr. Hodges about Berwick, if I wanted to. It’s not just his lack of . . . dignity; he’s a filthy slob, Mother. You would not believe the state he leaves the desk in.”
“I know,” the woman said. “But that’s the way the world is, son. Some people act correctly, some people don’t. We are not responsible for anyone but ourselves.”
“I know he says things about me. Some of the colored boys, I can tell, by the way they look at me.”
“Are they disrespectful to you?”
“Well . . . no. I don’t mean anything they say. It’s just . . . I don’t know.”
“Carl,” the woman said, sternly, “there are always going to be people with big mouths and small minds.”
She brought a pale-blue plate to the table. On it were two perfectly poached eggs on gently browned toast, with the crusts removed.
“It isn’t like that everywhere,” Carl said.
“Oh, Carl, please. Not that again.”
“Well, it isn’t,” the not-so-young-anymore man insisted. “In some of the big cities—”
“You have roots here,” his mother interrupted. “You have a place, a place where you belong. A fine job, a lovely home . . .”
“I know, Mother. I know.”
“Sometimes, I get so worried about you, Carl. Every time you go on one of your vacations, I can’t even sleep, I’m so terrified.”
“There’s no reason to be frightened, Mother,” Carl said, resentfully. “I know my way around places a lot bigger than Locke City will ever be.”
“Oh, Carl,” the woman said, “I know you can take care of yourself. I raised you to be a competent man, a man who knows how to deal with whatever situation may come up in life.”
“Then why do you always get so—?”
“I worry . . . I just worry that, one day, you’ll go on vacation and you won’t come back.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Why is it so ridiculous, son? With your experience, you could get a job in a place like Chicago very easily.”
“Not Chicago,” Carl muttered.
“What?”
“I said, ‘Not Chicago,’ Mother. If I was going to live someplace else, it would be far away. New York. Or maybe San Francisco.”
“I couldn’t bear that,” she said, fidgeting with the waistband of her apron.
“Don’t be so dramatic, Mother. You know I would never leave you here alone. We could sell this house, and find
a perfectly fine place somewhere else.”
“Carl, if I had to leave Locke City, I would just die. All my friends are here. My own mother, your Grandmother Tel, is an old woman now. How many years could she have left? Without me driving over to her place to do for her, why, she’d end up in one of those horrible old-age homes. And there’s my church. Our church, if you still went with me. My bridge club. My gardening group. I was born and raised only a few miles from this very house. There’s some flowers you just can’t transplant; they wouldn’t survive. And your father—”
“Yes, I miss him, too,” Carl said, sullenly.
“There is no reason to be so spiteful, Carl. I know you and your father had your differences, but he’s been gone a long time. And I always protected you, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Carl said, blinking his eyes rapidly. “Come on, Mother. Sit down with me. I want to tell you all about the mysterious Mr. Walker Dett.”
* * *
1959 September 30 Wednesday 08:11
* * *
Sun slanted through the partially drawn curtains of Room 809. Dett opened his eyes, instantly awake. He was on the floor, the double bed between him and the wedged door. Before going to sleep, he had balanced a quarter on the doorknob, and positioned a large glass ashtray beneath it. Had anyone tried the door while he slept, the coin would have dropped into the glass, alerting Dett but not the intruder.
Between the carpeted floor and the blanket and pillows he had removed from the bed, Dett had been quite comfortable. He was positioned on his side, back against the wall beneath the window. The derringer in his right hand looked as natural as a child’s teddy bear.
Dett got to his feet, pulled the tightly fitted sheet off the mattress, then deposited it at the foot of the bed, along with the blanket and the pillowcases he had removed to construct his sleeping quarters. He plucked the quarter from the doorknob, returned the ashtray to the writing desk, and lit a cigarette. While it was burning, he emptied some more of the Four Roses into the sink.
After a shower and shave, Dett telephoned room service and ordered breakfast and a newspaper, specifying the local. While he waited, he dressed—another plain dark suit, another carefully knotted tie, this time a sober shade of blue.
Three eggs, yolks broken and fried over hard, four strips of bacon, a side of hash-brown potatoes, two glasses of orange juice, and a basket of biscuits took him more than an hour to consume.
Dett carried the breakfast tray outside his room and left it on the floor, next to his door. He went back inside and sat down to read the paper, turning first to the personals column—in case Whisper had a message for him.
A few minutes later, the door opened and a cocoa-colored young woman in a white maid’s smock walked in.
“Oh! I’m sorry, sir!” she said, her amber eyes alive with anxiety. “I saw the tray outside, and I figured you was out. I’ll come back later and—”
“That’s all right,” Dett said, sliding the derringer back into his pocket, shielded by the newspaper. “Might as well get it done now; I won’t be in your way.”
“Yes, sir,” the young woman said, pushing her service cart ahead of her. “If you want to . . . stay in late, any day, all you have to do is put the sign up, and I’ll know—”
“I’ll know better next time,” Dett said, mildly, lowering his newspaper. “Thank you.”
“Yes, sir,” the young woman said, still nervous over having blundered into the room without knocking. It was just the kind of mistake that Mister Carl would report to the manager, if the guest complained. At the Claremont, maids had been fired for less. She entered the bathroom, skillfully removed and replaced the three tumblers she found there, exchanged the roll of toilet paper for a new one, replaced the towels, added a fresh bar of soap. Even moving mechanically, she noted how clean and neat the guest had left everything.
“All right if I do the bed now, sir?” she asked, stepping back into the main room.
“Sure,” the guest replied. “And my name is Dett, Walker Dett.”
“Yes, sir. I mean, yes, Mr. Dett, sir.”
The young woman’s large amber eyes met the guest’s pale-gray ones. She felt her face flush.
“And your name is?” the guest asked.
“Rosa Mae, sir.”
“Rosa Mae . . . ?”
“Rosa Mae Barlow, sir.”
“Thank you, Miss Barlow.”
“You welcome, sir,” the woman said, not sure of anything except that the man was making her . . . well, not nervous, but . . .
The maid bustled about the room, a model of efficiency. “I come back and do the vacuuming later, sir,” she said. “It’s a big old noisy thing, and you—”
“I’d appreciate that, Miss Barlow,” the man said. “Starting tomorrow, I’ll remember about the sign, all right?”
“Yes, sir. Anything you say all right with me, sir. Thank you.”
* * *
1959 September 30 Wednesday 09:51
* * *
Dett waited several minutes after the maid left his room, standing with his ear to the door. Satisfied, he quickly stepped outside and hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign over the doorknob. He locked the door behind him, kicked his wedge under it, and then closed the window curtains completely.
Taking a small key from his pocket, Dett unlocked his attaché case, removed some papers, pens, and a road map, then lifted the false bottom to reveal a pair of .45-caliber automatics, bedded in foam rubber. He carried the pistols over to the easy chair, turned on the floor lamp, and worked the slide on the first one. He looked down the barrel, using his thumbnail to reflect light. He unwrapped a soda straw and used it to blow out the barrel, then repeated the process with the other pistol.
Dett opened four small unmarked boxes, each containing thirty-six cartridges. He upended the boxes and examined each cartridge with great care, inspecting the primer, checking the fit between the casings and the slugs. Some were hardballs, others had been converted to dum-dums with a carefully carved “x” on each lead tip.
Dett dry-fired each weapon before he filled a magazine with seven cartridges and inserted it into the tape-wrapped butt of one of the pistols. He racked the slide, then ejected the magazine and replaced the chambered round. He did the same with the other pistol, flicking the custom-made extended safety off and on with his thumb.
From the larger suitcase, Dett removed an over-and-under 12-gauge shotgun. The stock had been replaced with a pistol grip, the barrels sawed off so deeply that the red tips of the double-0 buck shells were visible.
One of the pistols went into a shoulder holster, rigged to carry butt-down. The other went into the inside pocket of a long black overcoat. The coat looked like wool, but it was made of a lightweight synthetic fiber, with a network of leather loops sewn under the lining, accessed by long vertical slits. The shotgun slid perfectly into its custom-tailored pocket.
Dett filled the left outside pocket of the overcoat with six magazines for the .45s, and the right-hand pocket with shotgun shells. He knew from both practice and experience that he could walk around for hours in the heavily loaded coat without revealing a hint of its contents.
After carefully arranging the coat over a wooden hanger in the closet, Dett took off the shoulder rig and removed the pistol. Then he relocked the attaché case and returned to the easy chair. He turned off the floor lamp, poured some more of the Four Roses into a fresh tumbler, and let the drink sit there as he smoked a cigarette through.
When he was finished, he emptied the bourbon into the toilet, tossed in his cigarette, flushed, and returned to the easy chair.
After a few minutes, he reached for the telephone.
* * *
1959 September 30 Wednesday 11:22
* * *
“So he a big spender, what’s that to me?” the cocoa-colored young woman in the maid’s uniform said to Rufus. “He may put some money in your hand, but he ain’t leaving no dollars on his pillow for Rosa Mae Barlow, that’s for
sure.”
“Don’t some of those traveling men leave you something, when they check out?” Rufus asked.
“I heard of that,” the young woman said. “But I haven’t seen it for myself. Everybody in this place got a hustle going except the maids. People work in the kitchen, you know they take home plenty of extras. A man with your job, he got lots of ways to make money. Guest wants some liquor, wants a woman, wants . . . anything, you always got your hand out. Mister Carl, too. When they have those big card games up in one of the suites, you know he’s got to be getting something for himself.”
“I heard the girls who clean up after those games, they get thrown some.”
“Some what?” the young woman said, tartly. “I got to work that shift, once. All night long, picking up after all those men. You know what I got thrown? A few pats on my behind, that’s what. One of the men, he said it brought him luck, do that. Didn’t bring me no luck, I tell you that.”
“It will, honeygirl. Swear to heaven. A woman put together like you, got to bring you luck, someday.”
“You got me mixed up with those whores you bring up to the rooms, Rufus,” she said, pridefully. “All I ever got out of looking the way I do is some fancy man with a ten-dollar conk and a flash suit and a big car he ain’t paid for telling me what a ‘star’ I could be. Man I’m looking for, he’s not going to want me for that kind of thing. That’s why I go to church.”
“Little girl, listen to someone who’s telling you the truth. I don’t care if he’s a saint or a sinner, if he’s a man, he’s gonna want what you got, because, Lord knows, you got all of it.”
“What do you want, Rufus?”
“Me?”
“You, boy,” she said, tartly. “What do you want with me? Or are you just practicing your lines, in case some country girl comes to work here?”
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