by Howard Fast
She was looking at him with new interest now. She said to him, “You talk as if you believed in God and that He made anything for a reason.”
“Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t,” he answered impatiently, as if it irritated him to talk about a subject like this. “I believe in Him when I see that there’s a possibility. You know what I mean—a possibility in people. So I say to myself, ‘Well, maybe there’s a God above,’ but most of the time I don’t. Most of the time God talk—it turns my stomach.”
“Where are we going now?” she asked him. “Back to the hotel?”
“That’s right. First of all, back to the hotel and up to your suite, and we put you in a place where you’ll be able to relax for the next half hour and stop thinking that you’re living on a firing range. Then I’ll look in on the house detective there, whose name is Kennedy and who is a very decent guy and reliable. We’ll talk about it, and meanwhile Lieutenant Rothschild will go downtown to Centre Street and see if he can’t make a little deal with the big brass to work out some kind of a net or trap, so that you don’t have to look forward to the prospect of spending the rest of your life as a hunted animal.”
“I have no intention of spending the rest of my life that way,” she said sharply, “and I am glad that you have finally decided to do something about it.”
“We have been trying to do something about it since I first met you.”
“I suppose you have.”
“Well, what would you do if you were in my place?” Gonzalez asked her.
She thought about that for a while, and then she said to him, “If I were in your place, I think I would tie me to a lamppost in the middle of Fifth Avenue and then find a place where you could sit with an elephant gun and, when he comes—”
“You want him killed?”
It had not occurred to her in that kind of point-blank realistic manner, and she thought about it for a long moment and then shook her head.
“No, I don’t want him killed. I don’t want anyone killed.”
“But if I tie you to a lamppost and I sit up in a window with an elephant gun,” Gonzalez pointed out, “I will end up killing him, won’t I?”
“Well, one of us is going to die. Isn’t that so?”
“I don’t know,” Gonzalez said. “Maybe the only good thing we got going for us in this life is that we never know who is going to die or just when. And there’s the hotel, so let’s get on to more cheerful subjects. Let’s get you up to your room and let’s relax you a bit, and we’ll see what we can do about straightening this thing out and making sense out of it. And meanwhile it’s worth thinking that we walked from Fifty-third Street and Eighth all the way across town to Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fifth where we are now and nobody tried to kill you.”
“I suppose because he would have to kill you first. Wherever I look, you’re always there.”
“No, I’m not always there.”
They entered the hotel now. Gonzalez had his problems. In a place like the St. Regis he was never sure whether he felt more like a cop or like a Puerto Rican; but in any case, he never felt completely at ease. To him it was always better to be in a place like this on professional business. That at least gave him his own justification. Yet now, for the first time, he pictured himself coming here with Sally Dillman, just the two of them coming here together—a man and his girl out on a date. They’d be turning left after they’d come into the place and going through the lobby to the King Cole Room and having a drink there. He thought about it now and asked her whether she had ever had a drink in the King Cole Room. And she said, no, you didn’t go in there alone. It was one of those places in New York City where a woman could go only if she had a man with her.
“I feel like a fool,” she said to him, “because you’re asking yourself, how about her—how come she was in New York City from November until now and never had a man with her or a man to take her anyplace?”
“Well, of all the damn fool comments,” Gonzalez said. “Don’t you think I know why? What do you think of me anyway? I’m not brainless, I want you to know. I’m not totally without sensitivity.”
Then he felt like a fool, defending himself in this manner. He became silent as he led her into the elevator. He had thought of taking her over to the King Cole Room right now and inviting her to have a drink, and sitting there and playing the sophisticated man about town while he told her the history of the room and of the fine old Maxfield Parrish mural on the wall behind the bar.
He had been there once himself. Allan Perez, the Puerto Rican lawyer, had asked him to meet him there—the day Perez talked him into taking his Bar exams. That was four years ago. Gonzalez was younger then, and more easily impressed. Now he told himself that he didn’t give a damn whether he ever set foot in the King Cole Room again as long as he lived.
Sally, facing Gonzalez in the elevator, looked at him with concern. Gonzalez reflected on the fact that no girl had ever looked at him in exactly this manner. But he shook off this feeling, and he told himself that he had a job to do. The wandering of his attention and all the foolish and needless thoughts that had filled his mind during the past ten or fifteen minutes were working against the job he had to do.
Her suite was on the eleventh floor. When the elevator stopped there, Gonzalez got out first, looked up and down the hallway, and motioned to her. She joined him. The elevator door closed behind them, and Gonzalez took out his service revolver and led the way toward her door. He heard her giggling a little behind him, and he whispered to her caustically, “Are you becoming hysterical, or is this funny to you?”
“It’s funny,” she replied. “I mean it’s the way it’s always done in films, and you always know that there’s someone in the room waiting to kill or clobber the poor devil, and sometimes he doesn’t know it and you wonder how he could be so stupid.”
“Good, then since I am taking precautions, I’m not stupid. That gives me A for anticipation or something, and as far as the movies are concerned, they got to do something in the same stupid way now and then. Now open the door, just stand aside and let me in.”
She opened the door and he kicked it back and went into the room swiftly, turning as he went. There was a tiny hallway and then a living room with a couch, two chairs, and an assortment of better than the usual run-of-the-mill hotel furniture. He went from the living room into the bedroom and then into the bathroom. He looked through the closets. He examined the place quickly and efficiently, and then he walked back to the door and bolted it.
“As long as you’re here,” he said to her, “you’re safe. Now, in life things happen sensibly. I mean not sensibly but reasonably, logically. In other words, he can’t get into this suite of yours unless he knocks on the door and you open the door and let him in. All you have to do when someone knocks on that door is ask who it is. If it’s anyone but myself, you don’t open the door. I’ll be here. I’m going to see Kennedy and talk to him—”
“Who’s Kennedy?” she asked him.
“You forgot. I told you about that before. He’s the house dick.”
“I wouldn’t think a place like the St. Regis would have their own detective.”
“They don’t publish the fact. He’s the security officer of the hotel and he has a good many people working under him. You could not run a first-class hotel in New York without someone like Clare Kennedy. I call him the house dick because I want to impress you with how knowledgeable and tough I am as a New York cop.”
“You’re only impressing me with the fact that the moment you lose patience with anything you get nasty.”
“I don’t see that the way I am acting now is particularly nasty. I try to have a sweet temper, but not everybody is born with that.”
“That, at least, is certainly evident,” she said.
Gonzalez had opened the door to the hall. Now he turned toward Sally Dillman and grinned. It was the first time in their relationship that he had done so. It was a big, wide, generous grin. Gonzalez had good teeth—la
rge, well-placed, and white—and he was proud of them. He grinned at her and he said, “Look, kid, I’m not the best. I’m not the worst. I got all kinds of ideas in my head, but the biggest idea I got is that nothing is going to happen to you, and that idea makes me nervous and it makes me a little nasty, and then I try to talk tough like a cop should, to cover up the fact that I’m nervous and anxious. Now will you forgive me, please?”
She replied very seriously, “I forgive you. And I understand you too.”
“All right.” He turned to the door. “This is a run-of-the-mill, good hotel door, Sally. When you close it behind me, you lock it and bolt it and then nobody can open it with any of those sneaky little burglar tools. You will be safe then until I come back. Will you do that?”
“I’ll do it,” she said.
“Good, good.”
He leaned over suddenly and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Then he stepped out, and closed the door behind him.
CHAPTER
8
SALLY went to the window and raised it as high as it would go. Then she spread her arms, gulped the cool April air, tasted and savored it, and admitted to herself that it was a delirious and wonderful thing to be alive.
Now she skipped around the room, making a little dance for herself, crossing one leg over the other, swaying from side to side, letting go in the exuberance of her spirits, weaving, spreading and then bending her arms, and going into a rough Sally Dillman imitation of the frug.
She went to the mirror and stood in front of it and made faces at herself and laughed at herself. Then she dropped into a chair and contemplated her hands with original interest. They were nice hands—not unusual or very ordinary—strong, wide, and long-fingered. She bent finger after finger, watching each motion curiously and looking with pleasure upon the movement of the muscles, the cleverness of the joints, the simple fact of the miracle of life, life in her and a part of herself. She was alive, she was going to live, and suddenly she had a strong man in whom she could put her trust.
Specifically, as a woman does, she thought about Gonzalez and she tried to imagine what the social and home life of a Puerto Rican policeman in New York would be like. He was thirty-three years old; her mother had once said to her that when a man gets to be thirty-three years old, he is a problem in marriage at best and a tragedy at worst.
“But what on earth,” she asked herself aloud, “can make you think of marrying the man? It’s out of the question. It’s absolutely the last thing in the world that should even occur to you.”
Yet her thoughts dwelled on this, and as much as she tried to shake loose from the subject of Gonzalez, again and again the thoughts returned to the policeman. She had always liked dark men, tall men with big bones. Her father had been built like that—wide-shouldered and large-boned; and the memory of her father and of her mother made her a little sad and led her into other memories of Timmerville, of her life as a little girl, of growing up. She remembered her fears as the first day to teach school approached. Her fears, her embarrassments, and finally her triumph. The day passed and she conquered, and she was a teacher.
Remembering all this she cried just a little. Her father and mother, all the nostalgic memories, all the remembrance of pain and happiness—yet these were easy tears and she was able to dry them and be rid of them.
Now she desired a cigarette very much, and she got up and walked over to the sideboard where she had left her purse. The purse contained a lighter and a cigarette case of tooled Morocco. She smiled slightly as she remembered the boy in Timmerville who had given her the case. She had not yet started to smoke, but his was a great anticipatory love. Her eyes were moist, just remembering. Why did five years seem an eternity ago? The lighter had been her father’s. Five years ago he had been alive, tall, strong and vigorous. Then she shook her head impatiently and searched in the Morocco case for a cigarette. It was empty. She wrenched open a drawer where she had put a carton—only a day or so ago, she thought. It must have been longer. The carton was there but empty.
The fact that she had discovered that she was in the room without cigarettes made her desperately eager to have one. She played with the notion of a smoke, savored the taste of a cigarette she did not possess, and wondered what on earth she could do about it. Her first thought, obedient to Gonzalez’ injunction to remain in the room, was to call down to the desk and have a bellhop bring up a pack of cigarettes. But a recently cultivated knowledge of danger and the methods of danger made her put that idea aside. She simply did not intend to open the door for anyone but Gonzalez.
Her memories of similar situations and her notion of proper responses to such situations were all the direct result of television and film. How would she be able to tell whether the man who knocked on her door was friend or foe—bellhop or murderer? It could so easily be the killer, the one she could name only with horror even in the privacy of her own thoughts.
The craving for tobacco did not go away. It only became stronger. She began a discussion with herself and defeated herself with the argument that if she slipped downstairs and bought a pack of cigarettes herself, she could not possibly come to any harm. She instructed herself that this was the safest, the easiest, and the quickest way to do it.
Even as all this went through her mind, she changed from black dress and topcoat into a gray wool suit. The change had nothing to do with cigarettes. She simply felt that if she met Gonzalez on the way down, the gray suit would be more attractive than the dress. She admitted to herself that now she desired to be attractive.
“I have my reasons. Some reasons. Any reason,” she said aloud to herself. “I will not admit that Detective Gonzalez is any part of the reason. The last person in the world I ever intend to become serious with or to marry is Detective Gonzalez. In fact, I have not thought of marrying anyone. It’s ridiculous, it’s childish, it’s adolescent that I should keep coming back to that silly idea now. Furthermore, I think it’s only a reaction to the fact that I am alive and am going to live, at least for a little while, without being sick, without being weak, and without going out of my mind and lying awake every night with that kind of fear.”
She felt merry, a little giddy, as she went out of the room and closed the door behind her, making certain that the key was in her purse. She could not imagine danger here at the St. Regis.
The elevator took her down to the lobby. At the cigar stand she bought a pack of cigarettes. Still standing there, she tore open the pack, lit a cigarette, and inhaled with pleasure. How foolish her fears had been! She looked around her. The lobby was full of busy, well-dressed, and respectable people. The very look of them was reassuring. As she glanced to her right through the lobby, she saw the sign of the bookshop, and she decided to extend her adventure and buy a newspaper and perhaps a magazine or two. She had been to the bookshop a number of times before during her residence at the St. Regis, but now everything was new and different. She discovered that she was keenly interested in the titles of the best sellers. For the moment she found no books she wanted, and instead she picked up a copy of the New Yorker, a copy of Life, and a copy of Harper’s Magazine.
She remembered comfortably how often she had discussed this or that article in Harper’s Magazine with Miss Olson, the librarian in Timmerville. Miss Olson had a very high opinion of Harper’s Magazine and also of the New Yorker and The Nation. Miss Olson always held that if one could augment these three magazines with the New York Times, one would then be in a position to be well and accurately informed. Whereupon Sally added the New York Times to her collection.
The lady who kept the bookshop knew her by sight. She smiled and said that Sally was looking much better than she had looked in a long time.
“I feel much better,” Sally replied. “You know, I was ill.”
“Yes, I knew, my dear.” The lady nodded. “One could tell just by looking at you.”
“But I’m not ill now,” Sally said with a sense of great achievement, as if she had just told the woman that now she,
Sally Dillman, could run a hundred yards faster than any other woman on earth. The lady smiled at her, and Sally smiled back at the lady.
Sally remembered that Gonzalez might be looking for her, and she left the bookshop and walked by the King Cole Room and peeped in and grinned at the delightful, glowing mural. The headwaiter said to her, “I am sorry, madam, but until your escort appears, I am afraid I cannot seat you.”
“I don’t want to be seated,” Sally answered rather primly. “I am just looking. You don’t mind if I look, do you?”
The headwaiter shrugged. No, he didn’t mind if she looked.
Feeling that she had scored a small but important triumph, Sally turned around and walked back to the elevator. There was no elevator waiting with open doors, so she walked to the entrance of the hotel and glanced out into Fifty-fifth Street. She suddenly realized that she was smoking in public, and smiling at her reversion to Timmerville, she dropped the cigarette into one of the big sand pots. The air was sweet as honey, and taking three deep, satisfying breaths, she walked down the few steps to the street. How daring she felt! And what a prim sense of satisfaction there was in flouting Gonzalez’ orders. He could be most provokingly didactic—and she did not appreciate a school-marm attitude in a man. Then she thought of the killer, and it was like a cold wind on her skin.