“Sorry, Willy,” I said, backing off in a flash. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was just trying to get your attention.”
“You sure succeeded!” he cried, voice still shrill and trembling. “Mercy me! I almost fainted dead away.” His Southern accent was more noticeable now than it had been yesterday.
“You were lost in another world,” I explained, “and you didn’t respond when I spoke to you. I got a little nervous.”
“Yes, but I’m the nervous one now!” he squealed, throwing his hands up in the air. His piece of toast flew out of his fingers and thwacked against the wall behind him.
“I can see that,” I said, smiling.
Willy leaned over, picked the toast up from the floor, and daintily dropped it on his empty plate. “Well, I’ve got a lot on my mind, you know! The police think I killed Gray! You should have seen how they treated me yesterday. They gave me a really hard time after you left.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, checking his face and arms for scratches and bruises. He was clean as a whistle. “They didn’t hit you, did they?”
“No, this time they just pummeled me with questions and accusations. For hours and hours and hours. I was so scared and exhausted when they left, I curled up in a ball on the carpet and cried myself into a coma.” He gave me a shamefaced smile, then dabbed the perspiration off his upper lip with his napkin. “And I stayed there all night long, honey. I didn’t get up off the floor until six thirty this morning, when Flannagan phoned and started pounding me with questions again.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Humpf! You name it, he asked it. First yesterday, and then again this morning. How long had I known Gray? Did we spend much time together? Am I a homo? Was Gray a homo? Had we been screwing each other? Was I jealous of his other boyfriends? Did we hang out at the same bars? Did we eat at the same restaurants? Was I obsessed with him? Was he getting sick of me? Who were his friends? Who were his enemies? What did I want from him? Did I want him dead? Did I kill him for revenge or just for fun? Did I enjoy gashing his throat, and stabbing him in the gut, and watching his blood spill out on the floor?”
I hated to admit it, but these were the same questions I wanted to ask Willy—except I would have phrased them in a gentler way, and omitted the last three altogether. (Which compels me to make yet another admission: As much as I’ve always prided myself on not jumping to hasty conclusions, I had already made up my mind that this whimsical little potbellied man was no murderer.)
“Sounds pretty rough, Willy,” I said, reaching across the table to touch his stubby, freckled hand. I felt very sorry for him—both for the way he’d been treated by the police and for the way he would always be treated by society. “But you can’t really blame Flannagan for asking so many questions,” I added. “It’s his job, after all. He’s the one who has to track down the killer.”
“Yes, but he’s convinced I’m the killer, so how much tracking do you think he’s going to do? I’ll tell you how much! None! He’s just going to hammer me with relentless gibes and interrogations until I cave in and confess to a crime I didn’t—and never, ever, ever would—commit.” He paused for a few seconds while he gnawed one pinkie nail to the nub. “You want to know what he was grilling me about at six thirty this morning, honey? My blood type, of all things! Can you believe it?! What does that have to do with anything? He even demanded the name of my doctor so he could get positive proof.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked. “Do you even know what your blood type is?”
“I sure do, honey,” he proudly pronounced. “I donated to the big Red Cross blood drive last month, and they gave me the best grade of all—an A.”
I SAT AND TALKED TO WILLY FOR ANOTHER half-hour or so, trying to steady his frazzled nerves and dig up some new leads at the the same time. I failed at both endeavors. Willy remained as jumpy as a jackrabbit, and I was left as clueless as a Keystone Cop. Aside from his incriminating blood type (which, in the interest of preserving Willy’s shaky sanity, I chose not to explain the importance of just then), he didn’t give me any new information at all. (I’m talking zilch. Zero. Or, as Abby would say, bupkes.)
I asked Willy if he’d ever met any of Gray’s friends or relatives—specifically his girlfriend, Cupcake, or his Actors Studio cohort, Binky, or a persistent fellow named Randy, or somebody calling herself Aunt Doobie—but Willy swore he’d never even heard those names, let alone met the people they belonged to. He also insisted that—in spite of his own enormous crush on “the gorgeous golden-skinned god next door”—he had no firsthand (or any other-hand) knowledge of Gray’s true sexual proclivities.
After all was said and done, I concluded from our brief but intimate interview that Willy hadn’t known Gray very well at all.
Hoping the newspaper would offer a new clue or two, I opened the copy of the Daily Mirror I’d bought that morning, and scanned the pages for news of Gray’s murder. The story appeared on page seven, under the headline BROADWAY ACTOR SLAIN, and I read it quickly. The article was, like its headline, short and to the point, revealing nothing that I didn’t already know. The two women who discovered the body were mentioned but not, thank God, by name. I passed the paper over to Willy and he read the story, too, much more slowly than I had, chewing on his nails the whole time. We didn’t have much to say after that.
Willy and I left the cafeteria together, but parted company outside, on the abandoned chicken-run sidewalk, after exchanging phone numbers and promising to keep each other posted on any new developments in the case. Willy went home to “wash out a few underthings” and to make himself a “monster mint julep,” while I scooted over to Sheridan Square to catch a subway train uptown.
It was time to pay a call on Aunt Doobie.
THE MAYFLOWER HOTEL WAS ON CENTRAL Park West at 61st Street. I walked the block and a half from the Columbus Circle subway stop to the entrance of the hotel with my nerves tied up in knots. Was Aunt Doobie still a registered guest? Would she be in her room? How could I get her to talk about Gray? If she was really his aunt, she would probably be mourning his death. Should I give her my real name and tell her why I came? What would I do if she had already checked out? How would I ever find her again?
I ventured into the rather drab and narrow lobby, hurried past the news and candy counter, then made a beeline for the elevators on the right. Both cars were open and attended by uniformed operators. I stepped into the first one and asked to be taken to the ninth floor—where, I assumed, room 96 would be located.
“Sí, señorita,” said the skinny young Puerto Rican operator. He pulled the elevator door closed and then yanked and latched the metal gate across the door. Slowly cranking the brass control lever to the right, he turned and gave me a sly wink as the elevator began its jerky ascent. Then, turning back around to face the door, he mumbled something that sounded like “cute chicky” under his breath, and released a series of soft, nearly inaudible clucking sounds.
Oh, for heaven’s sake! The cocky little fellow was coming on to me! Had flirting with strangers become a national epidemic, or had he just caught the bug from Abby?
The elevator boy lurched his lever farther to the right, sending us into a much swifter ascent, and then, when we reached the ninth floor, he brought the car to a stop so suddenly my stomach did a somersault and sank like lead to my toes. He was showing off, I realized. He had been driving fast just to impress me. And when he gave me another wink and opened the gate and the door to let me out, I saw that he’d overshot the landing by a good eight inches. I had to step down to exit the elevator. (I’ve met some smooth operators in my day, but this character wasn’t one of them.)
Still feeling a bit woozy from the stomach-turning touchdown, I stumbled along the dimly lit, red-carpeted hallway to my right, looking for the door marked 96. I found it quickly, but didn’t knock right away. I just stood there like a dope, taking a few deep breaths and staring at the room number as if it were an indecipherable al
gebra equation. Finally, after several more moments of nervous hesitation, I raised my hand and rapped my knuckles on the door.
No answer.
I knocked again.
Still no answer. I put my ear to the jamb and listened for noises inside the room, but all I could hear was the thumping of my own heart. I tapped on the door again and again, but there was no response at all. Finally accepting the evidence that nobody, not even Aunt Doobie, was there, I groaned and turned back toward the elevators. But right before I walked away, just for fun (okay, spite), I gave the door one last knock. A really loud one this time.
To my enormous, eye-popping surprise, the door flew open and an exceptionally good-looking man with a towel wrapped around his waist started yelling his head off at me. “Shut up, already!” he roared. “Stop that goddamn knocking and get lost! I’m trying to get some sleep in here!” His brown eyes were blazing and his bare chest was heaving. With his dark wavy hair falling down over his forehead and his lips pulled back in a toothy snarl, he looked like a cross between Dean Martin and a rabid Great Dane.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, sir!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I must’ve made a mistake. I thought this was my Aunt Doobie’s room.”
Was it my imagination, or did his eyes grow fiercer when I mentioned my dear auntie’s name? Did he know who Aunt Doobie was? Was he related to her in some way? Was he, perchance, Uncle Doobie?
“You’re nuts,” he growled. “Do I look like somebody’s aunt?”
I had to admit that he didn’t. There was nothing at all aunt-like about his broad shoulders and brawny biceps.
“You’d better go down to the desk and get the right room number,” he said, pulling his shoulders straighter, and his towel tighter around his hips. “There’s no Aunt Doobie here.”
“But this is room ninety-six, isn’t it?” I asked, doing my best to look and act like an anxious niece. “That’s what it says on the door. And that’s where I was told to come. My cousin Gray said Aunt Doobie was expecting me.” (If the first bell doesn’t ring loud enough, try a gong.)
“Gray?” he muttered.
“Yes, Gray,” I stressed, studying his face for a reaction. “Gray Gordon.”
If the name meant anything to him, he showed no sign. “Look, I don’t care who told you to come here,” he said, glowering, “but whoever it was made a mistake. This is my room, not your aunt’s. And I booked it so I could get some sleep. So will you please get the hell out of here and go bother somebody else? I’m going back to bed.”
To emphasize the import of his words, he stepped back from the door and then closed it, like a book, in my face.
Chapter 14
THE ELEVATOR RIDE GOING DOWN wasn’t as eventful as the one going up. The other Puerto Rican operator was older, less excitable, and more attentive to the landing than the takeoff. He piloted our car to a sure, steady descent and parked it perfectly at the bottom. I gave him a grateful smile, then swooshed into the hotel lobby, heading straight for the main desk.
The gaunt, middle-aged man behind the counter gave me a look of total boredom and exhaustion. “May I help you?” he asked, clearly hoping my answer would be no.
“Oh, yes, please!” I begged, adopting, once again (and much to the desk clerk’s dismay), the role of a frantic neice. “I’m very, very upset! I was supposed to meet my aunt here today, in her room on the ninth floor, but now there’s somebody else in ninety-six! I don’t know what happened! Did she move to another room, or did she check out altogether? I don’t know where to go or what to do!”
The man sighed and shrugged his thin shoulders. “Room ninety-six, you say? Let me check on that for you. What’s your aunt’s name?”
“Aunt Doobie,” I said, madly searching for an appropriate surname to tack on the end. “Isn’t that funny?” I stalled. “I’m so used to using her nickname, I can’t think of her real name . . . Oh, now I remember!” I cried. “It’s Gordon!” (At least that seemed a likely choice.) “Mrs. Dorothea Gordon.”
“I’ll take a look,” he said, heaving another weary sigh, opening the guest ledger and slowly sliding his finger down the page. “Gordon . . . Gordon . . . Gordon . . . uh, no, miss . . . nobody by the name of Gordon is registered in the hotel at this time. Is it possible your aunt made a reservation under a different name?”
“Gee, I don’t know,” I said, fluttering my lashes and giving him an urgent, pleading look. “All I know is she was supposed to be in room ninety-six. And I’m supposed to be meeting her there right now!” I was working myself up to ask for the name of the room’s current occupant, but it turned out I didn’t have to.
“Well, there must be some mistake,” the droopy desk clerk said, “because a Mr. Jonathan Smith checked into that room on Friday and reserved it for the rest of the holiday weekend.” He paused and gave me a pleading look. “Are you sure your aunt isn’t registered in room ninety-six of another hotel? Perhaps the Plaza? It’s just across the park, you know.” He inched his hand toward the phone. “If you’d like, I could call the Plaza and ask them—”
“No, thanks!” I hurriedly replied. “I’ll just pop over there and see for myself.” I gave the tired but dutiful fellow an appreciative smile, then made a run for the hotel exit. I saw no reason to stick around.
Except for the air-conditioning, I soon realized (i.e., the very second I stepped outside to the street). The thick, steamy afternoon heat was so overwhelming I wanted to duck back into the Mayflower and reserve a nice cool room for myself. I would have done it, too, if I could have been sure to get a room on the ninth floor, or—to phrase it in a simpler, more direct way—if I’d had enough money.
But all I had left in my purse was a half dollar. One measly fifty-cent piece. It was enough to get me home on the subway, but it wouldn’t buy me a hamburger at the White Horse, or a pizza at John’s, or even a chicken salad sandwich at Chock Full—which was a rotten shame because I was hungry.
Maybe Abby will be home, I thought as I trudged back to the Columbus Circle subway stop. Maybe she has some bagels left over from breakfast. It was either that or the leftover bread, salami, cheese, and green pepper I had in my own Frigidaire. I focused my hopes on a bagel—not because it was my dining preference, but because it would come with some lively conversation and an ice-cold gin and tonic on the side.
“AUN T DOOBIE IS A MAN?!” ABBY croaked. She was obviously excited by the news.
“I didn’t say that!” I cried. “What I said was, there was a man in Aunt Doobie’s room. There’s a big difference, you know. You’re always jumping to conclusions!” I took a quick drag on my cigarette and exhaled with a swoosh. “The guy could be Aunt Doobie’s son, or her lover, or her husband, for all we know. Or, he could be a man named Jonathan Smith who just happened to check into room ninety-six right after Aunt Doobie left.”
“Doobie who?” Jimmy asked. The brilliant and beautiful bearded poet had been sitting at Abby’s kitchen table with us for over an hour, listening to every detail I recounted about my afternoon crime-busting adventures, and he still didn’t have a clue.
“Never mind, Daddy-O,” Abby said, curling her fingers through his sleek dark Vandyke and blowing her words directly into his ear. “Mama will tell you all about it later, when we’re alone. Here, have another piece of pizza.” She held the last slice of our cheese and tomato pie up to his mouth and fed him like a baby—or a dog, depending on your point of view.
Speaking of dogs, Jimmy’s best friend and constant canine companion—the miniature dachshund named Otto—was at the table, too (or under it, I guess you would say). He was curled up in a soft brown wad and sleeping soundly in his master’s lap. I was dying for Otto to wake up and and come sit on my lap instead, as he’d often done in the past. That way I wouldn’t feel so lonely, or so much like a third wheel.
“John Smith!” I barked, trying to get Abby’s attention again (and wake Otto up). “Did you ever hear a more obvious alias? Couldn’t the lazy creep have made up a
better pseudonym than that? He may be handsome but he sure as hell isn’t creative!”
“He’s handsome?” Abby asked, perking up like a flower in a shower. “You didn’t tell me that!”
“Some things are better left unsaid.” I took another sip of my drink (gin and tonic, just like I’d wanted), and another drag on my cigarette. “Besides,” I added, “what do the man’s physical attractions have to do with anything? Apart from your ongoing quest for new models, that is.”
“Maybe nothing,” Abby said, gazing off into the mysterious distance like a daft fortuneteller, “or maybe everything.” She emphasized the last word in her sentence with a deep, spooky undertone. You could almost hear the thunder rolling in the background.
I put out my cigarette and lit another. “Get real, Abby! With you, it’s always the looks that count. With me, it’s the name. And I’d bet my whole bankroll this guy’s real name is not John Smith. It could be Hamlet or Heathcliff or Alfred Hitchcock—but it’s not John Smith. Maybe it’s Randy. The burning question is, why did he register at the Mayflower under an alias?”
Murder on a Hot Tin Roof Page 12