The Killing Spirit

by Jay Hopler

  “Damn,” he muttered, wishing vaguely that there was something more he could do to them. There was no question it would show: by morning there would be a bruise, and the swelling had already started. He just hoped there wouldn’t be a scar. Maybe all the blood was coming from beyond the hairline. “Damn!” he said again, under his breath. “Stupid. Rocks and clubs, like animals. Baboons!”

  Down the alley he could see the pool of light of the motel parking lot. He stopped to listen for a car coming his way, but there was nothing. He was surprised to see that he still had his newspaper. He didn’t remember picking it up. But a wave of relief washed over him. He opened the paper as though he had been reading it since he parked his car down the alley. Then he took a deep breath and came around the corner of the motel, heading for the back stairway. He heard a door somewhere in the other wing slamming but he kept on going, trying hard not to limp. His ears picked up the sound of keys jangling and muffled voices, but he kept on going, gritting his teeth against the pain. Up the stairs he climbed, using the handrail to keep the weight off the leg. He swung around with the paper under his arm, keeping his left side to the light as long as he could, then pressing his face so close to the wall it almost touched while he unlocked the door.

  He was inside, and breathing hard. He carefully stripped off his clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor, then walked into the bathroom. The mirrored wall told him what he had feared. He stared at it, and what stared back at him was a thin, nondescript man in his early thirties who looked as if he’d walked away from an airplane crash. The right side of his face was already beginning to blacken and swell, and a thin trickle of blood was beginning to snake down from his temple. He watched it saturate the sideburn and then quickly curve down the cheek to the chin. As he leaned closer to search the face, the drop reached the point of his chin and fell, making a bright blotch in the sink. He carefully washed his face, then ran the water in the bathtub.

  He sat on the edge of the tub and stared at his knee while he waited. A scrape, a cut with a little dirt in it maybe. He flexed the leg, studying the pain as though he were fine-tuning it. No cracks or chips, he thought. Just a scratch is all. But the face—he wasn’t ready to think about that yet. He padded out into the other room and turned on the television. The news was just coming on. He caught sight of himself in the other mirror, sitting naked on the bed. A small, whitish animal with a few tufts of hair. And hurt, too. As he watched, the injured face in the mirror contracted a little, seemed to clench and compress itself into a mask of despair. A sigh like a strangled squeak escaped from its throat. He said aloud to the face, “You sorry little bastard.” And then the moment was gone. The people on the television screen seemed to be dancing around, celebrating something having to do with a little car parked behind them. He wished them all dead.

  Then the newsman came on. He padded back into the bathroom to check the water. It was beginning to get deep enough now, so he turned the tap off and tested the temperature. Too hot: time enough to watch the news.

  When he got back to the bed, Claremont and his aide were descending the ladder of the plane. It was pretty much what he’d pictured—a white-haired, stiff-necked old coot in a three-piece banker’s suit of the sort you could hardly buy in a store anymore, followed closely by a neat, short-haired, milk-complexioned young man who appeared to be the prototype of a new doll.

  He studied their moves as they approached the terminal. The senator looked old and frail and a little tired. Then there was a different scene, at a podium bristling with microphones. He was saying, “We’re going to fight it through this time to the end. We’ve got key people from both parties working very hard in Washington and in their home districts.”

  Claremont looked old and vulnerable all right. Too old to run or fight, probably too old to even make much noise. He had that sharp-eyed hawk-face look that old people got sometimes, and his temples were marbled with blue veins. The picture changed and the newsman was talking about something having to do with some dark, intense little men in olive-drab fatigues. He switched off the television, went into the bathroom, and slowly settled himself into the hot tub. He studied the knee again, watching the tiny pink cloud swirl away from the cut like liquid smoke. Then he settled back, relaxing every muscle in his body. In a minute he would submerge his head and try to clean those wounds, too. That would hurt but it had to be done. No sense getting an infection.

  He tried to think the situation through. He couldn’t travel with a face like that. People remembered things like black eyes and bruised faces. And in the morning they’d find the two bodies, and start looking for somebody who’d been in a fight. The first place they’d look would be in the hotels and motels around here, starting with the cheapest first. It would look like a gang fight, but not enough like one to keep them from checking out transients right away while they could still put their hands on them. He’d paid in cash for the room, three days in advance, like always. And then there was the charter flight for Las Vegas—paid in advance, too. But that didn’t leave until Thursday night. Too soon for the face to get back to normal, and too long to wait while the police looked for a man who’d been in a fight. So it had to be tonight. There was no other way. He had to be somewhere else before they knew what they were looking for. And then his mind stopped dead. There was still the senator. How could he do the senator and get out of Denver in one night with a face like that? He thought again about the two men in the alley. If only they hadn’t picked him out, or picked that alley, or had thought of it another night. But there wasn’t much he could do about it now. He started again from the beginning. How can I travel with a face like this?

  McKinley Claremont sipped the last of his bourbon and watched the film of the Arab gun crew expertly loading and firing at a distant hillside. He wondered if it was stock footage, or if they were really getting that organized. In ‘67 he’d been to Egypt on a fact-finding tour and it hadn’t been like that. After a couple of rounds, the ammunition they had with them had turned out to be the wrong size, so the crew he was with just sat down and started eating and drinking. Two hours later a captain told him they were waiting for the supply lines to get untangled, or for further orders, whichever happened first. Meanwhile they sat in the sun behind their useless cannon, waiting.

  Carlson interrupted his thoughts. “I’d say it came off very well, wouldn’t you, Senator?”

  “All right, I guess,” said the senator. “On television they don’t get the chance to spell your name wrong, anyway.”

  “Big day tomorrow,” said Carlson tactfully.

  “Right,” said the old man. He set down his glass and raised himself slowly from his chair. “Call me at eight and while we’re having breakfast we’ll try to figure out what’s got to be done. That is, if we’ve got time for breakfast?”

  “Yes sir,” said Carlson. “First appointment isn’t until ten.”

  “Fine, see you in the morning then.”

  “Good night, Senator,” said Carlson, already halfway out the door. “My room is right next door if you need anything. Four oh eight.” The door shut.

  Claremont shuffled over to the closet and brought out his pajamas. He tossed them on the bed and then took off his suit, carefully hanging it up so it wouldn’t get wrinkled. If he didn’t hate the idea of losing his privacy, he’d get a valet, he thought. Living out of a suitcase half of each year was bad enough. Then you had to decide whether to spend your time worrying about wrinkles or give up the few minutes of solitude you ever had.

  He eased himself into the strange bed and tried out a couple of positions for comfort. Politics wasn’t so bad for the young fellows, he thought. Trouble was, by the time you knew anything and had enough seniority to make anybody listen to it, you were too old. He peered through the darkness at his teeth soaking in the glass on the nightstand. Those things were older than some of the men in the House of Representatives. He chuckled to himself. Still plenty of bite to them, though.

  He felt the water
around him loosening the taut muscles and soaking some of the hurt out of him. He began to feel stronger. Now and then he would take a deep breath and lean back with his chin tucked into his chest to submerge his whole head. Then he would wait until his breath came back and do it again for as long as he could. Finally he sat up, took the soap between his hands, worked it into a lather, then rubbed soap over his head and face. It was as though dozens of hornets were stinging his scalp, his cheek, his temple. He gasped to fill his lungs again and ducked under. Slowly the pain went away.

  He waited a few seconds, then climbed out of the tub and began toweling himself off, gingerly. When he came to his knee he dried around it. No telling what germs there were on a hotel towel, and no sense leaving bloodstains. He looked in the mirror again. This time the face didn’t seem quite so bad, with the hair combed and no clot of blood on it. It was the cheek and the eye that’d give trouble, but with the right pair of sunglasses, maybe not so much, at least until tomorrow night.

  He knew what he had to do now. There just wasn’t any other way. As he dried himself he walked out into the bedroom. He picked up his watch from the dresser and put it on. Eleven thirty-nine. It would be a long night, no matter what. If only this had happened when he was working on something normal. He could call them and ask them to send somebody else, or even farm it out himself to someone he knew—Eddie Mastrewski had done that with him a couple of times. That reminded him of something Eddie had said, and it brought back the nervous anxiety: “Never work when you’re hurt, kid. If you don’t feel good you won’t think straight, either. And if people can see it they’ll remember it. I don’t mean major surgery either. I wouldn’t work with a pimple.” Eddie was full of reasons not to work.

  He put on clean clothes and carefully combed his wet hair. There was one consolation, he thought. If anybody saw him and he did get away, what they’d remember about him was the bumps and bruises, and they’d be gone in two weeks with any luck.

  The whole thing would have to be changed now. He had planned to get a high-powered rifle with a scope, and get him through a window in his hotel. That was the way the crazies whose fantasies didn’t include getting their pictures in the newspapers all did it. There wasn’t time for that now, and he didn’t have a gun, and—no use even thinking about it. He’d just have to live with the situation as it was.

  He went to his suitcase and rummaged around for a few seconds, collecting some things. A pocketknife, a ballpoint pen, a clean handkerchief, a pair of sunglasses. He tried on the sunglasses and studied his reflection. It wasn’t great, but it was something. He made a mental note to get a pair with bigger lenses, maybe the wraparound kind. Then he sat down to read the newspaper.

  There was an article on the front page about the senator’s return. He studied it, but could find nothing that would tell him where the old man was staying tonight. He flipped through the paper until he came to a second article. This one had pictures of the old man and his aide getting out of a limousine in front of a building. Only part of the facade was visible, but it was a hotel, all right. They had said the old man had never lived in Denver. He had started out as a state assemblyman in Pueblo and still owned a place there. He studied the picture for clues. There was a doorman wearing one of those ridiculous comic-opera costumes, but no insignia on it, and nothing on the marble facade of the building except a number. He smiled. That would do it. 1905.

  He picked up the telephone book and leafed through it until he came to a page marked Hospitals—Hotels. There were dozens, but it didn’t take him long. The Constellation Hotel. 1905 19th Street. He went through the rest of the list to see if there was another one with a 1905 number—he had been the victim of enough coincidences for one day—but there wasn’t. So that was it. He studied the section carefully, looking for the hotel’s ad. There wasn’t any. So he turned to Restaurants. In a few seconds he’d found what he needed.

  He got up and packed his suitcase, then tore his bed up a little. He set the key on the dresser, and looked around one last time to see if he’d left anything before he turned out the lights. He walked down the back stairs and through the alley. The cold made his knee stiffen up a little, but he was walking better now. A few blocks down there was another motel, and a telephone booth at the gas station across the street.

  When he came to it, he called a cab company.

  “I’d like a cab, please.”

  “Where are you now?”

  He read the sign across the street. “The Wee Hours Motel on Colfax.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “The Pirate’s Cove Restaurant on Alameda.” He’d almost said Alameda and 19th. Never work tired or hurt.

  “Right. He’ll be there in about five minutes.”

  They always said five minutes, he thought. Now the suitcase. He couldn’t ditch it here. The police might not recognize the rock as the weapon and go around to all the trash cans looking for something else. Never overestimate the police, count on them figuring out the obvious. He decided to hold on to the suitcase for the moment. The worst thing the cabdriver could think was that he was skipping out on a motel bill in the middle of the night.

  He saw the cab pull up in front of the motel across the street. The driver was staring at the office window for his fare, so he didn’t see the man with the suitcase until he was almost to the car. When he did he reached behind him, swung the back door open, and said, “Pirate’s Cove?”

  “Yep, that’s me.”

  The cab was fitted with an oversized heater that blew a continuous rush of hot, impure air into the back seat. After the cold outside he figured he could tolerate it for a few minutes. He sat in the driver’s blind spot.

  The driver said, “Hell of a cold night, ain’t it?” as he pulled away from the curb.

  “Sure is. Glad you got here so quick.”

  “Not much business this time of night. Mostly dedicated lushes who’ve lost their licenses. A few old folks out visiting each other. Now and then a whore or two.”

  “Must be hard to break even.”

  “Not too bad, really. When it gets slow we hang around the airport for the late flights. Nobody wants to call Aunt Mary to come pick them up at two A.M.”

  “I guess not.”

  They sat in silence for a while. He could see one advantage to the late shift. Even on Colfax the traffic was light, and the cab was able to glide down the street catching each signal just at the moment when it turned green. He looked at his watch again. Just a little after midnight. He resented the way time was passing. He was going to need as much as he could get. At the Pirate’s Cove he reached over the seat and gave the driver a bill. “Ten cover it?” he said, facing downward away from the light.

  “Sure,” said the driver. “Thanks.” He’d tipped generously but not enough to be remembered.

  “‘Night,” he said and quickly got out, heading toward the glass door of the restaurant. When he heard the cab pull away he bent down to tie his shoe until the car was too far away for the driver to see him. Then he straightened up and moved off down the street toward the Constellation Hotel.

  It was seven stories, shaped like a cereal box. He went around the block to approach it from the rear. There was a parking ramp and a broad loading dock. To the left of the dock he could see that one part of the back wall was pierced with ventilators and fans with screens over them and a number of pipes—the kitchen. Just in front of it he noticed a small wooden stockade. He walked up to it, opened the gate, and looked inside. There were two large garbage Dumpsters. He opened the first, and the smell of it nearly gagged him. He tried the other, and it seemed to be mostly cardboard boxes flattened to save space. He set the suitcase on top and closed the cover, then made his way to the back entrance of the parking ramp.

  There was an elevator, so he entered it and studied the panel of buttons, then pushed Lobby, and waited. He hoped it wasn’t too empty. The way he looked he couldn’t afford much company, but if he were alone it would be worse. When the doo
rs opened he stepped out quickly, keeping his head down and moving across the lobby at a slight angle from the front desk toward the only doorway he could see. There were two young couples, well dressed, lounging in the oasis of furniture in the center of the room. One of the women had her shoes off and was rubbing her toes wearily. The man with her said something about a nightcap and she rolled her eyes in distaste.

  He knew exactly what he was looking for, but had no way of knowing if the hypothesis was correct. As he came abreast of the front desk he quickly stared at the mailboxes. Room 406, unquestionably, he thought. He had to try it, anyway. The person most likely to have written messages pile up in his mailbox this late at night in a hotel would be the senator. He kept on going out the front door to the street, then walked around to the parking ramp again and pushed the elevator button for the fourth floor. This would be the hard part.

  When the door opened he was prepared to see a uniformed guard, but the corridor was empty. As he searched for 406, part of his mind was taking note of which rooms seemed to be occupied. He heard voices behind one door, the background music from a television show behind another. There were Do Not Disturb signs hanging from some of the doorknobs. He went past 406 and down the corridor to take a look at the other elevator and the stairway. He had to get out of here afterward.

  At the end of the hallway there was a room where the sign said, Please Make Up the Room. He wondered—it could just be somebody who’d reversed the sign by accident, meaning to leave the Do Not Disturb side out. He stopped and listened. There was no sound. He decided to chance it.