After the First Death (15 page)

I shrugged.

“Will you give me twenty?”

“All right.”

Her face, small and birdlike, suddenly lost its tension and relaxed into a quick smile. She moved forward from the shadows and took my arm. She asked if I had a room we could go to. I said that I didn’t Wasn’t I staying at a hotel? I said I was staying with a friend.

“There’s a hotel a few blocks from here where they know me,” she said. “We shouldn’t have any trouble getting in. The night man knows me. You mind walking a couple blocks?”

I had a sinking feeling that she was going to lead me to the Maxfield. I asked where the hotel was.

“Forty-fifth Street.”

The Maxfield was on Forty-ninth. I said it was okay, and we crossed Seventh and Broadway and headed downtown. We turned the comer of Forty-fifth Street and she made me wait in a doorway to make sure we were not being followed. I waited while she returned to the corner and checked. She was visibly relaxed again when she returned to me.

“If there are any police back there,” she said, “then they’re invisible. What’s your name?”

“Doug.”

“Mine’s Jackie.”

“Like Jackie Kennedy?”

“Yeah.” She squeezed my hand. “Jacqueline,” she said. “You figure she’ll sue me for having the same name?”

“I don’t think so.”

“People get on your back for all kinds of reasons. Like when I had to check for police, that they might be following us. I didn’t mean to leave you standing there like that.”

“Oh, that’s all right.”

“But it has been very warm here lately. A lot of arrests, you know. Ever since the killing.”

The angel had brought it up herself. “I read about it.”

“It’s a scary thing. You never know who you’re going with, you just go and hope it’ll be a nice guy. Like you seem like a nice guy to me. I like uniforms.”

“Even on cops?”

She laughed, delighted. “Except on cops,” she said. “What are you in, Doug, the Army or the Air Force?”

“Army.”

“I suppose I should be able to tell, but I don’t know the difference in the uniform. Were you overseas?”

I made up some fort that I was stationed at. I don’t. remember it She asked something else, and I passed the question and asked her if she had known Robin Canelli.

“I knew Robin very well,” she said.

“Were you out that night?”

“Yeah.” She sighed, and squeezed my arm tighter. “it’s just across Eighth Avenue on the right You see it? Hotel Claypool.”

“I see it.”

At the corner she said, “Yeah, I was out that very night. It was Saturday night, I was out. It could of been me. The next few days after I heard what happened I couldn’t eat I couldn’t go out nothing. All I could think of was it could of been me. You just never know what you’re getting.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And, you know, you’re all alone in the room with a man, and what are you going to do? I never had anybody like that. Of course I didn’t otherwise I wouldn’t be here. But some strange men. A lot of them who want to slap a person around and other things like that Strange. I wonder what makes a person that way?”

The desk clerk at the Claypool looked like that actor who always plays the terrified bank teller in holdup movies. His eyes bulged behind huge glasses. I gave him $5.25 for the room and the tax and signed the card
Major & Mrs. Douglas MacEwan.
He gave me the key and left us to find the room on our own.

It was a flight up. There was an elevator but we took the stairs. The room was small, with a bed and a dresser and a sink and a chair, nothing else. A card on the dresser advised that television sets were available. I wondered if anybody ever wanted one.

It’s a clean place,” Jackie said. It did seem better than most of the hooker hotels. She switched on the overhead light a dangling bare bulb, and closed and latched the door. She turned to me, and I looked at her face and tried to guess how old she might be. She had old eyes, and the skin around them was drawn and sallow, but her mouth looked young and her face unlined. Late twenties, early thirties.

“I’ll have to ask you for the twenty dollars now,” she said.

I found a twenty dollar bill and gave it to her. I was running low on money. The sailors and Doug had provided me with operating capital, but it wouldn’t last forever. At twenty dollars an interview, I wouldn’t be able to ask very many whores what they knew about Robin Canelli.

“Thank you,” she said.

She put the bill in her purse, put the purse on the chair, draped the raincoat over the purse, and turned to smile at me. Her fingers, trained by frequent practice, worked the buttons of her blouse. “You can get undressed now, honey.”

I sat down on the bed and took a lot of time unlacing my shoes. I kept a careful eye on her to make sure she was undressing. Sometimes a hooker will wait until a John is undressed, then bolt with his money, figuring he can’t chase her without any clothes on. But she was playing the game honestly. She took off blouse and bra and skirt She was not wearing a slip, just a pair of white nylon panties, torn on the side. She took these off, too, and I looked at her.

Very slender. Thin in the wrists and ankles. Fragile. A good trim bottom, and breasts that were small but nicely shaped and firm. Economical breasts, an economical body. All things in moderation, nothing to excess.

I wanted her.

Which was absurd, but undeniable. I had both shoes off now. She leaned against the dresser, lit a cigarette, watched me patiently.

I said, “I don’t suppose you actually saw this Robin girl get picked up by the killer, did you?”

“Why?”

“I just wondered.”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t even like to think about it. It gives me the shakes.”

“I can imagine. Then you did see him?”

“Who?”

“The killer.”

“No, I didn’t I think I was with somebody at the time.”

“Oh.”

She moved closer to me. I was on my feet now, unbuttoning my shirt. I suppose in the army they call it a blouse or a tunic. I was unbuttoning my shirt, and trying not to notice the closeness of her, the pale skin, the needle marks on the upper arms.

“The way you talk, you sound more interested in Robin than me.”

“Oh, I was just interested.”

“Uh-huh. Aren’t you gonna take your hat off?”

She reached out a hand, took off the dress cap. I started to smile, and then I saw the change in her eyes and my own smile died. She took a step backward, looked at me, looked past me at the closed door.

I said, “Take it easy, Jackie.”

“You’re him.”

“Jackie—”

“Oh Jesus God.”

“I’m not going to—”

“You cut your hair but it’s you. Oh Jesus God in Heaven. Oh my God.”

One hand was at her side, the other at her throat, as if to ward off the knife I did not have. Her face was absolutely bloodless. I have never seen anyone so profoundly naked.

“I won’t hurt you.”

If she heard me she gave no sign of it. She stood, quite frozen, and then after a moment her little hand fell in slow motion from her throat to her side. She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes.

She said, “You want to kill me, do it now. I could stand it now, I don’t care, I’m not afraid. You want to kill me, do it now.”

17

I
GOT HER PURSE FROM THE CHAIR, OPENED IT, TOOK OUT MY
twenty. She watched without a word as I did this. I closed the purse and put it down on the chair. I got onto the bed and moved over against the wall to leave her access to the door. She looked at the chair and at the door and at me.

“Jackie.”

She waited.

“You can put your clothes on. I won’t touch you. You can get dressed, and if you want you can leave. Or you can get dressed and sit down and let me talk for a few minutes, and if you do that you can have the twenty dollars back. Either way you walk out of here. I’m not a killer.”

“You say.”

“I never killed anyone.”

“I know you’re him. I got eyes.”

“I’m Alex Penn, yes.”

“First that other girl, and then Robin—”

“I never hurt either of them.”

“You say.”

I pointed to the chair. “First get your clothes on. Then you can decide whether or not you want the twenty dollars. If you’d rather leave, you don’t even have to run. You can walk out.”

“I don’t—”

“Get dressed.”

She went over to the chair and began dressing. I ignored her and put my shoes on again and rebuttoned my shirt. She dressed even more speedily and economically than she undressed. When she finished she turned to me. She looked as though she was hunting for words.

I got out the twenty and handed it to her. She shook her head and took a step backward. I shrugged and set the twenty down on top of the bed.

“You keep the money,” she said.

“Suit yourself.”

“I don’t want it now.” She got a cigarette but couldn’t get the match lit. I got to my feet and scratched a match for her. She was afraid to come to me for the light, and I saw her fear and smiled at it, and that put her a little at ease. She drew deeply on the cigarette, let the smoke out in a sigh.

“You want to talk about something.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s what you picked me up for, to talk. About Robin.”

“Right.”

She thought about this. “You didn’t kill Robin.”

“No.”

“Or anybody else, that’s what you said, Doug. Oh, look at that, I called you Doug. Not that I ever figured it was your name. I don’t suppose anybody gives his straight name to a girl. But you need something to call a person, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“What do I call you? Alexander?”

“Just Alex.”

“Alex. I like that Alex.” She savored the name, then abruptly remembered what we were here for. “If you didn’t kill Robin,” she said, “then who did?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“But you went out with her that night, didn’t you? To the Maxfield?”

I gave her a capsule version of what had happened that night and the following morning. I told her briefly how memory had returned, how I knew with complete assurance that another hand had wielded the knife and left me to take the blame. She listened to every word and her eyes never left my face.

When I ran out of words we stood there in that little room and looked at each other for a long time.

Until finally she said, “You want to know something crazy? I believe you.”

No one had said that before.

We caught a taxi on Eighth Avenue. She had said that we couldn’t stay in the hotel, that it was not safe. “I have a place uptown that’s safe. God, I must be crazy. I have an apartment on Eighty-ninth Street, I never take anyone there.” So we left the hotel and took a cab, and in it I sat so that the driver could not catch my face in his mirror. She gave him the address, and he read us as a soldier and a whore on the way to a bed, and we sat in stony silence until the cab dropped us on Eighty-ninth Street between Columbus and Amsterdam.

When he pulled away, properly paid and tipped, she took my arm. “It’s a block from here, toward the park. In case he remembers your face later, this way he won’t know the address.”

I hadn’t thought of that.

We walked to her building, a brownstone in a row of brownstones. Her apartment was on the third floor. We climbed stairs, and she opened the door with a key. When we were inside she locked the door and set the police lock, a steel bar set into a plate on the floor and angled against the door.

“I don’t drink, so I don’t keep anything around. I could make some coffee.”

“Oh, don’t bother “

“Sure, I’ll make us both some coffee. Sit down, I’ll make the coffee.”

She went into the kitchen and I heard water running. I wandered around the living room. The furniture was old and the rug worn, but the pieces were comfortable together. I walked to the window. It faced out on a blank wall, an air shaft, but I pulled the shade anyway.

“The water’s up,” she said. “I only have instant, I hope it’s all right“

“Instant is fine.”

“Cream and sugar?”

“Just black is fine.”

“You’re like me, but I always put in an icecube so it cools faster. You want an icecube?”

“I’ll try it.”

We settled down on the couch with cups of black coffee. She curled her thin legs under her, and I caught an instant of
déjà vu.
It took a minute to identify it and then I remembered how Linda had curled herself into the identical position two nights back.

She said, Tve been here almost three years. I never brought anyone here before. Not even when it’s been very warm and the hotels just won’t let anybody in, not even girls they know well. I would always find a hotel in some other neighborhood where I could get in, maybe Twenty-third Street. Or I would just not work that night but I would never bring a trick here, not once.”

“I appreciate it.”

“But you’re not safe around Times Square, you know. I think the uniform is a very good idea, but even so someone is gonna recognize you sooner or later. Here, nobody knows you’re here. Except me.”

I lit us each a cigarette.

“Cause once the cops get you, you’re dead.”

“I know it”

“I wish I could say that I saw something, like somebody following you and Robin to the Maxfield. But I didn’t even see you pick her up. I was with somebody.”

“You told me.”

“Well, at the time I would of told you that anyway. Not to get involved, you understand?” She sipped her coffee. “Do you have any idea who did it? Any suspects?”

“Nothing much.”

“Tell me.”

So I did. I gave her the unabridged edition this time, all of it, front to back. She was the first person to hear the whole thing, and it did me good to tell it. She was just the right kind of sounding board. She stayed with every word, nodding to show that she was following me, interrupting now and then when she wanted a point cleared up. Linda disgusted her, MacEwan appalled her, and the problem of finding out who did what appeared to intrigue her.

She didn’t think much of my idea of picking up a girl and asking her questions. “No one would tell you anything,” she said. “They’d just run.”

“You didn’t run.”