Boldt (8 page)

Murdock looks at him for a minute or two then he slaps him twice more with the billfold and drops it on the floor.

“Come on, Roy,” Murdock says to me. “Let's leave these two motherfuckers to fix a price for the job.” Murdock pushes Nicholson out of the way, opens the door and goes out into the corridor. I jerk a thumb at the clerk and he goes out, too. When I get to the doorway, I turn around to Cliff who has already turned away from the window surprised at the way things have worked out.

“Listen, sweetheart,” I say to him. “Those lips of yours, they're your stock in trade. You're lucky they're still arranged the same way.”

I close the door behind me.

“I never could stand guys like that,” Murdock says. “They give me the fucking creeps.”

“Well, you know what they always say,” the clerk says.

“No,” Murdock says, looking at him. “What do they always say?”

“Nothing,” the clerk says, looking away.

“Good.”

“That the empty room?” I ask the clerk, pointing to the remaining door.

“That's right,” he says.

“Let's take a look.”

“What for?” the clerk says. “I already told you about that.”

“Let's take a look anyway.”

“It'd be a waste of your time. The room's empty.”

I'm about to tell the clerk again when a small sound stops me saying what I was going to say. The sound comes from behind the door of the room which is supposed to be empty, and the sound is the sound of a man coughing, just once. Murdock and me look at one another and then at the clerk.

“The key,” I tell him. “Which one's the key?”

The clerk selects a key and pushes the key ring at me. I take it off him and say quietly, “Okay, who's in there?”

The clerk shakes his head. I get a grip on his collar. “Who's in there?”

“I don't know. Honest. I don't know who it is.”

“There somebody supposed to be in there?”

The clerk nods his head.

“Then who—”

“Look, I don't know. A guy called Newman. He paid me not to tell anybody about him, that's all. I don't know who he is.”

“Okay,” I tell him. “All right, you don't know anything about him. But you can go on right over there and unlock the door, okay?”

“Listen—”

“Just like you did the other times. It's easy. You're good at it.”

“I—”

“Do it,” I tell him. “Right now. Just unlock the door and push it wide open.”

I give him back his keys and he has no choice but to go over to the door and do as I've told him. Murdock and me are right behind him. The clerk puts the key in the lock, we get either side of the door, the clerk turns the key and then pushes the door wide open almost falling over himself trying to get out of the way.

Nothing happens. That goes on for a moment or two then I draw my gun and stick my head around the corner of the door to take a look.

There's nothing there but an empty room.

I lean off the wall and stand in the doorway taking another look but the room's still empty. I walk a couple of steps forward. Now I can see the bed and the bedside table and on the bedside table there is a pair of field glasses.

I cross the room and look down at the field glasses. Murdock comes in after me and says, “What have you got?”

A voice behind us replies.

“So far he's got the glasses, but up to now he's overlooked me.”

We both whirl around in the direction of the voice which has come from behind the open door. At first I can't see who the voice belongs to or do anything about it if I have to, then Murdock moves and I see, leaning against the wall with his arms folded, a guy in a short-sleeved shirt. He's a young guy, a sneer on his fresh face. We cover him and Murdock says, “Raise your arms, you mother.”

The young guy shakes his head, unfolds his arms and says, “Ain't no need. I mean, if I was who you were looking for, you wouldn't be looking at me right now.”

“Face the wall, just face the wall,” Murdock says.

The guy shrugs and turns around.

“Save a lot of trouble if you feel in my vest pocket.”

“Shut up,” Murdock snaps, and goes over the guy. When he's satisfied, he feels in the guy's vest pocket and pulls out what looks like an I.D. wallet.

“My gun's on that chair over by the window underneath my coat,” the guy says.

Murdock looks at the wallet while I go over to the chair and lift up the guy's coat. Sure enough, there underneath it is a shoulder holster holding a piece of government issue.

Murdock says, “This says this guy's Secret Service.”

“Let me see.”

I take the card off Murdock.

“Can I turn around now?” the guy says.

“Shut up,” Murdock replies.

“Oh, Jesus,” the guy says.

I look at the card for a minute or two, then hand it back to Murdock.

“Turn around,” I say to the guy.

The guy turns around.

“So,” I say to him. “The card says Secret Service. What did you do, send box tops for it?”

The guy sighs. “You know I'm what it says I am,” he says. “Deep down in your heart of hearts you know it. But if you want to check it out, I'll give you an extra few minutes before you have to admit you're wrong.”

“That'd be long enough for me to split your lip for you,” Murdock says.

“Yes, I guess it would,” the guy says.

“Oh, shit,” I say to Murdock. “Leave it. We'll check it out, but we know the answer.”

“Christ,” Murdock says. “Why don't we ever get to know anything?”

“You mean you couldn't guess?” the guy says. “You couldn't figure we'd have men covering a thing like this?”

“Sure, sure,” I say, lighting a cigarette.

The guy moves away from the wall.

“Still,” he says, “the way you came into the room, I can appreciate how you wouldn't figure something like this.”

“Maybe we ought to remind him we haven't checked him out yet,” Murdock says.

I shake my head then I ask the guy, “What do you hope to achieve in a flea pit like this?”

The guy jerks his head at the ceiling.

“The roof,” he says. “It's the highest in this section. On the day, I liaise with your helicopter. In the meantime, I work from here checking the street, and by the time the day comes, we're legislated for everything but the wild card. And that we've got a good chance of reading.”

“Oh, sure,” I tell him. “No problem.”

“Well,” he says, “don't forget we've got you scaring him away.”

Murdock makes a move but I slow him down by standing between them.

“Forget it. Forget about him. He's here, but he's not going to be any use. They never are. After it's all over and he's played it by the book, he says well, how can I be blamed? I did it right.”

“Yeah,” the guy says. “Like you came through the door.”

I put my arm out to stop Murdock going forward.

“Come on,” I say. “Let's get back on the street. There's no point hanging around here. We don't want to spoil his game.”

The guy grins at us as we go out closing the door behind us. The desk clerk has vanished from the landing.

“He's right,” Murdock says. “He could have had us cold if he'd been the wrong guy.”

“Well, he wasn't and fifty percent of that performance in there was for his own benefit,because he'd been caught cold, too, without his gun.”

“You think so?”

“What would you have done caught flatfooted like that?”

“I guess maybe you're right,” Murdock says.

I tread my cigarette out on the floor.

“Come on, let's go downstairs.”

On the way out I notice that the clerk is nowhere to be seen but I decide to leave it at that.

We walk down the street to where we've left the car, get in and pull away. After Murdock has been driving for a minute or two, I say, “Oh, Christ, let's face it, the guy was right.”

“Sure he was right.”

“Christ, I mean, the way we went in there.”

“Yeah, like gangbusters.”

I shake my head.

“Gangbusters would have kicked in the door so hard it would've flattened anybody stood behind it.”

We drive along some more without saying anything until Murdock asks, “Where we going now?”

“Follow the route. Turn into Weaver Street.”

“Then what?”

I am tired and pissed off and I don't want Murdock asking me what I'm asking myself.

“Just cover the route, George. That's all. I don't figure on stopping off anymore right now.”

We drive along some more without saying anything. Everybody is trying to get to their bar or their home or their wife or their girlfriend just that minute earlier than anybody else. The traffic is heavy and slow, horns are honking and the noise is just what I need to set my feelings to music, so I try and switch myself off. When I do that though, my brother's face keeps floating into my mind, not as it is now, but as it was when we were kids—when he was seven and I was twelve.

Then other images flood in like the time he gave Marty Powell cause to want to rough him up a little. In the end it was me that stepped in and got the bloody nose and the bawling out from our mother, and I remember the way my brother kept quiet through all of it even when my mother was holding him up as an example of how to behave. I'd got so mad that afterward, when we were on our own, I'd asked my brother why he'd let me take the blame. He'd just laughed and told me he thought the reasons were obvious considering I was the one who'd got the bloody nose and the bawling out from Mom. I took a few minutes of his self-satisfied amusement then I hauled him one off and paid him the interest on my bloody nose which, of course, only gave me short-term satisfaction until Mom came on the scene again. I was kept inside for two weeks while my brother made a big deal out of going out and playing with his friends.

I light a cigarette and swear at myself for allowing the memory of a small incident like that to affect me the way it did at the time; it even makes me mad that I can still remember it, but then every memory I have of my brother affects me that way because they're all of the same kind--- a patchwork of niggling resentment. I flip the match out of the window.

“Why in Christ's name didn't the bastard carve out a career with General Motors?” I say out loud.

“What?”

“Sorry, George,” I say to him, “I was just thinking about my fuck of a brother. I was thinking why, at my time of life, am I still keeping his ass clean for him?”

“Well,” Murdock says, “it don't matter he's your brother, does it? I mean, we'd be in the same position whoever it was.”

“Yeah, I know. But it's because he's a politician this has happened and I'm involved with him. Christ, he never had to become a politician. He doesn't give a shit about the niggers or Medicare or Channel 13. All he gives a shit about is himself; that's all he ever gave a shit about. It didn't matter what he did—all he wanted was to get himself to the top of the heap. Politics is just like any corporation to him. He doesn't have any beliefs. They're just paper clips to him.”

“Then why those particular beliefs?” Murdock wonders. “What'd he do, flip a coin?”

I shake my head.

“He likes them,” I reply. “He doesn't feel them, but he likes people thinking he's got courage, character. A hero. He's always wanted to be a hero.”

“Like you, you mean,” Murdock says.

I laugh. “That's right, a big successful hero like me.”

We crawl to the end of Weaver Street and stop at the light.

“What now?” Murdock says. “Still follow the route?”

“It's getting late. Why don't we turn it in for an hour or so?”

“Fine by me.”

“Look, drop me off at Gardenias's will you? And you take the car and pick up your stuff from your sister's and I'll phone you at the Chandler in an hour or so.”

“Fine,” Murdock says, and a few minutes later he pulls the car into the curb outside Gardenias's and lets me out and drives off.

The sidewalk is still warm in the evening sun and I can taste the dust in the air, so I cross the sidewalk and walk into Gardenias's where the coffee is good enough to wash away even the taste of this city.

Gardenias's is a long narrow diner that looks like any other diner except that Gardenias's is spotless, not a speck of dirt anywhere—not a mark on the tablecloth, not a rim inside of a cup, not a splash on the counter. But it's not only the hygiene that attracts Gardenias's out-of-the-ordinary clientele; it's the food which is no different from the kind of food served in any other diner in the country except that it's the best. There is no coffee better than the coffee served in Gardenias's, the doughnuts are like you never tasted, the soup is homemade and makes you think of something you may or may not have had years ago, the sandwiches are works of art. These are some of the reasons why Gardenias's has the kind of clientele it's got because many of this city's beautiful people and trendsetters or whatever they like to call themselves have discovered the place—they like telling the uninitiated how clever they've been to find the joint and what a character Gardenias is.

As I go through the door, it occurs to me that however much of a character Gardenias might be, he could never compare with the three characters who are taking up the space at the far end of the counter those characters being Leo Florian and the two guys who always walk behind him, Charlie Bancroft and Earl Connors. Florian himself is an extremely good-looking guy in his late fifties, beautifully barbered hair, silvery and curly; the suit he's wearing was, of course, tailored by angels, the shoes made by somebody who is probably now a millionaire. Florian is sitting at the counter, a coffee pot in front of him, a napkin stuck in his shirt collar, and he's drinking his coffee very carefully holding the saucer high. He's looking very serious,as if all his concentration is going into appreciating his coffee and nothing else must interfere with that concentration. The other two, Bancroft and Connors, are not sitting down; they're standing behind and slightly to the right of Florian, holding cups and saucers. No bookmaker would take bets as to who out of Bancroft and Connors was the ugliest or the meanest.