Manhattan Noir 2 (18 page)

“Where’s Charlie?”

Simms recognized Max Wallace’s voice. “I don’t know, I just walked in.”

“Find him,” Wallace ordered crisply. “Then the two of you get up to my office—
fast
.”

Simms found Hosey over in a section of the basement that had been converted into a laundry room for the welfare tenants. He had the drum out of a clothes dryer and was resetting its axle. Simms told him about Wallace’s call and Hosey put aside his work. “Did he say what it was about?” he asked.

“No,” said Simms. “He just sounded mad—as usual.”

When they got to the security office, Max was with a little black girl of eight or nine and her mother. Wallace glanced at Hosey, glared at Simms, and knelt in front of the girl. “Sweetheart, I want you to look at these two men and tell me if it was either one of them that scared you.” The child hesitated and Wallace gently patted her head. “It’s all right. Come on now, take a look for me.”

The little girl looked at Hosey and Simms, frowned, seemed to ponder, and finally said, “I’m not sure. It was so dark—” Her voice broke and she whimpered a little.

Wallace gestured to her mother. “I’ll talk to her again later. Meantime, try to go on with her normal routine as much as you can. Don’t avoid the subject, but don’t talk about it like it was the end of the world, either. Understand?”

“Yes, all right,” the mother replied in a strained voice. She took her daughter and left.

Wallace sat behind his desk and studied Hosey and Simms with cold eyes. “That little girl,” he said evenly, “was on her way down the stairs to go to school this morning when a man accosted her on the landing between the lobby and two. She says the man tried to kiss her. The light on the landing was out, but she saw that he was a white man and she says he had a funny smell.”

“Well, why pick on us?” Hosey said indignantly.

“You’re white and you’re in the building,” Wallace said.

“For Christ’s sake, there’s probably two or three dozen white guys living in the place,” Hosey argued. “And there’s boyfriends that sneak in and spend the night, there’s johns that some of these women go out and pick up for extra money. You got no right to single us out, Wallace.”

“Nobody said I was singling you out. I always check the obvious first.” The security man reached for his phone. “You can go,” he told them.

His eyes lingered on Simms until he was out the door.

That afternoon, Simms was helping Hosey rehang one of the lobby doors that the kids had misaligned by swinging on it. “Maybe I shouldn’t have got so hot at Max,” the little man mused. “He’s just trying to do his job. It ain’t an easy one, either—there’s lots going on in this place that shouldn’t be going on. Prostitution, drug sales, stolen property being sold—”

“I guess you never expected to see those kind of things in the Algiers,” Simms sympathized.

“Not stuff like that, never,” Hosey declared. “’Course, in any big city hotel you’re gonna get your share of illegal goings-on. Hell, I used to see Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano come in here regular to have a drink in the Oasis Bar—there’s no telling what kind of crooked business they was talking about. And one time we found out there was a high-price callgirl ring operating out of what used to be the penthouse suite. It was supposed to be rented to this wealthy Texas dame and her four daughters—well, they wasn’t her daughters at all, if you know what I mean.”

Hosey grinned. “Funniest thing that ever happened was the time some teller over at Chase Manhattan got conned by a blonde who was a dead ringer for Lana Turner. She was supposed to run away with him, see, after he embezzled a bundle of dough, but what she really did was run away
from
him—
with
the dough. The cops arrested him right here in the hotel, sitting on the bed, suitcase all packed, waiting for her to come back.” While Hosey was talking, Simms noticed Debbie’s mother go into the coffee shop across the street from the hotel. Debbie wasn’t with her. “She got caught later on,” Hosey said.

“Who?”

“The blonde that looked like Lana Turner. She got caught down in Florida somewheres. Only had about ten thousand dollars left. Claimed the bank teller only gave her twenty. The bank said a hundred thousand was stole. If you ask me, the bankers probably took the difference.” Hosey used an electric drill on a long extension cord to screw in the last door-hinge. “Well, that about does it. I wish there was some way to keep the kids from swinging on it, but I guess there ain’t. We’ll be fixing it again in a month.”

“Okay if I take a few minutes off, Charlie?” Simms said. He could see Debbie’s mother sitting by the coffee-shop window with a cup in front of her.

“Sure, take a break,” Hosey said, winding up his extension cord.

Simms trotted over to the coffee shop and went to the table where Debbie’s mother sat. “Can I talk to you a minute?” he asked.

She looked up from a folded section of classified ads. “What about?”

Simms sat across from her. “I just wanted to tell you I was sorry for what happened about the gum. I guess I wasn’t thinking. I mean, it was just a natural thing to offer the kid a stick of gum. It never occurred to me how it might look.”

“Just stay away from her, okay?” the woman said firmly.

“Yeah, sure I will,” Simms assured. “I just wanted you to know I didn’t mean nothing by it. I was only trying to be friendly.”

“Okay, but don’t let it happen again.” She sighed wearily. “That place over there—” she bobbed her chin at the hotel “—is a sewer. A mother with a kid can’t be too careful.”

“I know, I realize that now. I’m sorry, okay?” He took a pack of gum from his shirt pocket. “How about you?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “
You
want a stick of gum?”

She half smiled in spite of herself. “Why not?” She took a stick and put it in her mouth.

“Looking for a job?” Simms asked, nodding at the classifieds. “Yeah. Soon’s I find one, I’m getting out of that dump over there.”

“Listen,” he told her, “I go to this place at night, it’s kind of a community center, and sometimes I hear about job openings over there. If I hear of anything I think might interest you, I’ll let you know.”

Her eyes flashed suspicion. “What do you think that’ll get you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t sleep around, man.”

“Hey,” Simms said righteously, “I’m just trying to be a nice guy. Lighten up a little.”

She sighed again. “Well, you just never know. Seems like everybody’s out to get something.”

“I know. It’s hard to tell who’s being straight with you sometimes.” Simms drummed his fingers on the tabletop. After a moment, he asked, “So where’s Debbie?”

“She’s in daycare until three.”

“How’d you happen to give her a name like Debbie?” he asked. “I mean, that’s kind of an all-American girl-next-door name.”

“Maybe I’d like her to grow up to be an all-American girl-next-door. Anything wrong with that?”

“No, not at all. No offense intended,” he said quickly. “Hey, speaking of names, what’s yours?”

“Lupe Mercado,” she told him.

“I’m George Simms,” he said. He extended his hand and, after first hesitating, she shook it. “If you ever need anything fixed in your room,” he said, “just let me know. You don’t have to fill out a form and wait your turn, I’ll do it for you right away.”

Lupe shrugged. “Okay.” There was a tiny pinch at the top of her nose.

“I better be getting back,” Simms said, rising. “Thanks for not being mad at me anymore.”

Outside, as he waited to cross the street, he looked back and saw her watching him suspiciously. He smiled and waved. She still doesn’t trust me all that much, he thought. But for his purposes, that was okay. All he needed was a little trust.

For a week, Simms watched Lupe Mercado come and go. Her routine never varied. First thing in the morning she took Debbie to daycare, then she spent the rest of the morning job-hunting. At noon she was usually back at the hotel for the free meal served by Help for the Homeless. After lunch she’d sit in the lobby or go across to the coffee shop and read the classifieds again to see if there was anything she missed that morning. Sometimes Simms would see her using one of the pay phones in the lobby to call about jobs. Then, just before three, she’d leave to get her daughter from daycare.

Now and then Simms would speak to her in passing or wave to her across the lobby, but he didn’t intrude on what she was doing or in any way act as if he was presuming a friendship. All he wanted to do was keep her aware of him until he was ready.

He picked Thursday as the day. Thursday: late in the week when people were tired, not as alert, laboring toward the weekend. Simms had already selected the boiler-room door that led to the alley as the way by which he’d leave the hotel. He knew he’d have to move fast—Max Wallace would be after him very quickly.

At three-thirty, Simms was on the seventh floor when Lupe Mercado got off the elevator with Debbie and came down the corridor to 704. Simms pretended to be in a hurry.

“I was hoping I’d run into you,” he said in a rush of words. “I only got a second—there’s a bad leaky pipe in the basement I got to tend to.” Fumbling in his pocket, he pulled out a slip of paper. “This lady’s got a dress shop down in the Village. She wants somebody to work in her stockroom—says she’ll train somebody with no experience, says it’s good pay plus a discount on clothes. Give her a call as soon as you can, the job might still be open.” Pressing the slip of paper into her hand, he hurried down the corridor to the fire stairs. He made sure his footsteps sounded loudly as he ran down to six, and halfway down to five. Then he abruptly turned and crept quietly back up to seven. Standing just around the corner from the corridor, he heard Lupe speaking to her daughter.

“I’ll be at the phone in the lobby—just for a few minutes. You stay inside until I get back. Don’t play in the hall.”

Hearing a door close, Simms peered around the corner. Lupe Mercado was hurrying toward the elevator. He waited until she got on the elevator, then walked quickly to Room 704. When he knocked, Debbie opened the door on a chain.

“Debbie,” he said easily, “call your mother to the door—I gave her the wrong phone number.”

“She went downstairs.”

“Oh. Well, let me in and I’ll wait for her. I have to give her the right number.”