Missing (16 page)

"Oh, yeah. The guy on the fifth floor."

I got out my wallet and took out another couple of
twenties, placing them on the hardwood counter. The man stared at
them suspiciously, as if they were pictures of money.

"What do you need to know?"

"The man who killed himself," I said. "What
kind of shape was he in when he checked in that night?"

"Drunk. Looking for a place to flop."

"I thought you didn’t have any rooms to rent?"

He looked puzzled. "Must’ve had a few that
night. Sometimes they open up when they find the niggers a place to
stay permanent. Now that I think about it, the front room on the
upper floor was open. We try to keep that open—just for
emergencies?

"What kind of emergencies?"

He shrugged. "Somebody you know gets kicked out
by his old lady, that kind of thing. Of course, we can’t always do
that. Depends on the Welfare."

"So the front room was open that night?" I
said.

"Yeah. Must’ve been. Top floor, front."

"You’re sure this guy was drunk?"

The man laughed, showing a mouth full of gold and
empty spaces. "That’s one thing I know about."

"Did he have a bottle with him?"

"I didn’t see one if he did. Course he could
have had it in his coat pocket. We did find one in the room, when we
found him next day." The clerk puckered his lips and fanned his
face furiously, as if he was clearing the air. "Man, what a
stench in that room."

I remembered. I had been there.

"He came in by himself? On his own power?"

"Yeah," the clerk said, "I guess so. I
didn’t actually see him come in. I was taking a crap." He
nodded to a door marked Private behind the desk. "When I come
out, he was standing right where you are, bobbing and weaving like a
featherweight. He dropped some money on my desk and says, 'I’d like
a room upstairs.' I gave him the room."

He shrugged as if he didn’t see the mystery in it.

"Did he look like he’d been beat up or taken a
bad fall?"

"I don’t remember that," he said
uncertainly. But by then, I was pretty sure that he really didn’t
remember much at all. It had been late that Monday night. He’d been
sick to his stomach and as sleepy as he was when I’d come in a few
minutes before. Moreover the guy was conditioned not to look at
anyone too closely. That was the etiquette of transient hotels like
the Washington. Everyone’s business was his own. Hell, he hadn’t
even remembered my face~and less than a week before, he’d ridden me
upstairs to identify a dead man.

I heard a john flush, and the door behind the desk
opened. The old man l’d seen on Tuesday stepped out, his pants
hanging open. When he saw me, he smiled a shameless, broken—toothed
smile.

"Jesus, put your pants on, Pat," the clerk
said, glancing back at him.

"l’m trying," the old man said,
struggling gamely with his suspenders.

I took out a business card and laid it on top of the
money, pushing it all over to the clerk.

"If anything else comes to you, call me." I
said it for the old man’s benefit, too, figuring he’d get the
word out to everyone in the hotel.

"Couldn’t take your money," the clerk
said, plucking the card off the twenties. "Not after what
happened."

I nodded at him and pocketed the bills. The old man
frowned as if his heart were breaking.

"Harry Stoner," the clerk said, reading off
the card. "That’d be you?"

"That’d be me."

"Well, I’m sorry about what happened. That man
seemed like a nice man."

I walked back down to Stacie’s lot and picked up
the Pinto. I was tired and hungry, and outside of the fact that the
cops’ main witnesses weren’t terribly reliable, I hadn’t really
learned anything new. Nothing I could make a lead out of. I’d just
have to wait and see what fell out from Stacie’s and the
Washington. As I was pulling out onto Fifth, a blue-and-white cruiser
rolled by, making the usual inner city rounds. He was the first cop
I’d seen in that neighborhood all night.

I circled back around Broadway to Sixth Street, then
uptown through the dead streets to the Riorley Building. Outside of
the cop car on lower Fifth, the only sign of life was the flurry of
traffic around King’s News, where the touts were double-parking to
run in and pick up the fresh racing form. It was past two when I
pulled up in front of the Riorley. I parked on the street and went
upstairs to the office.

The light on the answering machine was on, flashing
the news that I had three messages. I flipped on the desk lamp, sat
down, and played them back.

The first call was from Ira Sullivan, asking me to
phone him at his office the next day. "There could be something
odd here," he said in an odd-sounding voice. "I found an
old friend who talked to Mason. I’d best wait before jumping to
conclusions." And that was it.

His tone of voice had been so strange that I decided
to phone him right away, even though it was going on two-thirty. I
looked him up in the white pages and dialed the number. I let it ring
five times, and when no one answered and no answering machine came
on, I hung up. His message had to have come in late, after my first
stop at the office around eight. Could be he was off talking to the
"old friend" he’d referred to in the message. Cindy had
said Sullivan was a night owl.

The second call turned out to be almost as odd. There
was a long silence and then a boy’s voice: "This is Lee Marks.
Mr. Greenleaf ’s student from Nine Mile. I want to tell you
something. I’ll be home tomorrow, all day." He left a number,
with a Kenwood exchange. I jotted it down on a notepad.

The third message was from Cindy, asking me to return
the call as soon as possible. "After talking to those cops, I’m
not going to be sleeping," she said. "So call anytime."

I dialed her number.

She answered on the second ring. "Oh, man, I’m
glad to hear your voice," she said, sounding shaken enough to
make me ask if anything was wrong.

"It’s just that the cop treated me like I was
a jerk when he came to check Mason’s car. Some guy named Segal. A
real momzer."

"He was the IO on Mason’s case."

"l told him about the bloodstains, and he told
me it didn’t make a difference. Mason killed himself, and the blood
in the car didn’t change that. The bastard had all sort of
explanations for what it meant: Mason bumped his head getting in the
car—apparently there was quite a dent in the car roof. Or he fell
in the lot and then bumped his head. Anything to avoid lifting a
linger to find out why he died. I don’t even know why he bothered
to take the samples."

I knew why—because he’d been ordered to. "Be
patient, Cindy. There are some things that may break our way."

"You have news?"

"Possibilities."

There was a moment of silence on the line. Having
done with Mason, we were left with each other—our own
possibilities.

"You wouldn’t want to come out here, would
you?" she said tentatively.

"Yes," I said, thinking about her. "I
would."

"Good," she said, sounding so relieved that
she said it again.

"Good."
 

17

IT was almost three when I pulled into the driveway
of the little yellow brick house and parked behind Mason Greenleaf’s
Saab. Cindy opened the door a short time after I knocked. She was
wearing a white T-shirt that stretched down to her thighs. Passing
her hand through her curly black hair she smiled at me sleepily.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey, yourself." I kissed her on the lips.

"I must’ve dozed off," she said, stepping
aside to let me in, I went over to the couch and sat down wearily.
Cindy knelt down beside me on the floor.

"I’m glad you’re here," she said. "You
want anything? Food or anything?"

"I’m fine."

There was a moment of silence, as we both settled
into the newness of being together.

"Did I tell you about that cop, Segal?" she
asked.

"Yeah, you did. Might as well just accept the
fact that the case is officially closed. Anything we find, we’ll
have to find on our own."

She laid her cheek on my leg. "Did you learn
anything at that bar?"

"No, but Ira Sullivan left a message that
sounded promising. And a kid from Mason’s school apparently has
something to say. We’ll see tomorrow."

We sat there for a while. Two vaguely haunted people
in a haunted house.

"This is more awkward than I thought it would
be," Cindy finally said. "I mean, you don’t really know
me."

"How much do you know about me?"

"I have some ghosts, Harry. More than Mason."

"You think I don’t?"

"Yeah, but mine are doozies." Folding her
hands on her breasts, Cindy laid her head back against the edge of
the couch. "I want to tell you a story about me. I wanted to
tell you earlier tonight. There just wasn’t any time for it. Now
that you’re here . . . you should hear this before you decide
whether you want to be with me. Because it’s something you should
know. Something that matters."

"Cindy, we could trade horror stories all
night."

"I want to say it."

"All right," I said.

Cindy closed her eyes. "Before I met Mason, I
was with a guy, Jerry. I’d been with him for better than a year.
And I was in love with him, even though I knew that he didn’t love
me. He liked me in bed—he liked that part a lot. After Randy and
the divorce, I was willing to settle for that, to settle for anyone
who had a need for me.

"Lovemaking was a game with Jerry. 'Let’s
pretend under the covers.' He’d turn off the lights and tell me to
close my eyes, then start whispering to me: what he wanted me to do
to myself, what he wanted me to think about while I was doing it.
Most of his fantasies had to do with seeing me make love to other
people, men or women. I didn’t mind—or told myself I didn’t. I
wanted to please him, and I’ve never been a prude about sex. Then
he started bringing it out of the bedroom. We’d go places—bars,
parties—and he’d push me off with other men, friends of his. I
knew what he was doing, what he wanted me to do. But it’s one thing
in fantasy and another in reality. I loved him and I wanted him to
love me, but I was never a party girl. He kept at it. We had a fight.
A bad one. And I could feel we were coming to the end of each other,
that I was about to lose him.

"One night, right before the end, we were in a
bar and we ran into this friend of Jerry’s, a guy named Dave. I’d
seen him before at several parties, a nice-looking guy who liked me
and didn’t disguise it. That night the three of us ended up going
home together—back to Jerry’s house. There was a lot more
drinking, some lines of coke, suggestive talk. It got late and all
three of us were stoned. We ended up on the couch. Jerry started in
on me, not even hinting anymore, just telling me to make it with
Dave, to let him make it with me. At that point I was so drunk and
desperate to hang on to him that I told myself that I didn’t care
anymore. So I kissed Dave. He started undressing me, handling me. I
got hot and just went with it while Jerry was watching.

"After he finished, Dave told Jerry what a great
piece of ass I was and left. Then we just sat there, Jerry and I, for
the longest goddamn time, naked, with the television going and this
stink of disgust and contempt filling the room up like a gas leak. I
gave him what he wanted—I even enjoyed it, like he wanted—and he
hated me for it. Jerry told me to get dressed and drove me back here.
It was the last time I ever heard from him or saw him. I left a dozen
messages for him that night. Wept on the phone. Begged him to forgive
me—for what, I don’t know. He never called again.

"The next day I couldn’t even get out of bed.
I just lay there, wishing I was dead, thinking about how to do it so
it wouldn’t leave a mess. I was like that for maybe a week. As
close to the edge of my life as I’ve ever been—even after Randy,
and that had been bad. I didn’t eat. I didn’t answer the phone. I
just sat in bed and cried with shame. Eventually a friend of mine who
I taught with, Alice Connelly, came to the house. She fed me, cleaned
me up, got me
dressed and out of bed.

"The next week there was this teachers’
conference in Louisville. Alice insisted that I go with her, even
though I didn’t want to go anywhere that people were. But she
wouldn’t take no. So I stuffed myself with antidepressants and
went. I thought I could handle it with the drugs in me. But I
couldn’t. Couldn’t stand to be around people. I ended up making a
scene at a cocktail party—just burst into tears and ran back to the
hotel room. Mason happened to be standing in the hall when I came off
the elevator.

"I don’t know what he said to make me trust
him—I was so distraught, I don’t remember much of anything. Just
that he was kind, and gentle, and nonthreatening—just what I
needed. Someone who would love me first, then make love to me. All my
life it’s been the other way. Even as a kid.