Winter at Death's Hotel (13 page)

“Are the police so corrupt as that?”

“The New York police would pull a drowning man out of the river so's they could take his wallet and then throw him back. That's all the police are about, is money. Money, money, money.”

She swallowed. “Commissioner Roosevelt, too?”

“Terrible Teddy? Naw, Teddy's straight. He lives in a fool's paradise where he thinks he's cleaning up the corruption. He's a dreamer.”

“All the other police? Corrupt, I mean?”

“Root and branch.”

“So the policeman who found her body in the Bowery—he was corrupt? He lied in what he said?”

Manion shrugged. “Where'd the money be in that?”

“But you said—”

“An old footy like the guy who found the body would take a buck from a chippy not to bust her, or he'd take a free meal at a beanery or a free oyster off a pushcart. There's cops in this city haven't paid for a meal in twenty years. But there's also things cops gotta do to keep their jobs, which isn't because somebody, somewhere, is a good cop, it's just because the system's gotta look like it works. So the cop that found the body wrote his report. That's what the beat cop
does
. Unless somebody paid him to do it wrong, he did it the best he knew. Now, it could be that in some far-fetched detective story the murderer paid him to lie, but even the dumbest Mick bull on the beat knows that he could do better by telling the truth, unless the money was so big he could share it with his sergeant and his lieutenant and keep everybody happy. But somebody give him a lot of cash to hush up the murder of a professional girl? Nah. Nah, the beat cop probably told the truth.”

“Then his report would have the things in it that the newspapers left out.”

“Like what?”

“What ‘mutilated' and ‘disfigured' meant.”

“Yeah, probably, but you don't want to know stuff like that.”

She caught his eyes again. They started to hold each other's glance, but she broke it and said, “Would he still have his report?”

“No, that goes to his sergeant. But if he's the ignorant mackerel-snapper I think he is, he'll have written it out a couple of times before he got it in words he could spell and could hand in. He might still have those.”

“How much?” Manion looked wary again. She said, “How much to buy his rough drafts from him?”

“What if he threw them out?”

“If he didn't? Ten dollars? Twenty? A hun—”

“For ten bucks, the average bull would sell you his badge. For twenty he'd throw in the wife and kids. A hundred would scare him to death.”

“I'm a stranger to New York, Mr. Manion. You're not. I don't know the police. You do.” She let a smile touch just the corners of her mouth. “How much would you take to buy that policeman's report for me?”

His nostrils flared. “I wouldn't take a penny from you! What the hell do you think I am?”

“I thought you said—”

“I took that cop's two sawbucks because I didn't want trouble, but if you think he bought me, you're crazy! And you're not gonna buy me, either.”

“I'm confused.”

“I'll say!”

Irritated again, she said, “I can hardly go to that policeman myself.”

“What difference does it make? What d'you care what happened to that woman?”

She hesitated. A picture leaped into her mind: two naked people on a bed—the joy of it, the pleasure. All she could say, however, was, “She was happy.”

Manion started to say something, then got up and walked to a window. He took out a cigarette, lit it. He blew out smoke. “You don't know it was the same woman.”

“
You
know.”

“I don't! That newspaper sketch could have been anybody.”

“You recognized her, or you wouldn't be here.”

He turned back toward her, then lowered his head and, with the same hand that held the cigarette, rubbed his forehead. “I don't know what ‘disfigured' meant, but if she was all banged up, the sketch artist might have had to fake a lot. Or an editor could have pulled some old sketch from the morgue and printed it.” He drew in smoke and blew it out one side of his mouth. “Tell you what. You get the artist to say that the sketch was a good likeness of the woman, then…” He shrugged.

“Then
what
, Mr. Manion?”

“Then I suppose I'll help you get the cop's report. If it exists.”

“And then?”

“Then I hope you'll be satisfied.” He looked around for somewhere to put out his cigarette and, seeing nothing, supported himself with one hand on the back of a chair and put it out on the sole of his shoe. “But I suppose you won't be.”

“Given your attitude, I am surprised you would help me under any circumstances.”

His face showed disgust, apparently with himself. He said, in a voice that was dredged from somewhere that he kept old and unused things, “You might be surprised what I'd do.”

***

With Ethel gone for the afternoon, Louisa felt very daring as she maneuvered herself out through the hotel's great bronze doors. Still uncertain on her crutches, she lurched: lacking the strength of back and shoulder to do it gracefully, she had to gather herself for each controlled fall forward, then hunch down, shrink, and lunge up again as if coming up out of water. Yet she felt that she was setting off on a great adventure—her first real journey outside the hotel, and on crutches! Stepping across the threshold into cold outdoor air was like, she thought, what a prisoner must feel when released from prison. Reality!

She had thought she would take advantage of Newcome's offer to take her anywhere, any time, in his friend's carriage, but Mr. Newcome was not to be found. Reception thought he was in his room, but he was not answering his door. Perhaps an indisposition. Or a late night.

Newcome, she decided, was one of those charming but insincere people who promise more than they ever mean to deliver.

The doorman wore some sort of bogus livery and a top hat, which he now tipped to her. She said, “I want you to call me a horse-cab, and when it comes I want you to help me into it, and then I want you to tell the driver that he is to help me down when we get where I want to go.”

“Indeed, indeed.” He touched the brim of the top hat again, palmed the coin she gave him in a gloved hand (more cash gone), and charged into the teeming street as if he'd been fired from a siege gun. He blew a whistle, then waved a cab toward him with a gesture that looked as if he were batting a bird out of the air. Then he stood in the middle of the street and, hand raised, held up the instantly enraged traffic until the cab had ground its iron rims against the curb. Other drivers and draymen and even some pedestrians hooted at him, but he was unmovable.

Louisa crutch-hobbled to the cab's narrow door. She lunged forward and got her left foot on the step, then felt herself boosted under the arms into the interior, where the doorman held her until she got her left foot on the floor and could pivot and fall backward on the horsehair seat.

Breathless, she said, “Thank you,” and dove into her reticule for another coin, but he waved it away and went to instruct the driver. He seemed to assume that the authority was all on his side, for he spoke very loudly and, to Louisa, very bossily, but the driver seemed to take it without complaint, for a moment later he bent down from his seat and said to her quite meekly, “Where to, ma'am?”

She gave him the address of the
New
York
Express
and off they went, the hotel doorman now waving at the traffic—which he had stopped—to move faster. Flakes of snow were coming down; the day was dark; electric lights were on in the buildings, giving an impression of warmth, of life, close but unreachable.

It was a long trip, in fact several miles, most of the way down Manhattan. She hadn't looked at her guidebook's map, and she was shocked at what it would cost. When at last they arrived, the driver climbed down, opened the door, and stood there. Louisa looked at him. She realized that she had no more idea what to do than he did. She couldn't use the crutches inside the cab; she didn't think that she could stand on one foot at the cab's door and put the tips of the crutches on the curb and so be able to let herself down, even with an assist from him.

Perhaps she could launch herself into the air and trust him to catch her? He was a fairly old man, and inside his ancient frock coat she suspected he was string-bean skinny; she'd probably flatten him, and there they'd both be, writhing on the pavement.

“I think,” she said, “if you would take my crutches and put them down and then put your hand under my left arm, I should be able to descend.”

“Give 'er a try,” he said. “But don't yous do nothing rash, please.”

It was all right until she was balancing on her left foot in the cab doorway, but she realized too late that she would have to hop down to the carriage step, which was a metal plate about as big as one of her hands. She was debating how catastrophic this could be when a male voice said, “Allow me, ma'am,” and a tall man who seemed to be dressed for a costume party swept one arm behind her skirts and the other behind her shoulders and plucked her from the cab—Louisa said, “Oh!”—and put her down as gently as if he were putting down an egg; then he waited until she had her weight on her left foot, waited to make sure the crutches were placed securely under her arms, and tipped his wide hat and disappeared.

“Wild West Show,” the driver said. “Them fellas is all over town.
I
coulda done it m'self, if he'd waited.”

Louisa shook herself, pulled down part of her bodice that had got disarranged, and paid him off.

She was standing in front of a tall building with imitation Greek columns that went up and up, stopping at each story for a different order of capital. On her level was a more or less Gothic doorway in gray stone, inside it double doors in somewhat grubby brass, only the parts immediately around the handles looking bright. There was no doorman, but a pretty regular stream of people were coming and going, mostly male—men in suits and bowlers, boys in cloth caps and some adult's cast-off overcoat or cut-down suit, an old man wearing a board fore and aft that advertised the very newspaper she meant to visit. Louisa tried to join the stream but was too slow; to her astonishment, one of the boys held a brass door for her. When she tried to tip him, he said, “On the house, lady!” and trotted off into the building.

There was a lobby with a terrazzo floor and a lot of dark bronze on the walls—pillars, plaques, some sort of directory—and at the far end a stairway whose steepness made her gasp. She said to one of the men who was flying past, “The
Express
?” and he never slowed but did turn his head and snapped, “Editorial on seven, presses in the basement!”

She couldn't conceive why everybody was in a tearing hurry, but they were, and she had to get out of the way or be run over. Huddling against a bronze pillar (vaguely Egyptian), she said to a boy, “Is there an elevator?” She remembered not to say “lift.” The boy, who was quite different from the first boy, said, “Where yez from, Arkansas?” and hurried away.

Seeing that there was nothing for it but the stairs, she started hobbling toward the back of the building. The mob rushed past her, flung itself at the stairs, and went up mostly two stairs at a time, while another mob ran down the other way. It seemed to be like the streets outside, everything organized into one-way streams. She looked up the stairs as she got close; they were steep, their treads black, dirt and cigarette butts and paper ground into their corners. And she had to go to seven!

“Why don't you take the elevator, little lady?”

She turned her head to see who had spoken; somebody else jostled her from the other side. The same voice shouted, “Watch what you're doing, there!” And he raised his voice another notch to bellow, “Go easy, boy, there's a crippled woman here!” He was a very fat man in a very loud suit, but he looked to her like Galahad in a cheap engraving. She said, “Oh, thank you!” as he piloted her to her left and into a side corridor she'd missed, and there was an elevator.

“Too slow for most of us,” he said. “Have a good day.” And then
he
was gone.

It was her first experience of
real
Americans—New Yorkers, anyway—in their native habitat, except for the news vendor next to the hotel. She concluded that they were generous, always in a hurry, vulgar, and somewhat improper in their easy dismissal of the proprieties. Yet how grateful she felt to some of them already!

The man had been right: nobody else was waiting for the lift. It was at that moment up above somewhere. She could hear a noise like iron wheels grinding on cobblestones; the noise would start, go on, then stop, and there would be a clashing sound; then it would start again, stop, and the same sound.
Somebody
must use the elevator, obviously.

At last the brass doors parted. Behind them was a brass grating that made the clashing noise when the adolescent at the controls threw it to the side as if he meant to smash it, and the pivoted pieces, which formed diamonds the size of her notepaper, closed up as their sides folded together and became slender verticals.

“
Gongup!
”

Three large men got out talking and walked off, still talking. Louisa hobbled in.

“
Floor?
”

“Oh—ah—oh, I think seven. Is seven—?”

“
New
York
Express
, editorial, sports, news, and ads. Publishing offices're on eight. Wotcher want?”

“Seven.”

“You got it.”

He reached across her and grabbed the shiny brass handle of the tarnished brass gates and pulled them across her and smashed the gate against the jamb. “
Gongup!
” He grasped a handle that stuck out from the wall, actually part of a kind of crank that was pivoted at the level of his knees. He threw the crank over and sat on a padded stool that rose like a mushroom on a brass column from the elevator floor. They started with a lurch; Louisa gulped and felt her stomach drop to the level of her thighs.