Winter at Death's Hotel (9 page)

“For money, I suppose.”

“Now just a minute—”

“I suppose I could ask the desk clerk, whom you also gave one of your looks, as I clearly remember.”

“You got the wrong end of the stick.” He wasn't smiling anymore, she was pleased to see; in fact, he looked rather angry. And dangerous. And—disturbing.

“No, I have the right end of the stick, and I have a good grip on it. I wonder if you haven't a little sideline here of letting certain men bring women of a certain sort. What do they pay you, five dollars or some such magnificent sum? Is that what integrity goes for in New York nowadays, Mr. Manion?”

“I never sold my integrity in my life!” Then he grinned. “I never had any to sell. Where I come from, they cut your integrity off at birth.”

“You deny allowing this couple into the hotel?”

“'Course I do. Ask anybody who knows me.”

“Then you won't object if I go to Mr. Carver and the police with what I saw.”

He was silent. He wasn't flustered, however; after that single flash of fear or panic, he had remained as solid as when he had come through the door. Nor was he threatening or blustering. He said, “I don't think Carver would fire me over a look, Miz Doyle.”

“Do you not, indeed. Mr. Carver is very worried for his hotel just now; he's terrified that I'm going to make a fuss over my fall. Do you think he'd like to see his hotel in the newspapers—‘Hotel Detective Allowed Murdered Woman's Love Tryst'?” She thought that was rather good, and made up in an instant, too.

Manion put his hands on his knees as if he were about to get up and said, “No offense, but you got nothing. A look? Go ahead—tell a cop you saw a look. Cops love a good laugh.” He stood. “You got anything else for me?”

“I recognized that woman, Mr. Manion! I want to know who she was!”

“Go look in the register. Not there? Didn't the guy give Reception the dame's name? Why would he? You think he had his head screwed on wrong? Guys who bring dames to hotels probably don't even
know
their names! You think a hotel D's gonna jump up and say before she gets in the elevator, ‘Could I have your name for my dance card, please?'” He shook his head in disgust.

“You are quite offensive.”

“Oh, yeah? Try being told you're a crook sometime.”

“I saw you!” That had no effect at all. “I
will
tell Mr. Carver!”

“Do a lot of that as a kid, did you? What we call a tattletale? You're a sweetheart, you are.”

“How dare you!”

“‘How dare you!' I been waiting all my life to hear somebody say that! I never heard it this side of a two-bit melodrama.” He threw a ten-cent piece on the sofa next to her. “Worth the price of admission.”

“Get out! Get out, you vulgar lout!”

Manion laughed. “You could have that maid of yours put me out.”

She threw the dime at him and missed by several feet. She thought he would laugh at her again and then saunter out, but to her surprise he sat again in the chair, his face closed. After some seconds, she said, “Get out,” again.

Manion sighed. “You could send for the hotel detective.” He didn't smile. He seemed to have to think about what to say. “Whadda you mean, you recognized the woman you say I gave a look to the guy she was with?”

Louisa had folded her arms over her breasts and pulled her bare ankle under the skirts of her brocade robe, as if to hide as much of her flesh from him as she could. “I recognized her.”

“How?”

“From a sketch in the newspaper.”

Manion frowned and picked at something on one leg of his trousers. “I wouldn't go spreading that around unless I was real sure.”

“I'm sure.”

“From a newspaper sketch?” He sat there. He frowned some more at his trouser leg. He said, “Yeah, I remember the woman. Okay? I won't say I was conniving in anything. But what I remember was you and your husband, and me thinking he wrote Sherlock Holmes and how funny that was, me being a detective. And I remember seeing you and thinking how…thinking you weren't my kind. Then, yeah, I remember the woman. And you think she was the one murdered in the Bowery?”

“I'm sure.”

He pursed his mouth as if to whistle and blew out air, but not so as to whistle. “Not good.”

“Because you'll get caught?”

“Nah. Oh, it'd make me look bad, letting them get past me, but no. What it is, a murdered woman and a connection with the hotel, that
is
bad. For that, I could get the ax.”

“I don't care what you get, Mr. Manion.”

“I see that.”

“I care about that poor woman. She was
happy
. And you and all the rest of them, you want to erase her!”

He stood. “Maybe you oughta do the same. Get that ankle better, go join your husband, forget it.”

“I will not!”

“Best advice you'll get today.” He headed for the door. “The cops have decided to bury the whole thing—I can tell by what isn't in the papers. You don't want to mess with the New York cops, Miz Doyle—you really don't.” And he was gone.

Louisa pushed herself against the sofa pillows. She wanted a swear word and didn't know one strong enough. She did find that she had forgotten about the pain in her ankle, however.

What had he meant by saying she wasn't his kind?

***

“There's a boy with a message asking if a Mr. Galt can come up, madame.”

“Galt.” She was back in her bed, pondering Manion's visit. “Galt? Oh, dear heaven, he's somebody that dreadful doctor's sent.
Another
man to visit me in bed. You'd think I was a courtesan at Versailles. Oh, let him come in—but stay in the room, Ethel.”

Five minutes later, Ethel said, “Mr. Galt, madame.”

She saw a decently tall, balding, fair man in the doorway. Silhouetted against the light from the sitting room, he looked round shouldered, a posture she disapproved of. Perhaps he was tired. He said, in a surprisingly deep voice, “I do apologize, Mrs. Doyle. Dr. Strauss sent me.”
Doctor
came out as “doc-tuh”—was this the Southern accent?

“Yes, yes.”

“May I come in?”

“Yes, please.” Trying not to sound as irritated as she felt.

He came in three steps and looked at Ethel. He said, “I'm sure Mrs. Doyle prefers having you here.”
Havin' you heah.

“Oh, well…” Ethel looked at Louisa.

Louisa said, “Yes, I do.” She sounded impatient, she knew. What was Galt afraid of—that she was going to fling her arms around him if Ethel weren't there? More kindly, she wondered if he had had trouble before, perhaps a misunderstanding. Yes, now she thought about it, having Ethel there was a kind of insurance for both of them.

“You have a sprained ankle, I hear,” Galt said, coming closer. As if it were all part of the same speech, he said sidelong to Ethel, “If you can put your hands on a measuring tape, I'd surely like one.” He was looking down at the ankle, which was sticking out of the bedcovers like something that didn't belong to her. It was now as much yellow-green as blue, still swollen. He said, “That must hurt like all get-out.” His voice was pleasing to her, soft despite its deepness, the hard American sounds rounded by what she was now sure was a pleasant, not at all insistent Southern accent.

Galt had on a buff-colored linen jacket like a shop assistant's, and dark trousers and canvas shoes with rubber soles, the sort of things that men called “brothel creepers.” She didn't know why; was one supposed to pussyfoot about in a brothel? He wore a stiff collar with rounded fronts and a dark necktie that certainly wasn't new. He was, she thought, somewhere about fifty, looking it not because of lines and gray but because of a look of wear, even of perpetual fatigue. “I'd like for Miss…mmm, ah…“

“Grimstead,” Ethel said, blushing.

Galt smiled at her. “Miss Grimstead. Yes, I'd like you to measure up Mrs. Doyle, if that's all right.”

“Of course it's all right!”

There was some measuring of her ankle and her foot, but Ethel was the one who touched her, not Galt. Would she have minded if he had touched her? He had rather long, masculine fingers, big in the knuckles. She thought of Manion's rather square hands, his short but strong-looking fingers. Square thumbs. When had she noticed all that?

“I guess it isn't news to you that you've got some pretty good swelling there, Mrs. Doyle. Also some pretty fine bruises. But the other foot is all right, is it? Because if the other foot's all right, then you got something to walk on. I'm a great believer in patients walking.”

“Now?”

He chuckled. “Not right this very minute, no, ma'am; we'll make haste slowly, as the saying is. But I'll send some crutches up just in case you get the urge. You're what height, Mrs. Doyle—about five foot four? And a half, yes, ma'am.” He smiled. “A hotel keeps all sizes of crutches, just in case. You'd be surprised the things that happen in a hotel.”

She said, both because she was curious and because she wanted to be something other than the poor body in the bed, “You're a nurse, are you, Mr. Galt?”

“Not a nurse, ma'am, no, not as you'd say a
nurse
, unless you meant a Sairey Gamp kind of a one. I'm more what I'd call a caretaker for the elderly, though I do have a certificate of completion from the Sanders College of Chiropracty.” He smiled. “By correspondence. But it fits me to take care of old Mr. Carver.”

“And old Mr. Carver is…young Mr. Carver's—that is, the hotel manager's—father?”

“Yes, ma'am, his father.”

“And they live in the hotel?”

“Oh, no, ma'am; Mr. Carver, the younger one, I mean, he lives out. With his wife and all.”

“So he's put his father in one of the rooms?”

“Oh, no, ma'am! Old Mr. Carver and me have the penthouse.” He pointed upward. She remembered somebody else's doing the same thing; now she understood. “Mr. Carver had it put up there for himself.” Seeing that she still didn't understand, he said, “Mr. Carver
built
the hotel.”

This surprised her, she wasn't sure why. She said, “I don't believe I've seen him—in the lobby or the restaurant, I mean.”

“Oh, no, ma'am. Old Mr. Carver don't go out anymore.” He was writing in his book; he said to Ethel, “Could you find us some ice, do you think? You could ring for a boy and tell him to bring it.” Galt looked again at the side of Louisa's face. “I think that some ice in a towel would bring that swelling down, Mrs. Doyle, and maybe take some of the bruising off, too. I'm a great believer in ice. You'll hear people say to use hot towels, and they have their place, but in the early days, I like ice.” Ethel had left the room—there seemed to be no worry now about being alone with Louisa—and while Galt was waiting for the ice, he looked out a window.

“Your work must be very rewarding.” She was being polite.

He smiled again but stared out the window. “Old people are sometimes surprisingly strong. They can have forgotten their own children and not know where they are, forgotten even who
they
are, but they still can be a handful. I saw Colonel Beauregard throw a grown Negro man off the piazza once.” He turned to her. “I was taking care of Colonel Beauregard. He'd been in the war, which is why he was called ‘colonel.' It taught me to be careful, seeing him throw a grown colored man like that.”

Still Ethel hadn't come back. “Is old Mr. Carver a handful?”

“He's all right. I shouldn't talk about him, should I. He's all right.”

“Does Dr. Strauss tend to him?”

“Dr. Strauss is his physician, yes.”

“I think that Dr. Strauss relies too much on morphine.”

Galt seemed to withdraw from her, then to come back. “Dr. Strauss's wife died two years ago. Dr. Strauss is
lonely
.”

“Oh—I didn't mean…” It wasn't a matter of what she had meant; it was what he had meant: that the doctor relied too much on morphine in his own case because he was lonely. Could that be what he meant? She blushed. He was looking away from her.

Ethel came back. Galt showed her how to make a sort of sling for Louisa's ankle out of a strip of torn cotton he produced from a pocket. The idea was that the sling would hold her injured foot off the floor and tie to something at her waist so as to relieve her of carrying the foot around if she used crutches. “It isn't much of an invention as medical improvements go,” Galt said, “but it seems to work. I'd suggest you choose a skirt that's not too heavy, too, because it'll catch on your heel and weigh the foot down even more.” He smiled at Louisa, her gaffe about the doctor apparently forgiven. Or forgotten. He explained how she was to use the crutch and how careful she would have to be on stairs, especially going down. “Or down goes McGinty!” They all laughed.

The ice came, and he showed Ethel how to fold it into a towel (which she hardly needed to be shown, Louisa thought) and apply it to the side of Louisa's face; then the two of them filled another towel with ice, Louisa watching with one eye, and put it on the ankle. Ethel's color was quite high.

“Too cold?” Galt said.

“It's very nice.”

“Cold does the job. Heat feels good, but cold's the ticket.” Galt looked around, found what he wanted in the bedside clock, said he had to go. “Time to get old Mr. Carver up from his morning nap.”

“Can't he get himself up?”

“Sometimes yes and sometimes no. He pretty well has to be carried about sometimes. Or pushed in his chair.” Galt hesitated, then gave her an apologetic smile. “You don't want to get old if you can help it, ma'am.”

When he had gone, Ethel seemed fluttery. This was unusual, in fact unprecedented, but Louisa couldn't see how Galt could have had this effect on her and so let it go. Instead, she started to write a letter to Arthur—where would he get it? Somewhere days and days and miles and miles from now—but her mind sloped off to her letter to Commissioner Roosevelt and what effect it must be having. She had sent it by special messenger (her stock of ready money that much more depleted), so it must be there by now; had Roosevelt been spurred to action? Invigorated in his pursuit of the criminal element? On the track already of the killer?