Winter at Death's Hotel (39 page)

“Tell me the layout—where you were, where they were, where the light was coming from.”

She did it as well as she could, irritated that she was having to do it a second time, irritated with herself because she knew he had to do it this way. When she was done, he told it back to her in a shorter form that was accurate and crisp. He finished, “So all the light came from the door, correct? If the door was closed, there was no light. Yes?” He nodded. “How did Newcome and this other man behave?”

“They…giggled.”

He nodded as if that was something he heard all the time. “What else?”

“I think that Mr. Newcome had been drinking.” She tried to justify herself. “He staggered once. And he giggled, which wasn't like him…other times.”

“Did you see the other man's face?”

“No. Not well, I mean.”

“Did they seem friendly?”

“Well…they embraced.”

“Put their arms around each other? Or just an arm over the shoulders, like one of them helping the other one home? More like embracing when people kiss, would you say?”

“Yes, I think…in fact…I had the impression they were kissing.”
As
I
kissed
Minnie
and
she
me.

That didn't seem any more or less interesting to Dunne than anything else he'd heard. He tipped his head back and looked at the ceiling and narrowed his eyes—was he seeing the scene?—and said, “The other man. The first one you saw, I mean. What was he like?”

“I thought he was a breakfast cook. But they were too early to be the cooks, as it turned out; the real cooks came in later.”

“What was he like—young, old, tall, short…?”

“I saw him only from above. He was wearing some sort of soft hat, but I couldn't see his face. I could see his shadow on the pavement when he opened the door; his coat looked quite long. That doesn't help much, does it.”

“He came along the alley first.”

“Well…I don't believe I was aware of him until I heard his keys. I suppose he did come along the alley, yes, but he was really directly below me when I first became aware of him. I heard his keys, and then the key in the lock, sort of a grating sound—I thought of rats, I remember—and then he opened the door and the light came out of the open door. In a kind of fan, you know.”

“Had the other two appeared by then?”

She tried to remember. “I think…perhaps…”

“Could they see him?”

“I really don't know. They embraced and…kissed, I think, and then Newcome pulled the door open wider, and that's when he looked up and I recognized him. Oh, and then—I think it was then—he looked inside and…he might have said something, or…I remember thinking that maybe there was someone there he knew.”

Dunne sat back. He bit his lower lip and made small sucking noises. He studied her. “And they both had keys.”

“The first man and Mr. Newcome, yes.”

Dunne wiped his mouth, shifted his legs, and looked at the ceiling again. “You've made a number of things clearer, Mrs. Doyle. Much clearer. I think I'll let you go now, but I'm going to have a couple of fellas out in that alley below your window, so don't be surprised if you see them. And I'd like to come by in a bit to have a look from that window of yours myself. I'll bring you your statement to sign and save you waiting around.”

“I'd hoped to lie down.”

“And so you can, for at least a bit of time. Once I've seen what I need to see, I'll be out of your hair.” He stood and, to her surprise, held out his hand. “You're a good witness.” He held on to her hand when she offered it. “I think there are one or two other things I'd like to talk to you about. Tomorrow? Not tonight, but certainly tomorrow. You're not leaving, I hope.”

“No. No. But I shall have things to do.” She didn't know why she said what she said next, but she did, responding, perhaps, to something warm in Dunne. “I lost a very dear friend today.”

He looked solemn, then severe. “So I heard. That's one of the things I want to talk about.” He went to the door. “Thank you, Mrs. Doyle. I'll see you in an hour.”

She was taken to her room in the annex by a policeman. When she closed her door, she saw a telegram on the floor. It would be from Arthur, of course. Had he relented?

YOU MUST LEARN ADULT RESTRAINT STOP NOT ANOTHER PENNY STOP OBEDIENCE YOUR DUTY STOP ARRIVE NEW YORK NOON DAY AFTER TOMORROW STOP DO NOTHING UNTIL ARRIVAL STOP ARTHUR

She threw it in the wastebasket.

Then she went into the WC and vomited.

She lay down on her bed and tried to sleep, thought instead of Minnie and now was able to cry. The terrible finality of death, the terrible chasm of loss. But in a way, weren't they really about oneself? Minnie no longer cared; Minnie didn't feel the horror or the finality. And although Louisa was revolted by the means of Minnie's death, that revulsion wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was the complete loss of her. That Minnie had suffered pained her; she actually writhed on the bed, thinking of the wounds. But that was an essentially animal sympathy, woman for woman, creature for creature. No, what was worst was the hollow that had appeared in herself: the loss. “
The
pity
of
it, oh, the pity!
” But wasn't it really self-pity?

Detective-Sergeant Dunne came back as he had said he would, but a good deal more than an hour later; she was asleep by then, red eyed, frowzy. He seemed hardly to look at her, but gave her two typewritten pages to read while he looked down from her window, then sat by it as she had sat before, then opened the window and gave some instructions to somebody out there. It was dark. Cold air flowed in the open window; he seemed not to notice. He was, she thought, restaging the scene. She even heard him say, “Laugh,” then, “A little closer in.” Light came on and went out in the alley—the opening and closing of the door? After ten minutes of this sort of what she had heard Irving call stage management, he closed the window and accepted the signed statement from her.

“I'll let you sleep now. But I do need to see you tomorrow.”

She said, “It is Mr. Newcome, isn't it?”

He nodded.

“How did he die?”

He shrugged. “It'll be in the late papers anyway. He was beaten to death.”

She closed her eyes. “In his room?”

“The housemaid found him about three this afternoon.”

Her eyes were still closed. Tears trickled down from beneath her eyelids. As if another voice were speaking through her, she said, “This place is cursed.”

“That's the other thing I want to talk to you about tomorrow.” He had brought an overcoat that seemed to be made of many yards of hairy fabric. As he struggled into it, he said, “And about you, Mrs. Doyle. I'm a little worried about how you keep turning up in these matters.”

***

Roosevelt lived on Madison Avenue. Dunne was tired out and wanted to go home, but he'd had a message from the commissioner that said he wasn't to leave duty without reporting to him. The death of Newcome, Dunne thought, was somewhat like the death of Harding's wife—Roosevelt's kind of people. They mattered. He wondered if the deaths of people like this poor newspaper bitch who was the latest victim mattered to Roosevelt. Mattered in the way that a death of one of his own mattered.

He was shown in by a uniformed maid and led to a paneled, book-lined room that he supposed was called the study rather than the office. He'd kept his hat and coat, although the maid had wanted to take them; it would be more time lost, waiting for them, once Roosevelt was through with him.

“Aha, yes, well! Good of you to come.” Roosevelt was wearing short evening dress, a jacket instead of tails. His buttocks stuck out more than the tailor had meant them to. He rubbed his hands. “Is it colder out?”

Weary now, Dunne was tempted to say, “Colder than what?” but he nodded and said it was cold. “I've just come from the New Britannic.”

“Yes, this chap Newcome. I think I went to school with one of his brothers. Well?”

“It looks like he was one of ‘those.' A witness saw him bring another man into the hotel by a back door in the small hours. Saw them kissing, in fact.”

“Awh!” Roosevelt smacked a fist into a palm and turned away. “How could he?”

“We think it's the usual story—he brings somebody back to his room, the other one beats him up and robs him.”

“Beats him to
death
?”

“It happens. If it's the usual type, some tough kid, they can carry a load of hate for what they have to do. It happens.”

“Will the family have to know?”

“The papers already got it. They'll be on the sex angle like flies on a mince pie.” Dunne picked up his hat as a sign that he was ready to leave. “I've got people out looking for the suspect. There's a fairy saloon, the Golden Pit, down in the Village.” He didn't whitewash it. He was tired, and tired of Roosevelt. “Barman there saw the dead man with a kid named Philly Nugent. We should have him by morning.”

Roosevelt put his hands behind him. “This city is a sinkhole.”

“Most cities are.” Dunne got into his overcoat and started away. “By the way, the woman who saw Newcome and this kid, Nugent, at the New Britannic was the same woman who wrote you the letter about seeing Mrs. Harding in the hotel with her gigolo.” He waited for a response, got only Roosevelt's frown. “She seems to get around.” He went to the door, said, “She's also the woman that identified the Butcher's third victim.”

***

Far uptown on the west side, in fact on the northern fringe of Yorktown, a closed carriage came slowly along a modest street, the driver slowing and peering at the houses to find a number. At last, he pulled to the curb and said something to two men inside. One got out and went up the neat walk, the white-painted bricks on each side now smudges in the darkness. He rang, and eventually a light appeared in an upper window. After still more time, the front door opened; there was a murmur of voices, then another delay.

At last the first man came down the walk with Sergeant Grady, now under suspension from the Murder Squad. The first man opened the carriage door for him. Grady climbed in. The man called the driver down from the box and walked away with him up the street.

There was no light inside the carriage except for the dim glow from a street lamp a few yards away. Nonetheless, the man in the carriage said in a rich Irish voice, “I guess you know who I am, Grady.”

“Yes, sir.” He'd have been a poor cop who didn't know Deputy Chief Francis Xavier Halloran, even in the dark. The rich voice, dripping sincerity and truth like slobber, filled the carriage.

“Well then, Grady, you can guess why I'm here. For the good of the department, man!”

“Yes, sir?” Grady was frightened, but he was thinking,
Here
comes
the
shit.

“Now, Grady, you're a man of sense and a man of great experience in the police. I'm sure you understand the seriousness of having a crooked cop in our midst. I'm referring to Lieutenant Cleary, your former boss, you know. It's a sad fact, Grady, but he's a dishonest man.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So I know you see as clear as I do that something must be done. Now, I've just come from a meeting of some of the senior fellas—I won't mention any names, but you know who I mean—and we all agreed that it's unfortunate that your name has been dragged into the mud with Cleary's. Now, you may know or you may not, that Cleary has offered to give evidence that you were the one behind the corruption that has so upset Commissioner Roosevelt. Did you know that, Grady?”

“No, sir! Nor will I believe it of him!”

“That's loyal of you, Grady; that's to your credit. Unfortunately, nonetheless, it's true. What Cleary is, besides being a skunk and a snitch, is a loose cannon. He'd tell anybody anything to save his own skin. I suppose he'd even tell Roosevelt it was me put him up to his shenanigans. He's a bad actor, Grady. You agree, don't you, Grady?”

After a second or two, Grady muttered, “Yes, sir.”

“And so something has to be done about him, d'ye see that too, Grady?”

“I suppose so, sir.”

“And we think that you're the man to do it, Grady. And if you do, what we see is you being promoted, as you would have been years ago but for Cleary; and we believe we can see the way to improve your manner of living by putting you on to some fine investments, too. I guess your wife would like that, Grady?”

“I…suppose she would.”

“Everything can come clear once we've dealt with this villain in our midst. We'll have cleaned the barrel of the bad apple, and we'll be able to make a new life for you—promotion and a decent bit of money. D'you follow me, Grady? Are you with us? That's fine; that's excellent! Now, Grady, here's what you must to do…”

Louisa spent another bad night. Now it was Newcome as well as Minnie, appearing in dreams not as themselves but as cats and dogs and old patients of Arthur's, animals and humans she had somehow failed, losing them, trying to find her way back to them, running from somebody or something that took her farther and farther from them. Waking at midnight, she felt melancholy, futile; she dozed, twisted the bedcovers, dreamed through an agony of sex that never went anywhere, to wake and know the dream had been about Manion, although he hadn't been in it as himself. At three, she was sitting by the window again, shivering in a wrap. Nobody came down the alley until after five, and they were only the breakfast staff.

She felt little for Newcome himself. In the end, she hadn't liked him much. His aunt would be affected, she thought, but Mrs. Simmons was probably tougher than her soft body and her laces suggested. And perhaps she hadn't liked Newcome much, either.

For Louisa, Minnie's death caused Newcome's to shrink to a dot.

Grief for Minnie had settled in as a kind of ache. She felt no pangs of the heart, no flashes of romantic loss, but the ache seemed always to be there. Grief, regret, loss. And anger, which did flash and thunder, anger not at Minnie for dying but at her murderer for killing her…

She wanted to lie in bed and sink back into sleep. She wanted to be numb. Instead, she dozed sitting up, then crawled into bed only to throw herself out of bed again at seven.

At ten, she was far downtown at Chase's Bank on Nassau Street. She asked there whether she could draw money on her husband's account, but no matter what documents she showed, they were terribly sorry, Mrs. Doyle, but they would need permission from her husband and
his
signature. Couldn't he wire money to her?

She went back uptown to Union Square and found his publishers and then his editor, who was genial and gave her tea but couldn't advance her money from Arthur's royalties. He offered her a loan of twenty-five dollars of his own money; she refused, later regretted the refusal. He too suggested she wire Arthur; she murmured, “Of course,” and went away.

Back at the hotel, she found a note from Detective-Sergeant Dunne asking to meet him at the hotel at one, no answer required if she agreed.
Why
not?
she thought. What else had she to do?

The hotel had a stunned quiet to it, as if the building had itself suffered the death. The lobby was almost empty, the pile of luggage gone—most of it, one of the boys confided, to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Not only had the new arrivals decamped, but also some of the residents. Newcome's death had been in the morning papers, grisly in the less staid ones, where “inversion” was hinted at. The
Express
had it on an inner page, only a long paragraph; the first page carried a story about Minnie, who was called the
Express
's “star reporter” and “the third victim of a crazed monster.” The article hinted darkly at a connection between her death and the piece she had written two days before but made no accusations—it seemed to have it both ways, that she had been “fingered by Fate itself for so horrible an end,” but also that “the explanation for the terrifying act may lie in her discoveries of only two days ago.” A separate box said that the newspaper would pay for “the finest funeral New York can offer” as soon as her body was released by the coroner and the police.

But
what
difference
will
it
make? What good will it do?
Louisa remained a clergyman's daughter, for whom funerals were hollow rituals. She thought that Minnie would be forgotten as quickly as any other nine-days' wonder; memory of her wouldn't survive as long as the graffiti by the newsroom elevator, which might keep her name visible for another year or two.

Her ankle felt rather better. She sat in the empty lobby and drank tea and nursed her resentments: Arthur, the bank, the publisher. Money.

Well, I have to have some money. And I'm
damned
if
I'll ask Arthur again. I won't beg!
There would be a new bill from the hotel, certainly smaller than the last but payable on demand, regardless. There were Ethel's wages. There would be cabs, food,
things
until Arthur arrived, even if he did show up tomorrow as his telegram had said. She
wouldn't
let him ride in on his high horse and rescue her by paying all her bills: she wanted to pay them herself.
With
his
money?
a sneering inner voice whispered.

Then, she knew, there would be a major row, at first about the money, then about his having to return to New York when he hadn't planned to. It would be ugly. He was already angry; now so was she. They had had few real arguments, but she knew he feared her anger. Well, he had brought it on himself.

Money
. How did people get money in a hurry?

She signaled to one of the boys.

“Where is the nearest pawn shop?”

He behaved as if guests asked him about pawn shops all the time. “Closest one is Fine's Gold on Sixt', but don't go there; he's a crook. Go ta Friendly Pawn over on Sevent', couple blocks down—sout' a Twenny-Foist.”

She went to Reception and asked for her jewel case from the safe, grateful that she had signed it in herself and had not had Arthur do it. The same panjandrum who had registered them was on duty; he said grandly that of course he would get it immediately. When he came back with it, he murmured, “A very sad day at the New Britannic, Mrs. Doyle.” He sounded to her like an undertaker.

“I suppose Mrs. Simmons is in seclusion.”

“Dr. Strauss was with her all last evening.” He lowered his voice. “Mr. Carver is in shock.”

She supposed she had some special status because she had been there for so long; otherwise, why would he have confided in her? She said, “I don't see Mr. Manion today.”

“He is helping the police, madame.”

She didn't see how Manion could help the police, especially as he had seemed so cowed since Dunne had questioned him, but she pictured his going over guest lists, perhaps letting the police into rooms. What could they be looking for now?

A cross-town horse tram took her west on Twenty-Third Street, this time to Seventh Avenue. She got down and had to orient herself, then got in a queue for the downtown car of the Seventh Avenue Line. She left it at Twenty-First—it seemed ridiculous to her to take the car for so short a distance, but she was trying to save the ankle—and walked down, then back up, looking for the pawn shop, at last spotted it on the other side of the avenue.

Her mother had taught her that pawning was a sign of weakness, of failure, besides being low and common. Only people whose failures were their own fault were so morally low as to pawn.

But here she was.

She wondered if Minnie had ever had to pawn anything.

She walked past the shop three times before she could go in. The large window was filled with unrelated articles—musical instruments, clothes, suitcases, guns, fishing tackle, jewelry. She looked at the jewelry. It looked far inferior to her own. Surely they'd try to cheat her?

When she went in, a breezy-looking woman was just coming out. Her clothes were rather loud, her hair rather insistent; still, she sounded friendly as she held the door for Louisa and said, “Don't let him Jew you, dearie.”

She found herself in a larger version of the window. The walls and even the ceiling were hung with other people's valuables. Banjos seemed to her to abound, also men's summer clothes. On the floor were three glass-topped cases and a pile of furniture, as if somebody were just moving in.

Nobody was in the place, or so she thought until she looked beyond the furniture and saw a barred window like a bank clerk's till, behind it a man. He had sparse hair, a seemingly emotion-proof face like the stone ones on the tenements. He was looking at her, apparently without interest, but she thought that if she tried to steal something, he'd be on her like a tiger.

She walked to the back.

“Whatcha got, dear?” His voice was harsh and hard, somehow distant, as if he were really in another room.

“I, uh…”

“First time?”

“My first, yes, time to, uh…”

“I can always tell a first-timer. Knew it when you come through the door. In fact, when I saw you walking up and down. Whatcha got?”

She wanted to flee. “Some jewelry.”

“We can't do business if I don't see it, can we, dear?”

She was carrying the jewelry case in a net shopping bag. She took it out and placed it on the ledge in front of his bars and pushed it a few inches toward him. He snatched it the rest of the way and had it open before she could have second thoughts.

In the case were her mother's diamond earrings, tiny bits of diamonds inherited from
her
mother; there was an opal necklace that Arthur had given her; some
pavé
; an emerald ring, also from Arthur; assorted jet and gold chains and bangles and pins.

The man had a loupe in one eye. He went through the jewels quickly, pushed the diamond earrings aside, then gathered all the gold pieces in his fingers and dropped them on a balance and began adding tiny weights to the other pan.

Louisa said, “One of those chains was designed by Louis of Paris.”

“Don't make me no never-mind, dear; we pay by the weight. Gold is gold.” He wrote something down, swept the gold out of the pan and dumped it next to the now empty case. “A hunnert and sixty bucks, dear.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.” He pushed the diamond earrings toward her. “You can keep these.”

“Those are my mother's diamonds!”

“Paste, dear. If I had a dollar for every one of somebody's mother's pearls or diamonds that turned out to be paste, I wouldn't be sitting in this cage. Hunnert and sixty.”

“I must have two hundred dollars.” She didn't know why she chose that figure, but she thought that she was supposed to bargain.

“Give me more stuff, then, dear.”

“That sapphire ring alone is worth more!”

“It may be, dear, but we aren't
buying
your things; we're loaning you on them. They're collateral. If we forked over full value, we'd be broke in six months. A hunnert sixty.”

“And I can have them back?”

“Thirty days, total amount plus ten percent. You don't redeem or pay another ten percent in thirty days, we sell them.”

Ten percent would be sixteen dollars. A hundred and seventy-six dollars to pay back within thirty days! The money would have to come from Arthur. What a row
that
would be. She felt a glow of self-righteousness: he deserved it for being so miserly. It gave her a pleasurable pain to think that he had given her some of the things she would be pawning.
Serve
him
right
if
I
didn't redeem them
.

But she was looking beyond the bars, beyond the man, at the wall behind him, where something that reminded her of Victoria Woodhull had caught her eye. She said, “What is that little gun?”

“Which one, dear? This one? Oh, this.” He plucked it off the wall, constantly glancing back to make sure she wasn't covertly retrieving some of her own property. He held the gun, looked it over, looked at the tag on it. “This is a Smith and Wesson .32 Double Action.”

“Double Action seems an odd name.”

“I didn't name it, dear. Ask the company. That's a very nice little revolver for a lady, fits her hand, not too much concussion of the fingers. You can have that gun for three dollars fifty.” He pushed it through to her.

She picked it up. “It's very heavy!”

“It's steel, dear. You get used to it.”

She handled it as if it were an explosive. She knew nothing about guns, nor why she had fixed on this one, nor why any gun at all. She hadn't been thinking about guns. But she had been thinking about Minnie and Newcome and her fears, which, since Minnie's death, had seemed to come closer. Before, the deaths had been terrible but separate from her; no longer. “Do you have bullets for it?”

“Of course, dear. Maybe partial boxes, you know, somebody buys the gun and shoots a few bullets and decides he doesn't want it, but you get a bargain. That's a fine little gun, I assure you. Three dollars fifty.”

She put the gun down on the counter. “I'll take your offer on my jewelry if you'll include the gun and some bullets.”

“That would be an extra five dollars, dear.”

“That's my offer.”

He actually laughed. “I'm the one makes the offers.” He chuckled again. “You got spunk. You're Scotch, am I right about that? You're not planning to shoot your husband, are you, dear? I see you got a wedding ring there. And a nice ruby; I'd give you another fifteen for the ruby ring, round it up to one seventy-five?”

“No, thank you.” She couldn't go so far as to do
that
to Arthur.

He smiled at her. He looked almost fatherly. “Okay, dear, because you're a first-timer, and you got class, and you're the first one to say ‘No thank you' to me in about forty years. A hunnert and sixty and the gun and some ammunition.”

Her jewelry disappeared so fast she couldn't follow it; he seemed to have swept it into a drawer she could not see. However, he was doing something down there and writing on a cardboard ticket and then in a ledger, then scribbling on much smaller tags. As if he knew what she feared—and of course he knew exactly what she feared—he said, “We tag everything with your number, which is the number of the ticket I'm gonna give you with your money. Don't lose your ticket, dear; you can't redeem without it.” He went on writing, finished at last and pushed the ticket through to her. “Read me the list on the back of the ticket and we'll compare.”