Scudder - Eight Million Ways To Die Part 29

An a.s.sistant manager let me look at Jones's registration card. He'd printed 'Charles Owen Jones' on the line marked 'Name,' and on the 'Signature' line he'd printed 'C. O. JONES' in block capitals. I pointed this out to the a.s.sistant manager, who told me the discrepancy was common. 'People will put their full name on one line and a shorter version on the other,' he said. 'Either way is legal.'

'But this isn't a signature.'

'Why not?'

'He printed it.'

He shrugged. 'Some people print everything,' he said. 'The fellow made a telephone reservation and paid cash in advance. I wouldn't expect my people to question a signature under such circ.u.mstances.'

That wasn't my point. What had struck me was that Jones had managed to avoid leaving a specimen of his handwriting, and I found that interesting. I looked at the name where he'd printed it in full. The first three letters of Charles, I found myself thinking, were also the first three letters of Chance. And what, pray tell, did that signify? And why look for ways to hang my own client?

I asked if there'd been any previous visits by our Mr. Jones in the past few months. 'Nothing in the pastyear,' he a.s.sured me. 'We carry previous registrations alphabetically in our computer and one of the detectives had that information checked. If that's all - '

'How many other guests signed their names in block caps?'

'I've no idea.'

'Suppose you let me look through the registration cards for the past two, three months.'

'To look for what?'

'People who print like this guy.'

'Oh, I really don't think so,' he said. 'Do you realize how many cards are involved? This is a 635-room hotel. Mr. - '

'Scudder.'

'Mr. Scudder. That's over eighteen thousand cards a month.'

'Only if all your guests leave after one night.'

'The average stay is three nights. Even so, that's over six thousand registration cards a month, twelve thousand cards in two months. Do you realize how long it would take to look at twelve thousand cards?'

'A person could probably do a couple thousand an hour,' I said, 'since all he'd be doing is scanning the signature to see if it's in script or in block caps. We're just talking about a couple of hours. I could do it or you could have some of your people do it.'

He shook his head. 'I couldn't authorize that,' he said. 'I really couldn't. You're a private citizen, not a policeman, and while I did want to cooperate there's a limit to my authority here. If the police should make an official request - '

'I realize I'm asking a favor.'

'If it were the sort of favor I could grant - '

'It's an imposition,' I went on, 'and I'd certainly expect to pay for the time involved, the time and inconvenience.'

It would have worked at a smaller hotel, but here I was wasting my time. I don't think he even realized I was offering him a bribe. He said again that he'd be glad to go along if the police made the request for me, and this time I let it lie. I asked instead if I could borrow the Jones registration card long enough to have a photocopy made.

'Oh, we have a machine right here,' he said, grateful to be able to help. 'Just wait one moment.'

He came back with a copy. I thanked him and he asked if there was anything else, his tone suggesting he was confident there wouldn't be. I said I'd like a look at the room she died in.

'But the police have quite finished there,' he said. 'The room's in a transitional state now. The carpet had to be replaced, you see, and the walls painted.'

'I'd still like to see it.'

'There's really nothing to see. I think there are workmen in there today. The painters are gone, I believe, but I think the carpet installers - '

'I won't get in their way.'

He gave me a key and let me go up myself. I found the room and congratulated myself on my ability as a detective. The door was locked. The carpet installers looked to be on their lunch break. The old carpet had been removed, and new carpet covered about a third of the floor, with more of it rolled up awaiting installation.

I spent a few minutes there. As the man had a.s.sured me, there was really nothing to see. The room was as empty of traces of Kim as it was of furniture. The walls were bright with fresh paint and the bathroom fairly sparkled. I walked around like some psychic pract.i.tioner, trying to pick up vibrations through the tips of my fingers. If there were any vibrations present, they eluded me.

The window faced downtown, the view chopped up by the facades of other tall buildings. Through a gap between two of them I could catch a glimpse of the World Trade Center all the way downtown.

Had she had time to look out the window? Had Mr. Jones looked out the window, before or afterward?

I took the subway downtown. The train was one of the new ones, its interior a pleasing pattern of yellow and orange and tan. The inscribers of graffiti had already scarred it badly, scrawling their indecipherable messages over every available s.p.a.ce.

I didn't notice anyone smoking.

I got off at West Fourth and walked south and west to Morton Street, where Fran Schecter had a small apartment on the top floor of a four-story brownstone. I rang her bell, announced myself over the intercom, and was buzzed through the vestibule door.

The stairwell was full of smells - baking smells on the first floor, cat odor halfway up, and the unmistakable scent of marijuana at the top. I thought that you could draw a building's profile from the aromas in its stairwell.

Fran was waiting for me in her doorway. Short curly hair, light brown in color, framed a round baby face. She had a b.u.t.ton nose, a pouty mouth, and cheeks a chipmunk would have been proud of.

She said, 'Hi, I'm Fran. And you're Matt. Can I call you Matt?' I a.s.sured her that she could, and her hand settled on my arm as she steered me inside.

The marijuana reek was much stronger inside. The apartment was a studio. One fairly large room with a pullman kitchen on one wall. The furniture consisted of a canvas sling chair, a pillow sofa, some plastic milk crates a.s.sembled as shelves for books and clothes, and a large waterbed covered with a fake-fur spread. A framed poster on one wall over the waterbed showed a room interior, with a railway locomotive emerging from the fireplace.

I turned down a drink, accepted a can of diet soda. I sat with it on the pillow sofa, which turned out to be more comfortable than it looked. She took the sling chair, which must have been more comfortable than it looked.

'Chance said you're investigating what happened to Kim,' she said. 'He said to tell you whatever you want to know.'

There was a breathless little-girl quality to her voice and I couldn't tell how much of it was deliberate. I asked her what she knew about Kim.

'Not much. I met her a few times. Sometimes Chance'll take two girls at once out to dinner or a show. I guess I met everyone at one time or another. I just met Donna once, she's on her own trip, it's like she's lost in s.p.a.ce. Have you met Donna?' I shook my head. 'I like Sunny. I don't know if we're friends exactly, but she's the only one I'd call up to talk to. I'll call her once, twice a week, or she'll call me, you know, and we'll talk.'

'But you never called Kim?'

'Oh, no. I never had her number, even.' She thought for a moment. 'She had beautiful eyes. I can close my eyes and picture the color of them.'

Her own eyes were large, somewhere between brown and green. Her eyelashes were unusually long, and it struck me that they were probably false. She was a short girl of the body type they call a pony in Las Vegas chorus lines. She was wearing faded Levi's with the cuffs turned up and a hot pink sweater that was stretched tight over her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

She hadn't known that Kim had planned to leave Chance, and she found the information interesting. 'Well, I can understand that,' she said after some thought. 'He didn't really care for her, you know, and you don't want to stay forever with a man who doesn't care for you.'

'What makes you say he didn't care for her?'

'You pick these things up. I suppose he was glad to have her around, like she didn't make trouble and she brought in the bread, but he didn't have a feeling for her.'