Memory (Hard Case Crime)

by Donald E. Westlake

  There was a stout gray-haired woman in a nurse’s uniform there. She took his form and told him, “Go through that door and strip. The Doctor will see you in a minute.”

  He went into the next room. It was small and dim, with a venetian blind closed over the one window. There was a gray leather examining table, and a table with a milk glass top, and a white cabinet with locked doors, and a black kitchen chair. He took his clothes off and hung them on the chair and stood there naked, waiting. Five minutes later the door opened and a woman started in, carrying papers and looking preoccupied. She wasn’t the nurse, but she was about the same age and weight. She stopped short and said, “Oh! I beg your pardon!” She backed hurriedly out, and closed the door so hard it slammed.

  Cole felt like crying, but he wasn’t sure why. He looked at his clothing all hung on the black kitchen chair, and wanted to put it all back on, but he told himself he couldn’t do it. He had to have this job, for money, to get back to New York.

  He wanted to sit down, but there was only the one chair, and his clothing was all on that. The floor was black linoleum, and cold under his feet.

  The doctor came in twenty minutes later, wearing a white smock. He was a brisk distracted man in his forties, with a look of impatience to him. He had all of Cole’s forms in his hand. He said, “Sorry to keep you waiting,” in a brisk and meaningless way, and looked at the forms. “You say you’ve been hospitalized recently. What was the complaint?”

  “I was beaten up.”

  “Oh. I see.” He nodded, and put down the forms, and got to work. It was a long examination, like the one before the Army. When it was finished, the doctor said, “Well, you’re in perfect physical shape, if you’d like to know.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Get dressed. The nurse will have your forms.”

  He put his clothes back on and went out to the other office, and the nurse handed him the forms. There was a new one under the paper clip with the rest, and another set of initials on the instruction form.

  Cole went to Building 3, the long shed by the railroad yards, and in through the front door. There was a door marked Supply. He went in there and asked the girl at the near desk where to find the Shipping Department. She told him, and it was midway through the building, at the end of a long corridor, solid double doors with Shipping Department written on them. He went through and found himself in a long open space, the whole rear half of the building, full of noise and motion and stacks of boxes. There was a glass-and-wood cubicle to his right. He went over there and inside. It was a small cubicle, crowded with two desks and a row of filing cabinets. One of the desks was unoccupied, and at the other sat a very fat man in a dirty white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a black tie. He looked up at Cole and said, “What can I do for you?” His right hand was fidgeting with a pencil stub, and his left hand was fidgeting with a cigar butt that didn’t seem to be lit.

  Cole held out the stack of forms towards him, and the fat man dropped his pencil and took them. He glanced through them, grunting to himself, and then said, “Yeah. Ellie called. You’re Paul Cole, I’m Joe Lampek. You want to start work today?”

  “All right.”

  “Good. Show up here at four o’clock. I’ll have a timecard made out on you. You see that door over there?” He pointed to the right, through the glass of the cubicle.

  Cole looked that way, and nodded. “Yes.”

  “That’s where you come in. The time clock’s right next to it. Look for your card alphabetically. You lose half an hour for every five minutes you’re late.”

  He’d forgotten to ask in the Finance Office about his pay, so he did it now. “How much do I get paid?”

  “Straight dollar an hour the first forty hours. Dollar and a half the last two, that’s overtime. You work a six day week, Monday through Saturday, four to midnight, with dinner hour at seven-thirty. That’s seven work hours a day, forty-three bucks a week.”

  Cole nodded. He’d only have to work here one week, and he’d have money left over.

  Lampek said, “Payday is Friday, and you’re paid for the week before. This Friday you don’t get anything. Next Friday you get your first pay. Starting today, you’ll only have five days in this week, so there won’t be any overtime.”

  “I won’t get any money till next week?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t have any money at all.”

  Lampek shrugged. “Not my problem,” he said. “Take it up with the Employment Office.” He scribbled his initials on the instruction form, and handed all the forms back. “Be here at four o’clock.”

  Cole took the forms, and went out the door next to the time clock, which led him to Parking Lot #1. Building 2, containing the Employment Office, was to his left. He went there, and back into the Employment Office, and put his stack of forms on the counter.

  The girl was talking on the telephone. She motioned to him to wait, and kept talking. He stood leaning on the counter, watching the movement of her dry mouth, and after a while she hung up and came back to him. She tried for a real smile and missed, and said, “Well, now. All done?”

  “Yes.”

  She went through the forms, looking them all over, and nodding to herself. When she was done, she said, “That’s fine. You’re all set.”

  He said, “They told me I won’t get any money till next week.”

  “That’s right. You’re paid the Friday after each pay period.”

  “I don’t have any money. I’ll need money for food and rent.”

  “It’s possible you’ll be able to arrange a loan somewhere. From one of the agencies in town, or from a friend.”

  “I don’t know anybody here.”

  “Company policy forbids making advance payments.”

  “Then pay me tomorrow for the work I do tonight.”

  “As I say, company police forbids making advance payments.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want an advance payment. Pay me tomorrow for the work I do tonight.”

  “That would be considered an advance payment, and company police forbids it.” She shrugged slightly. “I don’t make the rules,” she said.

  He was going to argue some more, but instead he closed his mouth and looked at her. It was true what she said, she didn’t make the rules. She had no responsibility, she could not be held responsible.

  He felt sad again, and felt a mute pity for her, but he didn’t know why. He only knew it was cruel to stand here and badger her about her enforcement of rules she hadn’t made. He said, meaning it deeply, “I’m sorry.”

  She looked surprised, and then annoyed, and he realized she thought he was being flippant, because that was supposed to be her line. She was supposed to say I’m sorry, and he was supposed to answer That’s all right.

  “That’s all right,” he said. He turned and walked out of the Employment Office. He went back out to Western Avenue and turned left and walked across the small bridge into the downtown section. It seemed to him that the tannery smell was less strong, but then he understood he was beginning to get used to it.

  He was very hungry. He stopped in at the restaurant where he’d eaten last night, and spent seventy cents on lunch. Then he went back to the hotel.

  He started on by the Dutch door and the young man with the sharp guilty defiant face, the clerk, but the clerk said, “Oh, no you don’t! Where do you think you’re going?”

  Cole didn’t understand him. He said, “Up to my room.”

  “You don’t have a room.” He pointed. “There’s your stuff.”

  Cole looked, and saw his suitcase and canvas bag on the floor near the door. He said, “What’s that for?”

  “I told you checkout time was one o’clock.” The clerk was making no effort to keep the triumph out of his voice.

  Now that the clerk had reminded him, he remembered the conversation this morning. He looked at his watch, and it was quarter after two. He shook his head, and said, “You saw my luggage there. You kn
ew I’d be coming back.”

  “I told you this morning, checkout time is one o’clock.”

  “Where’s the owner?”

  The clerk laughed. “City and County Trust,” he said. “Two blocks over.”

  “The manager, then.”

  “As far as you’re concerned, I’m the manager.”

  There was silence then, while Cole tried to think. He had always been sure of himself, all his life, but this business about his memory was affecting him other ways, making him less sure of anything, less sure of himself. He said, “Why do you have to be like this?”

  “We don’t want no deadbeats around here.”

  Cole shook his head. “In this place? What else could you get here? What are you?”

  “Just take your stuff and scram. Or, if you want to stay another night, cash in advance.”

  “The hotel is cheap and shoddy, and you’re cheap and shoddy. What can you expect?” But the last sentence was directed at himself.

  “If you don’t want trouble, buddy, you’ll take off right now. Or you want me to call the cops?”

  “Don’t you feel bad about this?” Cole asked him.

  “I’m just doing my job.”

  “You’re like the girl,” said Cole, and that ended it as far as he was concerned. He went over and picked up his luggage and went outside and down the slate steps.

  It was quarter after two now. He had to be to work at four o’clock. He went along, walking toward downtown, thinking that, and was suddenly afraid that by four o’clock he would have forgotten. If he concentrated on getting a room someplace else, he might forget about the job, and he couldn’t let that happen.

  The thing to do was go to the bus depot and check his luggage, and then stay near the tannery till four o’clock. After work he could go find a new place to stay. He could probably come back here then, the other clerk would be on duty, but he didn’t want to come back to this hotel any more. He’d find someplace else to live; he knew now that he would probably have to stay here two or three weeks.

  4

  The work was hard, and he enjoyed it for that. He lifted heavy boxes, carried them to a prescribed place, and put them down again. He didn’t know what was in the boxes, and he didn’t care. For a while, after the dinner hour, they unloaded a railroad boxcar on a siding next to the loading platforms. For that operation, a thing like a conveyor belt was brought out. It consisted of lengths shaped like ladders, but with very many rungs all close together, and with freely-spinning white metal wheels on all the rungs. Six-foot lengths of these were attached together, on legs, with one end in the boxcar and the other end across the loading platform and inside the building itself. The end in the boxcar was slightly higher, so there was an incline. Cole and three others worked in the boxcar, which was full of cardboard cartons about the size of a beer case. Lift a carton, carry it over to the conveyor, set it down, and give it a shove. With the first shove, and the incline, the carton would roll across the open space between boxcar and building, through the wide doorway, and inside, where someone would take it off and put it on the new stack that was abuilding. Cole worked in the boxcar for nearly three hours, and he liked that part best. He enjoyed pushing the cartons along on their journey into the building.

  He hadn’t forgotten to come to work, though the idea of it had frightened him. Between the time he’d left the hotel and the time he reported to work, he stayed close to the tannery. After spending a quarter to check his luggage in the bus depot, he strolled down to the bridge, and leaned on the brick railing there, looking down at the black water for quite a while. Then he walked all around the tannery buildings, trying to get familiar with the surroundings. He wanted to impress the tannery on his memory, and particularly the building where he was supposed to work.

  When his watch told him it was five minutes to four, he went into Building 3 and looked at the cards stacked under the time clock. There was one there with his name on it, and he took it out and stood looking at it, musing. There was no one else around the time clock and when he looked up at it he saw why. It was five minutes slow, and said ten minutes to four. It didn’t matter; he struck the card into the slot anyway. The card was punched with the time, and the clock rang a bell. He put the card back where he’d found it, and went over to the cubicle where he’d talked to the fat man, whose name he couldn’t now remember. There was only one name he could remember from all the names he’d come across today, and that was Warren H. McEvoy. He remembered that name, but he couldn’t remember who it was. The Union Steward, or the man in the Finance Office, or somebody else.

  The fat man greeted him warmly, and a few minutes later introduced him to Black Jack Flynn. “Cause there’s two Jack Flynns here,” he said. “Black Jack and Little Jack.”

  “No relation,” said Black Jack Flynn. He was a huge, muscular man with a smiling face, the kind of man who would drink a lot of beer and shoot darts very well. He was Section Supervisor on the four-to-midnight shift.

  Then the work started, and it was hard and pleasurable. Pleasurable both because it forced him to use his body, and because it made no demands on his mind. At seven-thirty, his supper hour came, and while the others opened paper bags or lunch buckets Cole went downtown and had a hamburger and a cup of coffee. That was all he intended to have, but the work had given him an appetite, so he had a piece of apple pie, too. The bill came to sixty-five cents, and he left no tip. On the way back to work he counted his remaining money, and he had three dollars and forty-seven cents.

  In a lull after the boxcar had been unloaded, he went to Black Jack Flynn and said, “They tell me I won’t get any money till next Friday.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t have any money at all. Three dollars, that’s all. How can I get some money, for food and a room?”

  “Jesus, buddy, I don’t know. You might try Artie Bellman over there. He sometimes loans money, five for four.” Flynn pointed him out.

  Cole went over to Artie Bellman and said, “Mister Flynn told me you sometime loan money.”

  “You strapped?” Bellman was short and wiry, with a pinched face. He looked as though he could move very fast.

  Cole said, “Yes. I need money for food and a room.”

  “How much?”

  “I won’t get any money till next Friday.”

  “So how much?”

  Cole thought about it. Two dollars a day for food, say. Three dollars a day for a room. Ten days till next Friday. “Fifty dollars,” he said.

  Bellman shook his head. “Too much,” he said. “I can let you have thirty. Make it thirty-two.”

  “All right.”

  “What you got for security? You got a watch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  Cole took off his watch, and showed it to him. Bellman took it and studied it, dubiously. “I don’t think I could get thirty for it,” he said, “but what the hell. Let’s sign the paper.”

  Bellman led the way to the office cubicle, and inside. There was no one in here now, and Bellman got a sheet of paper and a pen from one of the desks. “You write it,” he said. “It’s got to be in your handwriting.”

  “All right.”

  “Write, ‘IOU forty dollars, to be paid ten dollars a payday.’ And sign your name.”

  “Forty dollars?”

  “Five for four. Didn’t they tell you? You get thirty-two, you pay back forty.”

  “Oh.” Cole wrote it, and signed it. He was thinking that he wouldn’t be here more than two or three paydays anyway, so Bellman would be lucky to get the money back he was loaning, much less the interest. Cole felt no compunction about it; Bellman was loaning money, but Bellman was a usurer and Cole was feeling the atavistic revulsion toward the usurer. He needed Bellman’s money, and was grateful to get it, but wouldn’t feel badly about cheating Bellman out of his profit.

  Bellman took the paper and put it in his pocket. He already was wearing Cole’s watch. He took out his
wallet, and gave Cole two tens, one five, and seven ones. “See you payday,” he said.

  “I won’t get any pay this week.”

  “I know.”

  Then they went back to work.

  When Cole punched the time clock on his way out, his card read 12:02. He put it back in its place, in alphabetical order with the other cards there, and walked out of the building.

  His clothing hadn’t been right for the work. He’d taken off his tie and suitcoat, but he’d still been working in his white shirt and suit trousers. Tomorrow he would wear his slacks and a sport shirt. And he would buy some bread and cold cuts to keep in his room, and make sandwiches to take to work. It would be cheaper than going out.

  He’d forgotten he wasn’t staying at the Wilson Hotel any more, but when he started across the intersection where he should turn right to go to the bus depot he suddenly remembered. He stopped in the middle of the street, flushing with embarrassment and anger. He remembered the young clerk now, and the stupid series of events. He shouldn’t have let it happen. He was very tired now, after working, and he shouldn’t now have to go look for a room.

  He turned and walked down to the bus depot, and looked at the locker key to find out what number his locker was. He reclaimed his luggage and then turned to the counter. An elderly man without teeth was sitting on a high stool behind it, reading a comic book spread open on the counter in front of him.

  Cole said, “Excuse me. Can you tell me where I can find an inexpensive room at weekly rates?”

  “What’s that?”

  Cole repeated it, a little louder, and the old man said, “Wilson Hotel.”

  “No, not there. Someplace else. Is there anything near the tannery?”

  “Everything’s near the tannery, sonny. Don’t you smell it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wilson too cheap for you?”

  “No. I want something cheap.”

  “We don’t have no YMCA. Try the Belvedere.”

  Cole got directions to the Belvedere—it was about a block beyond the Wilson—thanked the old man, and carried his luggage out to the street. He was very tired now, and as he walked along, carrying his suitcase and canvas bag, he kept yawning. He couldn’t cover his mouth when he yawned, because of the luggage he was carrying. He tried ducking his head instead, but that constricted his jaw when it wanted to yawn wide, and made his neck and jaw ache, so he just walked along with his head up, yawning.