Frank Herbert

by Frank Herbert

  “Well …” McCoy said awkwardly.

  Ellis pulled himself to his feet. “Anything else you’d like to say?”

  McCoy stood up, followed Ellis to the door. “No. That’s about it.” His voice sounded easier now that Ellis was obviously leaving. “Are you sure you won’t have that can of beer?”

  Ellis was tempted to say “yes” just to watch the effect. But he wanted to get out almost as much as his host seemed to want him to leave. Scared witless, he thought. Good thing to find out early about a man.

  It left a bad taste in Ellis’s mouth. He pulled the car away from the curb with an angry jerk of the wheel. The one virtue a good fireman needed was courage. He would have said McCoy was a natural. And here he was—someone pushed, and he went into a yellow funk. They’d have to find out who was pushing, of course.

  Ellis pulled the mic from under the dash, called his squad, and arranged for a tail on McCoy.

  He headed toward the hotel where the morning’s fire had been. One thing was clear in Ellis’s mind—this had to be arson. No evidence at all. But too damn much smoke.

  In the afternoon light, the Sander’s Hotel looked more uninviting than it had that morning. Ellis saw no official cars; the street was back to normal. The signs of fire had been cleared away, except for a few burned chunks of mattress kicked into the gutter.

  Ellis parked several car lengths away. A man named Yorty had died this morning on a mattress. This afternoon, the mattress was just a few charred chunks of cotton in the street. Ellis felt there was a moral here, but he couldn’t frame it in words.

  He slammed the car door, started away, then turned back to check the lock. This was a ratty neighborhood; no sense leaving anything for quick fingers.

  Ellis stared at the car door a moment, thinking—then came to a quick decision. He unlocked the door, reached into the glove compartment, and took out the .38 police special he kept there. With a careful look to be sure he wasn’t watched, he dropped the gun into his coat pocket.

  He picked up the mic again—let headquarters know where he was going. No sense in foolish chances; the game was getting rough.

  The smell was gone from the air, but the musty aftermath of the fire greeted him the moment he pushed open the glass door and stepped into the green-painted lobby.

  On one side, a small man sat reading the pink sports section of the newspaper. Ellis recognized yesterday’s baseball results in a headline.

  The small man lowered the paper to gaze at Ellis, shifted his position slightly, and again raised the paper against the world.

  Ellis stepped up to the worn desk, spoke to a tired-looking elderly man who smoked a stub of a cigar. “You the manager?”

  “Yeah.” The man’s eyes were bloodshot, the eyelids drooped. “You a cop?”

  They can always sense the uniform, even when you’re not wearing it, Ellis thought. He shook his head. “Fire department.”

  “Fire’s out,” said the man.

  Ellis fingered his wallet from his inside coat pocket, flipped it open to show his credentials. “I’m Barnhard Ellis, Arson Squad,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “Dittman,” said the man. “Al Dittman.”

  No questions, nothing volunteered, Ellis thought. He pushed his wallet back into the pocket, feeling a bit awkward under the tired stare of the old man. “I have a few questions,” Ellis said, “about your cleaning routine.”

  The old man slid off his stool, raised himself slowly to full height.

  Ellis stared. The man stood even taller than his own six feet, two inches, but was so thin he waved like a blade of dry grass. “Cleaning!” exclaimed the man in his first sign of life. He put the cigar carefully on a blackened ashtray. “We run a good hotel. Got a certificate from the city. We can’t help it if some bum smokes in bed. What’s cleaning got to do with it?”

  Ellis shifted his weight. “I’m not here to put in a complaint, Dittman.” His eyes moved to the staircase and a small pile of trash near the foot of it. “Though maybe I should.”

  A guffaw sounded behind Ellis, and he whirled in surprise toward the small man trying to hide laughter behind his pink newspaper. “He’s got you there, Al,” laughed the man. “He’s got you there. Living here is like living in the city dump.”

  “Shut up!” said Dittman, and the laugh ended as sharply as a clicked-off radio. Dittman turned back to Ellis. “What about our cleaning?”

  Ellis kept his gaze on the tall, thin man—wishing he would return to the stool. Ellis wasn’t used to looking up when he talked. “I’d like to see your …” He hesitated, reluctant to say “mop bucket.” “I’d like to see your cleaning equipment.”

  Dittman sank back onto his stool, picked up the cigar. “There ain’t none,” he said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Ellis asked.

  “We use a service.”

  “What kind of service?”

  Dittman sighed. “I can’t see what this—”

  Ellis cut him off. “It isn’t up to you to see. What kind of service?”

  “One of those outfits you pay to come in at night and clean up. They bid for the job.”

  Bid, Ellis thought. There was a gratuitous offering. As though that relieved this creep from responsibility. “And what’s the name of this efficient service?” Ellis asked, glancing again toward the rubbish near the steps.

  The man behind the paper chortled briefly, broke off.

  Dittman turned, still on the stool, to bend close to a card tacked on a wall near the mail boxes. “Cellini and O’Grady,” he read aloud. “They’re lousy.”

  Ellis pulled out a notebook, jotted down the name. “Phone number?”

  Dittman read it off, then asked, “Anything else?”

  “Yes. Who reported the fire?”

  “Mulligan in 437,” said Dittman.

  “Can I talk to him?” Ellis asked.

  “Can I stop you?”

  Ellis bit at his lip to hide his irritation. “I mean, is he in his room now?”

  The thin hotel manager shrugged. “Search me. Climb up and see.”

  Ellis nodded sharply, turned to the stairs, and reluctantly began the four-flight climb. Christ, what a dump, he thought. And what a way to live.

  On the fourth floor, Ellis stopped to catch his breath. He thought about the people who lived in this class of hotel—derelicts, men living on alcohol and dead hopes—and older people with pensions that wouldn’t stretch for a better address.

  How did they manage these stairs? A less athletic group than the tenants of one of these old hotels would be hard to imagine.

  Still breathing deeply, Ellis looked down the poorly lit fourth floor hall. Directly ahead of him was the room where the witness had died.

  The musty hall angled to the right, revealing several doors in need of paint. The burned room was 425. He went down the hall the few doors to 437, raised his big fist, and rapped on the door.

  Quick motion stirred in the room, then stumbling footsteps. The door opened quickly, and a pudgy man gazed blearily at him, supporting his wavering weight on the doorknob. “Whadja want?” the man managed.

  Ellis caught the sweet-sour smell of wine on the man’s breath, moved back a pace. “Mulligan?” he asked.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Ellis, fire department. You the one turned in the alarm last night?”

  Mulligan blinked at him, clung to the door. His once-white shirt was open at the throat, revealing a thick bush of red hair. “’Zat a crime?”

  Ellis took a deep breath and, step by step, led Mulligan through a description of coming home. “I was dead sober,” Mulligan complained, “at 2:30 in the morning.” He had smelled smoke and phoned from the pay phone in the hall.

  Mulligan indicated the phone by a wide wave of his arm.

  “Did you see anyone?” Ellis asked.

  “Jussa cleaning lady,” Mulligan said.

  Ellis sucked in a quick breath of air. “Here? On this floor? What was s
he doing?”

  Mulligan raised a hairy-backed hand to support himself against one side of the doorjamb, leaned toward Ellis in an exhalation of sour breath. “What was she supposed to be doing, y’ dumb fireman? She was mopping the floor.”

  Ellis glanced at the threadbare rug of the hall. “Mopping the carpet?”

  “Christ, no!” Mulligan said. “I saw her on the stairs. She was carrying her mop and pail down to the lobby.” He leered at Ellis. “You got a thing for cleaning ladies, Mac?”

  Ellis ignored the man, reassembled his thoughts. He wanted to see the inside of Mulligan’s room, find out the normal layout of one of these rooms. And it was high time he called the department. He decided to try for both. “Can I use your phone?” he asked.

  Mulligan grinned. “Only phone’s that pay phone in the hall.”

  Ellis nodded. “Okay. Was anyone else around—besides the cleaning woman?”

  “No,” said Mulligan. “And goodnight.” He closed the door firmly.

  Ellis was caught by surprise, decided to make the best of it. He had got all he was going to get here. He fumbled in his pocket for a dime, went over to the pay phone.

  By this time they should have the word on how Yorty had died. He decided to call Captain Coddington instead of the sergeant. It was Coddington’s fire, and if there was anything funny about it, the captain would be the first to know. He’d also have the grapevine report, the unofficial view from the top.

  But Coddington was out. “He just happened to go to the Meadows,” explained the fireman on the board.

  Despite his disappointment at finding the fat fire captain out, Ellis had to smile. The Meadows was the local racetrack, and everyone in the department knew the captain’s passion for the ponies.

  The joke was the way Coddington always acted as if his visits to the track were infrequent impulses.

  Ellis fumbled for another dime, dialed the DA’s office. This time he was lucky. Onstott was in and had the coroner’s report in front of him.

  The thin assistant DA sounded disgusted. “Yorty died in the fire, all right—loaded with carbon monoxide. So there goes our homicide right out the window.”

  Ellis leaned close to the phone so his voice wouldn’t carry into the hall. “Any question on identification of the victim?”

  “No, it was Yorty, all right. It was the smoke that got him. The body’s blistered but in pretty good condition, all things considered.”

  Ellis put that picture firmly out of his mind. “I’m at the Sander’s Hotel right now. Thought I’d have a look around.”

  Onstott cleared his throat, sounded a bit apologetic. “Look, Barnie, isn’t this police business now? You haven’t an arson case, and—”

  Ellis interrupted. “I can’t argue that, Curt. But this whole mess doesn’t feel right. You know that. It’s full of things that don’t add up?”

  “Such as?”

  “Let me poke around a little, and maybe I can answer that. Will you be in your office all afternoon?”

  Again, Onstott cleared his throat. “As far as I know now.” He hesitated. “Look, take it easy. Those boys don’t fool around.”

  “Okay,” said Ellis. “I’ll finish up here and then check in with you again.”

  Ellis hung up the phone, then turned to look slowly up and down the narrow hall, not sure where he wanted to begin.

  For one thing, he knew he wanted a talk with the other denizens of this fourth floor—and then there was that cleaning service. He glanced at his watch—4:15. They might close at 5:00, if they were there on Saturday at all.

  He couldn’t get the idea out of his head that the ring on the floor could have been caused by a mop bucket. He grinned to himself. It was the first time he’d ever heard of using mop water to start a fire.

  Behind one of the doors, a phone rang, and Ellis paused in surprise. In this hotel, a private phone was a sound of affluence.

  All the doors Ellis could see had numbers except the one directly opposite the pay phone. He found himself staring at its paint-chipped surface.

  Supply closet? Probably locked. He tried the knob. To his surprise, it turned. The door opened with a loud creak of hinges.

  One look and he turned away. It had been a broom closet once; now it was a hiding place for garbage. And from the smell, an occasional comfort station.

  He pushed the door shut—but then another odor made him pause. Stale smoke?

  Again Ellis creaked the door open, then took out his penlight and flashed it around. The smoke smell was very faint. Perhaps trapped in here from the morning’s fire?

  His light picked up a mark on the floor. Ellis bent closer, saw a clearly marked yellowish-brown ring.

  He took out his tape, knelt quickly, oblivious now to the stench of the place. He nodded to himself as he read the tape. Exactly fourteen and one-quarter inches.

  Behind him, a door opened and closed. But when he stood up to look down the hall, he couldn’t tell which door it had been.

  Was Mulligan watching from 437?

  Ellis closed the door quietly.

  An ugly silence hung over the hall. Ellis glanced at the pay phone. Another call to Onstott was indicated—but he suddenly felt that phone was too public. Besides, he wanted out of here.

  A tiny red light glowed over a door at the opposite end of the hall from the front stairs. Fire exit? Service stairs? He’d better have a look.

  Ellis headed for the red light, wondered why Mulligan’s cleaning woman hadn’t gone down this way.

  When he opened the door, he saw why. Christ! Did every corner of this hotel harbor a pile of rubbish? The residents must empty their wastebaskets down these stairs. He made a mental note to call the fire inspectors but knew it would have small effect. They were understaffed and under pressure. Not their fault that these dumps existed on political geetus.

  Ellis picked his way down the filthy stairs, still puzzling about the cleaning woman. More and more, Ellis was convinced that no professional cleaners ever came near this joint. They probably had a contract with a “service” all right, but the whole setup smelled of a kickback.

  And what in the hell was a woman with a mop doing walking down carpeted stairs at 2:30 in the morning?

  Ellis was pleased, though, by the way two things dovetailed. When he had seen that ring on the floor of McCoy’s kitchen, he had wondered if a cleaning bucket had left the mark in the fire room. Now, first crack out of the bat, his questions had turned up a scrubwoman.

  Above him on the steep stairs, he heard a door open. He turned to see the blocky outline of a man against the dim lighting from a dirty skylight.

  Ellis walked a bit faster. Just one more flight to the ground level. He could feel the desire for fresh air welling up in him.

  “Wait a moment,” called the man above him in a gruff voice. “Your name Ellis?”

  Ellis stopped on the landing where the steps right-angled between the first and second floor, glanced up. “Yeah. What is it?”

  “I got a message for you.” The man broke into an awkward run down the steps. “From your office.”

  From the office? Ellis wondered. How the hell would the office reach me through this punk, whoever he was?

  A sound below him, from down the stairs, caught Ellis’s attention. He glanced left, saw another man—this one mounting the stairs. The second figure could have been a brother to the first—ring-scarred, the eyes with that stare of secret ferocities.

  Ellis didn’t like his position here on the stairs. Back stairs, he corrected himself. Who ever used the back stairs?

  The man from above stopped one step up, almost level with him on the landing. Ugly-looking pug. Neck thicker than his head. Fighter’s shoulders with that bunched-up shape to them. His body was thick all the way down; it made his head look even smaller and rounder than it was.

  “What’s this message?” Ellis asked. He retreated to make room for the man, but it also put his back into the corner.

  “Yeah, message,” the man
said. He was obviously waiting for his companion coming up from below.

  Through Ellis’s mind flashed the arithmetic of street fighting. This first pug was about five-ten. I’ve got the reach on him, Ellis thought. But the man outweighed him by at least twenty pounds—and here was his companion now—almost a mate in weight and empty stare. The companion stopped one step down.

  “This is the bird,” the one from below said.

  Ellis could feel the menace. No doubt of it now. He had almost decided to punch first and apologize later when he saw the gun in the hand of the one who had come up from below.

  Ellis knew the gun in his own pocket might as well still be in the car for all the good it could do him now. Better not reach for it and telegraph that he was armed. Later on, he might get a chance to use the .38. He watched the gun in the pug’s hand, weighing his chances.

  The armed man saw the direction of Ellis’s stare and said, “Yeah, friend, that’s right.”

  The other one stretched his mouth in a shallow grin that kept his teeth covered and said, “Like I said, Ellis, I got a message for you.”

  Ellis suddenly remembered young McCoy. Without needing the complete details, Ellis knew McCoy had met this pair—or their twins. They had syndicate written all over them. Deadly punks. Ellis fought against a sick feeling in his stomach. He had been through the police academy, but that was years back … and besides, the first thing they told you was, “Try reasoning first.”

  “I think I get the message,” Ellis said. “But I don’t think your boss would like it if you got the department mad at you.”

  “Department,” the man chuckled. Again his mouth stretched into that tight grin, and then he laughed shortly. Ellis saw a brief exposure of yellowed stumps and understood the tight grin, the concealing mannerism.

  “You sure as hell can’t make me look like a fire accident,” Ellis said.

  The moment he had spoken, Ellis knew the words were a mistake. He pressed back into the corner, wishing for more room, as the men exchanged a knowing look.

  “You ain’t got the message yet,” said the one from the top. “We want you should remember this message. When you wake up—if you wake up—you remember it good. There’s a kind of a postscript, friend. You stay nosy, and your wife, your Jane, she’s gonna get the same message. You remember that, huh? And if she don’t understand the message, then we’ll deliver it to your kids.”