Scenarios nd-29

by Bill Pronzini

  He used to be a homicide lieutenant so he knew what he was talking about. When he called back a half hour later he said, "You got your clearance. Feinberg had it pegged: the case is already in the Inactive File for lack of leads and evidence. I'll see if I can finagle a copy of the report for you."

  Some case, I thought as I hung up. In a way it was ghoulish, like poking around in a fresh grave. And wasn't that an appropriate image; I could almost hear Nick's sly laughter.

  Skeleton rattle your mouldy leg.

  The basement of the Medford Hotel was dimly lighted and too warm: a big, old-fashioned oil furnace rattled and roared in one corner, giving off shimmers of heat. Much of the floor space was taken up with fifty-gallon trash receptacles, some full and some empty and one each under a pair of garbage chutes from the upper floor. Over against the far wall, and throughout a small connecting room beyond, were rows of narrow storage cubicles made out of wood and heavy wire, with padlocks on each of the doors.

  Nick's room was at the rear, opposite the furnace and alongside the room that housed the hot-water heaters. But Feinberg didn't take me there directly; he said something I didn't catch, mopping his face with a big green handkerchief, and detoured over to the furnace and fiddled with the controls and got it shut down.

  "Damn thing," he said. "Owner's too cheap to replace it with a modern unit that runs off a thermostat. Now we got some young snot he hired to take Nick's job, don't live here and don't stick around all day and leaves the furnace turned on too long. It's like a goddamn sauna in here."

  There had been a police seal on the door to Nick's room, but it had been officially removed. Feinberg had the key; he was a sort of building mayor, by virtue of seniority-he'd lived at the Medford for more than fifteen years-and he had got custody of the key from the owner. He opened the lock, swung the thick metal door open, and clicked on the lights.

  The first thing I saw was the skeleton. It hung from several pieces of shiny wire on the wall opposite the door, and it was a grisly damned thing streaked with blobs of red and green and orange candle wax. The top of the skull had been cut off and a fat red candle jutted up from the hollow inside, like some sort of ugly growth. Melted wax rimmed and dribbled from the grinning mouth, giving it a bloody look.

  "Cute, ain't it?" Feinberg said. "Nick and his frigging skeletons."

  I moved inside. It was just a single room with a bathroom alcove, not more than fifteen feet square. Cluttered, but in a way that suggested everything had been assigned a place. Army cot against one wall, a small table, two chairs, one of those little waist-high refrigerators with a hot plate on top, a standing cupboard full of pots and dishes; stacks of newspapers and magazines, some well-used books-volumes of poetry, an anatomical text, two popular histories about ghouls and grave robbers, a dozen novels with either "skeleton" or "bones" in the title; a broken wooden wagon, a Victrola without its ear-trumpet amplifier, an ancient Olivetti typewriter, a collection of oddball tools, a scabrous iron-bound steamer trunk, an open box full of assorted pairs of dice, and a lot of other stuff, most of which appeared to be junk.

  A thick fiber mat covered the floor. On it, next to the table, was the chalked outline of Nick's body and some dark stains. My stomach kicked a little when I looked at the stains; I had seen corpses of bludgeon victims and I knew what those stains looked like when they were fresh. I went around the table on the other side and took a closer look at the wax-caked skeleton. Feinberg tagged along at my heels.

  "Nick used to talk to that thing," he said. "Ask it questions, how it was feeling, could he get it anything to eat or drink. Gave me the willies at first. He even put his arm around it once and kissed it, I swear to God. I can still see him do it."

  "He got it from a medical facility?"

  "One that was part of some small college he worked at before he came to San Francisco. He mentioned that once."

  "Did he say where the college was?"

  "No."

  "Where did Nick come from? Around here?"

  Feinberg shook his head. "Midwest somewhere, that's all I could get out of him."

  "How long had he been in San Francisco?"

  "Ten years. Worked here the last eight; before that, he helped out at a big apartment house over on Geary."

  "Why did he come to the city? Did he have relatives here or what?"

  "No, no relatives, he was all alone. Just him and his bones-he said that once."

  I poked around among the clutter of things in the room, but if there had been anything here relevant to the murder, the police would have found it and probably removed it and it would be mentioned in their report. So would anything found among Nick's effects that determined his background. Eberhardt would have a copy of the report for me to look at later; when he said he'd try to do something he usually did it.

  When I finished with the room we went out and Feinberg locked the door. We took the elevator up to the lobby. It was dim up there, too-and a little depressing. There was a lot of plaster and wood and imitation marble, and some antique furniture and dusty potted plants, and it smelled of dust and faintly of decay. A sense of age permeated the place: you felt it and you smelled it and you saw it in the surroundings, in the half-dozen men and one woman sitting on the sagging chairs, reading or staring out through the windows at O'Farrell Street, people with nothing to do and nobody to do it with, waiting like doomed prisoners for the sentence of death to be carried out. Dry witherings and an aura of hopelessness-that was the impression I would carry away with me and that would linger in my mind.

  I thought: I'm fifty-four, another few years and I could be stuck in here too. But that wouldn't happen. I had work I could do pretty much to the end and I had Kerry-Kerry Wade, my lady-and I had some money in the bank and a collection of 6500 pulp magazines that were worth plenty on the collectors' market. No, this kind of place wouldn't happen to me. In a society that ignored and showed little respect for its elderly, I was one of the lucky ones.

  Feinberg led me to the desk and introduced me to the day clerk, a sixtyish barrel of a man named Bert Norris. If there was anything he could do to help, Norris said, he'd be glad to oblige; he sounded eager, as if nobody had needed his help in a long time. The fact that Feinberg had primed everyone here about my investigation made things easier in one respect and more difficult in another. If the person who had killed Nick Damiano was a resident of the Medford, I was not likely to catch him off guard.

  When Norris moved away to answer a switchboard call, Feinberg asked me, "Who're you planning to talk to now?"

  "Whoever's available," I said.

  "Dan Cady? He lives here-two-eighteen. Goes to the library every morning after he gets off, but he's always back by noon. You can probably catch him before he turns in."

  "All right, good."

  "You want me to come along?"

  "That's not necessary, Mr. Feinberg."

  "Yeah, I get it. I used to hate that kind of thing too when I was out on a plumbing job."

  "What kind of thing?"

  "Somebody hanging over my shoulder, watching me work. Who needs crap like that? You want me, I'll be in my room with the scratch sheets for today's races."

  Dan Cady was a thin, sandy-haired man in his mid-sixties, with cheeks and nose road-mapped by ruptured blood vessels-the badge of the alcoholic, practicing or reformed. He wore thick glasses, and behind them his eyes had a strained, tired look, as if from too much reading.

  "Well, I'll be glad to talk to you," he said, "but I'm afraid I'm not very clear-headed right now. I was just getting ready for bed."

  "I won't take up much of your time, Mr. Cady."

  He let me in. His room was small and strewn with library books, most of which appeared to deal with American history; a couple of big maps, an old one of the United States and an even older parchment map of Asia, adorned the walls, and there were plaster busts of historical figures I didn't recognize, and a huge globe on a wooden stand. There was only one chair; he let me have that and perched himsel
f on the bed.

  I asked him about Sunday night, and his account of how he'd come to find Nick Damiano's body coincided with what Feinberg had told me. "It was a frightening experience," he said. "I'd never seen anyone dead by violence before. His head… well, it was awful."

  "Were there signs of a struggle in the room?"

  "Yes, some things were knocked about. But I'd say it was a brief struggle-there wasn't much damage."

  "Is there anything unusual you noticed? Something that should have been there but wasn't, for instance?"

  "No. I was too shaken to notice anything like that."

  "Was Nick's door open when you got there?"

  "Wide open."

  "How about the door to the alley?"

  "No. Closed."

  "How did you happen to check it, then?"

  "Well, I'm not sure," Cady said. He seemed faintly embarrassed; his eyes didn't quite meet mine. "I was stunned and frightened; it occurred to me that the murderer might still be around somewhere. I took a quick look around the basement and then opened the alley door and looked out there… I wasn't thinking very clearly. It was only when I shut the door again that I realized it had been unlocked."

  "Did you see or hear anything inside or out?"

  "Nothing. I left the door unlocked and went back to the lobby to call the police."

  "When you saw Nick earlier that night, Mr. Cady, how did he seem to you?"

  "Seem? Well, he was cheerful; he usually was. He said he'd have come up sooner to fix the lamp but his old bones wouldn't allow it. That was the way he talked…"

  "Yes, I know. Do you have any idea who he might have argued with that night, who might have killed him?"

  "None," Cady said. "He was such a gentle soul… I still can't believe a thing like that could happen to him."

  Down in the lobby again, I asked Bert Norris if Wesley Thane, George Weaver, and Charley Slattery were on the premises. Thane was, he said, Room 315; Slattery was at Monahan's Gym and would be until six o'clock. He started to tell me that Weaver was out, but then his eyes shifted past me and he said, "No, there he is now. Just coming in."

  I turned. A heavyset, stooped man of about seventy had just entered from the street, walking with the aid of a hickory cane; but he seemed to get along pretty good. He was carrying a grocery sack in his free hand and a folded newspaper under his arm.

  I intercepted him halfway to the elevator and told him who I was. He looked me over for about ten seconds, out of alert blue eyes that had gone a little rheumy, before he said, "Iry Feinberg said you'd be around." His voice was surprisingly strong and clear for a man his age. "But I can't help you much. Don't know much."

  "Should we talk down here or in your room?"

  "Down here's all right with me."

  We crossed to a deserted corner of the lobby and took chairs in front of a fireplace that had been boarded up and painted over. Weaver got a stubby little pipe out of his coat pocket and began to load up.

  I said, "About Sunday night, Mr. Weaver. I understand you went down to the basement to get something out of your storage locker.. "

  "My old radio," he said. "New one I bought a while back quit playing and I like to listen to the eleven o'clock news before I go to sleep. When I got down there I heard Damiano and some fella arguing."

  "Just Nick and one other man?"

  "Sounded that way."

  "Was the voice familiar to you?"

  "Didn't sound familiar. But I couldn't hear it too well; I was over by the lockers. Couldn't make out what they were saying either."

  "How long were you in the basement?"

  "Three or four minutes, is all."

  "Did the argument get louder, more violent, while you were there?"

  "Didn't seem to. No." He struck a kitchen match and put the flame to the bowl of his pipe. "If it had I guess I'd've gone over and banged on the door, announced myself. I'm as curious as the next man when it comes to that."

  "But as it was you went straight back to your room?"

  "That's right. Ran into Charley Slattery when I got out of the elevator; his room's just down from mine on the third floor."

  "What was his reaction when you told him what you'd heard?"

  "Didn't seem to worry him much," Weaver said. "So I figured it was nothing for me to worry about either."

  "Slattery didn't happen to go down to the basement himself, did he?"

  "Never said anything about it if he did."

  I don't know what I expected Wesley Thane to be like-the Raymond Massey or John Carradine type, maybe, something along those shabbily aristocratic and vaguely sinister lines-but the man who opened the door to Room 315 looked about as much like an actor as I do. He was a smallish guy in his late sixties, he was bald, and he had a nondescript face except for mean little eyes under thick black brows that had no doubt contributed to his career as a B-movie villain. He looked somewhat familiar, but even though I like old movies and watch them whenever I can, I couldn't have named a single film he had appeared in.

  He said, "Yes? What is it?" in a gravelly, staccato voice. That was familiar, too, but again I couldn't place it in any particular context.

  I identified myself and asked if I could talk to him about Nick Damiano. "That cretin," he said, and for a moment I thought he was going to shut the door in my face. But then he said, "Oh, all right, come in. If I don't talk to you, you'll probably think I had something to do with the poor fool's murder."

  He turned and moved off into the room, leaving me to shut the door. The room was larger than Dan Cady's and jammed with stage and screen memorabilia: framed photographs, playbills, film posters, blown-up black-and-white stills; and a variety of salvaged props, among them the plumed helmet off a suit of armor and a Napoleonic uniform displayed on a dressmaker's dummy.

  Thane stopped near a lumpy-looking couch and did a theatrical about-face. The scowl he wore had a practiced look, and it occurred to me that under it he might be enjoying himself. "Well?" he said.

  I said, "You didn't like Nick Damiano, did you, Mr. Thane," making it a statement instead of a question.

  "No, I didn't like him. And no, I didn't kill him, if that's your next question."

  "Why didn't you like him?"

  "He was a cretin. A gibbering moron. All that nonsense about skeletons-he ought to have been locked up long ago."

  "You have any idea who did kill him?"

  "No. The police seem to think it was a drug addict."

  "That's one theory," I said. "Iry Feinberg has another: he thinks the killer is a resident of this hotel."

  "I know what Iry Feinberg thinks. He's a damned meddler who doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut."

  "You don't agree with him then?"

  "I don't care one way or another."

  Thane sat down and crossed his legs and adopted a sufferer's pose; now he was playing the martyr. I grinned at him, because it was something he wasn't expecting, and went to look at some of the stuff on the walls. One of the black-and-white stills depicted Thane in Western garb, with a smoking six-gun in his hand. The largest of the photographs was of Clark Gable, with an ink inscription that read, "For my good friend, Wes."

  Behind me Thane said impatiently, "I'm waiting."

  I let him wait a while longer. Then I moved back near the couch and grinned at him again and said, "Did you see Nick Damiano the night he was murdered?"

  "I did not."

  "Talk to him at all that day?"

  "No."

  "When was the last time you had trouble with him?"

  "Trouble? What do you mean, trouble?"

  "Iry Feinberg told me you hit Nick once, when he tried to brush off your coat."

  "My God," Thane said, "that was years ago. And it was only a slap. I had no problems with him after that. He avoided me and I ignored him; we spoke only when necessary." He paused, and his eyes got bright with something that might have been malice. "If you're looking for someone who had trouble with Damiano recently, talk to Charley
Slattery."

  "What kind of trouble did Slattery have with Nick?"

  "Ask him. It's none of my business."

  "Why did you bring it up then?"

  He didn't say anything. His eyes were still bright.

  "All right, I'll ask Slattery," I said. "Tell me, what did you think when you heard about Nick? Were you pleased?"

  "Of course not. I was shocked. I've played many violent roles in my career, but violence in real life always shocks me."

  "The shock must have worn off pretty fast. You told me a couple of minutes ago you don't care who killed him."

  "Why should I, as long as no one else is harmed?"

  "So why did you kick in the twenty dollars?"

  "What?"

  "Feinberg's fund to hire me. Why did you contribute?"

  "If I hadn't it would have made me look suspicious to the others. I have to live with these people; I don't need that sort of stigma."

  He gave me a smug look. "And if you repeat that to anyone, I'll deny it."

  "Must be tough on you," I said.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Having to live in a place like this, with a bunch of broken-down old nobodies who don't have your intelligence or compassion or great professional skill."

  That got to him; he winced, and for a moment the actor's mask slipped and I had a glimpse of the real Wesley Thane-a defeated old man with faded dreams of glory, a never-was with a small and mediocre talent, clinging to the tattered fringes of a business that couldn't care less. Then he got the mask in place again and said with genuine anger, "Get out of here. I don't have to take abuse from a cheap gumshoe."

  "You're dating yourself, Mr. Thane; nobody uses the word 'gumshoe' any more. It's forties B-movie dialogue."

  He bounced up off the couch, pinch-faced and glaring. "Get out, I said. Get out!"

  I got out. And I was on my way to the elevator when I realized why Thane hadn't liked Nick Damiano. It was because Nick had taken attention away from him-upstaged him. Thane was an actor, but there wasn't any act he could put on more compelling than the real-life performance of Nick and his skeletons.