Corpus Delectable

Fifteen

When I turned from the phone, Myrtle was studying me carefully. Her eyes went a shade darker. Her lips became redder and heavier as the background skin turned whiter. She shook her head from side to side, the dark-blond hair splashing across her cheeks. “No,” she said softly. “No, no, no!”

I slid the .38 from under the waistband of my pants and started checking it. I had a replacement blade for the one McJunkin had carried out of here the other night in his tissues, but I wasn’t counting on the knife at all now. McJunkin had already had experience with it.

Myrtle took a slow step toward me, unable to tear her gaze from my face. “I won’t let you go, Ed!”

“I have to go.”

“With the police?”

“It won’t work that way,” I said. “I need — and want — to do this one alone.”

“Where is McJunkin, Ed?”

“On the moon.”

“I’m no dainty-fingered hothouse plant! Don’t treat me like one!”

“Just wait here,” I said. “You can drink your drink.”

“I don’t want a drink. Not now. I’m going with you.”

“You’re nuts, Myrtle.”

“I won’t sit and wait. So help me, Ed, I won’t just sit.”

“Then try the TV. They’re broadcasting a Gasparilla beauty pageant on a local station tonight.”

As I moved, she reversed directions, going backward, keeping herself between me and the door.

“Who called you, Ed?”

“A man named Pepe.”

“There are a million Pepes!”

“Just a few thousand in Ybor City. Anyway, it wouldn’t do you any good if you knew which Pepe. You couldn’t trace me that way. He’d tell you nothing.”

The door pressed against her back. Tears came to her eyes. “You want me to beg, Ed?”

“You know I don’t.”

Her moist gaze worked into every detail of my face. A faint change came to her, a hint of the depths beyond the molded surface perfection. For a second the physical shell was almost lifted to the plane of rare beauty.

“Cut it out,” I said. “You’re not looking at me for the last time.”

“You’re a fool, Ed.”

I touched her shoulder. “Don’t make me push you to one side.”

“You’ll have to if you go. Why do you have to be such a fool!”

“Give me an alternative,” I said. “I want an alternative. I’m a scared fool looking for an alternative.”

The force of my hand increased, sliding her across the face of the door. There was resistance in her; then it melted out of her.

As I opened the door, she said bitterly, “Your mother should have had an abortion!” She wheeled away, crossed the room, and picked up her drink. She was working on it seriously when I closed the door behind me.

The crowded streets, the lights, the sounds of a city at play slid by the car as the minutes passed. Then ahead was an old neon with some of the letters dead and others quivering. The glass tubing spelled out “San Salvador Hotel.”

I parked a block away, around the next corner. I sat there for a minute or two with thoughts running through my head, the weight of the .38 against my belly, and the desire not to get out of the car strong inside me.

I got out, felt the pavement beneath my feet, and watched the car door swing closed.

I walked slowly but without hesitation to the corner. Traffic swished endlessly. A group of laughing young people came out of a club, flowed around me, and chattered in Spanish while they waited for the light to change.

It’s fifty-fifty, I thought. McJunkin is either in his room right now, or he isn’t. I don’t want him to be. I want him to be out munching beans and peppers or working on a steak. I want him to walk into the room and find me there. And this is the best time of day to take the chance. No calling the hotel or asking any questions that will be brought to his attention and give him warning. Straight to his room. Play the odds. Pretty favorable odds, at that. If he’s there, he won’t know anyone is coming.

If it isn’t a trap... If he didn’t get to Pepe Tortugas and force Pepe to make the call... No... Pepe sounded right. There is a sound a man makes when a gun is at his head.

While my brain kicked thoughts around like french fries in a deep frier of boiling grease, my feet took me casually toward the San Salvador. As I went past, I studied the lobby without turning my head. It was the rundown showplace of a once-fine hotel. The chandelier was grimy and partly lighted. The potted palms were dusty, with missing fronds. The ancient leather couches and chairs showed lumps and low places. The gloomy and bedraggled room was empty except for an old man working behind the desk.

A few yards beyond the hotel a dark alley formed a break between the buildings. I walked quietly into the alley, went twenty yards, and stood with my back against the rough brick side of the hotel where the shadows combined to form a pool of absolute blackness.

I made the best possible use of the next ten minutes by staying perfectly still and watching the mouth of the alley.

Satisfied that no one had noticed me enter, I moved deeper into the alley. A very few of the rooms overhead were lighted. From one came the sound of two old geezers in sudden argument. I translated enough of their Spanish to gather that they were about to come to blows over a game of dominoes.

They kept at it, getting a little louder. It began to bug me. Shut up, I thought; it isn’t that important... Go back to your game... Two old men come to blows and the cops come... Cops come and Ben McJunkin doesn’t come home tonight...

You see how it was, how it goes. You move into the warped world of the Ben McJunkins and nothing remains quite normal. The argument of two old men you’ve never seen can postpone a meeting tonight, and tomorrow may be too late. Tomorrow McJunkin might have figured a way to get to you.

I looked up at the lighted window, lips thinned and flat against my teeth. In the manner of Spaniards, the two old men stopped it as suddenly as they had begun it. Quietness returned to the alley.

“Thanks,” I muttered in the direction of the window two stories overhead.

I started moving again, locating the service door a few yards farther on. Without striking a light I explored the lock with my fingertips. It was old, as old as the building. Opening the lock would have been duck soup — but there were heavy studs near it, indicating a chain or heavy bolt inside.

With the back door ruled out, I reversed my field a few steps and paused at the fire escape. The prospect of using it didn’t make me happy. I had to go four stories up. During that time, I’d be limned against the night sky. The odds were very long against it, but no guarantee that someone passing on the street wouldn’t glance down the alley and see the shadow of a prowling man on the escape.

I flexed my knees and leaped upward with hands raised high. My fingers were short of their goal by inches. I landed with a soft thud. I took a moment to relax my arm and leg muscles. I put a real punch behind the next jump.

Rough metal touched my fingers. My body was swinging clear of the ground. The hinged counterbalanced section of the escape began to lower under my weight.

The end of the section thudded to rest on the alley. I stood on the steel slats of the bottom step to keep the counter weight from raising the section. I didn’t move right away, listening to make sure the soft but unusual sounds had attracted no attention.

I moved up to the first landing, taking my handkerchief in my hand. I used the handkerchief for a pad as I grasped the weathered braided metal cable that ran through a pulley to connect the counter weight to the free-swinging end of the escape.

Braking the pull of the weight, I let the swinging bottom section rise silently to a horizontal position. Again I waited, my back pressed against the building there at first-floor level.

With the alley continuing quiet and peaceful, I started up. I stayed close to the building where I was less likely to be seen and where the old metal of the escape protested least under my weight. As I climbed, flakes of rust shivered loose from the thin steel webbing and trickled in little showers to the alley below. The rust motes struck with the grainy sound of sifting sand, but to my heightened senses, it sounded like bricks were falling.

When I reached the fourth-floor level I experienced the luxury of a long, deep breath. A feeble corridor light glowed beyond the window, which was open against the warmth. A sluggish breeze stirred, billowing the edges of grayish curtains through the window.

I let the curtain edge catch on my finger and took a look inside. The corridor was short, an emergency exit connecting to the main hallway.

I put my rump on the window sill, swung my legs across, and ducked in. When the hotel had basked proudly in its shine of newness, the carpeting had been superb, wall to wall, padded thickly. Now it was threadbare, composed in part of dust that had accumulated over the years. It still deadened the sound of footfalls.

I endured a tight moment as I stepped into the main hallway, which was at right angles to the service hall. Overhead a small red light marked the emergency exit.

I turned to the left, making a random choice. Glancing at the numbers on the first two doors I passed, I saw that they got higher.

I turned and started in the other direction, toward 404. A door opened just in front of me. A woman came out of her room, gave me hardly a glance, went to the elevator, and punched a button. I heard the faint reverberations as the ancient self-service elevator rattled upward.

I reached 404 but didn’t stop. I walked to the far end of the corridor, came to a halt, and went through the motions of a man searching for keys.

The stinking elevator was bumbling toward its destination by inches. The woman was beginning to be aware of me, looking away quickly when I glanced at her.

I made as if I was fitting a key in the door and the elevator finally reached the end of its journey. Hesitant creaks marked the opening of the elevator door. The woman got aboard, and the cage started down.

Alone in the corridor, I spun and moved to McJunkin’s room. A thin sweat spread a cold touch across my forehead. I slid my hand to the waistband of my pants and curled my fingers around the butt of the .38.