Down Among the Dead Men

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Dora got up, laid her knitting bag on the chair, put the sweater on top of it. “Dick, ain’t yuh? New one, roun’ here?”

“Not too new. I won’t stand for a brush-off, anyway. What about the guy in Five?” He reached for the register, flapped over the pages.

“I don’ know nothing ’bout Room Five.” She clopped around behind the desk with short, wary steps.

“Dommy says different.”

“I ain’t heah him say so.”

The only entry against the fifth numeral for Sunday was a carelessly printed MR. & MRS. T. JOSLIN. The name probably wouldn’t mean anything, anyway, he knew. Nobody gave his right name in a dive like this.

“You were supposed to change the sheets and pillowslips in there. Weren’t any sheets to change. You saw the mattress. You know what happened.”

She eyed him stolidly. “You gonna run me in? You know I ain’t goin’ to do no squawkin’.”

“You don’t understand the set-up, Dora.” He rested his right elbow on the counter; it lessened the pain in his side. “Your boss is in wrong. Up to here.” He touched his neck. “I had to flatten him; I’ll have to book him. Any number of charges — obstructing an officer, Sullivan violation, assault with intent to kill — enough to put him on a state diet long enough to thin him down quite a lot. He’ll be in the lineup in the morning. The payoff boys over at the station won’t burn their fingers on him now.”

“Ain’t goin’ singe none of my hair, neither. Keepin’ my mouth shut ain’t never got me in no mess.”

“Going to get you in one, now. Person who fails to report a murder to the police can be charged as accessory.”

“Don’t high-jive me. I minds my own business strickly—”

“Pretty puking business. Covering up for a killer who saws his victim’s head off.”

The Negress slapped a hand up to her lips. “Yu lyin’! To sca’h me!”

“Grab your coat. We’ll hop over to the morgue. I’ll show it to you.”

“Was that what happen? Hones’ to Moses?”

“Cut up in hunks. Like a side of beef. Wrapped in pieces torn off the sheet. Heaved in the river. Haven’t found all of it yet.”

Dora wrinkled her nose. “Wouldn’t want nobody to think I got any truck with that beheadin’ stuff.”

“All right. Talk.”

“I don’t know nothin’, hardly.”

“Maybe it’ll be enough.” His finger tapped the register. “What’d this Joslin look like?”

“Now you problems me. Man who pays me fo’ Five look like a sailor. He wear glasses.”

Koski dragged a description out of her, piecemeal. It corresponded roughly with Ansel’s age, height, weight and coloring. The man had checked in around three-thirty Sunday afternoon, with a blonde girl and a black suitcase.

“But he don’ sign in. He’s s’pose to. He say he do so. But he don’.”

“How’d he get by you?”

“I’m down th’ hall gittin’ sheets out the closet. He come in from the office with this girl an’ the bag. He got his money in his han’; he give it to me an’ say he sign the book. But when I go look, he ain’ done so. I figure on makin’ him do it when he come out — but I don’ see him come out.”

“You don’t know how long they stayed in. there?”

“I ain’ seen neither him or her go out. But I don’ think he stay long.”

“You find the door of Five unlocked?”

“Uh, uh. But I see some other man come out.” She craned her neck to see past Koski, into the hall. “Them gals ain’t puhmitted to stay in no room twice on one pay. Boss, he persist agains’ it.”

“This other man a sailor, too?”

“I couldn’ tell nothin’ ’bout him; he got a cloth wrap’ all roun’ his face.”

“Bandage.”

“Must been.”

“How you know the blonde was still in there?”

“Don’ know, pos’tive. Ain’t many men comes up heah for no otheh reason, excep’ cravin’ female comp’ny. An’ when I asks him what business he got in Five when he ain’ paid me, he just laugh kind of as if I knows why he in there. So he reach in his pocket; give me some money. I make him go sign on the register heah. So they ain’t no need to say nothin’ ’bout it to the boss.”

“Especially since you got paid double, hah?” Koski tried to synchronize the crime. Gjersten had been back on board the yacht at five-thirty or so. The killing in Room Five must have been done after that. “What time’d you see this other man?”

“ ’Round nine, I put it. I jus’ finish my suppah. I eats late Sundays.”

“Didn’t you think there was something funny about a bird with a bandaged face... coming out of another man’s room?”

“Didn’ ponder it so much, right then. Sees plenty peculiar things ’round this place. But when I find them sheets an’ pillahcases gone an’ all that blood sticky on that mattress, I say to myself, ‘Them white folks been cuttin’ each other up. But they ain’t no remains lyin’ dead aroun’ so mos’ likely nobody got hurt fatal.’ ”

“You knew somebody’d been killed, all right. Must have been enough blood for a slaughterhouse, even after the murderer’d sopped it up with the sheets and drained it down the washbowl. When’d you get in the room?”

“This mornin’. Monday mornin’. Wasn’t no more need for the room las’ night; we had plenty empties. Anyhow, I ain’t suppose to clean up without I find the key on the hook.” She curved a thumb toward the numbered board. “Man might been sleepin’ off a load, way he was hollerin’ an’ carryin’ on las’ night.”

“He was yelling? When was this? Why the hell didn’t you say so...!”

“Shah. Ain’ nothin’ special ’bout singin’ in this shebang. Man puts down some of that mule-hoof they pour over that bar, he feels like hollerin’.”

“What was he singing?”

“Differen’ things. Like men off ships do. One I hear befo’.” She threw back her head, set her arms akimbo, sang in a rich, easy contralto:

Koski understood. “He’d have to do something to cover up the sound of the saw when he was cutting up the body. A concert for the corpse. Fine stuff. Would you be able to recognize this songbird if you saw him again?”

“ ’Deed I don’ know. I misdoubt I would. He got his cap pull down oveh his eyes. With that cloth all roun’ his face, I don’ see ’nough to remember.”

“How about the girl? The blonde he was with? Remember her?”

“She just one them poor tramps, picks up men downstairs, brings ’em upstairs.”

“Know her name?”

Dora closed her eyes, moved her head slowly from left to right, back again. “I wouldn’t get one them in trouble, nohow. They livin’ the hard way, without me worsenin’ things on ’em.”

“Get wise! You might be saving her life. If she spotted this killer, he might come around and put the dot on her so she wouldn’t be able to identify him.”

“You hear me say I don’ know her.”

“Yair. You know her.” Koski touched his swollen lip. “If you see her again, no tip-off, hear?”

“Furthes’ out this thing I can keep, better off I like it.”

“You’re not out of it, by a long shot. You’re liable to be a mark for this chopper, yourself. There’ll be a plainclothesman on post downstairs, for a while. If you see this blonde or anyone who looks like the bird with the bandage, go down and tell the officer. Don’t think you can play hide-and-seek with this killer. You’d be safer juggling dynamite.” He strode stiffly back up the corridor to Room Five; unlocked the door.

Dommy was motionless on the floor, his eyes closed.

Koski took out his gun. “Don’t bother with it, fink. I’m not so dizzy I can’t remember where I left you. Up on your pins.”

The saloonkeeper opened his good eye, mumbled: “You broke my jaw.”

“I didn’t. But I might. Allez oop, now.”

The fat man rolled over on his back, doubled up his knees. “You made a deal with me.”

“In a horse’s rosette. I would have. But you wanted it all your way. It didn’t go your way. So you’re for it. Stand up and take your dose.” Koski swung the pistol barrel, hit the Greek on one kneecap.

Dommy yelped, nursed his knee with pudgy hands. “What’ll it take to square things?”

“More than you’ve got.” Koski thought a moment. “Unless maybe you could save me some time.”

“I would go a long ways,” the fat man wheezed to his feet, “to save myself twenty years.”

“Now, you would. Well, I’ll give a try. I want the girl who came up to this room yesterday afternoon with a sailor by the name of Gjersten. She’s one of your regulars. A blonde. She checked in around three-thirty.” He gave a description of Ansel, mentioned the thick-lensed spectacles.

“The guy is a stranger to me. About the blonde, I’ll have to ask around the babes. I don’t keep a double-entry system on them, no matter what you headquarters lugs think. They don’t work for me. I just rent rooms.”

“Go on and make inquiries, Snow White. This is a rush order.”

Dommy limped to the door. “No charge, huh? You aren’t fixing to slip over a fast one?”

“Depends.” Koski prodded him in the small of the back with the .38. “On how good a bird dog you are.”

They went out in the hall. The Lieutenant locked the door behind them. “Keep out! This means you! And all your scummy crew. The Homicide outfit will want in on that. For prints, photos, whatnot. Hands off... savvy?”

Dora barely glanced up from her knitting as they passed the office. Going downstairs aggravated the lancing hurt in Koski’s side; his voice was brittle when he stopped Dommy at the barroom door.

“Get it right, slug. I can’t watch all the things that might crawl out from behind your woodwork. So I watch you.” He stuck the gun, muzzle down, under his belt inside his pants, pulled the vest down over the grip. “I can’t afford to take any more chances. You’ll have to take ’em.”

The fat man cringed. “You can’t hold me responsible for what some other gee might do.”

“Don’t bet on it, futz-face. I’ll arrange it so all the sulfanilamide in the city won’t help you any — at the first crack. Bear it in mind.” He shoved the saloonkeeper into the barroom, kept close at Dommy’s heels.

There were only a dozen customers around the horseshoe; a couple of them departed hurriedly as soon as the two men came in from the hall. Conversation among the other drinkers dwindled. The fox-faced man grinned slyly at Dommy, wiped froth off a smudge of mustache.

The Greek side-stepped around the end of the bar, went into whispered consultation with a baldheaded bartender who kept buffing the top of his skull with the hollow of his palm. Koski rested his left elbow on the mahogany rim. He thought a drink might quiet the hammering at his temples.

“Fizz me a lime and Jamaica while you’re chewing the fat, Dommy. Double the prescription.”

The baldheaded man wiped drippings off the bar with his apron, looked at Koski sideways. Dommy came over with the drink.

“We can’t finger the girl without we know the man. How we gonna know which one he was, out of maybe five hundred clucks who come in an’ out every day?”

“Name was Gjersten. Ansel Gjersten.” Koski winced as the rum stung the cut in his lip. “Wasn’t an ordinary seaman. Yacht-hand. Engineer.” He caught a sudden movement in the mirror at Dommy’s left, swung around with his back to the bar.

There was no one near him. The motion he had seen came from the direction of the fox-faced man with the buck teeth and seedy mustache. The man wasn’t looking in Koski’s direction; he stood with one foot on the rail, his elbows on the bar, his shoulders hunched over a glass of beer.

Koski turned back to the Greek. “I can’t be waiting around till you close up. Get action.” He saw the movement in the mirror again. The fox-faced individual was dipping his forefinger in his glass, wetting it, then drawing something on the polished surface of the bar. It was the sort of preoccupied thing a man might do if he was deep in thought and unaware he was noticed.

Dommy swore, beneath his breath. “You got to give me time enough to feel around a little.”

The chinless man finished his tracing, picked up his glass, drained it. Then he set it gently back on the bar, turned away from Koski and sauntered out of the saloon.

“Give you time enough to cook up a batch of hamburgs, Dommy.” Koski wanted a smoke but he couldn’t load a pipe with one hand. “Say about half a dozen. With onion. See if the chef can slice the Bermudas thicker than paper, will you?”

The Greek cursed again, joggled away to give the order through the service-window. Koski edged crabwise along the bar, reached for a basket of pretzels.

Beside the empty beer glass letters gleamed wetly on the bar. They were crude and already fading. But Koski could read: