The Copper Frame

Chapter 13

The Fenimore Hotel was on lower Main Street in the area where Main abruptly turns from a district of sleek modern stores, theaters, and cocktail lounges to one of dives and flophouses. It was a ramshackle frame building of three stories that advertised rooms at a dollar and up.

There was an elderly man with a dirty shirt behind a desk in the lobby. He eyed Saxon warily. It was the sort of place where a seedily dressed stranger would automatically be stopped for questioning about his business to make sure one of the tenants wasn’t allowing a friend to bunk in without paying rent. But Saxon’s dress passed him, because it was also the sort of place periodically visited by the police. Saxon’s clothing was hardly expensive, but it was of a good, solid quality worn by only one type of visitor to the Fenimore. The desk man probably assumed he was a local cop.

There was no elevator. Saxon climbed rickety stairs to the second floor and found room 203.

When he knocked on the door, a hoarse voice from inside said, “Yeah?”

Saxon tried the knob, found the door unlocked and pushed it open. There was an unmade iron bed with dirty sheets, a battered dresser with a washbasin and pitcher on it, a single straight-back chair before a small table, and a soiled and sagging overstuffed chair near the window facing the door. A thin, shriveled man of indeterminate age sat in the overstuffed chair. He wore stained denim pants and a wrinkled O.D. army shirt. He looked up at Saxon’s height dully, one cheek twitching.

Closing the door behind him, Saxon said, “Are you Alton Zek?”

“Yeah. But if you’re a cop, I ain’t done nothing.” He dropped his eyes, which were beginning to water with the strain of gazing upward.

“You look as if you need a pop,” Saxon said. Taking out his wallet, he removed a twenty-dollar bill, replaced the wallet, and let the bill dangle from his thumb and forefinger.

Alton Zek licked his lips, his eyes on the bill. His cheek gave another twitch.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister.”

“Sure you do,” Saxon said. “You’ve got a monkey riding you so hard you’re shaking apart.”

Zek said cautiously, “If you’re from Narcotics, you’re wasting your time. I don’t even know what horse means.”

“I’m not from Narcotics and I’m not after your pusher. I’m after a different kind of information.”

“Yeah? What?”

“You know a Sergeant Harry Morrison?”

The man’s watery eyes remained fixed on the dangling bill. “I know of him.”

“He has a call girl working for him whose first name is Ann. I want her full name and where to find her.”

Alton Zek’s gaze climbed to Saxon’s face. “You guys finally got wind of that, huh? The damn fool, risking his job over a hustler. You from Internal Affairs?”

“I’m not any kind of cop,” Saxon said. “I just want the information.”

“Why? Who are you?”

“Do you really care?” Saxon asked. “You can make twenty bucks by answering the question. If you’re not interested, I’ll go ask somewhere else.”

Thrusting the money into his overcoat pocket, he turned and reached for the doorknob.

“Hold it,” Zek said quickly. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t tell you.”

Looking over his shoulder without taking his hand from the knob, Saxon said, “Then tell it fast. I’m in a hurry.”

Zek licked his lips again and his cheek was twitching. “All you want is the broad’s name and address? You’ll give me the twenty for that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re not gonna drag me before no investigating board to tell what I know about Morrison steering business to a hustler?”

“I told you I’m not a cop. All I want is her name and address. Then you get the twenty, I walk out, and you never see me again.”

“All right,” the man said. “Let’s have the twenty.”

“Let’s have the name and address first.”

“You can trust me,” Zek said aggrievedly.

“I’d rather have you trust me.”

“Okay,” the informer said with resignation. “Her name’s Ann Lowry. She lives in an apartment on Bailey just off Main. I don’t know the exact address, but it’s in the first block west of Main. You can check apartment directories.”

“In case she isn’t listed, what’s she look like?”

“She’s a good-looking doll with a nice built on her. About five feet four and a hunnert and fifteen pounds, I’d say. Long red hair down to her shoulders and rolled under, kind of.”

“You mean in a page boy?”

“Yeah, that’s what they call it. You couldn’t miss her. Her hair’s real red and it’s natural.”

Walking over to the chair, Saxon took the twenty from his pocket and dropped it into the man’s lap. Zek seized it and thrust it into a side pocket of his denim pants.

“Like to earn another?” Saxon asked.

The informer looked up. “How?”

“You know of any other rackets Morrison is in?”

Zek frowned. “Like what, for instance?”

“Does he have any kind of tie-in with Larry Cutter?”

“Cutter?” Zek said in surprise. “He ain’t operating in Buffalo. He’s just living here.”

“That isn’t what I asked. Do you know if Sergeant Harry Morrison has any kind of an arrangement with him?”

Zek shook his head. “Not that I ever heard.”

“Then I guess you don’t earn the second twenty,” Saxon said, starting for the door.

“Wait a minute!”

Turning with his hand again on the knob, Saxon said, “Yeah?”

“I could inquire around. If Morrison’s got some kind of deal going with Cutter, somebody’ll know about it. Why don’t you drop back tomorrow about this time and bring some more money?”

There was a pay phone in the hallway near the stairs, and a tattered phone book hung from a string next to it. Saxon leafed through the book until he came to the Lowrys and ran his finger down the column. There were a lot of them, but none with the first name of Ann and none with addresses on Bailey.

He wasn’t surprised, for call girls usually have unlisted numbers that they pass out only to clients.

He went on down the stairs. In the lobby the gaze of the elderly man with the dirty shirt followed him to the door, but again the man said nothing.

Outside he climbed into his car and headed north up Main toward Bailey.

There was a filling station, then a string of small private homes on one side of Bailey in the block west of Main. On the other side were three multiple-dwelling apartment houses. In the lobby of the first he studied the name cards beneath a bank of mailboxes. No Ann Lowry was listed.

In the second apartment building’s lobby a card beneath one of the mail slots read Apartment 6-B and, below that, Sandra Norman — Ann Lowry.

There was a self-service elevator, but Saxon took the stairs to the second floor. Six-B was at the end of a hall. A dark-eyed brunette of about twenty-five answered the door. She was a pretty little thing only about five feet tall, with a prominent bosom she must have been proud of, for she wore a white sweater far too tight for her, which stressed its size by molding itself to the curve of her breasts like an extra coat of skin. She exposed small, even white teeth in a smile of inquiry.

Saxon took off his hat. “You must be Sandra Norman,” he said.

“Yes. Who sent you?”

The question momentarily puzzled him until he realized that the apartment mate of a call girl would undoubtedly be a call girl also. Apparently the brunette took him for a customer.

“I wasn’t looking for you,” he said. “I just happened to see your name on the card downstairs. Is Ann home?”

The smile remained on her face, but the look of interest in her eyes died. “Sorry, but she’s out shopping. I expect her back about two.”

Saxon checked his watch. It was only eleven-twenty.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll come back.”

“Is there any message?” she asked.

“No. I just wanted to talk to her.”

She looked him up and down calculatingly. “It’s a long time until two. I might let you wait inside if you told me who sent you.”

The girl wasn’t above cutting in on her apartment mate’s trade, he thought with amusement. On impulse he said, “Harry Morrison.”

“Oh, Harry’s introduction is fine around here,” she said. “Have you been to see Ann before?”

He shook his head. “Never met her.”

“Then how do you know you won’t like me as well? Want to come in?”

He was tempted to accept the invitation to see if perhaps Sandra Norman knew anything of Morrison’s relationship with Larry Cutter, but he realized that the moment she discovered he wasn’t a client, she would become suspicious and it might spoil his later chance of getting in to see Ann Lowry.

“Maybe another time,” he said politely. “I don’t think Harry would like it if I didn’t wait for Ann.”

She grinned at him without resentment. “He warned you not to let me sidetrack you in case Ann wasn’t here, eh? That’s because he doesn’t get any cut from me. Okay, Red. I’ll tell Ann to stick around until two in case she gets back before then. You can’t blame a girl for trying.”

“It’s all right,” he said in the same polite tone. “I was flattered, really.”

Turning, he walked back down the hall toward the stairs. He heard the door close behind him.