The Wycherly Woman

Chapter 10

The highway ran across flatland, prairie-like under the moon, to the edge of the Sacramento River. In the queer pale light the abrupt bridge which spanned the river resembled the approach to an ancient fortified city. The slums on the other side of the river didn’t do much to dispel the illusion. The night girls prowling the late streets, the furtive men in the doorways, looked sunk and lost forever in deep time.

The Champion Hotel was on the edge of the slums. It hadn’t subsided into them yet, but it appeared to be slipping. It was a narrow six-story building with a grimy stone face, put up around the turn of the century, when it had probably been a good family hotel. Now it had the air of a place where you could get cheap lodging without amenities you couldn’t afford: a place for one-night stands and last stands.

In a bar-and-grill next door people were singing “Auld Lang Syne.” An old man wearing a faded maroon uniform and a stubble of beard was guarding the unbesieged door of the Champion. He crossed the sidewalk on mincing feet. His shoes had been cut across the toes to make room for bunions, and his voice rose through his withered body like the audible complaint of the bunions themselves:

“You can’t park here, mister. Got to keep the curb clear. If you want to come into the hotel, you can leave your car in the parking lot around the corner. You planning to register?”

“I might as well.”

“Okay, you go around the corner to the left. You can’t go to the right, anyway, on account of they turned it into a one-way street five-six years ago.” He seemed to resent this change. “Better lock up your car, and you can come back through the alley if you want. It’s shorter that way. I’ll turn on the light at the side door. You want me to take your luggage?”

“Thanks, I can carry it myself.” Not having any.

The parking lot was a dark quadrangle hemmed in by the lightless walls of business buildings empty for the night. Carrying my brief case for appearance’s sake, I walked along the alley to the side door where the old bellhop was waiting. The naked yellow insect-repellent bulb over the door splashed jaundice on his face. He accepted my brief case as if he didn’t really expect a tip.

A woman with thyroid eyes and chins sat behind the desk in the deserted lobby. She offered me a room with bath for two-fifty, two dollars without. I didn’t really want to stay there. The migrant years had flown through the place and left their droppings.

The Captain had made a mistake, I thought, perhaps a deliberate one. It didn’t seem likely that Mrs. Wycherly had ever lived in the Champion. I decided to find out, before I contracted for a night-long date with depression.

The thyroid eyes were going over me, trying to decide if I was too choosy or too broke. “Well? You want the two-fifty with the bath, or the two-dollar one? I’ll have to ask you to pay in advance,” she added, with a glance at the worn brief case which the old bellhop was holding.

“I’ll be glad to. But it just occurred to me, my wife may have taken a double room.”

“Your wife a guest here?”

“She’s supposed to be.”

“What’s her – what’s your name?”

“Wycherly,” I said.

The fat woman and the old man exchanged a look whose meaning I didn’t catch. She said with something in her voice that was patronizing, almost pitying:

“Your wife was here for quite a bit. But she moved out tonight, less than an hour ago.”

“Where did she move to?”

“I’m sorry, she left no forwarding address.”

“Was she leaving town?”

“We have no way of knowing. I’m very sorry, sir.” She sounded as if she meant it. “Do you still want a room? Or not?”

“I’ll take the one with the bath. I haven’t had a bath for a long time.”

“Yessir,” she said imperturbably. “I’ll put you in 516. Would you sign the register please?”

I signed myself H. Wycherly. After all, he was paying for the room. I gave the woman a fifty-dollar bill, which she had a hard time making change for. The bellhop watched the transaction with great interest.

When he and I were alone in my room on the fifth floor, in the delicate interval between the window-raising and the tipping if any, he said:

“I might be able to help you put your hands on your lady.”

“You know where she is?”

“I didn’t say that. I said maybe. I hear things. I see things.” He touched the corner of his bleared eye with the tip of his forefinger, and winked.

“What did you see and hear?”

“I wouldn’t want to say it right out, you being her husband and all. I don’t want to make more trouble for her. She’s a troubled lady already. But you know that, you’re married to her.”

“I’m not working at it.”

“That’s good. Because if you was working at it you’d be getting pretty poor returns on your labor. I guess you know that, too, eh?”

“What I know doesn’t matter. What do you know?”

“I don’t like to make trouble for anybody.” His old and slightly tangled gaze shifted from me to my brief case, which he had placed on a wicker luggage stand against the wall. “You wouldn’t have a gun in that little case? I felt something in there that sure felt like a gun to me. And I don’t want to be party to no shooting.”

“There won’t be any shooting. All I want to do is find Mrs. Wycherly and talk to her.”

I was beginning to regret my impersonation of Wycherly. It had seemed like the quick way to get the facts, but it was involving me in too many facts.

“You don’t need a gun for that,” the old man said, edging towards the door. “Jerry Dingman’s no troublemaker.”

“Look here, I carry the gun because I also carry a lot of money.”

He stood still. “Is that so?”

“I’m willing to pay you for information, Jerry.”

He looked down at his feet, which bulged like potatoes in his slit shoes. “I got this fifteen-dollar bill I owe Dr. Broch for my feet. I never get far enough ahead to pay it.”

“I’ll pay your doctor bill.”

“That’s real nice of you, son,” he said sentimentally. “Let’s see the color of your money.”

“After I hear the color of your information. You know I have the money. Where did she go, Jerry?”

“From something she said when I was putting the luggage in the car, I think she was going to the Hacienda Inn. Anyway, she asked the guy if the Hacienda was a nice place. He said it was a big jump up from here, and that’s no lie. It’s a kind of a ritzy resort place out of town.”

“She went there with a man?”

“I wasn’t planning to tell you that. Shut my big mouth, eh?”

“Describe him.”

“I didn’t get a good look at him, either time I saw him. In the car, he kept his face turned away. He didn’t want me to see him, me or anybody. Before that, when he went up to her room, he didn’t take the elevator. He came in the side door and went up the back stairs. He didn’t look like one of the guests, so I followed along behind to see what he was up to. He knocked on her door and she let him in and I heard him sing out her name. So I figured it was all right. Matter of fact, I thought he was her husband.”

“Did you hear anything to that effect?”

“Just what I said. He called her Catherine when he went into her room – he sounded real glad to see her. Then they closed the door and that was all I heard. About twenty minutes later, she checked out and he was out front in the car waiting.”

“What kind of a car?”

“I think it was a new Chevvie.”

“Did she go with him willingly?”

“Sure. Matter of fact, it was about the first time I ever seen her reasonably happy. Most of the time she dragged herself around here like she was expecting to hear the last trump any minute. I never seen a lady so blue in my life.”

“How long was she here?”

“Two weeks and a little over. I thought it was sort of funny her checking in here in the first place. It’s a decent enough place but not the kind of a place a lady would choose for herself. And she had good clothes, good luggage. You know that.”

“What do you think she was doing here?”

“Hiding out from you, maybe,” he said with a grizzled smirk. “No offense intended.”

“None taken. Getting back to the man in the car, you should be able to give me a general description.”

“Yeah. He was a fairly big man, not as big as you but a lot bigger’n me. He had on good clothes, dark coat and hat. He kept his hat turned down and his head turned away, like I said, and I never did get a good look at his face.”

“Did he look anything like this?” I described Homer Wycherly.

“It could be him. I couldn’t say for sure.”

“How old a man was he?”

“Getting on, I’d say. Older’n you. But not as old as the old guy that came to see her last week. I can give you a good description of him.”

“Thin old man with a white moustache?”

“Yeah. I guess you know him. I took him up to her room but she wouldn’t let him in. She wouldn’t even open the door. He was mad as blazes. He tipped me good, though,” Jerry added reminiscently. “Speaking of tips, you promised me fifteen smackers.”

“In a minute. Did Mrs. Wycherly have any other visitors?”

“Yeah, but listen, mister, I can’t stand here jawing all night. I got to put in an appearance down in the lobby. That Mrs. Silvado on the desk, she watches me like a hawk watches chickens.”

“Who were the other visitors?”

“There was just the one that I remember. I’ll tell you about him, only right now I got to go down, let Mrs. Silvado see that I’m on the job. I’ll come right back up soon as I can. Only pay me my money first.”

I gave him a twenty-dollar bill. His gnarled hand closed on it, burrowed with it under his faded jacket, and came out empty.

“Thank you kindly. I’ll bring you the change when I come back up.”

“You can keep the other five. There’s something else I want you to do for me. Which room did my wife occupy?”

“End of the hall on the third floor. Three-two-three, the number is.”

“Is there anybody in it now?”

“No, it’s one of the ones we rent by the week. It ain’t even cleaned out yet.”

“Let me into it, will you?”

“Not on your life, mister. I could lose my job. I been working here nigh to forty years, ever since I got too big to make jockey weight. They’re just waiting for a chance to retire me.”

“Come on, Jerry. Nobody needs to know.”

He shook his head so hard that his hair wisped out. “No, sir. I don’t unlock no doors for nobody but the rightful occupants.”

“You could forget your passkey. Just leave it on my dresser.”

“No, sir. It ain’t legal.”

But he left it. Forty years as a bellhop hollows a man out into a kind of receptacle for tips. Twenty years as a detective works changes in a man, too.

I went down the firestairs to the third floor and let myself into 323. It was a room with bath very much like my own, containing the same bed and dresser, writing table and desk, wicker luggage stand and standing lamp. And a sense of heavy hours, of boxed and static time which refused to pass.

The dresser drawers gaped open, empty except for a nylon stocking with a laddering run. The closet contained a row of twisted wire hangers and dust-mice along the baseboards. In the bathroom cabinet, I found spilled powder and a green drugstore bottle with one lone aspirin tablet at the bottom. The towels were damp.

I found the wastebasket behind the bed. It was full of crumpled newspapers, and lipstick-stained pink Kleenex. A fifth bottle with a half-inch of whisky in it stood on the floor beside the wastebasket.

I pulled out the newspapers and looked them over: they were this week’s Sacramento Bees. In the most recent, dated two days before, I found a pencilled checkmark beside an announcement in the shipping news. It stated that the President Jackson was due in San Francisco harbor the following day. Apparently Catherine Wycherly had been keeping track of her husband.

And thinking of her daughter, too, it seemed. When I stood up, the light caught the window and I could see writing on it. I crossed the room. The window overlooked an alley and faced a blank brick wall. Scrawled large in the dust that covered the pane was a single word, “Phoebe.” Against the dark opposing wall it stood out like an inscription on a headstone.

Strangeness entered the room from the night outside. I could feel it entering me, and hear my heartbeat thudding in my ears. The sound of my heartbeat merged with the noise of the elevator throbbing like an embolism in the bowels of the building.

I closed the door of the ex-Mrs. Wycherly’s ex-room and ran up the firestairs, keeping ahead of the noise of the elevator. It was ancient and slow, like its rider. I got back to my own room before Jerry Dingman did.

He had a bottle of beer in his hand.

“How are things down in the lobby?”

“Slow. I told Mrs. Silvado you wanted some beer so’s I could get away again. I had to go next door for it, and that will cost you another fifty cents.” He peered anxiously at my face, as if our whole deal might break down over this issue.

“All right,” I said.

He let his breath out. “Aw hell, I’ll throw it in. I’ll throw the beer in.” He set it on the dresser and surreptitiously picked up his key. “I hope you like beer.”

“Sure. I’ll split it with you.”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not? Sit down. I’ll get a glass.”

He edged nervously over to the bed and sat down sighing. I poured his half of the beer in a glass I got from the bathroom and drank mine out of the bottle.

The old man sucked foam from his bristles. “You wanted some more info. I kind of forget what it was.”

“I’ll make it quick. I want to get out to the Hacienda Inn before they hoist the drawbridge.”

“Ain’t no bridge there, Mr. Wycherly. It’s nowheres near the river. It’s golf course all around it – got its own golf course. Got its own flying field. Got its own everything. This is good beer.” He smacked his lips, half drunk on the taste of it alone.

“You were going to tell me about Mrs. Wycherly’s other visitors.”

“Visitor,” he corrected me. “There was just the one other, far as I know. He was here to see her a couple of times before.”

“Before when?”

“Before last night, when they had the row. It sounded like he was slapping her around a little bit. I thought of calling the police, but Mrs. Silvado said no. She said if we called the police every time a guest had a private row, they’d be running in and out like Keystone cops. Anyway, it didn’t go on very long.”

“Who was the man?”

“I dunno his name.” He scratched his thin hair. “He was a big man, sharp dresser. He smiled all the time. But I didn’t like his eyes.”

“What didn’t you like about his eyes?”

“I dunno. He looked at me like a dog or something – a dirty dog in the gutter – and he was Jesus God personified. He had this turned-up nose like he was smelling something.” Jerry used his forefinger to push up the drooping tip of his nose.

I produced the blotter I’d taken from Merriman’s office, with Merriman’s picture on it.

“Is this the man?”

He held up the blotter to the light. “It’s him, yeah. Smiling all the time.” Laboriously he spelled out caption: “What does firstest with the mostest mean?”

“It’s just a gag.” A running gag that had run out. “What time was he here last night?”

“Along about nine–nine-thirty. He stayed about half-an-hour. He was still smiling when he came down. I noticed tonight she was wearing dark glasses. I think he blacked her eye.”

“Do you keep watch on all the guests this way?”

“Just those I like. I was worried about your lady. I still am. You better get out to the Inn and get together with her, Mr. Wycherly. You appear to be the kind of man she needs.”

“Did she ever talk about me?”

“No, she never talked about anybody, or to anybody. She spent all her time in her room, never went out.”

“What did she do with her time?”

“Mostly she was eating, and drinking. She drank quite a bit this last week. I ought to know, I took the bottles up to her.”

I played my last card, the picture of Phoebe in yellow. “Did this girl ever come to visit her? Don’t give me a quick answer. Take a good long look and think about it.”

He held the picture out at the full length of his arm. “She Mrs. Wycherly’s daughter?”

“Yes. Have you seen her, Jerry?”

“Can’t say that I have. ’Course I’m not on duty all the time. I can see the resemblance, though. Add on twenty years and twenty pounds – she’s her mother’s daughter all right. I got an eye for resemblances.” The half-pint of beer had made him loquacious. His eyes came up to mine like an old hound’s. “Your daughter took off on you, too, eh? You got family trouble for sure.”

“I know it.” I was glad I wasn’t Wycherly. But I was beginning to feel his load of grief, as if I’d assumed it magically with his name. “You’re certain you’ve never seen this girl?”

“Certain as I can be. The only people that come to see your lady was the two men – the old one she wouldn’t let in, and Firstest with the Mostest.”

“And the one she left with tonight?”

“Yeah. Him.” He got up wagging his head. “Don’t you go using that gun on him, mister. Take Jerry Dingman’s advice.”

“Thanks for the advice. And thanks for the beer.”

When he had shuffled out, I got out the gun, which was in a shoulder holster, and put it on.