Michael Dibdin - Dark Specter

Freeman agitated the bag like a hound dog shaking a possum until the key flipped over. On the other side, the number 412 was engraved in the metal. He dropped the bag on the counter.

“Have a good one,” he said, turning away.

“You bet,” muttered the clerk.

Freeman walked up to the main floor, where he dished out another helping of intensive eye contact to that sweet thing behind the desk. Now there was a body built for the long haul. He fired up a Camel and walked over to his truck. The bumper sticker read MY WIFE? SURE. MY DOG? MAYBE. MY GUN? NEVER.

Freeman unhooked the car phone and called in to tell HQ he was heading over to the Central Hotel, where it looked like the white perp had been staying. The Chief liked to keep tabs on everyone since it got out that three of the boys had been spending their afternoons playing pinochle in the back room of a midtown bar when they were supposedly trying to find the torso to which four recovered limbs and a head had originally belonged.

“We have a further development in that case,” the sergeant told him. “Woman called in, wanted to know if either the guys involved was named Dale Watson. I tried to take her particulars but she hung up on me. Got the number off the tracer, though. She was calling from the A-l Motel on Ponce. Probably nothing to it, she sounded kind of screwy. But it might be worth checking out.”

“I’ll swing by there,” said Freeman, happy to have an excuse to stay out of the office. Anything beat riding a desk all day.

He shoved a Reba McEntire tape into the deck and cruised up Piedmont. One block before the corner of McGill, a Toyota four-by-four coming out of a side street did a California stop, then swung right across the oncoming traffic into the turn lane, forcing Freeman to brake sharply and thereby miss the light. He leaned out the window and gave the elderly Chinese driver an emphatic number one, but she didn’t notice that either, of course.

The Central Hotel was on Peachtree, a five-story block of fancy brickwork with white bay windows overlooking the interstate. It would have been demolished years before, except for a political dispute over the future use of the land. Freeman got out of the truck and field-stripped his cigarette, just like his daddy taught him to when they were out hunting. The lobby smelled of sweat and smoke and failure. A cadaverous bald man peered out over the desktop. Freeman shoved his ID in the guy’s face.

“Detective Freeman, homicide. One of your guests ended up catching a bullet last night.”

A perfect, comic-book curve of a smile split the man’s soft beardless face like a ripe fruit.

“Exit only!” he said softly. “Ped Xing!”

Charlie Freeman peered at him.

“Yeah,” he said. “So anyway, he’s hovering between life and death like they say over at Grady and I’m here to find out who the hell he is plus any other details that might rise to the surface, you with me?”

The man’s smile grew even wider.

“Wrong way!” he whispered.

“I see the register? Guy was in 412.”

The bald man stood up. His smile had completely vanished. He reached toward a bank of numbered pigeonholes, with hooks for keys, drew a slip of thin cardboard from the opening marked 412 and laid it on the counter. It was only now that Freeman noticed that the man’s right hand was a shriveled knob, a vestigial thumb drooping at an angle.

He picked up the card. It had spaces marked “Name,” “Address” and “Rate.” Underneath was written ROOM MUST BE PAID FOR IN FULL BY 12 NOON-NO CREDIT CARDS-NO OUT-OF-STATE CHECKS. The occupant of Room 412 was registered as William Hayley of Grand Rapids, Michigan, no street address. He had checked in on the ninth and had paid the $55 in cash for three days running, the last time being the previous morning. Charlie Freeman pushed the card back. The man behind the desk was gazing at him with a look of utter despair.

“It’s past noon,” said Freeman, “and this guy didn’t cough up his fifty bucks. I guess I’ll go check out the room. You got a pass key, something?”

The man extended his deformed hand toward the registration card. Grasping the edge with his dwarf thumb, he flicked the card away to reveal a flat metal key. Freeman looked at it with a frown. He was certain the key hadn’t been there before. When he looked up, the clerk’s uncanny smile was back in place, his whole face beaming with barely contained glee. He reached out suddenly and laid his stump on Freeman’s arm.

“Pass with care!” he said with a stifled giggle.

Charlie Freeman nodded.

“Thanks, buddy. And listen, they ever get around to tearing this place down, give me a call. Maybe I can fix you up with a job as a street sign.”

The fourth floor of the hotel consisted of a single corridor running the length of the building. Room 412 was halfway along on the right. Charlie Freeman knocked perfunctorily, then unlocked the door and stood looking around. The air was hot and stale. Greasy light filtered in through the window. The bed was unmade, and there was a pile of clothes on the floor, a T-shirt, jeans, a pair of basketball shoes. On a shelf above the sink lay a toothbrush and a comb. There was a book beside the bed. Freeman picked it up and flipped through several pages. Poetry, it looked like.

In the corner of the room, half hidden by the folds of the drape, was a wastebasket. Freeman poured the jumble of paper coils and twists out on to the table. Half the stuff was wrapping. Untwisting the rest, he finally found a till receipt for a suit, shirt, tie and shoes, dated two days previously. He bundled up the wrappings, clothes and book in a blue plastic tote bag he found in the closet. Down in the lobby, the guy at the desk was gazing up at the ceiling with a beatific smile.

“Seeing as Mr. Hayley won’t be coming back here for some considerable time, if ever, I’m taking his personal belongings for safekeeping,” Freeman told him. “You need my John Hancock anywhere?”

The bald man transferred his gray eyes to Freeman’s face. They were as blank as if he had never seen him before. Then he winked conspiratorially.

“Walk don’t walk!” he breathed.

Freeman started to say something, then shook his head and walked out. An elderly black, his skin tough as an alligator hide, was standing on the sidewalk holding a sign that read GOD HATES GAY PRIDE.

“Seek ye the Lord,” he told Charlie Freeman in a voice devoid of all conviction.

Freeman unlocked his truck and slung the tote bag on the passenger seat.

“I already found Him,” he said. “And I got bad news for you, gramps. He’s a switch-hitter Hisself”

Singing along in a penetrating baritone to Reba’s “The Greatest Man I Never Knew,” he drove up Peachtree as far as the ornate fantasia of the Fox Theater, then swung right on the avenue which had once divided north Atlanta from south, white from black. The sun showed pale in the sky, high behind a veil of haze. Must have been in the mid-nineties, easy.

The A-1 Motel was four blocks along, a fifties sprawl of two-story rooms and cabins surrounding a large parking lot. Charlie Freeman pulled in and killed both the engine and Reba McEntire, who was instantly replaced by a barrage of thrash rock from a trio of baseball-capped dudes taking their ethnic briefcase for a stroll. Freeman picked a large manila envelope out of the file lying on the floor and heaved himself out of the truck.

“We’re full,” called a male voice as he entered the reception area. The sound of sports commentary rumbled in the background.

“Sign says there’s vacancies,” shouted Freeman.

“It’s broke.”

Charlie Freeman looked around at the bulging walls, the fake antebellum furniture, the cases of plastic flowers, the green globs of goop circulating in a huge lava lamp. A man appeared in the open doorway behind the counter. He was wearing a Braves cap, a T-shirt and shorts. His face was pudgy and pugnacious, the skin riddled with broken veins.

“We’re full,” he said, as if for the first time.

“You the manager?”

The man’s glaucous gray eyes curled up the way slugs do when you salt them.

“This about the fire code? I told the guy already, we’re going to upgrade same time we do the roof, right? Damn, all we’re trying to do here is turn a buck and promote tourism.”

Charlie Freeman laid his ID on the counter and extracted two glossy six-by-eights from the manila envelope.

“I’d just like for you to take a gander at these pictures, tell me if you ever saw either of these individuals, then I’ll let you get back to the game.”

The manager picked up the photographs.

“Damn, looks like they had a rough night,” he remarked lightly. “I seen this one here. He in some sort of trouble?”

“He’s dead,” said Freeman.

The manager’s eyes widened.

“Dead? Damn.”

“When did he check in?”

The manager tapped at a computer keyboard.

“He was in 118, right?” he murmured. “Arrived the tenth.”

“Name?”

“John Flaxman.”

“Address?”

“Didn’t give none. But I got some scoop on his girlfriend, if that’s any use to you.”

Charlie Freeman tucked one of the photos back in the envelope and slipped the other into his jacket pocket.

“Can’t hurt,” he said.

“She come by this morning, said her friend had left but she wanted to keep the room for a while and pay with a card. Gloria Glasser’s the name, 2344 East 19th, Hopkinsville, Kentucky.”

He handed a smudgy carbon copy of the credit card imprint to Freeman, who studied it briefly.

“Thanks now,” he said, handing it back. “Appreciate it.”

He walked along the line of cabins to 118 and rapped at the door. It opened almost immediately. The face that appeared was young, pale and drawn. Seventeen, maybe eighteen at the most.

“Gloria Glasser?” he said.

A momentary delay, a sudden obliquity of her gaze, confirmed Freeman’s suspicions.

“Uh huh?”

“I’m from the police, ma’am. You called in about a Dale Watson?”

“You heard something?”

Her whole face was transformed.

“I come in?” said Freeman.

The room inside was a shade classier than the one at the Central Hotel, but a whole lot sadder. The other had just been a single guy’s flop. Here something was missing, something which had been found and then lost again. The sense of that loss was as thick as the tobacco fumes in the air.

The girl closed the door and lit another cigarette.

“Want one?” she asked Freeman.

“Thank you kindly.”

She gave him a light from the tip of her own, just like they’d been best buddies for years. Cute little thing, thought Freeman, even if her name wasn’t Gloria.

“So how can we help you?” he asked brightly.

“You said you had news,” the girl replied, her manner hardening up.

Freeman shook his head.

“You asked. I didn’t say nothing.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed.

“How do I know you’re who you say? Show me your badge.”

Freeman did so.

“How about you?” he asked.

“Ain’t no law that says I have to show you ID,” she retorted with a defiance as thin and hard as enamel.

“That so? But there is a law against using a credit card that ain’t yours.”

“Who says it ain’t mine?”

There was real apprehension in her voice now. Freeman gave her the eye.

“Honey, Gloria Glasser’s held that card since 1988, it said on the printout. You’d still’ve been in grade school then. Am I right?”

The girl bit her lip.

“It’s my mom’s. It’s OK, she’ll pay the bill.”

“And you are?”

“Cindy.”

“OK, Cindy. I’ve already got a pile of work right now, ’sides which it goes against my nature to be ugly to a young lady. So you just answer my questions fully and frankly, I could overlook this little credit card matter. Deal?”

She glanced at him once or twice, then nodded.

“OK I sit down?” asked Freeman, doing so.

The girl perched on the edge of a chair covered in a heavy crimson acrylic weave.

“Now then,” Freeman said, “why don’t you tell me about this Dale Watson?”

Disjointedly, the girl related the whole story-how she’d met this guy on the bus, how she had nowhere to stay so she’d ended up coming here with him, how he was looking for work, how he’d gone out the night before and not come back.

“And then I heard on the news about this shooting, and it was where Dale said he was going, and I got thinking maybe something happened to him.”

“He tell you what kind of job this was he was applying for?”

The girl shook her head.

“And he said his name was Dale Watson?”

“Uh huh.”

“Only he signed the register as Flaxman. John Flaxman.”

She shrugged.

“Maybe he didn’t want to use his real name.”

“And he was from St. Louis, you say?”

“That’s where the bus was coming from. But he’d been on the road a whiles, he said. Oh, and one time he mentioned Seattle.”

“Seattle?”

Like she’d said Seoul or Sydney.

“But I don’t know if he was from there. He didn’t let on too much about that kind of thing.”

Freeman eyed the girl in silence.

“You know what’s happened to him?” she asked haltingly.

“I ain’t even sure we’re talking about the same person yet,” he said, taking out the photograph and passing it to her.

It was a head and shoulders shot, taken at the morgue. They’d done a pretty nice job. No injuries were visible, and the face appeared peaceful and indifferent.

“That’s him,” the girl said with a lift in her voice that wrenched at Charlie Freeman’s heart. “Where is he? What happened? Is he bad off?”

ROSA MORRISON WAS working on a lead article about racial integration in inner-city high schools when the call came through.

The piece was fascinating but an absolute bitch to sub: high-profile, extremely sensitive and site-specific. The two reporters who had researched and written it had done a good job, but the fine-tuning was down to her as assistant city editor. If she got the balance wrong, the various pressure groups involved would get on the case and the shit would hit the fan. On the other hand, if she watered it down into a feel-good McArticle, readers would complain that the paper was dodging the issues.

To make matters worse, this wasn’t just a think piece. These were local schools. People whose kids went to them were bound to have their own opinions which they would feel outraged to find ignored or contradicted. Plus the whole thing had to be written as an inverted pyramid in case it got picked up by another paper and needed to be cut to fit around an ad for pantyhose or something.

So when the phone went with some gofer saying he had a guy on the line who wanted to check on a news item, Rosa’s first impulse was to push the thing off on one of the other ACEs, only neither of them were at their desks. Bill was over by the water fountain flirting with Lesha Roberts, while Jodie was probably outside on the fire escape sneaking a cigarette. There were sometimes more people hanging out on that metal staircase than there were in the office. One of these days someone would drop a smoldering butt into one of the garbage Dumpsters below and start the biggest blaze since Sherman torched the city.