6
In the lobby, Dodds
went over to the desk and asked if Septemus Ryan was in his
room.
The clerk shook his
head. “Saw both him and his nephew go out a while ago.” The clerk
wore a drummer’s striped shirt and a pitiful scruffy little
mustache and had a lot of slick goop on his rust-colored hair. He
was the Hames’s eldest, nineteen years old or so, and this was his
first job in town. As far as Dodds was concerned he took it far too
seriously. The only law and order the kid respected was that of Mel
Lutz who owned the hotel and two other businesses.
“I’m going up to
their room.” He put out his hand. “I’d appreciate the key.”
“Sheriff, now you
know what Judge Mason said. He said you shouldn’t ought to do that
unless you check with him first. ’Bout how people had rights and
all. And anyway Mel says I shouldn’t ought to do it unless I check
with him first.”
“He in his
office?”
“Yup.”
“Then go check an’
I’ll wait here.”
“What about the
judge?”
“The judge’ll be my
concern. Now you go talk to Mel.”
“Who’ll watch the
desk?”
“I’ll watch the
desk.”
“I ain’t sure that’d
be right.”
“What the hell you
think I’m gonna do, boy-kid, steal somethin’?”
“No offense, Sheriff,
but you ain’t one of Mel’s employees. And Mel’s rule is that only a
bona fide employee can be behind the desk.”
“Boy, I just happen
to be sheriff of this here burg. Now if that don’t qualify me to be
behind that desk, what does?”
“Guess that’s a fair
point.”
“Now you go tell Mel
I want the key.”
“Can I tell him why
you want the key?”
Dodds sighed. “’Cause
I want to go up there and look around.”
“Can I tell him why
you want to go up there and look around?”
“Kid, you’re lucky I
don’t punch you right on the nose.”
“I’m just askin’ the
questions Mel’s gonna ask me.”
“I think Ryan’s up to
somethin’ and I want to see if I can get some kind of evidence on
him.”
The kid leaned
forward on his elbow and said, “What’s he up to?”
“Git, now. Go ask
Mel. That’s all I’m gonna say.”
The kid stood up,
frowning. Obviously disappointed. Like most desk clerks, the kid
was a gold-plated gossip.
“Git,” the sheriff
said.
The kid got.
***
In all, Dodds leaned
on the desk for ten minutes while the kid was away. He said hello
to maybe twenty people, sent icy stares at a couple of others he
suspected of being confidence men working the area, and helped
three different ladies out the front door with their
packages.
Dodds liked the
hotel’s lobby, the leather furnishings, the ferns, the hazy air of
cigar and pipe smoke, the bright brass cuspidors, the seemingly
endless pinochle game that went on over in the corner. This was
where the town’s men spent their retirement years. Didn’t matter if
they were married or not, they always came down there. It was
almost like working a shift at a factory. The missus made breakfast
and then one took a morning walk and ended up at the hotel. The
first thing to do was sit in one of the plump leather chairs and
read the paper and then discuss any pressing politics and any
pressing town gossip and then help oneself to the pinochle game.
Dodds was a piss-poor pinochle player. He would have to get one
hell of a lot better before he retired.
“Here’s the key,
Sheriff,” the kid said when he came back. “Mel said five
minutes.”
“So he’s setting time
limits now, is he?”
“I’m only tellin’ you
what he tole me, Sheriff.”
Dodds took the key.
“Thanks, kid.”
The kid held up the
five fingers of his left hand and pointed to them with the index
finger of his right hand. “Remember, Mel said five minutes.”
Dodds restrained
himself from telling the kid what an aggravating bastard he could
be.
***
Dodds had always
liked hotels. He liked the idea of all the different kinds of
people and different kinds of lives being led in them. After his
wife died, he’d thought of giving up the small house they’d lived
in and moving in to the hotel. He still thought about it, about
taking three meals downstairs at a long table covered with a fresh
white linen cloth every time, sitting up in his room with a cigar
and a magazine and a rocker and watching the sunset and listening
to people on their way into the festive night, just sitting there
smelling of shaving soap and hair oil, clean as a whistle and
without a care.
He thought of all
these things as he moved along the corridor to Ryan’s room. Taking
no chances, he pulled out his revolver, put an ear to the door, and
listened. That kid desk clerk could easily have missed Ryan coming
back up to his room. Or hell, maybe for some reason Ryan snuck up
the back way.
He tried the door
knob. Locked. He took out the key, fit it into the lock, and turned
it.
He’d been in these
rooms many times. In the daylight they looked somewhat shabby. The
paint had faded, some of the wallpaper had worked free, the brass
beds were getting a little rusty, and the linoleum was pretty
scuffed up.
The first carpetbag
he tried belonged to the kid. Or at least he assumed it did, unless
a grown man carried a slingshot and a Buffalo Bill novel.
In the second
carpetbag he found the newspaper stories. There were ten in all,
clipped carefully from the front pages of newspapers around the
state, some with pictures, some not. It was the same terrible story
again and again, the thirteen-year-old girl slain during the bank
robbery, the huge rewards offered for the capture of the men, the
grieving father and the outrage of the townspeople.
Dodds also found the
letter.
The thing ran three
pages on a fancy buff blue stock and it was written in a fine,
clear longhand that managed to be both attractive and masculine. It
said just about what one would expect such a letter to say. While
reading it, Dodds kept thinking of Ryan’s brown eyes, forlorn and
angry and mad all at the same time.
Dodds had to smile
about who the letter was addressed to-it was addressed to him. Ryan
had thought of everything. He would come to Myles and do what he
wanted and, when it was done, Dodds would have the letter for
explanation as to who had done it and why it had been done and what
was to be made of it in the common mind.
Shaking his head,
Dodds tucked the letter back inside the unsealed envelope, put the
letter back inside the carpetbag, and left the room. He moved very
quickly for a man his age.
If he didn’t find
Ryan fast things were going to get real bad in town. Real
bad.