Shoot the Moon

Chapter Five - Lonely Street

The Hotel Washington was across town in the Lower East Side. I'd try it and then go home and catch a nap before I went to work. There was a poker game at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel the next couple of evenings.

Just from opening the door to the Hotel Washington, I felt in need of a shower.

The desk clerk was locked in a cage. A sensible precaution as the clientele was not of the finest. A few representative tenants lay around the cramped lobby. The air reeked of unwashed clothing and a general stench of Lysol. The clerk didn't even look up from the magazine he was reading.

"Yeah?" he said.

"I'm looking for a man named Mickey Dolan."

"There's nobody here who is using that name. Are you the police?"

"What if I were?"

"I-didn't-see-nothing-I-don't-know-nothing."

"What if I'm not?"

"Go away."

"What if there's a couple of bucks in it for you?"

"A couple as in two?"

"A couple as in twenty."

His eyes oozed up off the magazine and settled on me like a couple of one minute eggs. "How may I be of service, sir." There was a narrow limit on what twenty bucks would get me.

"This guy rents a room by the month. He's had the room for at least a couple of years."

"Our customers tend to come and go."

"This is a big guy, six-four or five, maybe two hundred twenty pounds. He's bald from here on back." I chopped at the crown of my head. "You'd notice somebody like that wouldn't you?" I slipped the bill under the bars and he gobbled it up.

"Mr. 'John Smith', you mean. He hasn't been here in a while. Couple of weeks."

"How about another ten to take a look at his room."

"That wouldn't be right. Our guests depend on our discretion."

"Yeah. What about twenty? That discrete enough?"

"I'll take you up myself. Wait five minutes."

*****

The third floor was a treat for the nose. The narrow halls were covered with old wall paper stained with rusty water marks.

The clerk stopped at a door without a number, turned his passkey in the door and pushed it back. He stepped out of the way and said, "Five minutes."

Mickey's room was dirty. The bed was unmade. The carpet, which was of indeterminate color, was stained and spotted with little bits and flecks of gunk, twists of paper. There were no books. I pulled open the drawer in the night table. There was a litter of empty Alka Seltzer packets and a bottle of aspirin, a stray pill or two, some pencils, and a notebook. The skinny clerk was standing slumped against the end of the door, cleaning his long ridged nails with the groove of his passkey.

The notebook just fit in my pocket.

"What's your name?" I said.

"John."

Everybody's named John in a place like that. I gave him another ten and he took it. I gave him a card.

"Let me know if he comes back. Okay, John?

"This isn't my life's work you know."

"Call me. There's fifty dollars in it for you."

"Should I tell him you're looking for him?"