Scenarios

out. Dry witherings and an aura of hopelessness-that was the impression I would carry away with me and that would linger in my mind.

I thought: I'm fifty-four, another few years and I could be stuck in here too. But that wouldn't happen. I had work I could do pretty much to the end and I had Kerry-Kerry Wade, my lady-and I had some money in the bank and a collection of 6500 pulp magazines that were worth plenty on the collectors' market. No, this kind of place wouldn't happen to me. In a society that ignored and showed little respect for its elderly, I was one of the lucky ones.

Feinberg led me to the desk and introduced me to the day clerk, a sixtyish barrel of a man named Bert Norris. If there was anything he could do to help, Norris said, he'd be glad to oblige; he sounded eager, as if nobody had needed his help in a long time. The fact that Feinberg had primed everyone here about my investigation made things easier in one respect and more difficult in another. If the person who had killed Nick Damiano was a resident of the Medford, I was not likely to catch him off guard.

When Norris moved away to answer a switchboard call, Feinberg asked me, 'Who're you planning to talk to now?'

'Whoever's available,' I said.

'Dan Cady? He lives here-two-eighteen. Goes to the library every morning after he gets off, but he's always back by noon. You can probably catch him before he turns in.'

'All right, good.'

'You want me to come along?'

'That's not necessary, Mr. Feinberg.'

'Yeah, I get it. I used to hate that kind of thing too when I was out on a plumbing job.'

'What kind of thing?'

'Somebody hanging over my shoulder, watching me work. Who needs crap like that? You want me, I'll be in my room with the scratch sheets for today's races.'

Dan Cady was a thin, sandy-haired man in his mid-sixties, with cheeks and nose road-mapped by ruptured blood vessels-the badge of the alcoholic, practicing or reformed. He wore thick glasses, and behind them his eyes had a strained, tired look, as if from too much reading.

'Well, I'll be glad to talk to you,' he said, 'but I'm afraid I'm not very clear-headed right now. I was just getting ready for bed.'

'I won't take up much of your time, Mr. Cady.'

He let me in. His room was small and strewn with library books, most of which appeared to deal with American history; a couple of big maps, an old one of the United States and an even older parchment map of Asia, adorned the walls, and there were plaster busts of historical figures I didn't recognize, and a huge globe on a wooden stand. There was only one chair; he let me have that and perched himself on the bed.

I asked him about Sunday night, and his account of how he'd come to find Nick Damiano's body coincided with what Feinberg had told me. 'It was a frightening experience,' he said. 'I'd never seen anyone dead by violence before. His head… well, it was awful.'

'Were there signs of a struggle in the room?'

'Yes, some things were knocked about. But I'd say it was a brief struggle-there wasn't much damage.'

'Is there anything unusual you noticed? Something that should have been there but wasn't, for instance?'

'No. I was too shaken to notice anything like that.'

'Was Nick's door open when you got there?'

'Wide open.'

'How about the door to the alley?'

'No. Closed.'

'How did you happen to check it, then?'

'Well, I'm not sure,' Cady said. He seemed faintly embarrassed; his eyes didn't quite meet mine. 'I was stunned and frightened; it occurred to me that the murderer might still be around somewhere. I took a quick look around the basement and then opened the alley door and looked out there… I wasn't thinking very clearly. It was only when I shut the door again that I realized it had been unlocked.'

'Did you see or hear anything inside or out?'

'Nothing. I left the door unlocked and went back to the lobby to call the police.'

'When you saw Nick earlier that night, Mr. Cady, how did he seem to you?'

'Seem? Well, he was cheerful; he usually was. He said he'd have come up sooner to fix the lamp but his old bones wouldn't allow it. That was the way he talked…'

'Yes, I know. Do you have any idea who he might have argued with that night, who might have killed him?'

'None,' Cady said. 'He was such a gentle soul… I still can't believe a thing like that could happen to him.'

Down in the lobby again, I asked Bert Norris if Wesley Thane, George Weaver, and Charley Slattery were on the premises. Thane was, he said, Room 315; Slattery was at Monahan's Gym and would be until six o'clock. He started to tell me that Weaver was out, but then his eyes shifted past me and he said, 'No, there he is now. Just coming in.'

I turned. A heavyset, stooped man of about seventy had just entered from the street, walking with the aid of a hickory cane; but he seemed to get along pretty good. He was carrying a grocery sack in his free hand and a folded newspaper under his arm.

I intercepted him halfway to the elevator and told him who I was. He looked me over for about ten seconds, out of alert blue eyes that had gone a little rheumy, before he said, 'Iry Feinberg said you'd be around.' His voice was surprisingly strong and clear for a man his age. 'But I can't help you much. Don't know much.'

'Should we talk down here or in your room?'

'Down here's all right with me.'

We crossed to a deserted corner of the lobby and took chairs in front of a fireplace that had been boarded up and painted over. Weaver got a stubby little pipe out of his coat pocket and began to load up.

I said, 'About Sunday night, Mr. Weaver. I understand you went down to the basement to get something out of your storage locker.. '

'My old radio,' he said. 'New one I bought a while back quit playing and I like to listen to the eleven o'clock news before I go to sleep. When I got down there I heard Damiano and some fella arguing.'

'Just Nick and one other man?'

'Sounded that way.'

'Was the voice familiar to you?'

'Didn't sound familiar. But I couldn't hear it too well; I was over by the lockers. Couldn't make out what they were saying either.'

'How long were you in the basement?'

'Three or four minutes, is all.'

'Did the argument get louder, more violent, while you were there?'

'Didn't seem to. No.' He struck a kitchen match and put the flame to the bowl of his pipe. 'If it had I guess I'd've gone over and banged on the door, announced myself. I'm as curious as the next man when it comes to that.'

'But as it was you went straight back to your room?'

'That's right. Ran into Charley Slattery when I got out of the elevator; his room's just down from mine on the third floor.'

'What was his reaction when you told him what you'd heard?'

'Didn't seem to worry him much,' Weaver said. 'So I figured it was nothing for me to worry about either.'

'Slattery didn't happen to go down to the basement himself, did he?'

'Never said anything about it if he did.'

I don't know what I expected Wesley Thane to be like-the Raymond Massey or John Carradine type, maybe, something along those shabbily aristocratic and vaguely sinister lines-but the man who opened the door to Room 315 looked about as much like an actor as I do. He was a smallish guy in his late sixties, he was bald, and he had a