Scenarios

'What did you do then?'

'What'd I do? Went down to get my Coke.'

'You didn't go to the basement?'

'Nah, damn it. George, he said it was just a argument Nick was havin' with somebody. I never figured it was nothin, you know, violent. If I had-Yeah, Eddie? You need somethin?'

A muscular black man in his mid-thirties, naked except for a pair of silver-blue boxing trunks, had come up. He said, 'Towel and some soap, Chancy. No soap in the showers again.'

'Goddamn. I catch the guy keeps swipin' it,' Slattery said, 'I'll kick his ass.' He went and got a clean towel and a bar of soap, and the black man moved off with them to a back row of lockers. Slattery watched him go; then he said to me, 'That's Eddie Jordan. Pretty fair welterweight once, but he never trained right, never had the right manager. He could of been good, that boy, if-' He broke off, frowning. 'I shouldn't ought to call him that, I guess. 'Boy.' Blacks, they don't like to be called that nowadays.'

'No,' I said, 'they don't.'

'But I don't mean nothin by it. I mean, we always called em 'boy,' it was just somethin' we called em. 'Nigger,' too, same thing. It wasn't nothin personal, you know?'

I knew, all right, but it was not something I wanted to or ever could explain to Charley Slattery. Race relations, the whole question of race, was too complex an issue. In his simple world, 'nigger' and 'boy' were just words, meaningless words without a couple of centuries of hatred and malice behind them, and it really wasn't anything personal.

'Let's get back to Nick,' I said. 'You liked him, didn't you, Charley?'

'Sure I did. He was goofy, him and his skeletons, but he worked hard and he never bothered nobody.'

'I had a talk with Wesley Thane a while ago. He told me you had some trouble with Nick not long ago.'

Slattery's eroded face arranged itself into a scowl. 'That damn actor, he don't know what he's talkin about. Why don't he mind his own damn business? I never had no trouble with Nick.'

'Not even a little? A disagreement of some kind, maybe?'

He hesitated. Then he shrugged and said, 'Well, yeah, I guess we had that. A kind of disagreement.'

'When was this?'

'I dunno. Couple of weeks ago.'

'What was it about?'

'Garbage,' Slattery said.

'Garbage?'

'Nick, he dint like nobody touchin' the cans in the basement. But hell, I was down there one night and the cans unner the chutes was full, so I switched 'em for empties. Well, Nick come around and yelled at me, and I wasn't feelin' too good so I yelled back at him. Next thing, I got sore and kicked over one of the cans and spilled out some garbage. Dan Cady, he heard the noise clear up in the lobby and come down and that son of a bitch Wes Thane was with him. Dan, he got Nick and me calmed down. That's all there was to it.'

'How were things between you and Nick after that?'

'Okay. He forgot it and so did I. It dint mean nothin'. It was just one of them things.'

'Did Nick have problems with any other people in the hotel?' I asked.

'Nah. I don't think so.'

'What about Wes Thane? He admitted he and Nick didn't get along very well.'

'I never heard about them havin' no fight or anythin' like that.'

'How about trouble Nick might have had with somebody outside the Medford?'

'Nah,' Slattery said. 'Nick, he got along with everybody, you know? Everybody liked Nick, even if he was goofy.'

Yeah, I thought, everybody liked Nick, even if he was goofy. Then why is he dead? Why?

I went back to the Medford and talked with three more residents, none of whom could offer any new information or any possible answers to that question of motive. It was almost five when I gave it up for the day and went next door to the office.

Eberhardt was there, but I didn't see him at first because he was on his hands and knees behind his desk. He poked his head up as I came inside and shut the door.

'Fine thing,' I said, 'you down on your knees like that. What if I'd been a prospective client?'

'So? I wouldn't let somebody like you hire me.'

'What're you doing down there anyway?'

'I was cleaning my pipe and I dropped the damn bit.' He disappeared again for a few seconds, muttered, 'Here it is,' reappeared, and hoisted himself to his feet.

There were pipe ashes all over the front of his tie and his white shirt; he'd even managed to get a smear of ash across his jowly chin. He was something of a slob, Eberhardt was, which gave us one of several common bonds: I was something of a slob myself. We had been friends for more than thirty years, and we'd been through some hard times together-some very hard times in the recent past. I hadn't been sure at first that taking him in as a partner after his retirement was a good idea, for a variety of reasons; but it had worked out so far. Much better than I'd expected, in fact.

He sat down and began brushing pipe dottle off his desk; he must have dropped a bowlful on it as well as on himself. He said as I hung up my coat, 'How goes the Nick Damiano investigation?'

'Not too good. Did you manage to get a copy of the police report?'

'On your desk. But I don't think it'll tell you much.'

The report was in an unmarked manila envelope; I read it standing up. Eberhardt was right that it didn't enlighten me much. Nick Damiano had been struck on the head at least three times by a heavy blunt instrument and had died of a brain hemorrhage, probably within seconds of the first blow. The wounds were 'consistent with' a length of three-quarter-inch steel pipe, but the weapon hadn't been positively identified because no trace of it had been found. As for Nick's background, nothing had been found there either. No items of personal history among his effects, no hint of relatives or even of his city of origin. They'd run a check on his fingerprints through the FBI computer, with negative results: he had never been arrested on a felony charge, never been in military service or applied for a civil service job, never been fingerprinted at all.

When I put the report down Eberhardt said, 'Anything?'

'Doesn't look like it.' I sat in my chair and looked out the window for a time, at heavy rainclouds massing above the Federal Building down the hill. 'There's just nothing to go on in this thing, Eb-no real leads or suspects, no apparent motive.'

'So maybe it's random. A street-killing, drug-related, like the report speculates.'

'Maybe.'

'You don't think so?'

'Our client doesn't think so.'

'You want to talk over the details?'

'Sure. But let's do it over a couple of beers and some food.'

'I thought you were on a diet.'

'I am. Whenever Kerry's around. But she's working late tonight-new ad campaign she's writing. A couple of beers won't hurt me. And we'll have something non-fattening to eat.'

'Sure we will,' Eberhardt said.

We went to an Italian place out on Clement at 25th Avenue and had four beers apiece and plates of fettuccine Alfredo and half a loaf of garlic bread. But the talking we did got us nowhere. If one of the residents of the Medford had killed Nick Damiano, what was the damn motive? A broken-down old actor's petulant jealousy? A mindless dispute over garbage cans? Just what was the argument all about that George Weaver had overheard?

Eberhardt and I split up early and I drove home to my flat on Pacific Heights. The place had a lonely feel; after spending most of the day in and around the Medford, I needed some laughter and bonhomie to cheer me up-I needed Kerry. I thought about calling her at Bates and Carpenter, her ad agency, but she didn't like to be disturbed while she was working. And she'd said she expected to be there most of the evening.

I settled instead for cuddling up to my collection of pulp magazines-browsing here and there, finding something to read. On nights like this the pulps weren't much of a substitute for human companionship in general