'How was he dressed?'
'Our friend here? I don't remember. Nothing specific sticks in my mind. Jeans and boots, for a guess. I never had to challenge him, so whatever he was wearing must have been appropriate.'
I asked some more questions and gave him my card and told him to keep the sketch. I said I'd like to go inside and show the sketch to the bartender, if I could do so without too severely breaching decorum.
'We have to make certain exceptions,' he said. 'After all, you're a police officer, aren't you?'
'Private,' I said. I don't know what made me say it.
'Oh, a private dick! That's even better, isn't it?'
'Is it?'
'I'd have to say it's about as butch as it gets.' He sighed theatrically. 'Honey,' he said, 'I'd let you past the rope even if you were wearing taffeta.'
It was well past midnight by the time I ran out of leather bars.
There were other places I could have tried, after-hours cellars clubs that were just getting started at that hour, but most of the ones I knew about were gone now, shut down in reaction to the gay plague, barn doors securely padlocked now that the horse was gone. One or two had survived, though, and I'd learned of some new ones that night, and for all I knew James Leo Motley was in one of them at that very moment, waiting for an invitation into the darkened back room.
But it was late and I was tired and I didn't have the stomach to go looking for him. I walked for a dozen blocks, trying to clear my nostrils of the reek of stale beer and backed-up drains and sweat-soaked leather and amyl nitrate, an amalgam of smells with a base note of lust. Walking helped, and I'd have walked all the way home if I hadn't already been feeling the miles I'd clocked earlier in the day. I walked until a cab came along, then rode the rest of the way.
In my room I thought of Elaine, but it was much too late to call her. I spent a long time under the shower and went to bed.
Church bells woke me. I must have been sleeping right on the surface of consciousness or I wouldn't have heard them; but I did, and I stirred myself and sat on the edge of my bed. Something was bothering me and I didn't know what it was.
I called Elaine. Her line was busy. I tried her again after I'd finished shaving and got another busy signal.
I decided I'd try her again after breakfast.
There are three places I'm apt to have breakfast, but only one of them is open on Sundays. I went there and all the tables were taken. I didn't feel like waiting. I walked a couple of blocks to a place that had opened within the past several months. This was my first meal there, and I ordered a full breakfast and ate about half of it. The food didn't satisfy my appetite but it did a good job of killing it, and by the time I got out of there I'd forgotten about calling Elaine.
Instead I continued on downEighth Avenue and started making the rounds of theTimes Square hotels.
There used to be more of them. A lot of the buildings have come down to make way for bigger ones, and most of the landlords would tear theirs down if they could. For a few years now there's been a moratorium on the conversion or demolition of SRO hotels, the city's attempt to keep the homelessness problem from getting worse than it is.
The closer you get toForty-second Street , the nastier it gets in the lobbies. Something in the air announces that everyone within the walls has a couple of wants out on him. Even the semi-respectable places, third-class hotels charging fifty or sixty dollars a night, have a sour and desperate aura. As you move down in class, more and more signs turn up above the desk and taped to the glass partitions. No guests after eight o'clock. No cooking in the rooms. No firearms allowed on premises.
Maximum stay twenty-eight days— this to prevent anyone's attaining the status of a permanent resident, and thus acquiring a statutory immunity to steep rent increases.
I put in a couple of hours and handed out a fair number of cards and pictures. The desk clerks were either wary or uninterested, and some of them managed to be both at once. By the time I'd worked my way past the Port Authority bus terminal, everybody looked like a crack addict to me. If Motley was staying in one of these dumps, what was the point of trying to ferret him out? I could just wait a while and the city would kill him for me.
I found a phone, dialed Elaine's number. She had the machine on but picked up after I'd announced myself. 'I had a late night last night,' I said. 'That's why I didn't call.'
'It's just as well. I made it an early night and slept like a log.'
'You probably needed it.'
'I probably did.' A pause. 'Your flowers are beautiful today.'
I kept my voice neutral. 'Are they?'
'Absolutely. I think they're like homemade soup, I think they're actually better on the second day.'
Across the street two teenagers leaned against the steel shutter of an army-surplus store, alternately scanning the street and sending casual glances toward me. I said, 'I'd like to come over.'
'I'd like that. Can you give me an hour or so?'
'I suppose so.'
She laughed. 'But you don't sound happy about it. Let's see, it's a quarter to twelve. Why don't you come over at one o'clock or a few minutes after. Is that all right?'
'Sure.'
I hung up the phone. The two boys across the street were still keeping an eye on me. I had the sudden urge to go over there and ask them what the hell they were staring at. That would have been asking for trouble, but I felt like it all the same.
