'I don't even know his name. How would I know what he did for a living?'
'Your impression,' I said. 'Was he an auto mechanic? A stockbroker? A rodeo performer?'
'Oh,' he said, and thought it over. 'Maybe an accountant,' he said.
'An accountant?'
'Something like that. A tax lawyer, an accountant. This is a game, I'm just guessing, you understand that —'
'I understand. What nationality?'
'American. What do you mean?'
'English, Irish, Italian—'
'Oh,' he said. 'I see, more of the game. I would say Jewish, I would say Italian, I would say dark, Mediterranean. Because she was so blonde, you know? A contrast. I don't know that he was dark, but there was a contrast. Could be Greek, could be Spanish.'
'Did he go to college?'
'He didn't show me a diploma.'
'No, but he must have talked, to you or to her. Did he sound like college or did he sound like the streets?'
'He didn't sound like the streets. He was a gentleman, an educated man.'
'Married?'
'Not to her.'
'To anybody?'
'Aren't they always? You're not married, you don't have to buy mink for your girlfriend. He probably bought another one for his wife, to keep her happy.'
'Was he wearing a wedding ring?'
'I don't remember a ring.' He touched his own gold band. 'Maybe yes, maybe no. I don't recall a ring.'
He didn't recall much, and the impressions I'd pried out of him were suspect. They might have been valid, might as easily have grown out of an unconscious desire to supply me with the answers he thought I wanted. I could have kept going— 'All right, you don't remember his shoes, but what kind of shoes would a guy like him wear? Chukka boots? Penny loafers? Cordovans? Adidas? What?' But I'd reached and passed a point of diminishing returns. I thanked him and got out of there.
There was a coffee shop on the building's first floor, just a long counter with stools and a takeout window. I sat over coffee and tried to assess what I had.
She had a boyfriend. No question. Somebody bought her that jacket, counted out hundred dollar bills, kept his own name out of the transaction.
Did the boyfriend have a machete? There was a question I hadn't asked the fur salesman. 'All right, use your imagination. Picture this guy in a hotel room with the blonde. Let's say he wants to chop her. What does he use? An axe? A cavalry saber? A machete? Just give me your impression.'
Sure. He was an accountant, right? He'd probably use a pen. A Pilot Razor Point, deadly as a sword in the hands of a samurai. Zip zip, take that, you bitch.
The coffee wasn't very good. I ordered a second cup anyway. I interlaced my fingers and looked down at my hands. That was the trouble, my fingers meshed well enough but nothing else did. What kind of accountant type went batshit with a machete? Granted, anyone could explode that way, but this had been a curiously planned explosion, the hotel room rented under a false name, the murder performed with no traces left of the murderer's identity.
Did that sound like the same man who bought the fur?
I sipped my coffee and decided it didn't. Nor did the picture I got of the boyfriend jibe with the message I'd been given after last night's meeting. The fellow in the lumber jacket had been muscle, pure and simple, even if he hadn't been called upon to do anything more with that muscle than flex it. Would a mild-mannered accountant command that sort of muscle?
Not likely.
Were the boyfriend and Charles Owen Jones one and the same?
And why such an elaborate alias, middle name and all? People who used a surname like Smith or Jones for an alias usually picked Joe or John to go with it. Charles Owen Jones?
Maybe his name was Charles Owens. Maybe he'd started to write that, then changed his mind in the nick of time and dropped the last letter of Owens, converting it to a middle name. Did that make sense?
I decided that it didn't.
The goddamned room clerk. It struck me that he hadn't been interrogated properly. Durkin had said he was in a fog, and evidently he was South American, possibly somewhat at a loss in English. But he'd have had to be reasonably fluent to get hired by a decent hotel for a position that put him in contact with the public. No, the problem was that nobody pushed him. If he'd been questioned the way I questioned the fur salesman, say, he'd have let go of something. Witnesses always remember more than they think they remember.
The room clerk who checked in Charles Owen Jones was named Octavio Calderon, and he'd worked last on Saturday when he was on the desk from four to midnight. Sunday afternoon he'd called in sick.
There had been another call yesterday and a third call an hour or so before I got to the hotel and braced the assistant manager. Calderon was still sick. He'd be out another day, maybe longer.
