He had to laugh. 'Not a very businesslike approach,' he said.
'I know it. I'm afraid I'm not a very businesslike person.'
'In a curious way, that inspires confidence. The thousand dollars—
I assume your expenses would be additional.'
I shook my head. 'I don't anticipate a lot in the way of expenses, and I'd rather pay them myself than have to account for them.'
'Would you want to run some newspaper ads? I'd thought of doing that myself, either a listing in the personals or an ad with her photo and the offer of a reward. Of course that wouldn't come out of your thousand dollars. It would probably cost that much or more by itself, to do any kind of extensive advertising.'
I advised against it. 'She's too old to get her picture on a milk carton,' I said, 'and I'm not sure ads in the papers are a good idea. You just draw the hustlers and the reward-hunters that way, and they're more trouble than they're worth.'
'I keep thinking that she might have amnesia. If she saw her photograph in the newspaper, or if someone else saw it—'
'Well, it's a possibility,' I said. 'But let's hold it in reserve for the time being.'
* * *
In the end, he gave me a check for a thousand dollars and a couple of pictures and what information he had— her last address, the names of several restaurants where she'd worked. He let me keep the two playbills, assuring me that they had plenty of copies of both. I copied down his address inMuncie and his phone numbers at home and at the auto showroom. 'Call anytime at all,' he said.
I told him I probably wouldn't call until I had something concrete to report. When I did, he'd hear from me.
He paid for our coffees and left a dollar for the waitress. At the door he said, 'I feel good about this. I think I've taken the right step. You come across as honest and straightforward, and I appreciate that.'
Outside, a three-card-monte dealer was working to a small crowd, telling the people to keep their eyes on the red card, keeping his own eye out for cops.
'I've read about that game,' Hoeldtke said.
'It's not a game,' I told him. 'It's a short con, a swindle. The player never wins.'
'That's what I've read. Yet people keep playing.'
'I know,' I said. 'It's hard to figure.'
After he left I took one of the photos to a copy shop and had them run off a hundred wallet-size prints. I went back to my hotel room, where I had a rubber stamp with my name and number. I stamped each of the photos on the back.
Paula Hoeldtke's last known address was a dingy red brick rooming house onFifty-fourth Street a few doors east ofNinth Avenue .
It was a little after five when I headed over there, and the streets were full of office workers on their way home. There was a bank of doorbells in the entrance hall, over fifty of them, and a single bell marked manager off to the side. Before I rang it I checked the tags on the other bells.
Paula Hoeldtke's name wasn't listed.
The manager was a tall woman, rail thin, with a face that tapered from a broad forehead to a narrow chin. She was wearing a floral print housedress and carrying a lit cigarette. She took a moment to look me over. Then she said, 'Sorry, I got nothing vacant at the moment. You might want to check back with me in a few weeks if you don't find anything.'
'How much are your rooms when you do have something?'
'One-twenty a week, but some of the nicer ones run a little higher.
That includes your electric. There's supposed to be no cooking, but you could have a one-ring hotplate and it'd be all right. Each room has a bitty refrigerator. They're small, but they'll keep your milk from spoiling.'
'I drink my coffee black.'
'Then maybe you don't need the fridge, but it doesn't matter too much, since I got no vacancies and don't expect any soon.'
'Did Paula Hoeldtke have a hotplate?'
'She was a waitress, so I guess she took her meals where she worked. You know, my first thought when I saw you was you were a cop, but then for some reason I changed my mind. I had a cop here a couple weeks ago, and then the other day a man came around, said he was her father. Nice-looking man, had that bright red hair just starting to go gray. What happened to Paula?'
'That's what I'm trying to find out.'
'You want to come inside? I told the first cop all I knew, and I went over everything for her father, but I suppose you got your own questions to ask. That's always the way, isn't it?'
I followed her inside and down a long hallway. A table at the foot of the stairs was heaped with envelopes. 'That's where they pick up their mail,' she said. 'Instead of sorting it and putting it into fifty-four individual mailboxes, the mailman just drops the whole stack on the table there. Believe it or not, it's safer that way. Other places have mailboxes in the vestibules, and the junkies break into them all the time, looking for welfare checks. Right this way, I'm the last door on the left.'
Her room was small but impressively neat. There was a captain's bed made up as a sofa, a straight-backed wooden chair and an armchair, a small maple drop-front desk, a painted chest of drawers with a television set on
