“I’ll go find Willis myself then,” I said.
“You mean that skinny little kid?” Norbert laughed. “Art kicked his ass and took his girlfriend from him.”
“He did?”
“Yeah,” Norbert bragged. “Kicked his ass and dragged that white girl away. ’Course she wanted to go.”
“She did?”
“’Course she did. Why she want that skinny guitar man when she could have Big Art in her bed?”
I handed Norbert a twenty dollar bill.
“Where was it that Art did this?”
“Next to that big ’partment buildin’ down on Avalon. Near the Chevron station with the big truck for a sign.”
I handed him another twenty.
“It was the only blue house on the block.”
“How do you know all that?” I asked.
“I drove him over there.”
“Did Sinestra mind Art beating up her boyfriend?”
“Didn’t seem to,” Norbert shrugged.
I handed him another twenty dollar bill.
“Where’s Art now?”
“At Havelock’s Motel on Santa Barbara. That’s where we go when we got a woman, you know, to let the other man get some sleep. I mean we ain’t got but two rooms up in here.”
I handed over another leaf of Sheila Merchant’s money and went away.
ONCE IN MY CAR I had a small dilemma. Should I go after the girl or Willis? It seemed to me that no one really cared about her, except maybe her father. Willis was the one that Etta was worried about. I knew that if I asked her she would have told me to make Willis my priority.
But I was raised better than that. No matter what she had done I couldn’t leave Sinestra Merchant at the mercy of a kidnapper and possible rapist. I couldn’t take Norbert’s word that she maybe wanted some rough action from some big black man in Watts.
HAVELOCK’S WAS A LONG BUNGALOW in the shape of a horseshoe. When I got there it was closing on midnight. A night clerk was in the office, sitting at the front desk with his back to the switchboard. I parked across the street and considered.
The motel sign said that there was a TV and a phone in each room.
I went to a phone booth and dialed a number that hadn’t changed in sixteen years.
“Hola,” a sleepy Spanish voice said.
“Primo.”
“Oh, hello, Easy. Man, what you doin’ callin’ me at this time’a night?”
“You got a pencil and a clock?”
I gave Primo a number and asked him to call in seven minutes exactly. I told him who to ask for and what to say if he got through. He didn’t ask me any questions, just said “okay” and hung up the phone.
“HI,” I SAID TO THE NIGHT CLERK five minutes later. “Can you help me with a reservation?”
It was a carefully constructed sentence designed to keep him from getting too nervous about a six foot black man coming into his office in the middle of the night. Thieves don’t ask for reservations. They rarely say hello.
“Um,” the white clerk said. He first looked at my hands and then over my shoulder to see if somebody else was coming in behind. “I can’t make reservations. I just rent out rooms for people when they come.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I thought. But you know I work at a nightclub down the street here and the only time I can really make it in is after work. Do the daytime people take reservations?”
“I don’t know,” the clerk said, relaxing a bit. “People usually just look at the sign. If there’s vacancy they drive in and if not they drive on.”
He smiled at me and the phone rang. He turned his back and lifted the receiver.
“Havelock’s Motel,” he said in a stronger tone than he’d used with me. “Who? Oh yes. Let me put you through.”
He pushed the plug into a slot labeled “Number Six.” I was smiling honestly when he turned back to me.
“That’s really all I can say,” he said. “Just look for the sign.”
“All right.”
I COUNTED THE DOORS on the north side of the building and then I went around the back, counting windows as I went. Number six’s curtains were open wide. The only light on in the room was coming from a partially closed door, the bathroom I was sure. There were two double beds. One was neat, either stripped or made. The other one had something on it, a pair of shoes tilted at an uncomfortable angle.
The window was unlocked.
