I went out of the studio and down the stairs to where Jack and Creedy were waiting.
CHAPTER TWO
I
I had trouble finding the Calloway Hotel. When finally I ran it to earth it turned out to be one of those dingy room-by-the-hour joints that are scattered along the waterfront of the Eastside of the river, and which are being continually closed down by the police, and as regularly opened up again under new management.
After I had dropped Creedy at a restaurant where he was to meet his wife and Jack at his apartment, it was too late for me to go home and then recross the city to meet Rima by ten.
So I called Sarita and told her I had to go to the office as Creedy wanted some figures for an article he was writing. I said I would be having a snack with him and I wasn’t sure what time I would get home. I felt bad lying to her, but this was something I couldn’t tell her.
I walked into the lobby of the Calloway Hotel a few minutes after ten.
There was an old white haired negro behind the reception desk. There was a dusty palm in a tarnished brass bowl by the door. Five bamboo cane chairs stood around, looking as if they had never been sat in.
An atmosphere of squalor brooded over the dismal scene.
I paused and looked around.
There was a shabbily dressed woman sitting in a corner in the only leather lounging chair, looking across at me, cigarette dropping from her over-made-up lips.
I didn’t recognise Rima for a moment or so. Her hair was no longer silver: it was dyed a brick red and cut short in a ragamuffin style. She had on a black suit that was pretty well on its last legs. Her green shirt was grubby and had a washed-out, faded look.
I walked slowly across the lobby watched by the old negro and stood before her. We looked at each other.
The past years had been hard on her. Her face had an unhealthy pallor and was puffy. She looked older than her thirty years. The touches of rouge she had dabbed on her cheeks kidded no one except maybe herself. Her eyes were hard: the impersonal bleak eyes of a street walker: like stones dipped in blue-black ink.
It was a shock to see how she had altered. When I had heard her voice over the telephone the image of her when last I had seen her had risen up in my mind, but this woman was a stranger to me, and yet I knew it was Rima. In spite of the red hair and the hardness there was no mistaking that it was she.
I watched the stony eyes move swiftly over my suit and the raincoat I carried on my arm and at my shoes, then they shifted to my face.
‘Hel o, Jeff,’ she said. ‘Long time no see.’
‘We’d bet er go somewhere where we can talk,’ I said, aware that my voice sounded husky.
She lifted her eyebrows.
‘I wouldn’t want to embarrass you. You’re the big wheel now. If your rich pals saw me with you they might jump to the wrong conclusions.’
‘We can’t talk here. Come out to the car.’
She shook her head.
‘We’l talk here. Don’t worry about Joe. He’s as deaf as a post. Are you going to buy me a drink?’
‘You can have what you want.’
She got up, crossed over to the reception desk and rang a bell by the negro, who shifted away from her, scowling at her.
A man came out of a back room: a big, fat Italian with greasy black hair and a heavy stubble on his chin. He was wearing a dirty cowboy shirt and a pair of dirtier flannel trousers.
‘A bottle of Scotch, two glasses and charge water, Toni,’ Rima said, ‘and hurry it up.’
The fat man stared at her.
‘Who’s paying for it?’
She nodded to me.
‘He is. Hurry it up.’
His black, blood-shot eyes roved over me, then he nodded and went back into the inner room.
I pulled up one of the bamboo cane chairs and arranged it so I would sit near her when she came back to her chair and yet be able to see the entrance to the lobby. I sat down.
She came back to her chair. As she walked I saw she had runs in both stockings and her shoes looked ready to fall to pieces.
‘Wel , it’s like old times, isn’t it?’ she said, sit ing down. ‘Except of course you’re married now.’ She took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, blowing smoke down her nostrils. ‘You’ve certainly done pret y well for yourself considering you could have spent all this time in a cell or maybe even by now you could be fertilising the soil of a prison yard.’
The fat man came with the drinks. I paid him what he asked, and after looking curiously at me, he went away and back into the inner room.
With an unsteady hand, she poured a big shot of whisky into one of the glasses, then pushed the bottle over to me.
I didn’t touch it. I watched her drink half the whisky neat, then add charge water to what was left.
‘You haven’t much to say for yourself, have you?’ she said, looking at me. ‘How have you been getting on all these years? Ever think of me?’
‘I’ve thought about you,’ I said.
‘Ever wondered what I was doing?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Did you keep that tape of me singing?’
Long before I had got home, I had got rid of the tape; I hadn’t wanted anything to remind me of her.
‘It got lost,’ I said woodenly.
‘Did it? That’s a pity. It was a good tape.’ She took another drink. ‘It was worth a whale of a lot of money. I was hoping you had kept it and I could sell it.’
It was coming now. I waited.
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘As you lost it, and you’ve made so much money, I don’t suppose you’l mind paying me for it.’
‘I’m not paying you anything,’ I said.
She finished her drink and poured more whisky into her glass.
‘So you’re married. That’s a change for you, isn’t it? I thought you didn’t care for women.’
‘We’ll skip that, Rima. I don’t think there’s much point carrying on this conversation. You and I are in two different worlds. You had your chance. I’ve taken mine.’
She slid her hand inside her grubby shirt to scratch her ribs. It was a gesture that brought the past back with an unpleasant impact.
‘Does your wife know you murdered a man?’ she asked, looking directly at me.
‘I didn’t murder a man,’ I said steadily. ‘And we’ll leave my wife out of this.’
‘Well, okay, if you’re so sure you didn’t, then you won’t mind if I go to the cops and tell them you did.’
‘Look, Rima,’ I said, ‘you know as well as I do, you shot the guard. No one would take your word against mine now. So let’s skip it.’
‘When I saw your photo in
