“I’ll come with you,” she said.
“Are you a movie star?” Freddie asked Michael.
“No.”
“‘Cause you look familiar,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to have a scraper, would you?” he asked Connie.
“In the trunk,” Connie said, and went around to the back of the car.
“Haven’t I seen you on television?” Freddie asked.
“No,” Michael said.
“In a series about Florida?”
“No.”
“You sure look familiar.”
“I have a very common face,” Michael said.
“Ah, thank you,” Freddie said, and accepted the scraper from Connie. “This should do the trick.”
She was no longer wearing the green satin, high-heeled pumps she’d had on a few minutes ago. Black galoshes were on her feet now, the tops unbuckled. She looked like pictures Michael had seen of flappers in the Twenties, except that she was Chinese. She saw him looking down at the galoshes.
“I changed my shoes,” she said.
He looked up into her face. So goddamn beautiful.
“I bought these in a thrift shop,” she said, “to keep in the trunk. For inclement weather.” On her lips, the word “inclement” sounded Chinese. She shrugged, and turned to where Freddie was already scraping the windshield. “You want to watch the car for me?” she asked.
“No, ma’am, I don’t wash entire cars,” he said, “I only do windshields.”
“You keep an eye on the car for me, I’ll give you that dollar you wanted.”
“Make it two dollars.”
“Two dollars, okay,” she said, and locked the car and then turned back to Michael and said, “Let’s go.”
Michael looked at the Bowery Palace Hotel. He nodded, and then started toward its entrance door. Connie followed immediately behind him.
“Ask for room five-oh-five,” Freddie called after them. “It has a mattress.”
The hotel lobby was done in what one might have called Beirut Nouveau. Plaster was crumbling from the walls, electrical outlets hung suspended by dangling wires, the bloated ceiling bulged with what was certainly a water leak, wooden posts and beams seemed on the imminent edge of collapse, wallpaper was peeling, framed prints of pastoral scenes hung askew, and ancient upholstered furniture exposed its springs and stuffing. Altogether, the place looked as if it had recently been attacked by terrorists with pipe bombs. The clerk behind the scarred and tottering desk looked like a graying, wrinkled Oliver North who had just made his last covert deal with the Iranians.
“Good evening, Merry Christmas,” Michael said to the clerk, and walked directly past the desk, and then past a hissing, clanging radiator that seemed about to explode and then past two men in long overcoats who were flipping playing cards at a brass spittoon against one of the flaking walls. It took Michael a moment to realize the spittoon wasn’t empty. Behind him, he heard Connie clanking along in her unbuckled galoshes. “Merry Christmas,” she said to the clerk, and he replied, “Merry Christmas,” sounding somewhat bewildered, and then—as Michael approached a door under a red-and-white EXIT sign—“Excuse me, sir, may I ask what you think you’re …?”
“Building inspector,” Michael said gruffly, and would have flashed his driver’s license or something if he’d still had it in his possession.
“Merry Christmas,” the clerk said at once,
“I’m sure you’ll find everything in order.”
“We’ll see about that,” Michael said, and opened the exit door, and stepped out into the backyard. Telephone poles grew from the snow-covered ground, their sagging wires wearing narrow threads of white. Fences capped with snow spread raggedly north, south, east, and west. Where tenements rose to the starry night, there were clotheslines stiff with frozen clothes. Not a breeze stirred now. Moonlight tinted the backyard world a soft silvery white.
“It’s beautiful,” Connie said beside him.
“Yes,” he said.
He sighed then, and looked up at the back of the hotel, getting his geographical bearings, and then turned his scrutiny to the building on its left. A fire escape zigzagged up the snow-dusted, redbrick wall.
“You’d better wait for me here,” he said.
“I’ll go with you,” Connie said.
He looked at her.
“There’s no reward, you know,” he said, and was sorry the instant the words left his mouth.
“Is that what you think?” she asked.
“I don’t know what I …”
“I mean, is that what you think?”
“All I know is that a very beautiful girl …”
“Yes, I know.”
“… has latched onto a stranger …”
“Yes.”
“… who she thinks killed someone, which by the way I didn’t. Not tonight, anyway.”
“Then when?” she said at once.
“A long time ago. I’ve been living a very quiet life since I …”
“Are you married?” she asked.
“Divorced.”
“Then what’s wrong with my latching onto you?”
“I find it peculiar, that’s all.”
“You have a very low opinion of yourself, don’t you?”
“No, I happen to have a very healthy ego, in fact.”
“What happened? Did they break your spirit in jail?”
“Jail? Why would I …?”
“For killing somebody.”
“It was my job to kill those people.”
“More than one?” she asked, astonished.
“Yes, but …”
“How many?”
“Eleven or twelve.”
“Which? I mean, a person gives you a contract, you ought to know whether it’s for eleven people or …”