HUNGRY, HE DROVE IN SEARCH of a local foodmarket or eatery. Downtown was a confusing jumble of dead ends and old shadows even on this bright morning. It was a district he’d never gotten the hang of. You could walk, drive or crawl here and some turreted building you thought you recognized could seem so close you were sure you were only a block off. Then you’d turn a corner and find some tunnel or ravine or whole run-down area you’d never seen before in your way. He drove on past the once-grand old rooming houses, then braked sharply and pulled in past a rundown lot when he saw a sun-faded sign for a place called Edna’s Eats.
Not so much a trolley car diner as a lunch wagon—barely a distant relative of one of those sleek steel and chrome Fodero creations you saw drawn up along the new strips toward the coast. Inside, hung fly papers and the thick brown air stirred to the creak of a fan. The sign above the chalked board of specials—bean and barley soup, pineapple pie, home made lemon sponge cake—stated NO SERVICE UNDER 5 CENTS. He took a table by the windows at the far side, lit up a Lucky Strike from Daniel Lamotte’s book of Edna’s Eats matches, and squinted through his glasses at the menu, which was covered with food stains. Meat hissed. Smoke drifted. Two guys a few empty tables along were talking about some insurance deal. An old woman with small dog in her basket was nursing a coffee. The well-dressed couple in the furthest, darkest corner were talking with quiet animation.
“You want… ?” The remains of a bruise was fading around the thin, tall waitress’ left eye. The name stitched on her lapel said MARY HAMILTON.
“How you doing Mary?”
“Oh, just fine.” She sighed a thin, tall waitress’ sigh.
“Mind if I ask a stupid question?”
“We don’t do credit.”
“Nothing like that.”
“Didn’t walk into no door, either.” She wiped her fingers down her apron and touched her face. “And the guy who did this has got balls even sorer than my face. Okay?”
“Nothing like that either. I was just wondering if you can remember seeing a guy in here who looks a bit like me. Tall, same kinda suit, these sort of specs. Same hereabouts ears and teeth as well. But with a beard…” He watched her eyebrow raise. “Told you it was a stupid question.”
“I heard stupider.” She gave the matter some thought. Or maybe she was just staring at him. “An’ I know who you mean. He was last in about five days ago. Maybe a tad less. Say about last Friday. Yeah. It was Friday for definite, and about this time. Don’t look that much like you, though, with or without the beard.
“So people keep telling me. He a regular?”
“You might say. Ain’t spoke as much to me as you in all the months I seen him, though. Don’t tip worth pickin’, either. Course, I only do mornings, so I quit at noon. And the guy’s usually got this notebook he writes in.”
“Alone?”
“Usually, yeah. But last time he was with this broad. Okay with the questions…? You want to order or not? I don’t get paid none to shoot the breeze.”
“This woman he was with—was she red haired, well dressed?”
Mary Hamilton watched as he unpeeled a dollar from Daniel Lamotte’s billfold and laid it on the table. Then she nodded. “… That’d be the one. Looker like her, you’d have thought she coulda done better.”
“What do you mean?”
“Guy’s obviously a boozer. Last time, f ’instance, came in okay but could barely stand up came time to leave. Lolling like Raggedy Anne. Woman had to help him—and, believe me, I know what a bastard that one is. Probably pissed his pants.”
“He was that bad?”
“What do I care? Woman say she had a car outside, and that was the last I heard and I ain’t talking to no police…”
He let all of that sink in. After all, April Lamotte had told him that she’d first met Dan at this diner on her way back from shifts at the Met, and that they’d come here since to discuss his work. And he knew that she was more than capable of doping someone. What it sounded like this waitress was describing was April Lamotte drugging and abducting her husband later on the very same Friday morning that Barbara Eshel last remembered hearing him typing in room 4A. What felt weird wasn’t the oddness of this, but the fact that it made sense.
“When they were talking before that, how did they seem?”
“He was plain agitated. Like he had something big and exciting he needed to explain.”
“Didn’t happen to hear what he was saying, did you?” He put out his cigarette in the tin ashtray and unfolded another one buck note.
Mary Hamilton skewed her mouth as she stared at him, then at the note, and then back at him again. “No,” she said eventually. “Like I said, he seemed agitated. And she was trying to calm things down at first. You know, being reasonable, the way us women are when men do what they’re best at an’ act pecker-stupid. At least, that was the drift. Spend too much time listening to what people say in this joint and you’d end up even more cracked than you are.”
“Anything happened since? People in asking questions?” She shook her head.
“Well thanks, Mary. I’ll have the standard breakfast with an extra glass of squeezed orange and a large coffee.”
“Well, hallelujah.” Mary Hamilton scribbled his order. “Used to be there, didn’t you?” she added as she bunched the notes from the table into her apron pocket.
“There what?”
She gazed up and away from him into the diner haze. Something softened the harsher edges of her face. “Up on that screen…” Her hand went to her hip. “Now, what was your name… ?”
“I used—”
“No, no, no—don’t tell me! I like things to stay the way they were. Meet someone. Talk to them. Find out they got bad breath and want to sell you dishcloths an’ aint too careful about how they prune their nails. All it does is mess with a girl’s head. I’ll go get that coffee…” She turned to slump away.
“Uh, one last thing, Mary.” She swiveled.
“That man and the woman. Where exactly were they sitting?”
“Over there,” she nodded to the furthest, darkest corner of Edna’s Eats.
“You mean where that couple are?”
“What couple?”
“That couple who were arguing over in the back…” He trailed off. The booth was empty.
“There ain’t been no couple there, Mister. Ain’t served no one there all morning. Now, are you sure you want that extra juice… ?”