A couple of days later I went out for a newspaper. The police hadn’t been back and nobody had gone into Nancy’s room. I walked down the hallway and stopped at her door. It was too quiet in the hotel with Nancy gone.
She didn’t have any relatives, not that anybody knew of. Gladys wrote a story about Nancy for the newspaper, and she ended up having to make up some of it, to fill in the blanks.
“She did have a life,” Gladys said. “She was somebody.”
The reason I was going out for a paper was that I thought maybe Gladys’s story would be in it. I took a canvas shopping bag with me but I didn’t really plan to do much shopping. It was a big bag and you could put a lot of stuff in it and nobody would ever know.
Mostly I just wanted to go out. It was a nice day, and I probably didn’t feel as sad as I was supposed to. Anyway, I was thinking that by the time I got back with the paper it would be time for lunch, and if I cleaned the bathroom and mopped the hallway for Elsie, then she might give me some of her soup.
I always skipped down the stairs because I liked to hear my shoes going kaboom kaboom kaboom. When I was passing Elsie’s parlor Stanley was in there. I stopped. He was sitting in my chair, watching the TV with the sound off and eating a sandwich. Elsie was stirring soup on the hot plate.
“Willy, I need to have a word with you,” she said. She didn’t even look up from her soup, and I couldn’t think how she knew it was me; but like I told you, nothing ever got by her.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said.
“Somebody—never mind who—told me they saw an alley cat hanging around the dumpster out back. Have you seen any cats?”
“I didn’t see any cat,” I said. “There’s no cat out there.”
“There are no pets in this hotel. If I hear any more reports I’m calling the exterminator. I don’t want to see any cats.”
“You won’t,” I said. “Maybe it was a skunk. I’m pretty sure I might have seen a skunk out there.”
“If you saw a skunk, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I saw it all right,” I said, looking right at Stanley. “There’s a great big skunk that’s been hanging around here, right under your nose. I’m going make a trap and catch him.”
“I don’t want to hear any more of your foolishness. And another thing,” she said, shaking her spoon at me: “I won’t put up with you banging your feet every time you come down the stairs. I’ve told you enough times now and …”
I wasn’t going to listen to that, and I turned and went down the hall and around the corner. I had my hand on the door knob and I was standing there looking at the floor. I thought, It isn’t my fault Nancy died.
“Willy, I’m not done talking with you! Get back here.”
I opened the door to the street, kept it open for a few seconds, and slammed it shut, so that she’d think I’d gone out.
“I’ve had it with him,” she said to Stanley. “Six weeks behind on his rent, and I’m going to have to put him out. He doesn’t care about anything or anybody, not even himself.”
That was when I thought I heard Stanley go, “Uhm,” but I wasn’t sure.
“Would you like some soup with your sandwich, Stanley?” she said.
Then I definitely heard Stanley, with his big mouth stuffed full of the sandwich, go “Uhmmm. Uhm hm!”
Deaf and dumb my ass! I thought.
As I walked to City Market to get the newspaper, the pieces were coming together. I’d figured all along that he had an angle, and now, finally, I knew what it was: He pretended he was deaf and dumb so that people would think he wouldn’t repeat anything! That way, they’d tell him everything and he’d run right back and tell Elsie. I figured that he was the stool pigeon who ratted out Mr. Winkley to her. It all made sense.
He’d been spying for Elsie all along! I was so shocked that I walked past three cars with the windows open and keys left in the ignition and I hardly noticed, even though one of them was a Chevelle SS 396 with racing stripes and white interior, brand new with dealer plates.
He was Elsie’s spy! That explained how Elsie found out about the time that Francine threw Lucille out the window. And when the Colonel’s science experiment blew up, she’d found out about that too.
I was so lost in thought that I almost bumped into two guys in business suits who were trying to block the sidewalk and I had to tell them to get out of my way.
If I told anybody what I knew, then it would be all over the hotel: “Stanley talked! Willy heard him talking with Elsie!” Then it would be Stanley this and Stanley that, and everybody would be talking to him all the time. If there was one thing I couldn’t stand, it was a spy. I decided I was going to fix his wagon and make him shut his big mouth.
I went into City Market and there was nobody minding the store. The place was empty. I took a newspaper off the rack, walked to the cooler, grabbed a bottle of Thunderbird and waited at the counter.
“Anybody home?” I said.
There was no answer. The register was right there in front of me. With all the crime there was, you would think that Old Man Watson would have known better than to leave everything wide open like that. Grabbing the Thunderbird had been a reflex. I didn’t know if I had the money to pay for it.
I walked to the door and opened it, to see if Mr. Watson was maybe out sweeping the street or something like that, being careful to hold the bottle so that it stayed inside the store. I looked up and down the street and I didn’t see anybody. I wrapped the bottle in the newspaper so that it wouldn’t get broken, and started to put it in the shopping bag.
I heard Mr. Watson coming up the stairs from the basement. My knees buckled like my legs were getting ready to run, but my hands scrounged in my pockets and came up with ninety cents; a nickel short. The top half of me wasn’t going to follow my legs, and I didn’t know what I was going to do. I looked around and there was half of a nickel sticking out from the edge of the mat by the magazine rack. Mr. Watson was an old man and I picked up the nickel and was standing at the counter when he came in from the back.