Roy’s room was downstairs and on the other side of Elsie’s parlor, so you could go in and out without having to go by Elsie. I took Mr. Winkley out and set him down on the sidewalk.
“Go away,” I said. “I don’t ever want to see you again.” I hated to do that to him, but I thought it was better than the police taking his eye out, and I knew that someday he’d go away like all my other friends, and so I might as well get it over with now, and get away from everybody. I didn’t want to be anybody’s friend, because I was Nancy’s friend and it didn’t do her any good.
“Go on,” I said. I pushed him down the sidewalk with my foot until finally he waved his paw and hissed at me and ran off. Then I went back in the hotel to the supply closet and got a hammer. I was going to get that guy that killed Nancy. The only problem was, I didn’t have any leads, except that Roy had said that everybody else knew who the guy was, and I thought that was true because everybody always knew things and I didn’t, and they never wanted to tell me.
I went to Howie’s room and knocked on his door.
“I trust that you are here to apologize for your behavior and to tell me that you have returned the item you took from Francine’s room,” he said.
“I’m all done fooling around,” I said. I was waving my hands in the air. “I want you to tell me everything you know.”
Howie was looking at the hammer in my hand. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, “but I assure you, Willy, that violence is not the answer.”
“Then what is the answer, Howie? What do you know about some guy that was going in Nancy’s window?”
“I can only imagine as to the sort of company she kept. I certainly wouldn’t know who her friends were.”
“I’m her friend,” I said, “and I’m going to get that guy. So screw you, you fat queer.”
I knocked on Gladys’s door and called her name. I kept knocking.
“It’s me,” I said. “Open the door, Gladys.”
“I’m not in,” she said. “Stop being such a little pest.”
She wouldn’t come to the door, so I started pounding on the door casing with the hammer. I was pounding on it when she opened the door.
She didn’t want to talk to me and she jumped back and closed and locked the door on me.
“Tell me what you know!” I said.
She said I was a little freak and to go away.
“And you’re an old junky whore,” I said.
I knocked on the Colonel’s door, and I didn’t know if he was still in his trance or if he just didn’t want to talk to me. I started to walk away, and then I walked back and kicked his door. I stood there looking at the door.
“You’re nothing but a big blowhard!” I said. “I’m not your friend anymore. I don’t want anything to do with you. From now on, you see me coming you better walk the other way. Did you hear what I just said?” He didn’t answer.
I was walking down the hall swinging the hammer and thinking about that guy coming in Nancy’s window, and how I was going to get him, and what I was going to do to him once I got him. Nobody would even talk to me, and I thought I didn’t have any friends except Roy. My ribs started squeezing me again like they were trying to make me cry, and that really made me mad, so I started hitting the wall with the hammer. I went down the stairs and Elsie was standing there at the bottom.
“What’s going on?” she said. “What happened?”
I held up the hammer. “This is what’s going on,” I said. “This is what happened.”
“Put the hammer down,” she said. “Put it down now.”
“I’ll put it down on some guy’s head,” I said.
I pushed past her and headed for the door. She called my name but I just kept walking. I went out and Stanley was standing there on the sidewalk leaning against the wall smoking cigarettes. “Get out of my way, dummy,” I said. I pushed him out of my way and went down the street.
I didn’t have any clues and nobody wanted to tell me anything. I walked around town, and everybody got out of my way. Finally I got tired of walking around looking for the guy when I didn’t even know what he looked like. I was standing there hitting the corner of a brick building with the hammer and trying to think what I was going to do. Roy had told me to break into Nancy’s room and get all the evidence, and I wanted to break something anyway.
“Hey hot shot.”
I looked up and Francine was standing there holding a blanket like she had a baby in it. I thought probably she had the statue in there and was making pretend it was a baby.
“Is that the hammer you threw at Elsie?” she said.
“I didn’t throw a hammer at her.”
“I heard different, hot shot. It’s all over the hotel. Everybody’s waiting for you to come in the door.”
“What have you got in the blanket?” I said.
“What I got ain’t none of your business,” she said. “What I got, honey, you wouldn’t even know what to do with it.”
“Is it a new doll? Let me see.”
“Oh, all right.” She uncovered the baby’s head, but it wasn’t the statue; just a doll. I thought I was never going to find that statue.
“Elsie’s going to kick you out of the hotel,” she said. “What a dummy. You ain’t got no sense.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I’m not going back there anyway. I don’t want anything to do with that lying bitch or anybody else in that dump.”
“Where you going? Back under the bridge?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve got a better place to go.” It seemed like everybody knew about my secret place.
“You taking Mr. Winkley with you?” she said. “You shouldn’t ought to make him live under a bridge. That ain’t no place for him.”
“He ran away. I think he’s living in one of those big houses on the other side of town, because that’s the direction he was headed the last time I saw him. The rich people live over there, and somebody will take him in. You haven’t seen him around, have you?”
“No, I ain’t seen him,” she said. “He probably got lost. You better go looking for him.”
“Have you seen some guy with a statue walking around?” I said.
“I ain’t seen nobody,” she said.
“If you do, let me know. Some guy had been going into Nancy’s room, and I think that guy killed her.”
“Who?”
“Some guy. I don’t know; a drug dealer. If you see some guy with a statue, that’s the guy I’m looking for.”
“What kind of a statue?”
“A statue of the Virgin Mary, about this big.”
“I don’t know nothing. I’m a dummy just like you. Honey, you don’t look so good. You better go back to the hotel and see if you can sneak by Elsie and get some sleep.”
“I’m not going back,” I said. “Anyway, there’s something I have to do.”
“I’ll see you later, hot shot,” she said. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot; you better take the back way home. The cops are looking for you.”
“Why? What did I do?”
“You threw a hammer at Elsie.”
“No I didn’t.” I smacked the corner of the building with the hammer and a chunk of brick flew off.
“I’m getting out of here,” she said.
She left, and it seemed that nobody wanted to talk to me. I decided there was one thing I was going to do right; I was going to get the guy that killed Nancy and take care of him myself. I wasn’t even going to report to Roy until after I’d already fixed the guy. I’d show Roy the kind of work I could do, and then he’d have other jobs for me.
I went around in a big circle so I’d stay away from the cops and end up in back of the hotel, and I climbed the fire escape to Nancy’s window.
I figured there had to be something in that room—a piece of paper with a name or a phone number or address, or a cigarette butt under the bed—that would give me some kind of a clue. I didn’t know what to look for, so I figured I’d just take as much stuff as I could carry, anything that looked like evidence. Then I’d get all the evidence out of the dumpster and put it in the supply closet and in my room just like Roy told me to.
I didn’t think Elsie would ever let me back in the hotel, though, and I thought I was never going back to my room, so I don’t know how I could have been thinking different things at the same time. I was so mad I couldn’t see straight.
I got all ready to break the window with the hammer when I heard something moving around in the dumpster. Francine had said the cops were looking for me and I thought maybe there was a cop in the dumpster. I looked down and it was Mr. Winkley in there. He started yowling and he had something in his mouth. I was glad to see him, but I wanted him to be quiet because there might be cops around.
“Shhh!” I said. “Shut up!”
He kept yowling and I went to throw the hammer at him but I couldn’t because I was afraid it might hit him. He looked up at me, and I shook the hammer at him and told him to shut up. He ran up the fire escape and he had a mouse in his mouth, probably the same one I’d dropped out Roy’s window and he’d gone back and picked it up again. I was kneeling at the window and he was rubbing up against me and turning in circles with his tail in the air, and he wasn’t even mad at me. I didn’t want him to eat the mouse and get sick, so I took it out of his mouth and dropped it to the ground.
Every time I’d try to swing the hammer at the window he’d get in the way and start rubbing up against me. I picked him up to get him out of my way. If I’d remembered how every time I picked him up I couldn’t be mad anymore, then I never would have picked him up in the first place. But once I did, I went all weak and limp like a rag doll, and I thought I shouldn’t break Nancy’s window, no matter what Roy said.
I carried Mr. Winkley down the fire escape and set him down on the ground, and he ran behind the dumpster to get his mouse.
I went back there to get him, and that’s when I saw the window screen. It was lying on the ground in back of the dumpster, and I hadn’t even noticed that Nancy’s screen was missing, and I knew it was in the window the day before she died, because I’d seen Mr. Winkley go through the hole in her screen that day. I wondered how Roy knew the killer went in through the window. It was hot the night Nancy died. She must have had her window open. Just because it was closed and latched when the killer left didn’t mean it was closed when he went in. He came up the fire escape, reached in through the hole in the screen—where Mr. Winkley always went in and out—and unlatched and took out the screen. Then he went in the window and closed and latched it from inside. He should have put the screen back in the window, but he didn’t. Then I remembered that when Roy took his window screen out for me to drop the mouse out his window, I had to put it back for him because he only had one arm.
Mr. Winkley was sitting there with the mouse in his mouth, looking up at me.
“Rrrrroy,” he said.
“Roy,” I said. “It was Roy.”
But I couldn’t prove anything, not without the statue, and it looked to me like Roy was going to get away with it.
I still had the hammer and I turned it around in my hand and looked at it, and swung it a few times. I always liked tools. Then I went out along the side of the hotel toward the front of the building and looked around the corner. Roy’s car wasn’t in the parking lot. I figured he was probably at The Sporters’ Club, because he always hung out there. They had a dress code and you had to be a member to get in. It was on the other side of town.
I told Mr. Winkley to stay, and I started walking with the hammer like I was going someplace. I kept looking back to make sure nobody was following me, and I didn’t see anybody. I went down a trail in the woods and when I got to where the trail went in back of the shoe factory I sat down against the chain link fence and lit a cigarette. They had wooden pallets in the yard. If you ever have to get into a locked car and you don’t have a slim jim with you, you can make one from a piece of the steel they use to strap stuff to pallets. They just throw the old strapping away, but you can make things from it; a slim jim, or a knife; lots of things.
The sun had gone down, but it wasn’t dark yet. I was sitting there against the fence with no place to go, and Roy was sitting in Sporters’ having drinks and being a big shot with all his buddies and probably bragging about how he killed Nancy. He’d be in there until after dark, and maybe—just maybe—one night he’d leave Sporters’ and unlock and open the door to get in his car and the dome light wouldn’t come on, and he’d think it was just the bulb burned out or something like that, and he wouldn’t see the guy scrunched down behind the driver’s seat, with a hammer or a knife or something.
But I wasn’t a hammer like Roy said; he was just making fun of me. And I wasn’t a knife either. That hammer was getting heavy, and I set it down on the ground.
I knew that Roy didn’t have the statue, but he must have used it to hold the door panel open so he could reach in and lock Nancy’s door from the hallway, and he had to have taken the statue with him. I knew he didn’t get rid of it, because he’d been looking for it; so either he lost it or somebody took it from him. He acted like he owned the cops and nobody could touch him, but he wanted that statue as much as I did, because he was scared he’d get caught and end up in prison.
Something was moving around in the bushes. I reached for the hammer, and Mr. Winkley came out. He’d been following me all along, but he’d been hiding until he saw me let go of the hammer. I tossed the hammer over the fence and he came over and sat down and looked at me like he was wondering when he was going to eat and where we were going to spend the night.
“I don’t know,” I said. Then I remembered the retainer money Roy had given me. I reached into my pocket but there was a hole in it and the money was gone. I was glad in a way, because it was probably Nancy’s money.
I picked up Mr. Winkley and walked around for a while, and we ended up back at the hotel. Stanley was still leaning against the wall, standing in a pile of cigarette butts and wouldn’t look at me. I stood there looking at the door, and above the door there were two cement lions’ faces with their tongues sticking out, and “MORPHEVM” carved into a big block of cement set in the bricks over the door. I thought those lions might have been sticking their tongues out at me.
It was getting dark and cold, and my jacket was in my room. I looked at Stanley and tried to get him to look at me.
“Stanley,” I said. He opened the door and waved for me to follow him in. We walked to the end of the hall where we could see around the corner to Elsie’s parlor. Then he held his hand up to tell me to stay there, and he went to Elsie’s door, pointed at her with his finger, then pointed the finger down at the palm of his other hand and made circles with it, just like he’d done to me when we were at the park. She gave him some paper and a pencil, and he wrote something and handed it to her.
“I’ll get it for you, Stanley,” she said. She went into the other room and Stanley waved me on and I carried Mr. Winkley past her parlor.