Read Online A Smile on the Face of the Tiger by Loren D. Estleman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Loren D. Estleman
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there as well.
The ending he’d dictated wasn’t that much different from the end of the original version of
Paradise Valley;
the last scene in that one took place in a motel on a lake. He liked to write about anonymous lodgings in remote locations. Someone else knew about some other things he liked. The potato was ripe.
I called the Edencrest Retirement Home and got a nurse who said Mrs. Milbocker was busy at the opposite end of the building. I said I’d hold. I listened to Burt Bacharach for twelve minutes.
“This is Mrs. Milbocker.”
“Amos Walker again. Can you put Fleta Skirrett on the telephone?”
“I can’t, Mr. Walker. She had an episode.”
The receiver creaked in my grip. “What kind of episode?” She couldn’t have died on me. Booth would have scorned to write a scene like that.
“Nothing serious. She forgot she ate lunch and accused a nurse of plotting to starve her to death. She became so agitated we had to sedate her. You won’t be able to talk to her before tomorrow morning.”
“How late is your shift?”
“We’re shorthanded. I’m on until midnight.”
I gave her my home number. She already had the one at the office. “If she wakes up tonight, ask her where Gene Booth likes to fish.”
8
T he Alamo Motel clung to its spot on West Jefferson Avenue like a half-dead bush to the side of a cliff. It offered four tiers of rooms exactly the same size, entered from outside by way of elevated boardwalks with open staircases zigzagging between. The nearest thing to a renovation it had undergone in recent years was a brief period during which the
M
in
Motel
had been replaced with an
H
on the sign in front; an attempt to lure conventioneers from the Westin and Pontchartrain hotels downtown. It hadn’t worked, and after a while the
M
had gone back up to reassure transients they’d have a place to park. Jungle growth sprouted through cracks in the asphalt lot, green grunge and hornets’ nests occupied the brass-plated carriage lamps mounted on the outside walls above the doors to the rooms. That was as much life as the place showed most days.
I parked next to a handicapped slot where a Dodge truck stood on blocks with a young elm grown up through its front bumper and mounted the stairs to the top floor. The original owner’s aspirations showed in the numbering of the rooms: They started on the ground floor at 300, jumped from 310 to 400 on the next, and ended on the fourth floor at 610, where Lowell Birdsall lived. The idea was to make forty rooms seem like more than six hundred. It didn’t stop the owner from going broke when the Edsel bottomed out. The Fraternal Order of No-Necked Sicilians had owned it for a couple of years, intending to run it into the ground and burn it for the insurance, but it was a stubborn organism that refused to lose money beneath a certain level, and they sold it for what they had put into it. Now it survived as a combination welfare hotel for permanent residents and a stopping-place for visitors who wanted something a little more private than the Y but didn’t mind sharing their quarters with a few silverfish. Both the fire marshal and the building inspector overlooked the code violations at the request of the police, who enjoyed the convenience of knowing where to look when the mayor needed a drug bust.
In front of 610 I leaned on the leprous iron railing to finish my cigarette and watch the shadows cross the Detroit River on the other side of Jefferson. At that hour the Windsor skyline looked like a row of books of uneven heights and thicknesses. It was the only spot on the North American continent where you could look across at a foreign country without seeing either wilderness or tattoo parlors. I snapped the filter end at the homebound traffic and turned around and knocked on the door.
The man who opened it didn’t look like the son of an artist or a systems analyst or a man named Lowell Birdsall. He was built like a retired professional wrestler
The ending he’d dictated wasn’t that much different from the end of the original version of
Paradise Valley;
the last scene in that one took place in a motel on a lake. He liked to write about anonymous lodgings in remote locations. Someone else knew about some other things he liked. The potato was ripe.
I called the Edencrest Retirement Home and got a nurse who said Mrs. Milbocker was busy at the opposite end of the building. I said I’d hold. I listened to Burt Bacharach for twelve minutes.
“This is Mrs. Milbocker.”
“Amos Walker again. Can you put Fleta Skirrett on the telephone?”
“I can’t, Mr. Walker. She had an episode.”
The receiver creaked in my grip. “What kind of episode?” She couldn’t have died on me. Booth would have scorned to write a scene like that.
“Nothing serious. She forgot she ate lunch and accused a nurse of plotting to starve her to death. She became so agitated we had to sedate her. You won’t be able to talk to her before tomorrow morning.”
“How late is your shift?”
“We’re shorthanded. I’m on until midnight.”
I gave her my home number. She already had the one at the office. “If she wakes up tonight, ask her where Gene Booth likes to fish.”
8
T he Alamo Motel clung to its spot on West Jefferson Avenue like a half-dead bush to the side of a cliff. It offered four tiers of rooms exactly the same size, entered from outside by way of elevated boardwalks with open staircases zigzagging between. The nearest thing to a renovation it had undergone in recent years was a brief period during which the
M
in
Motel
had been replaced with an
H
on the sign in front; an attempt to lure conventioneers from the Westin and Pontchartrain hotels downtown. It hadn’t worked, and after a while the
M
had gone back up to reassure transients they’d have a place to park. Jungle growth sprouted through cracks in the asphalt lot, green grunge and hornets’ nests occupied the brass-plated carriage lamps mounted on the outside walls above the doors to the rooms. That was as much life as the place showed most days.
I parked next to a handicapped slot where a Dodge truck stood on blocks with a young elm grown up through its front bumper and mounted the stairs to the top floor. The original owner’s aspirations showed in the numbering of the rooms: They started on the ground floor at 300, jumped from 310 to 400 on the next, and ended on the fourth floor at 610, where Lowell Birdsall lived. The idea was to make forty rooms seem like more than six hundred. It didn’t stop the owner from going broke when the Edsel bottomed out. The Fraternal Order of No-Necked Sicilians had owned it for a couple of years, intending to run it into the ground and burn it for the insurance, but it was a stubborn organism that refused to lose money beneath a certain level, and they sold it for what they had put into it. Now it survived as a combination welfare hotel for permanent residents and a stopping-place for visitors who wanted something a little more private than the Y but didn’t mind sharing their quarters with a few silverfish. Both the fire marshal and the building inspector overlooked the code violations at the request of the police, who enjoyed the convenience of knowing where to look when the mayor needed a drug bust.
In front of 610 I leaned on the leprous iron railing to finish my cigarette and watch the shadows cross the Detroit River on the other side of Jefferson. At that hour the Windsor skyline looked like a row of books of uneven heights and thicknesses. It was the only spot on the North American continent where you could look across at a foreign country without seeing either wilderness or tattoo parlors. I snapped the filter end at the homebound traffic and turned around and knocked on the door.
The man who opened it didn’t look like the son of an artist or a systems analyst or a man named Lowell Birdsall. He was built like a retired professional wrestler
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