following an economy-size ex-convict. Stealing a car and laying a trap isn’t procedure. Besides, the insurance company would have paid that off long ago, and hiked its rates to cover the loss. It’s like the money never existed.”
“Makes it all the more mine.”
We drove the last forty-five minutes in silence. I tried the radio and got the same static I’d gotten north of the straits. At that time I’d blamed it on the microwave telephone towers they use up there, but it was just the French getting back at us for New Orleans. We swept under a riot of layered overpasses into Detroit, lit by forty-foot lamps on both sides of the expressway to discourage motorized rapists. It was a warm night that far south and music drifted out of a dozen rolled-down windows. I asked DeVries if he had a place to stay.
“Deputy warden gave me a voucher for a dump called the Alamo on East Jefferson.” He patted his shirt pockets, then remembered he was wearing different clothes. “If it didn’t get soaked to pieces.”
“It’s a dump all right. I’ve got a couch at my place.”
“Ain’t you afraid I’ll cut your throat for the silverware?”
“You haven’t seen the silverware.”
“I got used to my own company a long time ago. Thanks just the same.”
The Alamo made a good case for being forgotten. The name was etched in sputtering orange neon across a plate-glass window with the shade pulled halfway down like a junkie’s eyelid and the front door, a thick paneled oak job that had been refinished under Truman, stuck in its casing and required a shoulder to open. Inside, a green brass lamp with a crooked paper shade oozed light onto a waist-high counter with a floor register in front of it to catch coins. It was someone’s job to empty it out once a month and pay the electric bill. On the wall behind the counter, next to a life-size acrylic painting on black velvet of John Wayne dressed as Davy-Crockett, a sign was tacked reading:
THE ALAMO HOTEL
(Permanents and Transients)
No Pet’s
No Children
No Visitor’s in Rooms
No TV or Radio after 10:00 P.M.
Enjoy Your Stay
A squashed fly dotted the i in “Children.”
We were sharing the lobby with a square of trod rug and a wicker chair on a pedestal fashioned after an elephant’s foot. DeVries slapped the bell on the counter. It went click. After a minute, John Wayne swung away from us and a cadaver in a shawl collar and brown wing tips came in through a door squirreled behind the painting. He was a tall item of forty or sixty, but nowhere near as tall as DeVries, with black hair pasted down on a narrow skull and fuzzy white sidewalls and white stubble on his chin. When he stopped at the counter with the light coming up at him through the opening in the top of the lampshade he looked just like Vincent Price.
DeVries got out the wrinkled voucher he had separated from the clothes in his overnight bag and smoothed it out on the counter. “ They told me this is good for a week,” he said.
Vincent Price didn’t look down at it. “Ten bucks.”
“They said the room’s paid for. State takes care of it.”
“The ten bucks is for you. Leave the paper.”
The big man ran a hand over his beard.
“Welfare scam,” I said. “He rents the room to somebody else for the regular rate, then turns the voucher in to the state and gets paid a second time. It happens a lot during the winter when Lansing remembers the tramps and bag ladies on the street.”
“I don’t want ten bucks. I want a room.”
Vincent Price hit the bell, and this time it rang. John Wayne got out of the way of a young, very fat black man in king-size green slacks and a paint-stained gray sweatshirt gnawed off above the elbows, who came in from the back and walked around the end of the counter to stand next to DeVries. He was carrying a Louisville Slugger.
The counterman said, “Take the ten or don’t, but leave the paper.”
DeVries took the baseball bat away and broke it over his knee.
“Makes it all the more mine.”
We drove the last forty-five minutes in silence. I tried the radio and got the same static I’d gotten north of the straits. At that time I’d blamed it on the microwave telephone towers they use up there, but it was just the French getting back at us for New Orleans. We swept under a riot of layered overpasses into Detroit, lit by forty-foot lamps on both sides of the expressway to discourage motorized rapists. It was a warm night that far south and music drifted out of a dozen rolled-down windows. I asked DeVries if he had a place to stay.
“Deputy warden gave me a voucher for a dump called the Alamo on East Jefferson.” He patted his shirt pockets, then remembered he was wearing different clothes. “If it didn’t get soaked to pieces.”
“It’s a dump all right. I’ve got a couch at my place.”
“Ain’t you afraid I’ll cut your throat for the silverware?”
“You haven’t seen the silverware.”
“I got used to my own company a long time ago. Thanks just the same.”
The Alamo made a good case for being forgotten. The name was etched in sputtering orange neon across a plate-glass window with the shade pulled halfway down like a junkie’s eyelid and the front door, a thick paneled oak job that had been refinished under Truman, stuck in its casing and required a shoulder to open. Inside, a green brass lamp with a crooked paper shade oozed light onto a waist-high counter with a floor register in front of it to catch coins. It was someone’s job to empty it out once a month and pay the electric bill. On the wall behind the counter, next to a life-size acrylic painting on black velvet of John Wayne dressed as Davy-Crockett, a sign was tacked reading:
THE ALAMO HOTEL
(Permanents and Transients)
No Pet’s
No Children
No Visitor’s in Rooms
No TV or Radio after 10:00 P.M.
Enjoy Your Stay
A squashed fly dotted the i in “Children.”
We were sharing the lobby with a square of trod rug and a wicker chair on a pedestal fashioned after an elephant’s foot. DeVries slapped the bell on the counter. It went click. After a minute, John Wayne swung away from us and a cadaver in a shawl collar and brown wing tips came in through a door squirreled behind the painting. He was a tall item of forty or sixty, but nowhere near as tall as DeVries, with black hair pasted down on a narrow skull and fuzzy white sidewalls and white stubble on his chin. When he stopped at the counter with the light coming up at him through the opening in the top of the lampshade he looked just like Vincent Price.
DeVries got out the wrinkled voucher he had separated from the clothes in his overnight bag and smoothed it out on the counter. “ They told me this is good for a week,” he said.
Vincent Price didn’t look down at it. “Ten bucks.”
“They said the room’s paid for. State takes care of it.”
“The ten bucks is for you. Leave the paper.”
The big man ran a hand over his beard.
“Welfare scam,” I said. “He rents the room to somebody else for the regular rate, then turns the voucher in to the state and gets paid a second time. It happens a lot during the winter when Lansing remembers the tramps and bag ladies on the street.”
“I don’t want ten bucks. I want a room.”
Vincent Price hit the bell, and this time it rang. John Wayne got out of the way of a young, very fat black man in king-size green slacks and a paint-stained gray sweatshirt gnawed off above the elbows, who came in from the back and walked around the end of the counter to stand next to DeVries. He was carrying a Louisville Slugger.
The counterman said, “Take the ten or don’t, but leave the paper.”
DeVries took the baseball bat away and broke it over his knee.
Similar Books
