Memory (Hard Case Crime) by Donald E. Westlake Page B

got directions to the Belvedere—it was about a block beyond the Wilson—thanked the old man, and carried his luggage out to the street. He was very tired now, and as he walked along, carrying his suitcase and canvas bag, he kept yawning. He couldn’t cover his mouth when he yawned, because of the luggage he was carrying. He tried ducking his head instead, but that constricted his jaw when it wanted to yawn wide, and made his neck and jaw ache, so he just walked along with his head up, yawning.
    He found the Belvedere, and was afraid at first it would be too expensive, because it had a canopy over the sidewalk, from the curb to the entrance. But then he saw that the canopy was very old, and so was the building. It might at one time have been moderately expensive, but no longer. It was a decaying pile of stone, looking as though it were settling back into the earth like an old German castle.
    There was a real lobby here, very small, with a real hotel desk, also very small. A man in a thick moustache and a yellow suit was on duty, and Cole asked him, “What are your weekly rates?”
    “Single?”
    “Yes.”
    “Kitchen privileges? Telephone? Private bath?”
    Cole said no to everything, not paying attention. If it was extra, he didn’t want it.
    The clerk said, “You can have a single for seventeen-fifty a week. Payment in advance.”
    “All right.”
    He gave the clerk Bellman’s two tens, and got two singles and two quarters in exchange. The clerk gave him a key, and instructions on finding his room and the communal bathroom. Cole went up the stairs to the third floor, found his room, and went in. It was smaller than the room at the Wilson, and maybe even older. He put down his suitcases, stripped, turned off the light, and went to bed. He had no trouble at all in going to sleep.
    There was no sunlight in his room when he woke up; the window faced the wrong way. He got up and dressed and went down the hall to the bathroom to wash. He had no towel, and there was no towel in the bathroom. He used toilet paper to dry his face and hands, which he’d had to wash without soap. He went back to the room and unpacked, putting his belongings in the dresser. He still had the key from the Wilson Hotel, and he was surprised to find it in his pocket, surprised that the young clerk hadn’t thought to get it back from him. But the clerk had been thinking too much of his own enjoyment. Cole opened the window and threw the key out. His window faced to the rear; a scrubby lot and, beyond that, the narrow curving Swift River.
    He wore his slacks today, and a sport shirt, and the sweater. He put all his money, seventeen dollars and ninety-seven cents, in his pockets, and then he left his room.
    He spent money like a miser. He had the cheapest breakfast at the diner, two hotcakes and orange juice and coffee, forty-five cents. Then he did his shopping, buying only what was absolutely necessary. He thought of buying a towel, but decided he could keep on using the toilet paper for the short time he’d be staying in this town. He did buy a cake of soap and a nineteen cent ballpoint pen and a twenty cent pad of lined paper, plus a loaf of bread and a package of cheese and a package of baloney. It all cost him a dollar ninety-three, and he carried his purchases back to his room in a brown paper bag. There were two smaller paper bags inside the big paper bag, and he saved these to carry his dinner in. He put the bread and cheese and baloney on the windowsill, outside the window, put the soap in a dresser drawer, and sat down on the bed with the ballpoint pen and the pad of paper.
    The first thing he did was write a note:
GO TO WORK AT TANNERY AT FOUR O’CLOCK EVERY DAY EXCEPT SUNDAY
    He fastened this piece of paper to the nail holding the list of hotel rules to the door, the paper lying over the framed rules. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed again, and started a second sheet of paper.
    He was trying to help his memory, get it working