Wolf Moon by Ed Gorman Page A

Whitney was busy with the usual drunks. Henry, a half-breed, had pissed his pants and was sleeping, mouth open and slack, propped up against a garbage can. A hobo with but one finger on his left hand was having some kind of nightmare, his whole body shaking and cries of "Mother! Mother!" caught in his throat. And there was Jesse-Jesse as in female, Jesse as in mother of three, Jesse as in town drunk. Most nights her kids (the father having been killed four years earlier in the mines) kept tight rein on her, but every once in a while she escaped and wandered the town like a graveyard ghost, and usually fell over unconscious in an alley.
        I debated waking them and making them leave. But that would only mean that one or two of them would possibly remember me.
        I made sure as I could that they were all sleeping, and then I climbed onto the fire escape that ran at an angle down the back of the Whitney.
        I moved fast. I could always say that I was following a suspicious character up here. But I wouldn't want to use that excuse unless I had to.
        Lundgren and Mars were staying on the fourth floor. I pulled the screen door open and went in. The hallway was empty. I started toward 406. In one of the rooms I passed, an old man was coughing so hard I thought he'd puke. The corridor smelled of whiskey and tobacco and sweat and kerosene from the lamps.
        I was two doors from 406 when 409 opened up and a man came out. He was so drunk he looked like a comic in an opera-house skit. He wore a messy black suit and a bowler that looked ready to slide off his bald head. He was weaving so hard, he nearly fell over backward.
        I pressed flat to the wall and stayed that way while the drunk managed to get his door closed and locked.
        He didn't once glance to his left. If he had, he would have seen me for sure.
        He tottered off, still a clown in an opera-house turn.
        Shaking, neither my stomach nor my bowels in good condition, I went to 406 and got it open quickly. You learn a lot of useful things in prison.
        The room was dark. Some kind of jasmine-scented hair grease was on the air. I felt my way across the room, touching the end of the bed, a bureau, and a closet door. By now I was able to see.
        I started in the bureau, working quickly. I found nothing special, the usual socks and underwear and shirts without their collars or buttons.
        I then moved to the closet. Nothing there, either.
        I was just starting to pick up one of the two carpet bags sitting on a straight-backed chair when I heard footsteps in the corridor.
        I paused, pulling my revolver.
        In the street below there was a brief commotion as a few drunks made their way from one saloon to another. In the distance a surrey jingled and jangled its way out of town.
        The footsteps in the hallway had stopped.
        Where had the man gone? Was it Lundgren or Mars coming back?
        My breathing was loud and nervous in the darkness. My uniform coat felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. My whole chest was cold and greasy with sweat.
        And then I heard him, whistling, or trying to-the drunk down the way, the one who'd barely been able to get his door locked. Easy enough to figure out what had happened. He had made his way down the stairs only to find that the people in the saloon wouldn't serve him. Too drunk. So he'd come back up here.
        It took him several minutes to insert key into lock, to turn doorknob, to step across threshold, to walk across floor, to fall across bed, springs squeaking beneath his weight. Within thirty seconds he was snoring.
        I went back to work.
        I took the first carpetbag to the bed and dumped everything out. The contents included an unloaded.45, a few more shirts without celluloid collars, and a small framed picture of a large, handsome women I guessed was his wife. I took it over to the window and hiked back the