The Deep

The Westhampton was a hotel for the nothing people. They came and went, sometimes stayed a while, sometimes even died there. It was an inexpensive and indifferent kind of hotel where you could find people who lived dangling from a thread. Struggling actors and out-of-town hopefuls used the place until their economy moved them down to squalid flea bags or up to the next notch.

I pushed through the door and scanned the lobby quickly. Two young girls in trench coats talked too loudly about some show while they waited for the elevator and by the front windows an old man in a smock dusted the backs of the chairs. Behind the desk the clerk was sorting mail out, whistling aimlessly while a transistor radio chatted at his elbow.

He nodded carelessly when I reached him, finished with the mail and said, “Room?”

“Cat told me to see you.”

He was one of the nothing people too. He had lived too long among them and taken on all their characteristics. Any expression that touched his face was unreal. Long ago he had discarded emotion for unconcern and now he just stood there playing the game.

“Cat?”

There were two ways of playing the game. I showed him the first way that generally everyone knew and laid a twenty-dollar bill on top of the counter. “That’s right, Cat,” I said.

He eyed the bill and I knew what he was thinking, but his face stayed impassive.

“Cat,” he stated, as if he were trying to remember the name.

So I showed him the other way to play the game and let my coat come open deliberately so he could see the rod in the belt holster and when I grinned at him he knew the game was over. “My name is Deep,” I said.

Deftly, his fingers snapped up the bill and tucked it away. His eyes swept the lobby behind me with a practiced glance and he fiddled with the card holder in front of him.

“Cat said you thought you could remember a number. The Wagner boys made it.”

“Yes.” He licked his dry lips. “But they...”

“Don’t worry about them,” I said coldly. “They’re both dead.”

He walked his eyes from the pad, up my front until he was drawn to my own. He had read a lot of faces in his time. He knew what kind of people were that kind who could stand behind a gun and use it, and now he was seeing it in me.

“I won’t... get rapped for this, will I?”

“You never saw me in your life before if anybody asks.”

“That Cat, I wish he didn’t ask. You tell him...”

“He’s dead too, buddy.”

“Cripes!” he said softly.

“What number was it!”

“Two-oh-two-oh-two. It rhymed. Sort of like a song. That’s how I remembered it.”

“Good. You remember the exchange!”

He said no with a quick shake of his head. But it was enough. I left him, walked across the room to the row of empty pay phones, climbed in the booth and shut the door. I got my party on the second try, gave him the number and asked for a listing of all exchanges that carried the number and the names to go with them. He asked for my number, told me to wait and hung up.

From across the room the desk clerk watched me like a mouse peering out of a hole.