Page 15

That was the same story Alma May had got.

“Well, all right, you know this fella?” I pulled out the photograph and pressed it against the glass.

“Well, he might look like someone got a room here. We don’t sign in and we don’t exchange names much.”

“No? A class place like this.”

“I said he might look like someone I seen,” he said. “I didn’t say he definitely did.”

“You fishing for money?”

“Fishing ain’t very certain,” he said.

I sighed and put the photograph back inside my coat and got out my wallet and took out a five-dollar bill.

Frog Man saw himself as some kind of greasy high roller. “That’s it? Five dollars for prime information?”

I made a slow and careful show of putting my five back in my wallet. “Then you don’t get nothing,” I said.

He leaned back on his stool and put his stubby fingers together and let them lay on his round belly. “And you don’t get nothing neither, jackass.”

I went to the door on my right and turned the knob. Locked. I stepped back and kicked it so hard I felt the jar all the way to the top of my head. The door flew back on its hinges, slammed into the wall. It sounded like someone firing a shot.

I went on through and behind the desk, grabbed Frog Man by the shirt, and slapped him hard enough he fell off the stool. I kicked him in the leg and he yelled. I picked up the stool and hit him with it across the chest, then threw the stool through a doorway that led into a kitchen. I heard something break in there and a cat made a screeching sound.

“I get mad easy,” I said.

“Hell, I see that,” he said, and held up a hand for protection. “Take it easy, man. You done hurt me.”

“That was the plan.”

The look in his eyes made me feel sorry for him. I also felt like an asshole. But that wouldn’t keep me from hitting him again if he didn’t answer my question. When I get perturbed, I’m not reasonable.

“Where is he?”

“Do I still get the five dollars?”

“No,” I said, “now you get my best wishes. You want to lose that?”

“No. No, I don’t.”

“Then don’t play me. Where is he, you toad?”

“He’s up in room fifty-two, on the fifth floor.”

“Spare key?”

He nodded at a rack of them. The keys were on na

ils and they all had little wooden pegs on the rings with the keys. Numbers were painted on the pegs. I found one that said 52, took it off the rack.

I said, “You better not be messing with me.”

“I ain’t. He’s up there. He don’t never come down. He’s been up there a week. He makes noise up there. I don’t like it. I run a respectable place.”

“Yeah, it’s really nice here. And you better not be jerking me.”

“I ain’t. I promise.”