I tapped a couple of times on the door. A moment later a dusty blue curtain was pulled back and a pair of dark eyes set against brown skin stared out, then ran up and down me like a scanner. The lock rattled and then the door opened a crack.
“Yes,” a warbling voice said. “What can I do for you, please?” Strange accent, like a stand-up comedian’s parody of an Indian accent.
“I’m looking for someone who’s supposed to be staying here. I wonder if you could help me.”
The door cracked open a bit further. I could see an entire human head in front of me now, skin dark brown, eyes nearly black, the whites a catchy shade of yellow. The head was also at a level with my sternum, leading me with my superior deductive powers to assume I was speaking to a very short person.
“Are you the police, please?” he demanded.
“No, just a friend of a friend.” I smiled at him as benignly as I knew how and kept my hands where he could see them. I also wanted, if at all possible, to keep from having to produce my investigator’s license. I don’t know why, but I had a feeling nosy official-looking people weren’t welcome here.
“Who do you want to see, please?”
“Mike Pinkleton. I understand he’s staying here.”
“What is your name, please?”
“Harry Denton,” I said. “If you’d tell him I’m a friend of Slim Gibson’s, I’d appreciate it.”
“Stay right where you are, please,” he said, the Rs rolling off his tongue as thick as curried eggplant. I nodded as the door shut and the locks clicked back into place. Thirty seconds later the door opened again, this time wider.
“Mr. Pinkleton says you can go to see him, please,” the man said. “He is in room number seventeen.”
“Thanks,” I said, “Mr.-”
“I am Mr. V. S. Naipur and it is my pleasure to serve you,” he said, then slammed the door and set the locks again.
“Okay,” I said to the door. I turned and checked the room numbers. Seventeen was diagonally across the parking lot, past the concrete swamp, nestled in the ninety-degree angle the two converging sides of the motel created. A black motorcycle sat out in front, chained to a support post for the awning that ran around the perimeter in front of the rooms. I crossed the lot and couldn’t help but notice that I was being checked out-subtle signs like curtains being pulled back, doors cracking open a half inch for just a second, then closing again with a whoosh. I wondered how many tenants had outstanding arrest warrants.
I stepped over a broken concrete planter onto the walkway, stepped up to the door, and knocked. The door was painted a rust red, with the paint peeling in half-dollar-size chunks. I turned and looked at the bike, an old Harley. I don’t know much about bikes, so didn’t recognize the model or anything. But this one was stripped to the bones, just engine and frame, and chopped as well, its front end extended several feet, with high-rise handlebars and a single speedometer between the forks. Simple, basic, two-axled hell-on-wheels.
No answer from inside. I knocked again. “Hello?” I called. “Mike?”
“C’mon in,” I heard from inside. I opened the door. It made a swishing sound as it brushed across a stiff, thick shag carpet of red and green.
The room was a typically cheap motel room that had been too long without maid service: dingy sheets turning gray and a thin pastel-blue blanket thrown haphazardly across an institutional bed; scarred, mismatched furniture; an old color TV flickering away soundlessly in the corner. Dirty laundry lay in several mounds throughout the room, and there was a general air of mold and decay, all mixed with the scent of institutional cleaner. I hadn’t smelled anything like it since my last visit to the men’s room at a bus station.
“Hello?” I called.
“Yeah, gimme a minute,” came a gruff voice from the bathroom. Then there was the rattling gurgle of a toilet flushing, followed by running water. I stood there awkwardly, wondering whether or not to sit down.
In a few more seconds, all six and a half feet of Mike Pinkleton plodded out of the bathroom. His hair was either soaking wet or incredibly greasy, and hung down in a jet-black, shiny mop below his shoulders. He was shirtless and barefoot, his right arm laced from shoulder to wrist with tattoos. When he turned toward me, his enormous belly shook and I saw that tattoos covered his chest and other arm as well. He wore a long, straight, salt-and-pepper beard and his bulbous nose was huge. I sensed that he was biker to the core, and had lived every second of his life full throttle, front wheel off the ground.
I instinctively took a step backward at the sight of him, something not exactly calculated to give me the upper hand in the body-language department. Couldn’t help it, though.
“Whaddid you say yer name was?” he asked. “I can’t understand that fucking Paki on the front desk.”
“Harry Denton,” I said. “I’m a friend of Slim Gibson’s.”
“Yeah, okay.” He stepped over to a round table in the corner, pulled a chair back, and shook it hard enough to scatter the dirty clothes on it all over the floor. He shoved it in my direction.
“Sit down.”
I moved around the piles of laundry and garbage, scooted the chair against the wall, and sat down. Pinkleton bent over, the seams on his greasy jeans straining, and opened a small refrigerator.
“Beer?” he asked, holding a can of Colt .45 malt liquor in my direction.
“No thanks.” Interesting definition of beer, I thought. He’d probably call a real Colt .45 a peashooter.
“Suit yourself.” He popped the top on the can, then strode past me to the bed. He settled down onto it with his head against the wall and the can balanced on his hairy gut.
“I don’t want to take up too much of your time,” I said. “I’ll get right to the point. Slim’s a friend of mine, but I’m also working for him. I’m a private investigator.”
He stared at me through a crack in his thick eyelids. I paused for a second, waiting for some reaction from him. All I got was an earthshaking belch.
“Slim’s in jail now, and it’s not likely we’ll get him out anytime soon without some evidence that he didn’t kill Rebecca Gibson. That’s what I’m looking for.”
He drained the rest of the beer can in one long gulp, then crushed it and tossed it in the corner. Real casual, this guy. He sat up and plunked his feet to the floor.
“So you thought you’d drop in on me here and get a confession, then go tell the cops and they’d let Slim go.” His voice was barely audible.
“That’d make my job simpler, but that’s not what I was expecting.”
He pulled open a drawer and fished around inside it, then pulled out a pack of smokes. He fumbled with the pack until a single cigarette extended outward. He grabbed it with his lips, then fired up a disposable butane and sucked in deeply.
“Goddamn cops grilled my ass for six hours,” he said. “Reamed me inside out. I didn’t have fucking nothing to do with killing Rebecca Gibson.”
“I understand she fired you a few weeks ago,” I said. Jeez, I hope this guy doesn’t go ballistic on me or anything.
“People get fired all the time.”
“Why’d she do it?”
He turned to me and I saw something in his eyes that made me think if he didn’t kill Rebecca Gibson, he could have. His lips were bared, revealing a set of yellow, rotten teeth with intermittent black gaps.
“She said I was stealing equipment.”
“Were you?”
Pinkleton got up and took two steps toward me, then stopped. His right hand clenched the cigarette so hard it twisted into a curve, then broke in two. The lit end fell on the floor and disappeared into the shag carpet. A surge of gunk came up into the back of my throat again, as bitter and vile as the last time.
“No,” he growled. I wasn’t going to ask him that again.
A thin wisp of smoke rose from the carpet. I pointed nervously toward it.
“Ugh,” I stammered, “that’s going to-”