Memory (Hard Case Crime) Read online

  He would continue to live. There was no particular reason to go on living, but on the other hand there was no particular reason to stop living, and of the two it was living that would take the least energy. So he was back to the question: What now?

  A place to live, of course, that was number one. And a job. Some sort of life would gradually build up around him, inevitably, the way barnacles gradually build up on a keel. There was no point in going back to New York, no more point than there was in staying here in Hammunk. The two were the same, all in all; it just happened that Hammunk was where he was.

  He went into the storefront bus depot, to ask about a hotel. There were always elderly people on duty in these places; in this instance, an old man, hunched over a copy of the newspaper Cole had seen outside. Cole asked him about an inexpensive hotel, and was told to try the Kent, three blocks down to the left. Cole thanked him and went outside again.

  It was four-thirty in the afternoon, just beginning to get dark. There were practically no pedestrians on the sidewalks, and only an occasional Chevrolet or Plymouth passing with rattling chains on the street. Cole walked along, and in the middle of the second block he passed a building with green lights flanking the doorway, and police station in gold letters on the glass of the doors. Cole glanced at it, and went on a few paces, and then stopped, remembering again the square of shiny metal. Something to do with police.

  Not that it meant anything. He no longer believed that learning about the square of shiny metal would help him in any way—it wouldn’t help him find Edna—but still it was nagging at him, unresolved, so after a moment of indecision he went back and climbed the police station steps and went inside.

  There was a small room with a high counter across near the front, and a man in a gray uniform with blue chevrons on the sleeves sitting on a high stool behind the counter. He looked at Cole without interest and said, “Can I help you?”

  “I don’t know. I want to ask you about something.” But then he didn’t know how to go on, and he stopped, trying to arrange his thoughts.

  The policeman waited, with disinterested patience.

  Cole said, “I’ve got a memory problem. I was in a, in an accident one time, and now my memory’s bad, and there’s something I can’t exactly remember, except it had something to do with the police.”

  The policeman was watching him with flat eyes. He said, “What’s that?”

  “A square of shiny metal. I guess it was about a foot square, and polished, so you could see yourself in it.”

  “A square of shiny metal? You mean a badge?” He pointed at his own.

  “No, a thin square of metal, flat. No design on it or anything.”

  The policeman shook his head. “I wouldn’t know what that might be,” he said. “Not in connection with the police. Maybe something used in construction work somewhere, that’s what it sounds like. You ever in construction work?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  The policeman shrugged. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Well...thank you.”

  “Quite all right.”

  Cole turned away, and started for the door, and the policeman said, “Wait a second.”

  Cole looked around at him.

  The policeman said, “Your memory’s bad, huh?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You ever get picked up, maybe just wandering around not knowing where you were?”

  Cole thought of the detective in Deerville. “I guess I was picked up one time, yes.”

  “Well, I never heard of anybody using a piece of shiny metal, but maybe so. I’ve seen it done with a glass, that’s all. You know, a drinking glass, offer the suspect a glass of water.”

  “Why?”

  “To get his fingerprints. You know, you don’t want to book him, or you don’t want to get him so worried he’ll fly the coop if you’re just checking him out, so instead of going through the whole rigmarole with the ink, you just get his fingerprints on something. A highly polished piece of smooth metal, now, that would do that trick.”

  “To get my fingerprints.” Cole was holding his canvas bag in his left hand; he raised his right hand palm upward and looked at the tips of his fingers.

  “Sure,” said the policeman. “To find out who you are.”

  “To find out who I am.” Cole smiled with one side of his face. “That’s funny,” he said.

  “Is it?” The policeman was watching him with his flat eyes.

  “Yes, it is. It’s really very funny.” Cole turned away, nodding, looking at his fingertips. “Very very funny,” he murmured, and went outside, and turned left, and continued on to the hotel.

  It was a small grimy hotel, and he could get a room without bath for three dollars a day. He paid for one night, left his canvas bag in the room, went back downstairs, and asked the clerk did he know if the tannery was looking for workers. The clerk said he thought Cole would have better luck at the plastics plant, and gave him directions to get there.

  At the plant, a girl told him to sit on that bench over there and wait. Sitting there, he patted his shirt pocket, looking for his cigarettes, but on the bus he’d switched them to his overcoat pocket. He reached in the wrong pocket of the overcoat first, and pulled out a folded sheet of paper which he at first didn’t recognize. He put it down on the bench beside him, and got his cigarettes out, and then opened the sheet of paper to see what it was. It said:

  Edna

  Malloy

  542 Charter St.

  Black Jack

  Bellman

  Cole’s Tavern

  He put the paper down and tried to get a cigarette out of the pack, but his hands were trembling and the pack spurted away, cigarettes flying out and rolling around on the floor like little white bodies. He got down on his knees and picked them all up again, stuffing them back into the pack. Then he took the piece of paper and wadded it up and carried it across the room and dropped it in the wastebasket beside the desk.

  “I wouldn’t have been happy there anyway,” he said. He could have cried then, at last, but the girl was coming back.

  Gripping Suspense From Donald E. Westlake’s Legendary Alter Ego

  Lemons NEVER LIE

  by RICHARD STARK

  When he’s not pulling heists with his friend Parker, Alan Grofield runs a small theater in Indiana. But putting on shows is expensive and jobs have been thin, which is why Grofield agrees to listen to Andrew Myers’ plan to knock over a brewery in upstate New York.

  Unfortunately, Myers’ plan is insane—so Grofield walks out on him. But Myers isn’t a man you walk out on...

  RAVES FOR ‘LEMONS NEVER LIE’:

  “This first-rate hard-boiled mystery...reads like Raymond Chandler with a dark literary whisper...of Cormac McCarthy.”

  — Time

  “The prose is clean, the dialogue laced with dry humor, the action comes hard and fast.”

  — George Pelecanos

  “Lemons Never Lie is a delight—a crime story that leaves you smiling.”

  — Washington Post

  “The best Richard Stark ever.”

  — Paul Kavanagh

  Available now at your favorite bookstore. For more information, visit www.HardCaseCrime.com