which was unreachable by public transportation.
Teddy didn’t keep a car in San Francisco, and of course I didn’t
have a vehicle. In the room I rented in a house with six strangers in
Hayes Valley, I had a queen-size mattress, a desk, a computer, a TV and
stereo, an original Nintendo that I liked to play when stoned, some
books, and my bikes, but little else of consequence.
The walk brought me past the Ninth Circuit courthouse, which had
gotten itself stranded in this neighborhood of junkies and residence
hotels. Suddenly I realized I was standing in front of the Seward Hotel,
where Teddy kept a room.
I should let Anderson know about this little hidey-hole here in the
city, I thought—or maybe he’d even found it without my help. A pair
of squad cars was double-parked on Mission, and an ambulance with
its doors open and its lights flashing stood fifty yards farther down, the
driver relaxing with one elbow out the window.
I hesitated, then pushed open the heavy, splintered door, and went
inside.
The dark entrance hall hadn’t been renovated in at least fifty years,
I guessed. To my left was a closed door and beside it a scarred window
with a pass-through and a grille. Behind the window was a room with a
desk, a board with hooks for keys, and cubbyholes for mail. A miniature
black-and-white TV pushed up against the Plexiglas showed me myself.
The small but tough-looking man behind the desk took one look
at my new suit and tie and shook his head slowly, as if this just wasn’t
his day. He waved me on. “They’re up there,” he said. “Go on up. I’ll
buzz you through. They all got here about five minutes ago.”
I hesitated. “What was that number again?”
“Six-oh-nine. Take the stairs. Elevator’s broke.”
On the second-floor landing a single used needle lay in a dingy
spill of light on the windowsill. On an impulse I touched the needle’s
plastic shaft. It was still warm. The tip was smeared with blood. After
that I stopped paying attention to the scenery.
Only as I came to the sixth floor and heard the sounds of a woman
sobbing and a man muttering something over and over again did it
occur to me that the police would have no use for an ambulance crew
if they were here merely to search Teddy’s room.
I went out into the hall anyway.
Two uniformed officers stood outside the door of room 609 at the
far end of the hallway. Only a few doors were open between here and
there. Seeing a couple sitting on a bed in one of the open rooms, I
stopped and asked what happened.
“She killed him, that’s what,” said the man, a white guy in his late
thirties in a sleeveless undershirt that crumpled over his ribs. He had
unclean dreadlocks dangling above an oversize brow, a shadowy beard,
and black, broken fingernails. “Waited till he was sleeping, then stuck
a knife in his ribs.” He gave a barking laugh, and the petite darkhaired
woman on the bed beside him smiled like someone who didn’t
understand English. The man looked me over with a hungry eye, as if
trying to determine which of the suited classes I belonged to.
I went down the hall to the room. The paramedics were inside. I got
close enough to see blood spattered on the wall, and then one of the
uniformed cops blocked my path. On the bed a naked man sat flinching
while the paramedics worked on a gash in his shoulder. Contrary
to what the dreadlocked man had said, he was very much alive and
cut rather than stabbed. Still, there was a lot of blood. It had made a
dark pool on the sheets and spattered the floor. A woman huddled in
the corner with her head bowed against her handcuffed hands. “Just
looking for a client,” I told the cop and retreated, though it was difficult
to tear away my gaze.
I continued down the hallway to the open door, in shock that my
brother had actually lived in such a place, that he apparently considered
it restful. “You wouldn’t happen to know which room was Teddy
Maxwell’s?” I asked the dreadlocked guy.
“Third