Chump Change Read Online Free PDF Page B

old man’s political machine. High enough up the chain of command that he’d done eighteen months in prison for election fraud when the whole thing came apart.
    “In the can, pulling thirty on a failure to appear,” George growled.
    I pulled an eight-by-ten photograph from my coat pocket and laid it on the table. The guy from the morgue. Postmortem.
    “Anybody know this guy?” I asked in a loud voice. My theory was that if this guy had been living as hard as it appeared he had, well . . . you know . . . birds of a feather and all of that. The ferry receipt said he’d been in Seattle earlier in the week. Anything was possible, I supposed.
    “He don’t look so good,” Heavy Duty Judy commented.
    “Tends to happen when you’re dead,” I said.
    One by one, everybody slid over and had a peek at the photo. No go.
    I caught Mick the bartender’s eye and made a circling motion with my hand. Give everybody one on me . Another cheer rose from the assembled multitude. I reached into my pocket to pull out my roll. The skeleton key from the dead guy’s pocket came out with the money and dropped on the table with a clank.
    The little skinny guy whose name I couldn’t recall pointed at it.
    “Baltimore,” he muttered.
    “Charm City,” I said affably.
    He shook his shaggy head. “Hotel Baltimore down in Jap Town.” He tapped the key with a filthy finger. “They got keys just like that.”

     
    Jap Town. That’s what they called it back before WWII. Back before they packed all those loyal Japanese Americans off to godforsaken relocation camps and appropriated their private property. These days it goes by the more politically correct moniker of the International District . Same place, different sensibility .
    The Hotel Baltimore was a four-story, redbrick hangnail of a joint. Maybe twenty rooms wedged between a defunct dry cleaner and a Chinese auto body shop on South Larimore Street. Unlike most roach hotels, which, over time, devolve into slums, the Hotel Baltimore had been a roach pit from the very beginning. In 1898, the Klondike Gold Rush had stuffed the city to the bursting point with wide-eyed would-be millionaires on their way to the Alaskan goldfields. The Hotel Baltimore had been slapped together in a scant three weeks, for the purpose of packing them in like cordwood, six to a room, sniffing each other’s feet, for four bucks a night, while they waited anxiously for the next passage north.
    Negative fourteen stars in the Forbes Travel Guide , the place smelled of piss and poverty. The guy manning the desk wore a wifebeater undershirt and one of the worst toupees I’d ever seen. Looked like a cat had curled up on his head for a nap.
    Over to the left of the window, what I figured to be the Hotel Baltimore’s complaint department lounged in a battered Morris chair from the 1930s. Guy looked like a pro wrestler gone to seed. The sight of me approaching the desk garnered his attention. Apparently, I didn’t look much like a customer, which, as I saw it, was a good thing. He dropped the racing form onto his belly and pulled his outstretched brogans back under himself.
    “Help ya?” the guy behind the desk asked.
    I smiled and slid the photo his way. “You know this guy?”
    He pretended the picture wasn’t there. Just kept looking at me.
    “You want a room?”
    “I want to know if you’ve ever seen this guy.”
    The bruiser pushed himself up out of the chair and began shuffling in my direction. I tapped the photo. “What about it?” I asked the clerk.
    “We got a real discerning clientele,” Wifebeater said with a gap-toothed grin. “Real touchy about their privacy, you know.”
    “I’m not a cop,” I said.
    “You sure look like a cop.”
    I turned toward the voice. The bouncer came bellying right up to me. Close enough to smell the onions on his breath. “You probably oughta get the fuck outta here,” he said.
    “When I’m done,” I replied.
    That seemed to amuse him. He showed me an