Wild Town Read Online Free PDF Page B

to. And the expectation, coupled with the worry over what might be going on during his absence, kept him on nerve ends.
    Westbrook was a hotel man of the old school, of the days when it was a pleasure to stop at a hotel instead of an adventure into indifferent food and accommodations, insolently or ignorantly administered. Now, at the Hanlon, he tried to do too much with too pitifully little. The job might be killing him, but he had to have it. He was in his late fifties, and for the last ten years he had been fired from every job he held. So it was this job or nothing.
    …At eleven o’clock at night, he was in his mezzanine-floor office, re-auditing the hotel’s books for the last three months. It was the third time he had been through them, and the result had been the same each time. There was a broad, fixed smile on his face: a frozen grimace. In his mind, deliberately overlaid with protective dullness, was terror.
    Cold sober, Westbrook had many of the reactions of a man who is dead drunk. The direst personal catastrophe had no meaning for him. He could be face to face with a fact, yet remain completely withdrawn from it. He had been that way for years— God, how many years? Only when the alcoholic content of his blood was at a certain level could he think and act as he should.
    At last he pushed aside the papers and took a pint bottle from his desk. It was about a third full. It was the last of three pints with which he had started the day. Westbrook drank half of it at a swallow and lighted a cigarette. After a few puffs on the cigarette, he drank the remainder. Warmth came back into his small paunchy body. His fixed, foolish smile gave way to a scowl of concentration.
    Well? he thought. And then: I don’t know.
    But you’ve got to! It’s your tail if you don’t. You hired Dudley, did it over the old man’s objections. You said that he was a hell of a good auditor, and you’d vouch for him personally. And now that the son-of-a-bitch has done this…
    I know! I know all that, dammit. But I still don’t know…Perhaps if I had another drink—And of course I’ll close out the watch before I take it; get the night shift under way…
    Mr. Westbrook stood up resolutely, ignoring a small and despairing voice of warning. Rolling down his sleeves, he refastened the links of the French cuffs and rebuttoned his fawn-colored vest. He put on a black broadcloth coat, carefully adjusting the white linen handkerchief in its breast pocket. Then, after swiftly examining his fingernails and flicking a speck of dust from one shoe, he stepped out onto the mezzanine.
    Rosalie Vara, the mezz’ maid, was dusting furniture a few feet away from him. Studying her from the rear, Westbrook again complimented himself for assigning her to her present duties. She would have got herself raped if he hadn’t. Any girl who looked like she did—who could easily have passed for white and yet admitted to being a Negro—was obviously too stupid to look after herself. All that was necessary was opportunity, which, on the job he had given her, was practically nonexistent.
    Westbrook let his eyes linger on her a moment longer, his ultra-cynical mind again considering the possibility that instead of being stupid she might be very, very smart. Considering it, and again rejecting it. She couldn’t be working a gimmick. He knew every trick and dodge in the book, and if there was any way that a gal could pull a swiftie by admitting that she was a Negro…well, there just wasn’t. She was simply dumb, that was all. Too damned dull-witted to tell a lie. So he’d put her in a job where no one could take advantage of her.
    Of course, she was upstairs occasionally. It was unavoidable, since all the day maids knocked off at eleven o’clock, and there were a few rooms, like Bugs McKenna’s, which had to be put in order before the morning shift came on. For ninety-five per cent of the time, however, she worked as she was working now. Out in the open.