Chapter IV - Turkey with Trimmings

I was looking forward to meeting Danny Carroll. After all, I’ve chased a fair number of people, but he was the first person to make it interesting on day one.

I walked around to the other side of Leon’s desk to get a better view of the registry. There, right above Leon’s meaty index finger, was the name “Charles Carroll.” This was certainly unexpected, given his wife’s claim that he was in North Carolina, waiting for orders to ship out and meet his maker. To say nothing of the fact that, even if he had been at the Princeton Arms, he was sending himself letters in Durham. Behavior like that makes a girl wonder.

“When is this for?” I asked.

He scanned up the page. “This is dated August 31, 1942. That’s pretty typical. Leases are up at the end of the month, so people come looking for a place to stay.”

It fit. Based on Frances Carroll’s timeline, Danny would have blown out of town in June or July. And the letter to Charley came in September, right after he met his new bride, and right before he went to war. This could be our boy.

I adopted a confidential tone. “Leon, if I were to show you a picture of someone, would you be able to tell me if that person had been a guest here?”

“Hmm.” He stuck his finger in his ear, as though he was rooting around for the answer. “Like I said, I don’t get out front as much as I used to. But I do try to see as many as I can.” He flicked wax off his finger as he calculated a lifetime of customers.

I could have done without the ear excavation. But hey, it was either him or Constant Reader out at the desk. Thus emboldened, I produced the photograph from my purse. Leon took the picture and squinted at it. He moved it back and forth, trying to get focus. Apparently, he got it. “Ach!’ he yelled, throwing the picture onto the desk. I quickly snapped it up; I’ve seen this kind of reaction before, and it usually leads to ripping and tearing. If he noticed my desperate save, it did not distract him from his ire. “This rat, I remember.”

I took a step back, not out of fear as much as a prudent sense of caution. “He didn’t like the view?” I offered.

Leon didn’t exactly hear me, but he was in the mood to rant, and that would be just as informative. “That face,” he seethed, “him I remember. I’d almost forgotten his name. We liked to call him ‘Mr. Pleasant.’ Oh, but I remember that face. That’s the guy you’re looking for? He’s a bum. A no-good bum.”

As opposed to the worthwhile, big-contributor bums. “What did he do, Leon?”

“What didn’t he do? First it was the requests. Oh, it started small. Wake-up calls at weird times. Always asking to use the office telephone. Next he wanted new sheets. The old ones were always sopping wet. Which was strange, because he never stopped complaining about how cold he was, so how could he be sweating so much?”

I helpfully joined in the abuse. “Mr. Pleasant was a problem child.”

“I can handle difficult guests. He paid on time, so what’s another kook in the house? But then came more complaints. He didn’t get enough food. There wasn’t enough heat. Another boarder was eavesdropping on his room. And when I offered to move him, it only made him angrier. Nothing made him happy.”

Mrs. Carroll had hinted at a touchy side to her brother-in-law. I just nodded at Leon as he continued to make his case that “touchy” was an understatement.

“Finally, I got complaints about him. Strange noises. Late-night visitors. One man claimed he threatened him at breakfast. But finally, he accosts me one morning, gets downright ugly. Starts making personal comments, insulting my business and my family. That was enough for me. I don’t need trouble. Isn’t there enough in the world? So I told him that I was getting comments. And he called me some of the worst things you could imagine! Do you know what he called me?”

I didn’t care to learn. There were more pressing items on my mind. “How long did he stay here?”

“I’m a good host, you know? I take care of people. I give them good food. But I have my limitations. And I won’t be talked to like that. I looked him straight in the eye and told him he was welcome to leave at anytime.”

Leon was a man who got carried away with his passions. “Mr. Ruskow, how long did he stay here?”

“It’s Leon!” He caught his breath. I bowed my head slightly, a token of acknowledgement that maybe I had interrupted him. People pick up on body language, although they almost never know it. Sure enough, he calmed down. “A couple months, I think.” He returned to the register. “Seemed like years. Yeah, okay, here.” He gestured to the book. “First, he stayed a week. Then he left. No problems. I think everything is great.” He turned a few pages, doing an Evelyn Wood on the list of names. “Ah, but here. Then he comes back. And he stays for two months. And it gets worse each day.”

“When was it that he came back?”

He put his finger on the very date. “September 25.”

“And you kicked him out two months later.”

“Oh, if only I’d gotten the chance. Like I said, I told him that if he didn’t like my place, he was welcome to go somewhere else. I wouldn’t stand in his way. He left for a couple hours, and then came back, got his things and left that day.”

I did the math in my head. Two months. Starting on the twenty-fifth. So he left these walls behind on…

“Mr. Ruskow!” I said, in mock astonishment. “Did you throw a tenant out on Thanksgiving?”

“I already told you,” he said defensively, “he left on his own!” He slammed the book shut. “Of all days, he wants to give me grief. We were about to have a family dinner. I gave plenty of thanks that night, I tell you.”

“And he never came back?”

“That’s right,” he said with enormous satisfaction. “Not even to pick up the remainder of his deposit. No, I never saw him again. And if I ever do, it’ll be a day too soon.”

“Did you recommend someplace else he could stay?”

“Ha!” Leon bellowed, without a trace of amusement. “I don’t wish him on my worst competitor.”

No forwarding address. That figured. A girl can only get so lucky in the course of one day.

There remained one element to be cleared up, my next step depended on just how clear it got. “Now, I have to ask you a very important question.” I held up the picture, taking care to put a little distance between the image and Leon’s angry hands. “Which of these men is your rat?”

He squinted again, I assume to confirm what was already in his mind. Then he pointed. “That’s him. That’s the bastard.”

Danny. Well, that was a relief. As least I was chasing the right brother. It was a curious choice, though, assuming his brother’s name. I guess it was easy to remember. But it did tell me one thing: at least for a while, Danny Carroll did not want to be Danny Carroll. He wasn’t just running away from his family. He was running away from himself.

If he had stayed in town, logic dictates that he wouldn’t want to go far from where he was. The neighborhood would have become familiar, and to an out-of-towner, familiarity breeds contentment. Of course, that was a big if. Danny Carroll could be in Walla Walla, for all anybody knew. Fortunately, that wasn’t my concern. I just had to make sure he wasn’t in Camden anymore.

I bade adieu to Leon and the Princeton Arms. Around the corner was a Rexall, so I stopped in to use the pay phone. The soda jerk leered at me as I walked past. It made me smile. Not because I enjoy being leered at, of course. But because I’d read something once about this thing Buddhists believe in called karma, which basically means that the stupid and nasty things you do come back to bite you in the end. Believe me, every soda jerk on the planet is on the being-bitten end of karma. Leer away, you little twerp.

Moments later, Nora was giving me the short version of her afternoon. “Your Daniel Carroll is a nonentity in the eyes of the Camden Police Department,” the tinny voice explained. “The Records Department sends its regards.”

“That’s great,” I shot back. “Then they won’t mind looking up Charles Carroll, too.”

“What?”

“Our Wizard of Oz borrowed his brother’s name at the boarding house. He might have gotten comfortable with it.”

“I asked you if he might have changed his name,” came the snippy reply.

“And your genius triumphs yet again. Maybe you’d like to change our name to Staub and LaFleur.”

“And have you work for me? Fine. When can I expect you to come in and finish all this paperwork?”

I looked at my watch. “It’s about 3:30 now. I figure I’ve got a few good hours of flophouses and cheap hotels left in me. Don’t wait up.”

“Do I ever?”

Most of the time, yes, she did. It was a habit I was trying hard to break her of.

The Thanksgiving eviction was actually quite a blessing. If he straggled into some other boarding house on a holiday like that, people were going to remember him. If he didn’t, then the trail was just as cold as it was when I started. So I either picked up his scent, or I quit the case, secure in the knowledge that I had done far better than anyone had a right to expect. Bonnie, Bonnie, she’s our gal.

The first three or four stops are the hardest. That’s when you’re still working through your routine, figuring out what will get you the most information. Maybe I’m a concerned relative, maybe I’m a legal secretary, bringing news of a great financial windfall, maybe I’m even a private detective looking for a missing person. No two visits are the same, and I still find myself needing a little time to get into the swing of things. My big score at the Princeton Arms didn’t help matters, because it got me thinking this was easy. Sad to say, but being a detective is a lot like being a baseball player: even a really good hitter only gets good wood 30 percent of the time. Not that anybody around here would know what a really good hitter looks like. The nice thing about cheering for Philadelphia is that it doesn’t matter what league you’re backing. A’s or Phillies, either way, you’re rooting for the worst team in the game for three years running. It’s almost enough to make you take up football. Oh, wait. The Eagles finished last, too. God, I hate sports.

The sun was starting to set by the time I walked back to Zelda. I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a small notebook, cataloging my travels for the day. I needed to get it all down on paper, while it was still fresh in my mind. That would initially prove to be difficult, as I had carefully concealed my pencil somewhere in the hidden recesses of my purse. After a minute or two of searching, I surrendered, and dumped the contents out on the seat. When you do that, what you’re looking for always appears immediately. Stuff mocks you. I clenched my teeth around the pencil in retaliation.

Another moment lost while I swept the contents back into my purse, saving the gun for last. With the weapon safely stored away, I opened the notebook to a blank page and jotted down what little knowledge I’d accumulated in the field. Danny Carroll. Identified as a guest at the Princeton Arms, although he signed in under the name of his brother. Arrived the last day in August, stayed for a week, then left. Sometime in that week, sent a letter to his brother. The next three weeks unaccounted for. Then back at the Princeton Arms, making a general nuisance of himself for two months, until finally pushing the proprietor too far. Nice work, Mr. Pleasant. Exiting on Thanksgiving Day. Seven hotels and boarding houses in the immediate vicinity report no Danny, no Charley, nobody. Six months later, the trail fades away.

I looked at my notes. According to the last census, Camden is home to well over a hundred thousand people. And that’s to say nothing of the two million people in Philadelphia and Camden County and all around the outskirts of town. How difficult would it be for a man to come to town and disappear without leaving breadcrumbs? I sighed. Not difficult at all.

I ripped the page out of the book and stuffed it into my coat pocket. Tossing the notebook back into the glove box, I closed the door. “Let’s go home, Zelda,” I said. Zelda responded enthusiastically, roaring to life with the turn of the key. My day was done. And so, I felt pretty sure, was my case. Oh, I’d be back at it tomorrow morning. The client pays for that kind of courtesy. But for all intents and purposes, Danny Carroll had lost himself in the wilds of Camden, and was long gone from these parts. Which just about wrapped it up for me.

And to think: Nora wasn’t sure I should take the case.