Free The Procane Chronicle by Ross Thomas Page B

that I thought had a hurt look about them, as if they had seen too much—or perhaps not enough, and never would now that they were stuck behind the reception counter of a cheap hotel.
    “No,” the clerk said, “I wouldn’t believe you.”
    “What if I said I was just nosey?”
    The clerk seemed to think about that. He made his fifty-year-old face go into a frown. His gray upper teeth bit down hard on his thin lower lip. The only thing in his face that wasn’t working was his tiny nose so he used his left hand to pull on that a couple of times. “You’re not a cop,” he said. It wasn’t a question so I didn’t say anything.
    “You could be a reporter,” he said. “You sorta look like a reporter—or what a reporter thinks he oughta look like. You know, when guys get your age they’ve pretty well made themselves look like what they are.”
    I thought about telling him that he looked like a philosopher, but decided not to. “I used to be a reporter,” I said.
    “But you’re not anymore?”
    “No.”
    “How much do reporters make nowadays, about three hundred?”
    “About that,” I said. “Some make more; a lot make less.”
    “I didn’t think you was a reporter,” he said. “You wanta know why?”
    “All right. Why?”
    “Because nobody’s gonna send anybody who’s making three hundred a week down here to ask questions about a nobody like Peskoe, that’s why.”
    “You didn’t like him?”
    “What was to like? He stayed in his room. Eight-nineteen.”
    “How long did he stay here?”
    The clerk yawned and didn’t try to cover it up. The yawn gave me a good look at the inside of his mouth. His teeth were gray all the way back, except where they were black. Or the fillings were. His tongue was mostly yellow. There didn’t seem to be much pink in his mouth. When he was through yawning, he said, “You know how I got this job?”
    “How?”
    “My wife kicked me out. So I checked in here because it was cheap. Then I got fired from my job and got behind in my rent so they let me work nights. For a while I tried to find another job, but who wants to hire anybody fifty-three years old?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “What kind of work did Peskoe do?”
    The clerk was still wrapped up in his own problem. “I get my room and sixty-six bucks a week. Twenty-five of that goes for alimony. That leaves me forty-one a week and with withholding and social security that leaves me about thirty-five a week. Did you ever try eatin’ on thirty-five a week?”
    “It sounds tough,” I said and pulled a twenty from my billfold and smoothed it out on the counter. It lay there for all of two seconds before disappearing into the clerk’s pocket.
    “Peskoe was here for a month,” he said. “He didn’t do nothing. I mean he didn’t work. He just stayed in his room most of the time. He didn’t have no visitors. He didn’t get no calls or no mail. He just stayed in his room except when he went out to eat. Once in a while he’d go out at night. But not a lot”
    “Did he drink?” I said.
    “Nah. Maybe a pint a week.”
    “Then he wasn’t drunk when he went out the window.”
    “He wasn’t drunk.”
    “Did he seem depressed?”
    The clerk looked at me curiously. “You with an insurance company?”
    “Why?”
    “I’ve heard if it’s suicide, you guys don’t have to pay off. On life insurance, I mean.”
    “I’m not with an insurance company.”
    The clerk seemed to believe me. He nodded a couple of times and then looked around the lobby. “You ask if he was depressed. He lived here, didn’t he? We haven’t got no happy guests. None I know of anyhow.”
    I brought out a package of cigarettes and offered the clerk one. He took it and I lit both of them. “What do the cops say?” I said.
    The clerk shrugged. “Fell or jumped.”
    “Not pushed.”
    A crafty look went halfway across his face before it stopped and changed into greed. “Why would anyone wanta push a guy like Peskoe out of