Free Memory (Hard Case Crime) by Donald E. Westlake Page B

particularly with a reference to beer, meant no one but the Ralph he’d been drinking with in the tavern tonight. The stay here in this town was turning into an independent life of its own, with its own memories and images building a wall between him and the earlier memories he was trying to grasp.
    “I’ve got to save the money quick, and get out of here,” he told himself, saying it aloud. Then he thought again of the name of the tavern—Cole’s—and he smiled at the coincidence, but he still felt a shadow of the irrational fear.
    Every night, he counted his money just before going to bed, and tonight he discovered he only had four dollars and eighteen cents. He’d spent three dollars in the bar. How stupid could he be! He’d just been paid today, there was no more money for a full week, and he’d spent three dollars in a bar!
    He went to bed cursing himself, and it took him a while to get to sleep. When he woke up in the morning he had the feeling he’d had bad dreams, but he couldn’t remember them. This was his feeling every morning; bad dreams had come to him during the night, but the memory of them was gone.
    He found the note about buying the newspaper, and hurried through his morning toilet, pleased at the thought of finding a cheaper place to live. At the diner where he ate breakfast—a sugar doughnut and a cup of coffee heavy with milk—the clock read quarter past ten. He had till four o’clock to look for a furnished room, and then he’d have to go to work.
    The newspaper cost him seven cents, which he paid grudgingly. There were nine furnished rooms listed among the ads in the back of the paper, and three of them offered rooms for nine dollars a week. He asked directions to one of the addresses picked at random, discovered it wasn’t more than half a dozen blocks from the tannery, and walked there smiling, the newspaper rolled into a tube and jutting from his hip pocket.
    The address was a brown shingle house with an enclosed porch. He rang the bell, and stood on the stoop waiting. After a minute, he saw the inner door open, and then a middle-aged woman in an apron came across the porch and opened the door. She was stout in a firm way, and her gray hair was in the tight ringlets of a home permanent. Her expression was wary and impatient; she looked like someone’s overly disciplinary mother.
    Cole showed her the newspaper and said he’d come about the furnished room. She gave a slight smile then and told him to come in. There was a straw rug on the porch floor, and a sofa and tables and hassocks. Broad green canvas shades were rolled up bulkily over the windows.
    “It’s upstairs,” she said, leading the way. “It’s my older boy’s room, he’s in the Army. There’s no private entrance, does that make any difference?”
    “No. I work at the tannery, four in the afternoon to midnight.”
    “Oh, we’d give you your own key.”
    The stairs were thickly carpeted. On the way up, Cole got a glimpse of the living room, bulging with maroon overstuffed furniture and thick carpeting and more hassocks. On the second floor there was a small cramped hallway, with five doors. One of them was open, showing a white tile bathroom with thick yellow towels hanging everywhere, and bottles of shampoo and hair lotion and bath salts and aftershave lined up on the windowsill. There was a soft yellow cover on the toilet seat.
    “It’s over here,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Malloy, by the way.”
    “Paul Cole.” He followed her into the room. It seemed as though there was already somebody living here; college pennants on the walls, personal bric-a-brac on the dresser, clothing hanging in the closet. There were photos stuck into the edge of the mirror over the dresser.
    “We’ll take Bobby’s things out of here, of course.”
    “That’s all right.”
    “Well, you’ll need room for your own things. Where are you staying now, if I may ask?”
    “At the Hotel Belvedere. I’ve only lived here a