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too. Forget it.” I pocketed the folder. “We’re in the same racket, Mr. Charm. I’m just trying to find out who ran up the Jolly Roger in Miss Irving’s room. The motel doesn’t have to come into it.”
    He ran a thumb down his necktie, lining it up with the placket of his shirt. “If you’d come to me straight on instead of trying to intimidate me with authority I might have cooperated, inasmuch as I can cooperate in a matter that has nothing to do with this establishment. Now you can just take your tin shield out the door.”
    “Don’t get your feathers up,” I said. “Hotel dicks are old scenery to me. A lot of them run with the roosters. If you don’t, that’s okay. But don’t get all fogged up because I didn’t expect you not to.”
    It smoothed him a little. He did the thing with the tie again.
    “We’re not unreasonable,” he said. “The comfort and safety of our guests come first. It’s just that I’m not convinced that Miss Irving wasn’t mistaken. That card could have been placed among her things by a friend before she came here, as a joke.”
    “She’s not laughing.”
    “I didn’t say it was a good joke. The nature of her personal relationships is not our concern.”
    “That’s how it is.”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    The clerk was sneering at me with the red telephone screwed to his ear. I took my elbow off the desk.
    “One more question. What’s the night manager doing on duty in the daytime?”
    Charm smiled thinly without disturbing the moustache. “The title is a euphemism. Like ‘private investigator’ for cut-rate gumshoe.”
    “I was right,” I said. “The name’s a gag.”
    I took myself out of the lobby. The black youth with the clipboard had worked his way down to the far end of the parking lot and was starting back my way. I intercepted him. He had his hair moussed up into a tall flattop the way they wear it now and a crescent of dark beard on the end of his long chin. His only concession to the cold was a thin green-and-white-striped scarf flung around his neck. The company blazer looked as thick as a handkerchief. He looked me over with great brown eyes and waited. Our breath made jets in the air.
    “How much they pay you to take down license plates?” I asked.
    “Who’s interested?”
    “The Lincoln twins.” I held up two five-dollar bills.
    “That’s two and a half hours,” he said. “Not that it ever takes me ten minutes. I write them all down and then I come around again a hour later, see how many’s parking here ain’t registered. They still here in another hour they gets towed.”
    “Were you on duty night before last?”
    He glanced at the bills and I gave them to him. He hiked the clipboard under his arm and folded them over, smoothing the crease between long brown fingers. “Six to ten. They rotates me.”
    “I need a list of the numbers that didn’t belong that were parked here that night. They don’t have to have showed up more than once. The one I want probably didn’t. He’d have parked out back, then again maybe not.”
    “Mr. Charm gots all the lists in his office.”
    “I bet he doesn’t lock the door every time he leaves it.”
    “How much you bet?”
    I pointed at the bills. “Two more brothers. If there’s a list.”
    “There’s one.” He bent his head around to read my watch. “He goes off at three to rest up for night duty.”
    I gave him the card the acting manager at the Kitchen had returned to me. “Leave a message with my service if I’m not there.” I watched him tuck the card inside the fold of the bills and put them in the side pocket of his blazer. “I’d as soon throw those down a storm drain as not get a call.”
    “You get it. Lester Hamilton ain’t Mr. Charm.” He carried the clipboard inside.

6
    I FILLED UP at a station on Tireman and tried John Alderdyce’s home number again from the pay telephone. The line was still tied up. I got in and drove.
    His house was one of a dozen in a cul-de-sac