“Do you know him?” I insisted.
He nodded. “White meat turkey on white, mayo, mustard, cranberry sauce. Almost like you, only he takes lettuce.”
“Do you know his name?”
“I don’t know names. I know orders. Works construction. Dirty clothes. Who’s next?”
“So he comes in after working all day, orders white turkey on white. When does he come in? What time?”
“Afternoons. Before we close. Around two or so. Next?”
“Any day in particular?”
“You want to talk more, order another sandwich.”
“Done.” I said. “Give me the same as before, both of them to go.”
“You didn’t say to go for the first one.”
“I didn’t know I was getting two sandwiches then, either. Now I want them both to go. But tell me, does he come in on a certain day?”
The clerk looked as though he was ready to leap across the counter and strangle me. Instead he glowered at the servers who were putting my sandwiches together. “Both of those turkeys on white are to go,” he shouted, and then he glared back at me. “Tuesdays maybe?” he said. “Sometimes Wednesdays, but not every week. Takes his sandwiches to go. Puts them in a lunch pail.”
My heart skipped with joy because this happened to be Tuesday.
I gave the clerk my money. He handed me my change. “Next?”
From the way he shouted, I knew better than to press my luck. Without asking any more questions, I took my sandwiches and left. Giddy with excitement, I practically floated back up Cherry to the Public Safety Building, where I rode straight up to the fifth floor, dodged past Captain Tompkins’s Fishbowl, and ducked into the cubicle shared by Detectives Powell and Watkins. They were both in. They looked up in surprise when I entered. Surprise turned to welcome when they caught a whiff of the turkey sandwiches.
By two o’clock that afternoon, the three of us had set up shop. Worried that the two guys might have seen me in the Doghouse the day Pickles and I were there at the same time, I stayed across the street, tucked into the shady alcove of a building that let me watch the door to Bakeman’s while using the excuse of smoking a cigarette to hang around outside. Watty, who wasn’t as fast on his feet as Larry Powell was, stayed in an unmarked car parked at the bottom of Cherry, while Larry went inside and ate a leisurely bowl of soup. I had also contacted Officer Vega and asked him to hang around at the corner of First and Cherry. I was worried that if the suspect was on foot and headed westbound on the eastbound street, Watty wouldn’t be able to follow in his vehicle.
At 2:20 I saw the suspect, trudging up Cherry from First carrying a heavy-duty lunch pail. He certainly looked like the guy in the sketch. He was dressed in grimy clothes and appeared to have put in a hard day of manual labor. I watched him walk past the spot where Watty was waiting at the curb. By the time he turned into Bakeman’s, my heart was pounding in my chest. There was nothing to do now but wait.
I checked my watch. The crowd inside the restaurant had died down. With no line, it would take only a couple of minutes for him to order his sandwich, pay, pick up his food, and leave. At 2:26 he appeared again. He stood for a moment at the top of the worn marble steps, then he stepped down, turned right, and headed back down to First. He walked past Watty’s vehicle, which was parked at the curb, all right, but it was also pointed in the wrong direction on the one-way street.
I slipped out of my hidey-hole and made my way down the hill. When I got to the corner of First, I waved off Vega. After that, it was up to me. When I turned right onto First, I could see the suspect half a block ahead of me walking uphill. Two blocks later, he turned into a run-down building called the Hargrave Hotel.
In theater circles, SRO means standing room only, and that’s considered to be a good thing. In hotel-speak, SRO means single room occupancy, and it’s generally not such a good thing. The Hargrave was a flea-bitten flophouse straight out of Roger Miller’s “King of the Road.” It might have been a lot swankier in an earlier era. Now, though, it was four stories of misery, with ten shoddy rooms, two grim toilets, and one moldy shower per floor. Bring your own towel.
I waited outside until I saw Mr. Lunch Pail get into the creaky elevator and close the brass folding gate behind him. By then, Watty had managed to make it around the block. After flagging him down, I stepped into the building lobby, where a grubby, pockmarked marble countertop served as a front desk. Behind it sat a balding man with a green plastic see-through visor perched on his head.
He looked up at me as I entered. “If you’re selling something,” he told me, “we ain’t buying.”
I held up my badge and my composite sketch. As soon as he saw the drawing, the desk clerk glanced reflexively toward the elevator. The dial above the elevator showed that the car had stopped on floor three. Clearly this was a one-elevator building.
“Who’s this?” I asked.