Hotel (Page 68)

"Doctor!" Peter called urgently. "Over here!"

Crouching, crawling, the newcomer joined Peter and Aloysius Royce. Behind them, extra lights, hastily strung, were coming on. Billyboi Noble screamed again. His face turned to the doctor, eyes pleading, features agony-contorted. "Oh, God! Oh, God! Please give me something.. ."

The doctor nodded, scrabbling in his bag. He produced a syrette. Peter pushed back Billyboi’s coverall sleeve, holding an arm exposed. The doctor swabbed hastily, jabbed the needle home. Within seconds the morphine had taken hold. Billyboi’s head fell back. His eyes closed.

The doctor had a stethoscope to Billyboi’s chest. "I haven’t much with me. I came off the street. How quickly can you get him out?"

"As soon as we’ve help. It’s coming."

More running footsteps. This time, a heavy pounding of many feet.

Helmeted firemen streaming in. With them, bright lanterns, heavy equipment – axes, power jacks, cutting tools, lever bars. Little talk.

Short, staccato words. Grunts, sharp orders. "Over here! A jack under there. Get this heavy stuff moving!"

From above, a tattoo of ax blows crashing home. The sound of yielding metal. A stream of light as shaft doors opened at the lobby level. A cry,

"Ladders! We need ladders here!" Long ladders coming down.

The young doctor’s command: "I must have this man out!

Two firemen struggling to position a jack. Extended, it would take the weight from Billyboi. The firemen groping, swearing, maneuvering to find clearance. The jack too large by several inches. "We need a smaller jack!

Get a smaller jack to start, to get the big one placed." The demand repeated on a walkie-talkie. "Bring the small jack from the rescue truck!"

The doctor’s voice again, insistently. "I must have this man out!"

Peter’s voice. "That bar there! The one higher. If we move it, it will lift the lower, leave clearance for the jack."

A fireman cautioning. "Twenty tons up there. Shift something, it can all come down. When we start, we’ll take it slow."

"Let’s try!" Aloysius Royce.

Royce and Peter, shoulders together, backs under the higher bar, arms interlocked. Strain upward! Nothing. Strain harder again! Still harder! Lungs bursting, blood surging, senses swimming. The bar moving, but barely. Even harder! Do the impossible! Consciousness slipping. Sight diminishing. A red mist only. Straining. Moving. A shout, "The jack is in!" The straining ended. Down. Pulled free. The jack turning, lifting.

Debris rising. "We can get him out!"

The doctor’s voice, quietly. "Take your time. He just died."

The dead and injured were brought upward by the ladder one by one. The lobby became a clearing station, with hasty aid for those still living, a place of pronouncement for the dead. Furniture was pushed clear.

Stretchers filled the central area. Behind the cordon, the crowd – silent now – pressed tightly. Women were crying. Some men had turned away.

Outside, a line of ambulances waited. St. Charles Avenue and Carondelet, between Canal and Gravier Streets, were closed to traffic. Crowds were gathering behind police blockades at both ends. Singly, the ambulances raced away. First, with Herbie Chandler; next, the injured dentist who would die; a moment later, the New Orleans woman with injuries to leg and jaw. Other ambulances drove more slowly to the city morgue. Inside the hotel, a police captain questioned witnesses, seeking names of victims.

Of the injured, Dodo was brought up last. A doctor, climbing down, had applied a compression dressing to the gaping head wound. Her arm was in a plastic splint. Keycase Milne, ignoring offers of help himself, had stayed with Dodo, holding her, guiding rescuers to where she lay. Keycase was last out. The Gold Crown Cola conventioneer and his wife preceded him. A fireman passed up the bags – Dodo’s and Keycase’s – from the elevator’s wreckage to the lobby. A uniformed city policeman received and guarded them.

Peter McDermott had returned to the lobby when Dodo was brought out. She was white and still, her body bloodsoaked, the compression dressing already red. As she was laid on a stretcher, two doctors worked over her briefly. One was a young intern, the other an older man. The younger doctor shook his head.

Behind the cordon, a commotion. A man in shirtsleeves, agitated, shouting, "Let me pass!"

Peter turned his head, then motioned to the Marine officer. The cordon parted. Curtis O’Keefe came rushing through.

His face distraught, he walked beside the stretcher. When Peter last saw him, he was on the street outside, pleading to be allowed in the ambulance. The intern nodded. Doors slammed. Its siren screaming, the ambulance raced away.

16

With shock, barely believing his own deliverance, Keycase climbed the ladder in the elevator shaft. A fireman was behind. Hands reached down to help him. Arms gave support as he stepped into the lobby.

Keycase found that he could stand and move unaided. His senses were returning. Once more, his brain was alert. Uniforms were all around.

They frightened him.

His two suitcases! If the larger one had burst open! … But no. They were with several others nearby. He moved toward them.

A voice behind said, "Sir, there’s an ambulance waiting." Keycase turned, to see a young policeman.

"I don’t need …"

"Everyone must go, sir. It’s for a check. For your own protection."

Keycase protested, "I must have my bags."

"You can collect them later, sir. They’ll be looked after."

"No, now.

Another voice cut in. "Christ! If he wants his bags, let him take them.

Anyone who’s been through that’s entitled …

The young policeman carried the bags and escorted Keycase to the St. Charles Avenue door. "If you’ll. wait here, sir, I’ll see which ambulance."

He set the bags down.

While the policeman was gone, Keycase picked them up and melted into the crowd. No one observed him as he walked away.

He continued to walk, without haste, to the outdoor parking lot where he had left his car yesterday after his successful pillaging of the house in Lakeview. He had a sense of peace and confidence. Nothing could possibly happen to him now.

The parking lot was crowded, but Keycase spotted his Ford sedan by its distinctive green-on-white Michigan plates. He was reminded that on Monday he had been concerned that the license plates might attract attention.

Obviously, he had worried needlessly.

The car was as he had left it. As usual, the motor started at a touch.

From downtown, Keycase drove carefully to the motel on Chef Menteur Highway where he had cached his earlier loot. Its value was small, compared with the glorious fifteen thousand dollars cash, but still worth while.

At the motel, Keycase backed the Ford close to his rented room and carried in the two suitcases he had brought from the St. Gregory. He drew the motel room drapes before opening the larger case to assure himself that the money was still there. It was.

He had stored a good many of his personal effects at the motel and now he repacked his several suitcases to get these in. At the end, he found that he was left with the two fur coats and the silver bowl and salver he had stolen from the house in Lakeview. There was no room to include them, except by repacking once more.

Keycase knew that he should. But in the past few minutes, he had become aware of an overwhelming fatigue – a reaction, he supposed, from the events and tensions of today. Also, time had run on, and it was important that he get clear of New Orleans as quickly as possible. The coats and silver, he decided, would be perfectly safe, unpacked, in the trunk of the Ford.

Making sure he was unobserved, he loaded the suitcases into the car, placing the coats and silver beside them.

He checked out of the motel and paid a balance owing on his bill. Some of his tiredness seemed to lift as he drove away.

His destination was Detroit. He planned to make the drive in easy stages, stopping when he felt like it. On the way he would do some serious thinking about the future. For a number of years Keycase had promised himself that if ever he acquired a reasonably substantial sum of money, he would use it to buy a small garage. There, abandoning his itinerant life of crime, he would settle down to work honestly through the sunset of his days. He possessed the ability. The Ford beneath his hands was proof. And fifteen thousand dollars was ample for a start. The question was: Was this the time?

Keycase was already debating the proposition as he drove across north New Orleans, heading for the Pontchartrain Expressway and the road to freedom.

There were logical arguments in favor of settling down. He was no longer young. Risks and tension tired him. He had been touched, this time in New Orleans, by the disabling hand of fear.

And yet . . . events of the past thirty-six hours had given him fresh confidence, a new elan. The successful house robbery, the Aladdin’s haul of cash, his survival of the elevator disaster barely an hour ago – all these seemed symptoms of invincibility. Surely, combined, they were an omen telling him the way to go?

Perhaps after all, Keycase reflected, he should continue the old ways for a while. The garage could come later. There was really plenty of time.

He had driven from Chef Menteur Highway onto Gentilly Boulevard, around City Park, past lagoons and ancient, spreading oaks. Now, on City Park Avenue, he was approaching Metarie Road. It was here that the newer cemeteries of New Orleans – Greenwood, Metarie, St. Patrick, Fireman’s, Charity Hospital, Cypress Grove – spread a sea of tombstones as far as vision went. High above them all was the elevated Pontchartrain Expressway. Keycase could see the Expressway now, a citadel in the sky, a haven beckoning. In minutes he would be on it.

Approaching the junction of Canal Street and City Park Avenue, last staging point before the Expressway ramp, Keycase observed that the intersection’s traffic lights had failed. A policeman was directing traffic from the center of the road on the Canal Street side.

A few yards from the intersection, Keycase felt a tire go flat.

Motor Patrolman Nicholas Clancy, of the New Orleans Police, had once been accused by his embittered sergeant of being "the dumbest cop on the force, bar none."

The charge held truth. Despite long service which had made him a veteran, Clancy had never once advanced in rank or even been considered for promotion. His record was inglorious. He had made almost no arrests, and none that was major. If Clancy chased a fleeing car, its driver was sure to get away. Once, in a melee, Clancy had been told to handcuff a suspect whom another officer had captured. Clancy was still struggling to free his handcuffs from his belt when the suspect was blocks away. On another occasion, a much-sought bank bandit who had got religion, surrendered to Clancy on a city street. The bandit handed over his gun which Clancy dropped. The gun went off, startling the bandit into changing his mind and fleeing. It was another year and six more holdups before he was recaptured.

Only one thing, over the years, saved Clancy from dismissal – an extreme good nature which no one could resist, plus a sad clown’s humble awareness of his own shortcomings.

Sometimes, in his private moments, Clancy wished that he could achieve one thing, attain some single worthwhile moment, if not to balance the record, at least to make it less one-sided. So far he had signally failed.

One solitary thing in line of duty gave Clancy not the slightest trouble – directing traffic. He enjoyed it. If, somehow, Clancy could have reached back into history to prevent the invention of the automatic traffic light, he would have done so gladly.