It's Not a Pretty Sight by Gar Anthony Haywood Page A

decent conversation with the desk clerk.
    He was a gaunt, middle-aged black man with a full head of unruly hair. Gunner found the clerk fighting a nap upon his arrival, and he was as full of information as a duck hunter’s decoy.
    “You know a working girl named Goldy?”
    “No.”
    “Last name Cruz. Goldy Cruz.”
    “Nope.”
    “A dark-skinned sister in her early thirties, average height, average weight, wears her hair in braids. Long, blond braids.”
    “Uh-uh.”
    “Always wearing gold shoes on her feet. That’s where the name comes from, Goldy.”
    “I don’t never look at nobody’s feet.”
    “But you look at their faces. Don’t you?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “Were you looking at faces last Tuesday night?”
    “Maybe. Some, I guess.”
    “You were working last Tuesday night, right? Isn’t that what you said, that you were the one here on the desk last Tuesday?”
    “Yeah. I was here.”
    “But you don’t remember seeing a girl like the one I just described to you?”
    “No.”
    “She would’ve been with a man.”
    “Man, they all with a man.”
    “This one would’ve been a good-looking, light-skinned brother. An inch or two shorter than me, a few pounds lighter. Wears a mustache.”
    Gunner waited for a response.
    “You didn’t see him ?”
    “No. I don’t think so.”
    “Mind if I see the motel register?”
    “The motel register?”
    “The book your guests sign when they rent a room. This.” Gunner tapped on the large ledger book sitting on the counter between them, then opened it without waiting for permission to do so.
    “You can look at it if you want,” the desk clerk said, “but don’t none of the girls work here use it. Their friends neither.”
    It was true; the book was almost empty. Gunner closed it back up and said, “You do understand that I’m not a cop, right? I’m a private investigator, working on an insurance fraud case.”
    “Yeah, you said that.”
    “So you have no reason to be afraid to tell me the truth. I’m not Vice, or anything.”
    “I am tellin’ you the truth.”
    “Sure you are. But—”
    “Maybe you got the wrong motel. Why you so sure they was here, these people you lookin’ for?”
    “Because Goldy said they were here. The Nite Owl Motel in Inglewood, she said.”
    The desk clerk paused a moment, thinking. “Maybe she was confused,” he said.
    “Or maybe she’s a friend of yours, and you think you’re helping her out, acting like you don’t know the lady. Maybe that’s it.”
    The desk clerk just stared at him.
    The time had come in this interrogation for Gunner to start thinking about offering the man a few dollars for his candor, but he didn’t know what the money would buy. He still couldn’t tell if the guy was a hard-nosed Goldy loyalist, or simply somebody who neither knew nor cared who Gunner had been talking about for the last twenty minutes.
    It took him about thirty seconds to decide what to do.
    Confident he’d be able to spend his money more wisely somewhere else, he handed the man one of his business cards and said good-bye.
    His next move was to buy a cup of coffee.
    It was a large cup of a West African blend called Safari Black at HiNotes, a neighborhood coffeehouse he liked to frequent on Central Avenue and 107th Street. He had to adulterate it with six packets of sugar to smooth out its rough edges, but it was good. Strong as aged oxen blood, but good.
    While Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” escaped from the speakers above his head, and sports pages and assorted business journals were being studied by black men and women all around him, he reviewed what he had learned about Nina Pearson’s murder so far and came to a very disagreeable conclusion: He still didn’t believe her husband had killed her.
    Which was odd, considering his little Q and A with the dimwit desk clerk at the Nite Owl Motel seemed to only bolster Poole’s contention that Pearson’s alibi was bogus. The guy couldn’t remember Pearson or