“Hell of a note,” he said again and reached for his trousers.
They were the only article of clothing in the room. Gary searched carefully, quickly, his anger growing, but there were no shoes or socks, no underwear, shirt or cap. He pulled on the wrinkled trousers and kicked at the wallet, cursing the unknown thief who had rolled him and then stolen his clothing while he slept. In nothing but the trousers he yanked open the bedroom door and strode into the narrow hall. His room number told him he was on the third floor.
Without hesitation he walked to the stairway, dust flying from the worn carpet with each angry footfall. Approaching the dimly lighted stairs, he passed a room whose door hung open and absently looked in.
Shocked, he stopped, took a step backward, and stared again. She lay naked on the bed.
Gary turned quickly, searched the hail behind him and the stairway beneath, to find he was still alone. Silently then he moved just inside the room.
The room was dusty and unclean like his own, but it also held an offensive odor that stung his nostrils, an odor he had known and lived with long ago. The woman's clothing was scattered about the floor, her open and ransacked purse had been tossed under the bed. A cheap suitcase had been split open and thrown aside. Gary stared at her body.
She was a nondescript woman, thirty or forty years of age — it was difficult to tell now. Not pretty, not ugly, but obviously a tramp. She fitted into the cheap and smelly room, into the run-down hotel. There were old and new scars on her thin body, and a dried trickle of blood on one ear where an earring had been torn away.
Gary moved nearer the bed, ignoring the odor, to confirm his first startled suspicion. A G.I. bayonet protruded from between her bony ribs.
He hesitated only a second longer and ran from the room. The hallway remained empty. He sped for the stairs, half jumping them in his eagerness to descend, to get away from the third floor. The second floor landing and corridor were equally bare of sound or movement and he continued down without pause, seeking the lobby.
It was a small lobby, dirty, dusty, empty.