A Stomping At the Savoy

[Excerpt from Devlin's Deadline by Anthony Royka, copyright 2009. All Rights Reserved.]

BIG ANTHONY KUBAN TOSSED ERNIE KNIGHT out of the Blue Moon Cafe Thanksgiving eve, 1935 and laid his fat arse out on the sidewalk.

Ernie Knight was out cold for two minutes.

If only Aldo Edgeworth hadn’t played Good Samaritan.

****
ERNIE'S REAL NAME was Harold Erndt Smith. The cops pieced together that much and most of the details leading up to the night he bounced a hammer a few times on my head, and the rest of the facts came out after I snuck out of the hospital and G.D. and combined good gumshoe work with excellent reporting to flesh out the remaining, gory details.


Harold Smith had calmly murdered three people before he amiably wandered into the ratty Savoy Hotel on skid road, where I was subbing security for G.D.

****

Edgeworth, an inebriated professor of literature at the University of Washington, had been embalming himself in Bushmill’s Irish all the way in from Portland. Aldo had been too drunk to realize he was driving his ’34 Buick in the opposite direction from his dusty room at the Savoy Hotel on 2nd Street. Ernie Knight, who was riding alongside him didn’t mind the detour one bit. To him the Buick was a golden coach and Aldo, a fellow knight of the Round Table.

The pair had stopped inadvertently at the Blue Moon, and while Ernie requested a cup of Jasmine tea and a Biscotti, was given lukewarm coffee and a day old sinker, and was too crazy to know the difference, Aldo was stepping into a phone booth and using a borrowed nickel to call his angry wife, who had banished Aldo to the Savoy not a week before for infidelities both real and imagined.

Ernie didn't mind waiting, and besides, he was preoccupied, wondering exactly what had happened to Estrella. Perhaps he had hidden her safely in a catacomb or a castle with a moat around it. Yes, that was it! She was safely ensconced in his Castle, and under his protection.

But where had he kept his castle? Ernie couldn't remember.

The doughy faced Ernie, who was only an inch or two taller than Edgar Chutes, couldn't remember a lot of things, like why he'd come to Seattle. He no longer remembered his full name. Neither did he remember that for twelve years he had lived alone in an upstairs studio apartment on Filbert Street in San Francisco, or that he was a quiet, timid and lonely little man who had toiled, quietly and timidly for ten years at the accounting firm of Sturm & Drang, or that he'd been forced to take a vacation yet hadn't known where to go.

His only company at night was his Philco upright radio and the parrot he'd named Pauletta, after his one and only and long since lost, love.

The parrot had died on the first Tuesday of his vacation. The Philco had blown a tube Wednesday and on Thursday, Ernie began to realize that his life simply had no meaning.

Since the only time Ernie had ever remembered actually being happy was the time his father and mother and sister and brother and Ernie had gone on a trip to Seattle in 1914. It had a been a wonderful few days, culminating with the grand opening of the tallest building east of the Mississippi River, the Smith Tower.

His father and mother and sister and brother were dead now, and if things worked out for once in Ernie's tiny life, he'd soon be dead too.

Harold's had been a little life, a little too boring, a little too lonely, a little too quiet, a little too long, so Ernie had decided to end it. This was his plan.

He would pack nine years worth of love letters to the long-gone Pauletta -- the lady, not the bird -- into a brand new used suitcase. He would withdraw his considerable wealth from the First National Bank of Filbert Street, using only a little of it to buy a bus ticket to Seattle. Then would stuff two twenty dollar bills in his socks, spend ten cents for two bottles of Coca Cola, and had an old suitcase filled with the remaining $13,572.22 to the first street bum he could find, and at the San Francisco greyhound station, a bum wouldn't be difficult to locate.

Then he would happily wend his way up the highways and byways, the nooks and crannies of the Great Northwest to Seattle, and then to the top of the Smith Tower, and from there, he would leap into eternity.

It didn't happen.

On a cold and rainy evening, the night before the night before Thanksgiving, Ernie stepped outside his gray apartment to execute his end game.

No sooner had Ernie given away his money than a thief had stepped out from a dark alley and beamed Ernie over the head with an empty bottle of Wild Irish Rose, changing Ernie's life forever.

Ernie remembered waking up from what he supposed was a lovely nap, aboard a bus bound for Seattle. All he had that was known to him was his ticket stub and his middle name "Erndt", a name which he had previously hated, but now enjoyed.

It was sometime after midnight on the day before the day before Thanksgiving when Ernie, aboard the bus, had awakened.

He was sitting beside a hook-nosed dowager with a mechanical left arm, but to Ernie she looked beautiful. She said her name was Edna, but Ernie thought she called herself Estrella. Ernie knew that in Spanish that name meant "star." Estrella had been Pauletta's middle name, but of course, Harold didn't remember than either.

Edna/Estrella was as friendly as she was ugly.

"That's quite a bump there, Dearie. I've got a bit of brandy in my purse. I could dip a bit of it on my kerchief and dab it on that bump. It would hurt, you know, but it might just keep that bump from getting infected."

Ernie gladly accepted her ministrations, and without complaint. To Ernie, Estrella was a merciful angel, a beauty assigned by the heavens to aid her errant knight.

"Erndt, huh? That's a good name, I suppose, though I bet people get it wrong a lot. Do they call you Ernie?"

They could have called him Abraham Lincoln and Ernie wouldn't have remembered it.

"Yes," he said. "Yes."

“It’s a beautiful night,” she said and Ernie thought she said that he was a beautiful Knight.

Thus was Ernie Knight born.

****

EDNA/ESTRELLA TALKED all night and Ernie listened, and as she talked he imagined killing evil doers who might try to molest his dear Estrella.

He would be her Knight. He would be her protector.

In the early Sunday hours of November 21st, a long-haired and dirty drunk had been snoring loudly from the back of the bus. His name was Wally Apple, and he had his tools and a whopping twenty dollars in his pocket.

At some point during the night, Estrella had complained that Walter’s snoring was keeping her awake.

Ernie waited until Estrella was asleep again, and by then he was imagining that the Apple’s snoring was really the clanking sounds of magic armor being forged, that this Walter Apple, formerly of Springfield, Missouri was actually an evil, black knight who was forging his armor in preparation for battle, that Wally the Evil Knight was percolating plans to kill Ernie and steal his beautiful Estrella away from him.

Harriet Holmer, an elderly lady, said that Ernie smiled at her as she saw him making his way to the back of the bus. She returned the smile and went back to sleep.

Apparently Wally was carrying a tool belt containing some basic tools of his trade, including, a hammer, a tap measure and a screwdriver.

Ernie calmly opened the bag, took out the claw hammer and the screwdriver and with one forceful blow, hammered the screwdriver into Wally’s right eye.

Wally immediately stopped snoring.

Ernie considered the hammer the spoils of war and before he sat down next to her, he kissed his “Estrella” lightly on the cheek.

At the last rest stop before Seattle, Ernie followed his beautiful Estrella all the way to the outside of the women’s rest room. Just outside the ladies room door, an elderly bum made the mistake of tipping his hat. He was only soliciting change, but to Ernie he seemed like an evil witch in disguise, an evil witch who would kill his beloved Estrella as soon as she had the chance.

Ernie would deal with the evil witch harshly, but first, he smiled and opened the bathroom door – which he imagined to be the doorway to her boudoir – and said:

“After you, My Princess.”

“Thanks anyway, kiddo, but I think I can handle some things by myself.”

“As you wish.”

Once Edna was inside, Ernie wasted no time. He grabbed the bum by the scruff of the neck, escorted him to the alley behind the bus station, and banged his head on the concrete.

The bum didn’t scream. He only whimpered, and to Ernie the whimpers seemed like vicious threats aimed at his lovely Estrella. He banged the poor man’s head again and the whimpering stopped. He banged it again, and again and again until a pool of blood began to form around the back of the bum's black and matted hair.

Ernie then took out the screwdriver and the hammer and nailed it hard into the poor bum’s right socket.

Then he remembered that his Estrella was alone and unprotected.

“I must guard her,” he thought. He had driven the screwdriver deeper this time and it was difficult to extract.

Ernie was holding the driver out and examining it, when Edna emerged, saw the poor bum and screamed.

Ernie put his doughy hand over Edna’s mouth.

“You are not my Estrella. You are an evil lookalike.”

****

FOR AWHILE, Ernie grieved over the loss of his Estrella for awhile as he wandered down the road.


Then he forgot all about her, but still Ernie was delighted that he had retained his tools, his spoils of war, though he could no longer remember in what battle he had earned them.

*Aldo’s chariot arrived and Aldo, on a binge but not unkind, saw our misguided Knight wandering down the road and offered the errant knight a ride. And later, in front of the Blue Moon, Aldo said “What the hell” and helped Ernie into his car.

“You poor gun. Where can I drop you, big fella.”

Ten minutes later, Aldo was dead inside his Buick, stabbed in the eye outside the Savoy, and Ernie was dripping blood all the way up the steps and then on the lobby floor.

I should have carried a gun.

I knew it, G.D. knew and scolded me ten times a week about it.

“You should carry a gun.”

“I don’t know shoot from Shinola, G.D. I’m crackerjack with darts or a bow and arrow, but if I carry a gun, I’m sure to shoot myself in the foot.”

I still don't carry a gun, and the world is probably safer because I don't pack heat.


****
At first I thought the disheveled hulk in the dirty brown suit was just one of the dozen or so drunks that had stumbled in and escorted themselves upstairs.

After all it was past three a.m. and long past time for all good little Rain City drunks to be either tucked in the tank at the police station, or sleeping in their respective doorways and beds or unconscious and bloodied in the front seats of their cars, which are wrapped around trees or stuck, front end first, in ditches.

Then the bounder genuflected.

“I should like to confer with His Royal Highness, King Aldo The First.”

“I see. Then do you have the keys to the King’s Court with you.”

“I uh, I…”

“You DO have a key.”

“Oh yes! I shall retrieve it and return anon.”

I shook my head, put my feet back on the rickety desk, and took out my old Da’s watch. Derby Madigan, the hotel clerk, was drinking an extra long lunch, and I had rounds to make.

Just then Ernie bustled back into the lobby, smiling blissfully, and once again, kneeling.

“I have the key.”

I step out around the concierge desk and wandered over to Ernie.

“Thou must hand it to me,” I said.

Without looking upward he handed me the key. Room 306. Right next door to Mo’s hole in the wall, and three doors down from Aldo Edgeworth, a U-dub prof in between semesters and currently on sabbatical from his wife and sobriety.

“Arise, Fair Knight and sally forth up the stairs to Room 306. King Aldo awaits you!”

Ten minutes later yet another drunk stumbled in.

“HEY, you’re not G.D.”

“No, I’m not but you’re snockered.”

"Either it's rainin' blood or shomebody's spittin’ scarlet on the Savoy Hotel
shteps."

"No loitering in the lobby, sir. You DO live here, don't you?"

"No, I'm firstmate on the Good Ship Lollipop. Ya DEEF? Blood's on them shteps!"

The stumble-bum drunk staggered toward the stairway, then forced his carcass to turn around and look back at me.

“Shtairs kill me. When in the name of Father Coughlin are they gonna fix the feckin’ lift ...in this shite hole? LISTEN, pup! If the blood's mine, don't wake me. I like shurprizes."

“Sure thing."

He turned back toward the elevator and mumbled.

“Shmartass! I’m saying there’s blood on the steps. Now get some shut eye”

“Jeez. Try to be a good shitizen and thish is how they treat ya.”

****
THE FIRST THING I noticed as I stepped outside wasn’t the drops of blood on the steps, but an arm dangling from the driver’s side of a Buick.

Probably someone who didn’t quite make it to his room to sleep it off.

Wrong.

It was the earthly remains of Aldo Edgeworth.

Damn.

DAMN! Had I let a killer into the Savoy? I ran back inside the hotel, taking the Savoy steps two at a time, and then double-timing up the rickety stairs toward the third floor.