Chapter 2: Model from hell

 

 

Rocco was not my friend, but he had been my landlord during my down and out days after the police department fired me and my wife decided she needed a divorce.

He was a Gruff man with a thick black beard and a voice that sounded like a foghorn.

Just over 50, he had inherited the motel on the south side of the county from his parents who believed old Jersey with its Roadside farms dance and flocks of tourists would make a comeback and nearly went broke struggling to keep the motel occupied.

 Rocco saved the motel by  using his mob connections to squeeze out a profit, also  serving as the county’s official temporary welfare residence,  and renting by the hour  to local prostitutes.

The place had its own history. While George Washington hadn’t slept there, Frank Sinatra and early members of his Rat Pack had while performing at the popular Top Hat night club just up the road from the motel.

Filmmakers use the place as a set for mostly mob movies since nothing had altered fundamentally about the place since its construction just prior to the fall of the stock market in 1929 and Rocco liked it that way, claiming the place had character. a truth I never disputed but always noted with a cavate that it was a place that attracted characters like flies, one of whom was me.

Situated in the middle of a loop of a highway off ramp, the place was like a fortress with a gate like entrance through which cars had to drive to reach the interior. The office sat on the side of this gateway with a parking lot inside with four walls of the motel surrounding it.

I pulled my car up next to the window and squinted in to make out the shape of the

clerk inside this turned out to be Rocco, who at five foot five looked like one of the kids he hired – at least through the glass.

He waved me in, and I pulled into the first available parking spot. There were many of these despite the “No Vacancy” sign. Welfare clients and prostitutes generally came by cab.

Rocco came out of the office door even before I had time to get out of my car, waving me towards one of the doors of the motel’s northern wing.

“Bad business,” he mumbled when I reached him and the door to the motel room. “I hate it when people die on me. It scares other people off.”

“I’m sure,” I said, aware that it happened pretty often since some of the people who rented by the hour came not for prostitution but for a place to shoot up. “do you know what happened to him or why he came here?

“Why the fuck do you think he came here,” Rocco growled, fishing out of ring of keys from his pocket. “He came here to get fucked.”

“Nathaniel?”

“Men do it’ women do it; even the birds in the trees do it,” Rocco said. “After all, he’s only human.”

Rocco swung open the door to the room, the morning light revealing only a portion of the room beyond, but it was enough for me to see Nat’s bulk lying prone on the bed.

Shorter than Rocco by a few inches, Nat was a man born to be fat, a beach ball of a figure from early youth. He became the butt of every bully’s jokes all the way through college, getting his revenge finally when hired on as a local columnist.

“So, what killed him?” I asked. “I don’t see any wound.”

“It’s not like that,” the nervous Rocco said. “Why do you always have to paint things like that.”

“Because many people who die here usually get shot or knifed or have a needle stuck in their arms when they die.”

“I’m telling you, it’s not like that. This is natural. He had a bad ticker. You know he did. It just stopped that’s all.”

“Then why didn’t you call the police.”

“You know why. Someone like him dies in a place like this it makes headlines I don’t need headlines.”

“You say he came here for sex. So, he must have checked in with someone.”

“Not one of the regulars,” Rocco said. This was someone special someone hot high class.”

“Nat couldn’t afford a high-class hooker,” I said.

I was actually surprised any hooker, high class or low, would take up with Nat regardless of how influential his column was.

He stank.

Not that he had bad personal habits he did but his age just over 60 have saddled him with Many ailments typical of aging and often smelled from the assortment of medicines he used to relieve the

Suffering.”

“You saw the woman?” I asked.

“Not me but my boy did,” Rocco said. “My boy was on duty last night when they checked in.”

“Maybe I should talk to him.”

“You’re not here to do no interviews,” Rocco said. “You get the body out of here before someone else finds out it’s here>

“How am I supposed to do that?” I asked.

“You know people.”

“People I would have to bribe to move the body. And it could be a crime.”

could be a crime.”

“I’ll pay the bribe as long as you get this goddamn body out of my place.”

“Why should I help you?”

“You owe me,” Rocco said. “When you were down and out, I took care of you.”

“For a price.”

”Sure but nobody else helped you no matter how much money you offered.”

Rocco had a point.

“I was a real prick back then,” I admitted.

“So?”

“So let me make a phone call,” I said and then you’re going to let me take a peek at your surveillance recordings.”

“Surveillance me?”

“You’re an old pervert Rocco and more than a little dishonest. You have recordings on more people than the NSA and use it to your advantage.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You don’t keep this rat trap open on just sleaze. You can’t possibly make enough from renting rooms to afford the car you drive or the white powder you put up your nose. I know damned well you got a glimpse of the girl that came in with Nat. Now, let me get to a phone and then we’ll both have a gander at her.”


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