“Oh, Burt,” Bess said.
“Shut up,” Burt said. He glared at Lois. “You’re acting like a baby,” he said angrily. “What would Sleepy Summers be doing in a place like this? It’s about time you started growing up, young lady.”
“It was him,” Lois said.
“Now you’re being stupid,” Burt said.
“Yeah, you’re crazy,” Frank Said. “You’re seeing that creep in your sleep.”
“You shut up,’ Burt snapped at him. He looked at Lois again. He wanted to make it up to her, but he couldn’t back down. “I’ll prove it to you,” he said.
He got out of the car and opened the door for Lois. She hesitated, then climbed out of the back seat. Burt took her arm and started toward the office. She tensed at his touch.
There was a tall man behind the counter in the office, and a slender dark-skinned girl working on some account books at a desk.
“Hey,” Burt said, “can you tell me the name of the guy who just went out of here?”
The motel man looked surprised.
Burt smiled apologetically. “It’s just that my daughter thinks she recognized him. Thought he was this singer, Sleepy Summers.”
Burt saw the tall girl look up at the man, who smiled.
“He registered as Albert Harrison,” the man said. “Got a wife and two kids.”
Burt looked at Lois with satisfaction. “What did I tell you?”
Lois said nothing. She remained silent while Burt registered. He got a double for eight dollars. And it was air conditioned, the man told him. Burt felt very pleased with himself when he went outside again.
“I kept you from making a fool of yourself,” he said to Lois. “What would that man have thought?”
Lois stared down the row of units, searching for the black Ford. It was not in sight. When she looked back at Burt her mouth had a sullen, stubborn set.
“I know it was him,” she said.
She walked away before Burt recovered from his surprise.
6
In Unit 8 Lew Cutter was in the smaller second bedroom. He moved a small chest a few inches farther out from the wall, then crouched beside it. First he peered toward the window of the small room, a window which faced the back of the motel and a view of the desert. From behind the chest Cutter couldn’t see much through this window, but his body was protected.
The bedroom door was immediately to his right, open. From the same position, crouched next to the chest, he commanded a clear view of the front door in the larger room out front, and a portion of the window which faced the motel’s inner courtyard.
He could concentrate on the front door and window, knowing that he couldn’t be seen—or hit—through the window of the back bedroom. The chest would conceal and protect him.
Cutter was satisfied. He went back to the rear window, raised the shade and checked the lock. Then he went to the window in the front room and repeated the inspection, carefully drawing the blinds in each case. After that he checked the bathroom. There was a narrow window, half open. Cutter started to close it and hesitated. He needed some air and it would soon be cool enough to turn off the air conditioning. He checked the width of the small window. No man could squeeze through it. He left the window open a few inches.
As he returned to the front bedroom he heard voices outside and the scrape of footsteps. A car door slammed. Cutter moved quickly across the room, his steps silent on stockinged feet, and crouched before the window. His gun was in his hand. He lifted the shade a fraction of an inch and peered out.
A girl stared directly into his eyes.
Cutter fought down the leap of tension in his chest. He didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. The girl stood about ten feet away from him. Her gaze shifted, then returned. This time Cutter saw that she wasn’t really looking into his eyes. Her stare was focused just above his head, as if she were trying to see through the blinds.
He heard a man’s rough voice bark. “Lois!”
The girl turned her head. Slowly she walked forward. It was a moment before Cutter realized that she was not walking toward the door of his room but to the unit adjoining his. He heard a door close and the low mutter of voices.
There was a blue Chevrolet parked in front of the unit next door, and Cutter remembered seeing the car pull up as he left the motel office. The tension in his muscles eased, but he was still disturbed by the behavior of the girl. Why had she been staring at his window so intently?
Cutter surveyed the motel. It was built in a U-shape, broken at the lower left-hand corner, right in front of him, by a driveway which permitted exit from the center courtyard to the side of the motel and from there back to the highway. The office was at the front, facing the highway, at the upper left hand corner. There were two units behind the office, then the driveway cutting through. Cutter’s own unit was in this corner. Other units ran along to his right, then out again toward the highway, completing the U.
He was in a good position. The Ford was parked out of sight at the side of his unit, just around the corner from the driveway, ready for a quick, straight run to the highway. From the window of his front bedroom he could see the entire courtyard. He would be able to watch anyone coming or going.
The thought crossed his mind that he might not get much sleep, after all. Then he reflected that it would be safe enough to sleep after all of the motel units had been filled and each occupant inspected. It was a million to one shot that any of Garner’s men could have followed his trail so closely—even more incredible that they would check into this particular motel. But Cutter didn’t mind being overly cautious. There was still the remote possibility that a shrewd man, following Cutter, would view the Hideaway Motel in the same light as Cutter himself—as a safe place for a fugitive to hide out.
And million to one shots sometimes came home the winner. Every year, somebody won the Irish Sweepstakes.
Cutter got off his knees and pulled a small desk chair over to the side of the window. He adjusted the Venetian blind so that he could peer out through a horizontal crack. He sat in darkness, the .38 Special in his lap, and lit a cigarette. He was prepared to wait.
He thought of Carla, and of the last night he had spent with her in a motel room not unlike this one. She had wanted the lights left on. Her body was a deep brown against the white of the sheets, except for the stripes of pale amber skin across her breasts and loins.
This time, remembering, Cutter’s body did not betray him. He felt coldly dispassionate, his nerves and muscles and glands quiet. You could only make a mistake like that once, Cutter thought. Even then you were lucky to get away with it. Never again.
The juices in his stomach sent a gurgling up through his body. He hadn’t eaten since noon, and then only a quick hamburger washed down with coffee. He glanced toward the phone, then back toward the courtyard.
He made no move. A fat, black Cadillac had just turned off the highway and was stopping in front of the office.
7
Marina closed the account books and leaned back in her chair. Art glanced at her questioningly.
“Well, you’re solvent,” she said. “But just. Any more trouble with the plumbing and you’ll finish the month in the red.”
“Thanks for the cheerful outlook,” Art said, but he was grinning.
Marina smiled back, warmly. Art felt a responsive glow.
“How about some coffee and a sandwich?” he asked.
“Haven’t you eaten?” She came out of her chair quickly.
“No. Your?”
“Yes, but I’d like some coffee.”
He lifted the counter section and started to go through but she stopped him.
“Let me get it?” she said. “I’d like to stretch my legs.”
“Nice legs,” Art said lightly. “They should be stretched regularly.”
She glanced up at him, and for a moment Art saw the vulnerable look in her eyes. She slipped past him through the counter opening.
“A hamburger?” she aske
d at the door. “Or is your imagination working tonight?”
“I’m solvent,” he said. “Make it a ham sandwich.”
His eyes showed his appreciation for the figure she made standing in the doorway, and her smile widened. She tilted her head slightly in a self-conscious gesture she had whenever she knew she was being watched.
“With mustard,” she said, and she walked out.
Art went slowly to the front window and watched her as she walked out to the highway, her long legs swinging freely. She looked tall, standing at the edge of the road, waiting for a car to go by. She had an exciting body, he thought, slender and supple and graceful. Manna was an exciting girl. Life with her wouldn’t have the angry tension which had been so much a part of his two years with Lucy, but it would be lively and unpredictable and full of warm laughter. And exciting. Their quarrels would have no harshness, only the pain of love.
And he loved Marina. He had never told her, either in words or in the way he kissed her. How could he tell her? What words would explain that he loved her with one part of him, the same part, while in another part of the same mind and body his hunger for Lucy still gnawed at him, unabated? He loved Marina, in a way he had never loved Lucy—but if Lucy walked in the door and crooked her finger at him he would go. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself.
How could he ask Marina to understand and respect this kind of insanity, when it left him with no respect for himself? Lucy was his weakness, a habit like narcotics that he couldn’t break. Yet he hadn’t had her for two years, not since that morning she had disappeared with the traveling salesman who had stopped overnight at the motel—and received, Art knew, extraordinary room service during the night. You’d think that in two years a habit would lose its control over you. You wouldn’t expect that just thinking about it could make your palms moist and your tongue thick in your mouth—not after two years.
A car’s headlights slashed past the window, and a black Cadillac swung into view, pulling up outside the office. At the same moment the phone rang. Art picked up the phone.
“Hideaway Motel,” he said. The call was from Albuquerque. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I have a room left. What was the name? Richard Wallace?”
He bent over the desk and wrote the name on a scratch pad. While he was writing, the office door opened and someone came in.
“Yes, I’ll hold it,” Art said into the phone. “And thanks.”
He hung up. As he raised his head to greet the man who had walked in, an automatic smile began to curve his lips. It froze half-way.
He looked past the thick-set man at Lucy, who stood just inside the door, a mocking smile just beginning to curve her full, sensual lips.
Art stared at Lucy. Knitted, black Capri pants were stretched taut over her voluptuous hips and heavy thighs. A thin black cotton sweater covered the globular swelling of her breasts, adhering so tightly that the uncontained nipples bulged provocatively under the fabric. Art felt the heavy stirring in the pit of his stomach, and his throat was suddenly dry.
He looked at the man who had entered with Lucy and he found himself gazing into a pair of small, bright black eyes that were as cold as any he had ever seen.
“Got a vacancy?” the man snapped.
“Yes,” Art said. He started to say more, but he glanced at Lucy in time to catch an almost imperceptible shake of her head.
Then he understood. The man with Lucy didn’t know who Art was.
He had caught the glance, however. Turning his head, he stared deliberately at Lucy for several seconds before bringing the hard, flat stare back to Art. He said nothing. The stare expressed his suspicion more clearly than words.
Art pushed the register at him and the man signed. Art saw the “Mr. and Mrs.” before the name, and he studied the man, surprised at the hot anger he felt curling inside his body, filling it like another long intestine.
Lucy’s new husband was short, his head level with hers. His cheeks were soft and fat, veined with the red lines of drink’ and anger, with a puffiness under the eyes. Art thought his body would be surface-soft, too, but under the layer of fat there would be strength and hardness, like the ruthless strength in his face that couldn’t be hidden behind the puffy cheeks.
Was this what Lucy had chosen—over him?
The man pushed the register back, turning it with a deliberate gesture so that Art could read the signature. Mr. and Mrs. Horace Stockwell, San Francisco, California.
“How much?” Horace Stockwell asked, his voice expressing contempt.
“Five dollars.” Art’s voice betrayed nothing, and his face was equally expressionless.
He took a key from the hook behind him and flipped it onto the counter, accepting Horace Stockwell’s five dollar bill. Art watched the man’s pink, pudgy fingers, quick and dextrous as they slipped the five from a pack of bills as thick as a deck of cards.
“Call me at seven,” Stockwell said. It was an order.
Art nodded. He waited, not looking at Lucy, until Stockwell wheeled toward the door. Then Art allowed his eyes to record the tight Capri pants and the remembered strength of her thighs. She went out of the door ahead of Stockwell, glancing back once over her shoulder, the mocking smile on her lips reflected in her eyes. She went out with her hips rolling. The look over her shoulder was a fleeting one, but her husband caught it. He’s used to the way men stare at Lucy, Art thought, and the way she eggs them on. And he doesn’t like it.
When the door closed behind them, Art let the thick tube of anger expand inside him. Damn her! How she was relishing the fact that he could still want her! The gesture was typical of her, coming back with her latest husband—not letting him know that the motel she suggested (for it would have been her idea to stop here) was owned and run by her first husband.
Her first! Art held the thought, lashing his anger with it. Which one was Stockwell? Not number two. That was the salesman she had run off with. Number three? Four?
Art’s anger turned viciously inward. He hated her for coming back deliberately to taunt him—but he hated himself more because he had wanted her again the moment he saw her. He hadn’t even been surprised to see her. Somehow he had known she would come back. It was that knowledge which had kept him from accepting Marina’s love. And he knew now that Lucy would find an excuse to return to the office alone. Horace Stockwell would suspect what she was doing, but he wouldn’t be able to voice his suspicions or to stop her.
For a fleeting moment Art felt a kinship with Horace Stockwell, like the bond which links two cowboys who have worked the same range, choked in the same dust, baked under the same hot sun, killed their abiding thirst in the same saloon with the same harsh, liquid fire—the kinship of two men who have wanted the same woman too badly.
The feeling passed, and he felt nothing for Horace Stockwell at all. When Lucy came, Art would be waiting for her. The moment of their meeting was inevitable. For two years he had been waiting for it, and he had the feeling that those intervening months had been an intermission between two main acts of his life. The knowledge saddened and sickened and excited him.
Joe Murray, the manager of the Western Ways Motel in Albuquerque, hung up the phone and smiled at the couple across the counter from him.
“Yes, they have a vacancy,” he said.
“How far is it?” Richard Wallace asked. He was a good-looking man, close to forty, with prematurely gray hair in a short brush cut. He looked like what he probably was, an up-and-coming young executive.
“About twenty miles, give or take a mile,” Murray said. “The Hideaway isn’t the fanciest motel around, but it’s clean. Reasonable, too,” he added, knowing that was irrelevant in this case.
Wallace looked at the woman beside him, and so did Murray. He had kept his eyes off her with difficulty. He noticed that one of the two men standing behind the couple was also staring at her. They had come in after the couple, and had made no bones about listening to the conversation.
“How about it?” Wallace said. “Th
ere’s nothing vacant anywhere in Albuquerque, and Daro is only twenty miles.” He smiled. “We can make it in twenty minutes.”
The blonde woman gave a faint sigh, and Murray sighed with her. Jeez, he thought. What a body! And a face to go with it. Cold-looking, maybe, but they were often the ones who got hottest in bed.
“We should have made a reservation,” the woman said.
“I know,” the man said. “But we didn’t, and I guess now we don’t have much choice.”
The blonde smiled. “Daro’s fine, darling,” she said.
“Sorry I couldn’t accommodate you here,” Murray said.
“Thanks a lot for your help,” Wallace said.
They went out past the two waiting men, and Murray watched the hip movement of the blonde’s slim, willowy figure. When the door closed behind them, Murray sighed again.
He looked at the two men, smiling. “I’m sorry, we’re full,” he said.
“Yeah,” the bigger of the two men said. “I heard. But we’re looking for a friend of ours. Guy driving a black Ford with California plates. Alone.”
“I’m sorry,” Murray said. “No singles checked in here tonight.”
“Anybody from California?”
Murray felt impatience. He didn’t like the man’s surly tone, and he didn’t like the looks of either of them. They looked like thugs.
“I’m afraid that’s really private information,” Murray said stiffly. “I can’t—”
The big man reached suddenly across the counter and grabbed Murray’s shirt, his fingers digging under the collar and pressing against Murray’s windpipe. He twisted his hand and Murray gagged. He was completely helpless.
“I asked you,” the big man said. “Anybody from California?”
Murray choked, trying to speak.
“For Christ’s sake let up a little,” the smaller man said. “The bastard wants to talk.”
The pressure against Murray’s throat eased a little. His legs were shaking in uncontrollable tremors.
Night of Violence Page 3