He pointed. ‘Just up those stairs, second on the right.’
I nodded, pocketed the Beretta, and headed up the stairs.
The door to room seven came into view, but I knew better than to just barge in on Lena. The Beretta in my pocket would not be her only gun. So I started whistling. Don’t know why, it just seemed like the right thing to do. The tune was Stardust – none of that crap that they played on the radio. You couldn’t get away from the Captain and Tennille and the idea that love would keep them together. If their only evidence was a clunky melody and a sentiment that had been soaking in warm milk for a week, I didn’t hold out much hope for the couple.
So Stardust it was, from a time when people really knew how to write a song, and by people I meant Hoagy Carmichael. I knew Lena would get it.
I stopped short of the door, whistling the verse, and stood there.
After a second I said, ‘Are you going to let me in? I’m hungry. I want another omelet’
The door flew open and Lena bounded into the hall.
‘Foggy!’
She had a gun in one hand, and she threw the other arm around my neck, hugging me like I had a million dollars. She was wearing a tee shirt that said ‘Disco Sucks’ and what they used to call Capri pants.
‘I don’t have a kitchenette,’ she went on, dragging me into the room. ‘We’ll have to go out for an omelet.’
‘Forget it then,’ I told her, allowing myself to be dragged. ‘I only like the ones you make.’
‘Yeah,’ she agreed, ‘because mine are fantastic.’
We were in, and she closed the door behind us.
‘Now.’ I exhaled. ‘What the hell?’
‘I see your point.’ She nodded.
She tossed the gun onto the bed and flopped down into one of the two chairs in the room. It was a nice room, beige, a little too much frou frou for me, but clean and well appointed. The bed was one of those canopy jobs, and the off-white carpet on the floor was very lush. The bathroom was right by the door, and the only window in the room was rigged up with blackout curtains so there was no telling what was outside.
I took the other chair and stared at her.
‘This is the last place my sister was seen,’ she said without prelude.
‘Yeah but that’s just the thing: she wasn’t seen. The guy downstairs has been here for five years, and he doesn’t remember her.’
‘Right,’ she said, leaning forward. ‘He doesn’t remember. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t here.’
‘Look, I know you think the stationery is a great clue,’ I shot back, ‘but it’s very likely that she just got the stationery from this joint without ever actually staying here.’
‘Why would she do that?’ Lena glared. Then, before I could answer, she nodded. ‘She’d do that to throw off anybody who came looking for her. Damn it. Damn it. I kept those letters all this time, and they’re useless. Square one.’
‘Not entirely,’ I told her, slumping down in my chair. ‘She got the stationery somehow. Like, for instance, maybe she worked here for a while. Never saw the night man, gave a false name, never mentioned she had a kid; lived somewhere close by.’
She shook her head. ‘That’s kind of genius. How did you think of that?’
‘First, I thought of it because I’m a kind of genius, but more to the point, I didn’t actually think of it at all. Your sister did. If she’s half as smart as you are, she’d cook up something like that pretty easily, right?’
Lena nodded. ‘So – what? We, like, canvass the neighborhood?’
‘I don’t want to be too obvious. Your sister went to a lot of trouble to hide. I don’t want to go crashing around, drawing all kinds of attention to her, showing her photo – it’s got to be quieter than that.’
Lena sat up suddenly. ‘You don’t think she could still be around here, do you? I mean in Lake Wales?’
‘Possible.’ I shrugged. ‘But those letters aren’t dated. There’s no telling how long ago they were written. When did you get hold of them? And how?’
She hesitated; took a breath.
‘David gave them to me about – maybe a month ago. He said they’d tell me where to find her when the job was done, get them their money. I just assumed that he meant she was still here, at the Chalet.’
‘Did you really read the letters?’ I asked her.
She squirmed. ‘A little. I don’t go in much for the sugary snacks.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed, ‘and they are insulin resistant, but if you take a deep breath and keep on reading until the third paragraph, you get something pretty odd.’
‘Odd?’
I sat up and leaned forward. ‘Have a look.’
I fished in my suit coat pocket and pulled out the documents.
‘You brought them with you?’ She seemed to think I was an idiot.
‘Just have a look, wise guy. All three of them have some very odd wording.’
‘What?’
‘Have a look, seriously.’ I handed her the letters.
She studied them for a few minutes and then looked up. ‘They’re in code.’
‘I think so.’ I gave her a good strong look. ‘How did you get this smart so young? And this tough?’
I was surprised to see that she avoided looking at me.
‘When we have a little more time,’ she answered me quietly, ‘I’ll tell you some stuff that happened to me, and you’ll tell me how you got from Brooklyn to Florida, right? But for now, I really want to find my sister.’
‘Got it. So. Let’s really concentrate. Between the two of us, we’ll figure it out in no time.’
Five hours later the sun was almost up and we hadn’t figured it out. She was cross-legged on the bed and I was slouched down about as far as I could go in one of the over-stuffed chairs.
‘Is there anything to the fact that the weird phrases are always in the third paragraph?’ Lena mused out loud.
‘Not as far as I can tell,’ I mumbled, ‘but I think I’m more confused now than I was when we started.’
‘Me too,’ she allowed. ‘So maybe we should say out loud what we’re thinking. You know, be spontaneous. What are you thinking right this second? Say it out loud.’
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. ‘All right. I say, out loud, that what I’m thinking now is I need coffee and a big breakfast.’
She bounded out of bed like a golden retriever. ‘See! I knew you’d think of something. Let’s go.’
She didn’t wait for a response, just headed for the door.
I hauled myself out of the chair and stumbled after her. She zipped down the stairs, through the lobby and the dining room, right into the kitchen. I did my best to keep up with her. When we flew through the lobby I checked to see if our friend at the front desk was going to object, but he pretended we were invisible.
Lena waded into the kitchen like she owned the place. Eggs in the fridge, bacon in the meat locker, day-old bread on the counter – she collected the ingredients without even looking at them.
Ten minutes later I was sitting in the dining room eating what she called ‘toad in the hole.’ She cut a circle out of the middle of a piece of bread, put it on a hot griddle, and cracked an egg into it; fried the bacon on the side. It was like French toast without the French. Plus, the kitchen had an espresso machine, a big one. I have no idea how she knew what to do with it – there were gears and knobs and cups, none of which made any sense to me. But there I was sipping first-class espresso and dining on a dish that was at once unfamiliar and very comforting.
She ate her food in ten seconds and then leaned forward, chin in elbow, watching me eat.
‘Better?’ she asked.
‘And I’ll tell you why,’ I answered, downing the last of my espresso. ‘Numbers.’
She hesitated. ‘Sorry?’
‘We’ve been going about the letters all wrong.’
‘Explain,’ she said.
‘All right.’ I finished my last corner of toast. ‘The phrases are repeate
d in the third paragraph of each letter, right?’
‘I’d forgotten about that. What about it?’
‘That’s to get your attention, so you’ll know what phrase to look at. Now the idea of using the single words telephones and pens is also to isolate them. Then there’s the odd phrase “in the same place.” I think the number three and the single words are trying to tell us about a place. Some location, I mean, where your sister might actually be.’
‘Maybe you need some sleep.’
‘It was your idea to think out loud,’ I told her.
She glared. ‘And what, exactly, does your thinking get us, Einstein?’
‘Numbers,’ I repeated. ‘One of the things I did in my callow youth in Brooklyn was I ran numbers for Red Levine, a relatively famous guy in my neighborhood. He took me under his wing, and I ran numbers until I graduated to boosting cars.’
She shook her head. ‘Miscreant.’
‘Yeah, but I’m telling you about numbers. It’s a racket like a lottery where a schmo bets on numbers and if those numbers turn up in the paper the next day, the schmo wins a little money. Most people used the race track results, but Red liked the bug, the last digit of the day’s New York bond sale.’
‘OK, you’re a hoodlum,’ she conceded, ‘but I still don’t understand where this gets us.’
‘Then I’ll continue. We used to employ little codes if we ever had to write anything down, in case we got cracked. Simple stuff. We’re looking for something – some place name with the number three in it. And the rest of the name is in the single words telephones and pens.’
She was doubtful. ‘You’re going a long way around to get home.’
‘Yeah, but I got an ace in the hole. I was given a hint very recently that David Waters liked to fish. Liked it a lot.’
She squinted.
‘Well,’ I went on, ‘maybe we need to find out what’s a good fishing hole here abouts.’
‘In Lake Wales? There’s got to be, like, a hundred.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed, ‘but as luck would have it, I know where to start. Let’s go.’
I got up from the table. Lena followed.
But in the Suzanne lobby, we got the stink eye from our boy on the front desk. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. Something was up.
‘Doesn’t that guy ever get off work?’ I mumbled.
‘Any chance someone followed you here?’ Lena whispered, frozen in the lobby.
‘Didn’t see anybody,’ I told her, ‘but I know Ironstone’s guys are after me.’
She moved very slowly toward the stairs. ‘Well, I’m worried about whatever it is that’s worrying Arnie.’
‘Arnie’s the desk guy?’
She nodded. ‘And all my hardware is in the room.’
‘So here’s the plan,’ I told her. ‘You go to the room; I wait in the hall. You try to act a little more like a scared fourteen-year-old kid and a little less like a thirty-five-year-old mobster, and that will give us the element of surprise. Leave the door unlocked. Then, when the time is right, I bust in, and we get the jump.’
She turned her icy glare my way. ‘Not really a plan, per se.’
‘I like to improvise the details. Go on.’
She wasn’t enthusiastic, but she went to the stairs. I stayed a little behind.
Up the steps to the second floor, she pulled ahead and, in a move that made me like her even more than I already did, she started whistling Stardust.
She only got louder at the door, shoved in the key, and pushed into the room. I had my back to the wall just to the right of the door. I watched her click the lock to make it stay open, and then she looked into the room and stopped whistling.
‘Hey,’ she said, sounding very much like a whiney teenager, ‘what’re you doing in my room?’
‘Shut up,’ a deep voice said.
I didn’t recognize it. She let the door close behind her. And even though I had every confidence in her ability to take care of herself, I was worried.
‘Why don’t you both just sit down,’ I heard Lena say loudly.
Good. She was telling me how many guys there were.
There was mumbling that I couldn’t hear, and then Lena talked again.
‘I’m on vacation,’ she railed, ‘what’re you doing here is what I’m asking?’
More mumbling and a little scuffling. Much as I hated guns, I reached into my coat pocket and took out Lena’s Beretta, suddenly very happy that I hadn’t given it back to her.
Then Lena gave out a little squeal, and that was enough for me. I kicked in the door, plastered myself against the wall inside her room, and pointed the Beretta everywhere at once.
The tableau that greeted me was, despite the situation, a little comical. Two great big goons were flanking Lena. They were both dressed in nice black pin-striped suits, also black shirts and black ties, a long braid of hair trailing down their backs. They had Lena by the arms and they were lifting her up. The three of them looked like some sort of wrong-headed avant-garde dance company.
‘I’m pretty sure I can plug both you guys before you can set down the girl and fish out your guns,’ I said confidently. ‘So let’s behave, OK?’
Without waiting for them to answer, Lena did some kind of circus move: kicked her feet up over her head; somersaulted backward in the air. In the next second she was free from the goon-grip, landing pretty neatly on the bed. She rolled, reached under her pillow, and came up on her feet with a gun in each hand.
I had to laugh. ‘Man,’ I told the goons, ‘did you guys ever pick the wrong kid to screw with.’
They both looked around like they were audience dupes at a magic show.
‘Now have a seat, gents,’ Lena commanded, ‘or I’ll pop you both in the back. I’m a little girl and I got no morals.’
They hesitated.
Lena didn’t.
She shot one of the guys through the back of his kneecap. He went down and passed out; didn’t make much noise. Oddly, neither did her gun. Closer examination told me that she’d fired a Smith and Wesson ‘hush puppy’ – mostly used by Navy Seals in Vietnam, very quiet, nice and small, and impossible for a kid to get hold of.
I took a step farther into the room. The guy on the floor was bleeding all over the carpet. I looked at his pal.
‘You should probably go into the bathroom and get a big towel,’ I told him.
He looked at me with dead eyes. ‘You should probably get away from me, Foggy. We’re taking this girl to Mr Waters. I can’t kill you because John Horse told me not to. But I can make it impossible for you to walk, or I can cut off your penis.’
He took a single step in my direction, but that’s as far as he got.
Lena came up behind him, put her little pistol in the back of his calf, and fired. The bullet came through his leg and skidded across the carpet.
He went down.
Lena looked up at me. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Six months ago I just would have iced these guys. I think I’m losing my nerve.’
‘Could be stress,’ I told her. ‘I’m reading a very interesting new book by Dr Lewis Thomas, and he says stress is the cause of most of your modern maladies.’
‘I do have a lot on my mind,’ she agreed.
I walked over and knelt beside the guy who had threatened my ability to procreate.
‘You do understand that this person here, this girl, just beat you, right?’ I asked him. ‘And she also killed David Waters in front of a crowd. And she would have killed Ironstone if I hadn’t messed her up. So you’re really on borrowed time, here. I’m pretty sure she’s going to get her mojo back any second now, and you’ll be left rotting in some hotel room far away from home, with no burial, and no one to mourn your passing.’
‘Why don’t you kiss my ass?’ he snapped.
‘Well,’ I said to Lena. ‘I tried to tell him. Go on, then. Shoot him in the back of the head. That’ll get you back in the old saddle.’
‘Maybe you’
re right. I loosen up, do these two guys just for practice.’
She pressed the barrel of the hush puppy against the guy’s skull.
‘Wait a second,’ the guy said.
I could tell that the shock of getting shot was wearing off and the pain in his wrecked leg was turning on.
‘Wait for what?’ I asked him.
‘Wait for me to tell you why I came to get the kid,’ he growled. ‘Ironstone isn’t interested in killing her anymore. He wants to help.’
‘Bullshit,’ Lena snapped. ‘I killed his son and I tried to kill him. He’s not the forgiving type.’
‘Ordinarily I would agree with you,’ he said. ‘But the old guy is suddenly interested in family. He wants to see his granddaughter.’
‘Me too,’ Lena said. ‘But I don’t know where she is any more than he does.’
‘It’s true,’ I chimed in. ‘We came here looking for her, but she’s gone.’
‘God’s honest truth,’ she swore.
‘So we can’t help Ironstone at the moment,’ I said. ‘But if you would let us continue in our investigation without dogging us or shooting us or threatening to cut off important body parts, we’ll probably find Ellen and her child within the week.’
‘I’d say that’s a good bet,’ Lena added.
‘And anyway,’ I concluded, ‘you both got shot. You can’t really keep up with us. You need to go to the hospital. That’s a great excuse to hand Ironstone.’
The guy sighed. ‘OK.’
‘There,’ Lena said and took the gun away from the guy’s head.
I pocketed her Beretta and offered the guy my hand. He took it and sat in one of the chairs, wincing.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.
‘Holata,’ he said.
‘Means alligator,’ I told Lena.
‘Impressive that you know,’ she said.
‘All right then,’ I went on, ‘I’ll call an ambulance and Lena’s going to pack her stuff. We’re going to be gone when the ambulance gets here.’
He nodded.
Lena went to the bathroom and got a couple of towels. She tossed them at me and went to a small black suitcase that was lying on the floor underneath the only window in the room.
I tried to fix up Holata’s wound and stop the other guy’s bleeding – he was still out. I stared down at him and finally realized that I’d seen him before. He was Herbert, the one who’d ransacked my office.
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