When would the call come? When would he answer the phone and learn another person had died?
Blinding light shot from the high beams of the oncoming car. Harry flicked his own and squinted. No effect. The car passed. On the right stood a hand-painted sign that said, “Madame Charlotte’s, Fortunes Told.” When he saw it, he thought it said, “Fortunes Sold,” the t writhing to an S shape in his tired vision.
Beyond the palm-reader’s dark house was a blinking sign. It said, “A-1 Motel and Restaurant.” Down below, it said, “Color TVs.” Harry pulled the Chevy into the space before the motel office.
He’d been driving for hours, driving too fast through towns where they would have buried him under the courthouse for the speed he was doing. He was terrified. Someone had tried to kill them and damn near succeeded. Ree had ridden the whole way clinging to his arm, her eyes wide and staring.
He struggled from the car and went in to book a room. He asked for two beds. The counter man, who looked Indian and spoke with an accent, gave Harry a key and two thin, spare blankets. Harry walked outside and stared at the single-story building. It was made of cinder block painted a dull gray. The signs on the room doors were small and dark. Driving past, he almost missed number 9. Backing up, he parked in front of the room and then levered himself from the car.
Ree stood right behind him when he opened the door. “This is it?” she said.
He stopped, the key in the door. It was the first she’d spoken since the pickup driver had tried to run them off the road. “Yes, but—” he said and closed his mouth when she brushed past him, her bag in the lead.
In the room, she turned from him, switched on the television, and then climbed up on one of the beds and, crossing her legs, stared at the screen. It was the news.
She flicked the remote control. For a moment, Harry just stood and studied her. Her body looked rigid, muscles tense, her arms wrapped around her chest. The worst was her eyes. They were wide and dark. For a moment she squeezed her eyelids closed, and then they were open again staring at the television. Favoring the side that hurt, he limped past her. Her gaze did not track him. It was like she was seeing something else, some horror that Harry could not see.
Shivering, he went to the bathroom, stripped off his clothes, and limped into the shower. He kept the water hot and felt the tension release from his shoulders and neck. Now he felt empty inside, drained of life. Getting out, he dried himself and hung the towel back on the rack. The pile of his clothes formed a multicolored hump on the floor.
He wrapped the towel around his waist, picked up his clothes, and went back into the room. Ree paid no attention to him until he had pulled the sheets and the thin blue cover over himself. She was adept at ignoring him, or maybe she was still too frightened to move. He chose the bed next to the one where she sat.
After he had settled himself, she picked up her bag and went into the bathroom. Harry watched her walk, and she, seeming to notice, hurried and then looked back at him from the doorway. Her eyes looked distant, unreadable. There was no smile.
He stared at the television a moment and then, using the remote on the bedside table, turned it off. The room was rectangular, with a sink and the door to the bathroom at the far end. Two pictures of seascapes hung off the block walls behind the beds. Harry wondered why they always thought there had to be pictures. The chests of drawers sat low with a mirror on top of both sides. He could see himself in the reflection. His hair was a mop of tangles. His face looked gray. On the back of the remote was a note that said the remote wouldn’t work on any other TV. He put it back on the table.
He took another three and stared at the mirror. He could not think about what had happened. If he did, he knew the fear would be right back. He would freeze with the terror of headlights bearing down on him, drilling into his eyes, and the whirlwind spinning of the car, the concrete abutment racing closer to smash the car and its inhabitants. He stared at his reflection, trying to remove the image of the headlights, replace it with his long face staring back from the glass.
After a quick shower, Ree came in with a brush in one hand and her bag in the other. She wore the same black tunic but had removed the tights. Her legs were tan, knees smooth, her feet small, with little toes that curled inward.
She sat on the end of the other bed, and looking into the mirror, she brushed her hair. After she’d finished, to his surprise, she sat down next to him and brushed the tangles from his hair, starting near the ends and working up. Her hands shook slightly. Still, it felt good, relaxing. Harry felt himself dropping into a trancelike state only to open his eyes when the light suddenly went off, and the room dropped to semidarkness. Ree went back to the bathroom. Through the curtained window to the outside, he saw the periodic flash of the motel sign. A car drove past.
He sank down in the bed, ready to sleep, and then stiffened with surprise when the sheet was pulled up and a body slipped in next to him.
“Hold me,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.
She pressed up against him, and slow with surprise, he circled her with his arm. She chose the uninjured side. Her head lay below his chin on his chest. Her hair looked pitch black in the darkness. Her body felt warm against him.
In the books, he thought, the woman always lies there for a while, and then her hand slowly goes down the man’s stomach until it is between his legs. That was how it was supposed to be: a sudden outpouring of emotion where fear turned to passion and released the day’s trauma.
Ree’s hands were tucked under her chin, formed into little balls. Her body felt tense. Her hands were going nowhere. Her breath came fast.
He raised his hand to adjust the sheet and felt her stiffen momentarily. He lowered the hand, and she relaxed. From the feel of her, she was still terrified. Had this near-death experience loosed some sleeping demon inside her? Or was it him that was fooling himself to think he had put the terror behind him? In the morning would he awaken to a shaking fit of his own fear?
Now she wanted to be held. The pill began to take effect, and Harry felt the pain in his side slowly moving away from him. With the pain went any desire to move. He lay there and let his mind roam. He thought about the woman in his arms. Instead of being an easy woman to make love to, she might be the hardest he’d ever met. She would be expensive, not in money, but in patience. She had no trust. Should he? She felt good beside him.
Wasn’t this what he’d really wanted from the start?
A truck went by and the bed shook. The diesel engine roared, a sound that turned to a whine in the distance. He reached over and brushed the hair to either side of her forehead. She looked at him; her dark eyes, passive.
“Go to sleep,” he said. With that, he closed his eyes and tightened his grip around her. A moment later, she snuggled closer. He thanked the codeine that separated him from the feelings his body should have been feeling. Before he fell asleep, he made a promise to himself. What he needed was a story, not emotional entanglements. Tomorrow, he would make her tell him everything she knew, and he would start working on both his story and a way to keep from getting killed.
In the morning, light peering through a rip in the curtain woke him. He looked around and cursed. She was gone again. Where could she go in Jesup, Georgia?
Dammit. He reached over the side of the bed and pulled his pants off the floor and searched for the keys to his car. They were there, but the room key was gone.
Would she have gone outside and hitchhiked? He stood up suddenly and then collapsed to the bed with a groan. His ribs burned like fire. He looked in the mirror. The blackness below his eye had turned a yellowish green. A merry sight.
He struggled to the sink counter beside the bathroom and found, in a neat row, shampoo, toothpaste, a toothbrush, razor, hairbrush, and deodorant. The complete kit. But where the hell was she? Angrily, he paced into the bathroom and turned on the shower. The water varied from hot to cold. He
yelped.
The shower did not help. He stayed angry, and when he bent down to dry his legs, his side blazed with pain. Finally, he had to sit on the toilet seat. He’d just wrapped a towel around himself and gone into the room when Ree opened the door.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
The smile on her face died, and her eyes flashed. “What the hell is it to you?”
“God dammit. Cut this shit out.”
“No. You have no right to yell it me.”
“Why not? You’ve just about got me killed several times. I wake up and you’re gone, just like you’ve been gone every time. What do you expect me to think?”
She threw a bundle down on the bed, revealing a Styrofoam cup in the other hand. “Just leave me here, then. Drive yourself back to Atlanta. I don’t care. I can take care of myself.” She put the cup on the dresser. “Here’s your coffee.” She marched toward the door.
“Oh.” Harry looked at the coffee sheepishly. “Stop. I’m sorry. I—”
She glared at him.
“Please shut the door and come inside and let me drink the coffee. OK? And I am sorry for the way I spoke.” He shook his head. She’d gone out just to get him coffee?
“OK,” she said.
He picked up the cup, pulled the lid, and took a swig. It tasted good, hot.
“I got you a couple of T-shirts, too,” she said. Out of the bag, she pulled a T-shirt with a large tractor drawn on the front. The second shirt had what looked like a combine stenciled on it. She came over and stretched one across Harry’s shoulders. “I guessed on the sizes, but it looks all right.”
“Thanks.” He pulled the T-shirt with the tractor on it over his head, winced, and sat down.
“I’m sorry, Harry.” She came over and helped tug the T-shirt down over his chest. “Maybe we should stay here today. It’s already past eleven. Nobody would look for us here, and I could buy some more clothes and a few other things. You could stay here and rest. Maybe you’d feel better tomorrow?”
He studied her face. The fear seemed to have gone. She looked serious. In fact, she looked as if she were concerned about him, her eyes rounded, her eyebrows drawn down. Not only that, she’d actually thought of him when she was out. That too was good. Perhaps she trusted him more now after the night. He felt a surge of warmth. He rubbed his jaw. “Yeah, that might be a good idea. Why don’t you pick up a map, and we can look at it for someplace nice to go.”
“Like a vacation.” She smiled that large infectious grin, and the last bits of Harry’s anger left. He dug into his pocket for the bottle of threes and was starting to take one when she grabbed his hand.
“Let me get you some water. That’s awful the way you do that. They could get stuck. You’d taste them for an hour.”
He shrugged. Ree the mother was much better than Ree the magical disappearing person. She got the water in a plastic cup. A moment later, she turned on the television and settled herself cross-legged next to him. It was a soap. She leaned forward as if fascinated by the dialogue.
Harry closed his eyes and waited for the drug to kick in and remove him from the pain. Sometime later, Ree woke him.
“I’m going out now. I’ll be back in a little. OK?”
He smiled. She returned his expression. Then she was gone. Father Harry, he thought, and remembered he hadn’t asked her anything. He knew no more than he did before. It didn’t bother him. The drug had removed anxiety as well as pain. Someone could have walked in the room and shot him, and he wouldn’t have cared.
The Italian restaurant was divided into small cubicles with a table in each cubicle. Ferenzi had taken a table at the back in the corner. Through the latticework of the divider, he could see the door. Across from him sat another man. Both men were dressed in sport coats and ties. It could have been a business luncheon, a conversation on the sale of golf clubs or sporting goods stores.
“Speak low,” Ferenzi said. “Andrews has bugged my phone and certainly the office. He may have foot surveillance going, too.”
The other man scowled. “I thought he was supposed to be a liaison from the agency?”
“Fat chance of that. The agency wants to keep track of me, not help. Now that we have some proof, it’ll just get worse. We’ll have to be more careful. What have you got?”
“Denny Felder is dead. He was found last night. Died of an apparent drug overdose, but word I hear is that he didn’t use drugs much. He met last night with a Latin American fellow in one of the complexes up in Roswell. We never saw Felder come out. We’re checking on the Latino. Nothing so far. Felder was clean too, but the police had him under surveillance a couple of times. Thought he might be involved in drugs or prostitution. They never found anything definite. His legit job was computers. Last work was for some physicist in New York.”
“Check on it. Anything else?” Ferenzi said.
“Felder was definitely the dead stripper’s man, and it was Felder’s men trying to pick up the roommate. Don’t know why.”
“Find out.”
“We’ll pick up the muscle and question him.”
“Good.” Ferenzi cut some of the spaghetti on his plate and scooped it to his mouth. A little trace of sauce dribbled onto his chin. He wiped it with the napkin and looked at his watch: eleven in the morning. “Any further word from Jerry?”
“The girl went out to a store and bought some clothes and made a phone call. When she went back to the room, she looked as if she was disturbed.”
“Where’d she call?”
“Couldn’t get it.”
“Damn, she could have been calling her contact.” Suddenly Ferenzi leaned forward, the hand with a forkful of spaghetti freezing in midair. The spaghetti slipped off and fell back to the plate. “That’s it. Given this Latin guy, we may be dealing with Cuba or South America. That may be why it’s been so hard to get much out of the Middle East. Shit—that’s got to be it. We’ve been looking in the wrong place. If there’s anybody that would like to have a quiet piece of our ass, it would be Cuba. They need something to get more support from the Third World. If something happened, nothing ever proven, nothing documenting their presence in the papers, but just enough information to let us know, we’d still have to act. They’d howl. Another provocation. They’re setting us up for a fall. That would explain the early deaths, too. It’s a warning—a piece of bait. Track that Latino. The Cubans could be working through their contacts in the drug trade.”
“Yeah, I guess,” the man said.
The fool looked dubious, Ferenzi thought, but that didn’t bother him. Frequently, people didn’t believe his sudden flashes of insight until it was too late. That’d been the problem with the agency. The last time they kept him on ice and waited until the whole thing blew up. Then they covered it up, acted like it hadn’t happened, and blamed him for the consequences. That’s why he’d left. Now he was in charge. There’d be no screw-ups. “Keep those three on the girl and that reporter. Yeah, and what about that guy, the reporter?”
“As far as we can tell, the girl took him to bed and is using him to help her get around. She’ll dump him when she reaches her contact. Probably down on the coast. Plenty of places to leave a body and easy access to boats.”
“Keep the surveillance tight on them, and don’t interfere unless she tries to get out of the country. I’ll meet you again for dinner tonight. I’ll spend the day in the office with that fool from the agency, keep him busy talking about Arab terrorists. Shit, this is perfect. We’ll turn it around on them before they know it.”
The man stood, putting his napkin on the table. He was impressive in height, six feet four. Shoulders wide, he weighed two hundred pounds, and very little was fat.
Until a minor incident with several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gambling money, he had worked for the agency. He left. Ferenzi finished his lunch.
Eight
Now the sun’s light formed a bright triangle where her legs did not quite meet together. Her legs were slender compared to her buttocks. It had been that combination of enticing roundness and lithe thinness that had attracted him to her.
He’d first seen her dancing at the Show and Tell one night when he and a group of friends had gone over to celebrate. The next night he’d returned to see her. On that Saturday, he arrived at the club at seven and had her do a table dance for him. Afterward, while they talked, he invited her to a party. He told her she’d like it and gave her a knowing smile. She agreed.
Later, when the nose candy at the party gave out, he invited her to his house for more. She’d liked that, too. It had been easy. As he’d expected, she was no more hung up about sex than she was about nudity, not with the right incentives at least. It was what followed that was hard. She’d proven easy to bed and hard to tie down. Not anymore. They’d been married over a year now. She’d quit dancing and gone back to nursing full-time. And no more coke for either of them.
All he’d had in the last year was the taste of the stuff he’d picked up on the side. He’d had to check it and had been amazed—it tasted and felt like pharmaceutical. That had to be wrong. How could the ragtag South American bandit get pharmaceutical? Yet so it seemed. Joey smiled to himself and looked back at his wife. The coke had been a very good buy.
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