5 Client

by Parnell Hall

  I pulled my foot out. My shoe was full of snow. I couldn’t see taking it off and shaking it out, though.

  Damn. What did I do now? I couldn’t back up any further, and my head was still in the light.

  I crouched down. Brilliant idea. Now I was totally in the shadows. I was also squatting in a horrendously uncomfortable position with a shoe full of snow.

  I flopped forward onto my knees. I maneuvered my feet free and wiggled them, to try to get the circulation going. My left foot felt positively numb. My hands didn’t feel too hot either—I had no gloves. I rubbed my hands together, stuck ’em in my pockets.

  I knelt there looking at the door to unit seven wondering how long this guy was going to take, and what the fuck I was gonna do if the son of a bitch decided to spend the night.

  He was out in less than five minutes. Talk about quickies. This guy could have been up for the Premature Ejaculator of the Year award.

  If that’s what he was there for. Somehow I didn’t think so. Not with the long-limbed Monica Dorlander. It would take longer than that just to get her undressed.

  At any rate, he was so quick I wasn’t ready for him. The door opened and out he came, and I started and grabbed for my camera, only my hands were in my pockets and I had to get ’em untangled first, and when I did my fingers were still so numb I could hardly hold the damn thing, and by the time I got it up to my eye the guy was already walking away. I fired off three quick shots anyway, though in my heart of hearts I knew they wouldn’t be any good. Not at that distance, not in the dark, and not without a flash. It was small consolation to know that even if I had been ready, even if I’d clicked it off just as he got out the door, it still wouldn’t have done any good. ’Cause the guy had his hat on again, and as he walked away toward the front of the motel, and as I fired off the last of my futile pictures of his back, I realized I still hadn’t seen the guy’s face. Well, hell, pictures were a long shot anyway—no pun intended—the main thing is I.D. the guy.

  I got to my feet, no easy task. Even in that short time my muscles had cramped up in the chilling cold. Getting up required putting my hands down in the snow. I eased to my feet, swayed unsteadily for a moment, brushed the snow off my hands.

  The retreating figure hadn’t seen me. He hadn’t turned around or even broken stride. The door to unit seven was closed, so Monica Dorlander hadn’t seen me either.

  O.K. Go get him.

  I kept in the shadows, lurched off toward the front of the motel. The guy had stepped out into the lot, was walking along the rear of the parked cars. He kept on going, past the office and out the driveway. At the bottom of the drive he turned right, walked on down the road. As soon as he turned the corner, I followed.

  The light was on in the motel office. I hoped the Woodsman was watching “L.A. Law.” Or any show, for that matter, that would keep him from looking out the window.

  I hit the bottom of the drive and turned right. Shit. The guy was out of sight. There was no street light in that direction, just the dark void that had swallowed him up.

  But he had to be there. There was no place he could go. So if he walked and I followed, eventually we’d come to the light and I’d spot him.

  Unless he heard me and turned back. Chilling-Thought-Number-409. Log it in the notebook under ‘paranoia’ or ‘prudence,’ depending on your mood.

  I gritted my teeth, forged ahead. I noticed I was limping slightly, favoring the snow-filled shoe. I wondered what the chance was of getting frostbite. “Private Detective Loses Toe: while conducting a routine surveillance of—”

  Stop it. No routines. This is important. Get it done.

  I limped on.

  There came a metallic click from ahead of me in the distance. I instinctively ducked. Then a small light. But not the flash of light from a bullet. It was the light that comes from a small bulb. Then a metallic slamming sound and the light went out. Moments later, a motor roared to life. Then more lights, two red dragon’s eyes gleaming at me. And two white lights shining on ahead.

  Shit. The son of a bitch parked in the road. He was too far ahead for me to see the license plate number or even the make of the car. He parked in the road and walked back, which means he must be as important as hell, and here he is getting away, Jesus fucking Christ.

  I turned and sprinted for the motel. Or at least my version of a sprint. I must have looked something like a gimpy flamingo, hobbling on stiff legs, topcoat flopping in the breeze.

  I negotiated the driveway, reached my car, fumbled for my keys. I hopped in, punched off the code alarm, started my car. I wheeled around, tore out of the parking lot, fishtailed coming out of the driveway, and sped off on what I knew would be a futile chase.

  It was. By the time I got back to the main roads there was no sign of him, and countless directions he could have gone. Picking any of them would have been stupid— nothing to choose from. And even if I found a car, there would be no way of knowing if it were his.

  I put my tail between my legs and slunk back to the motel.

  Monica Dorlander’s car was still there and her light was still on. Thank god. That would have been the ultimate humiliation, losing her in the process of losing him.

  I parked the car and went back to my room.

  The TV was still on, of course. I hadn’t had time to switch it off when I went out. It must have been after eleven, ’cause the news was on. It was a local station, and they were covering a car wreck in Poughkeepsie. I watched for a few minutes. If you think New York City news is bad, try this sometime.

  I flopped down at the table again, pushed the curtain aside. Nothing doing. The light was on, the door was closed, the car was there. All shipshape.

  But the horse had left the barn. Monica Dorlander had had a caller. And it had been important enough that the guy had been discreet enough to leave his car parked on the road, not the sort of thing a person would choose to do in this weather. And I’d blown it. Muffed it. Fucked up utterly. Jesus Christ, I thought. How the hell was I going to get off charging Marvin Nickleson two hundred bucks a day, plus time and a half for overtime, plus gas, tolls, motel bills, etc., when I was giving service like that?

  I sat there watching the door to Monica Dorlander’s unit, feeling slightly lower than shit, while in the background the local news droned on.

  Monica Dorlander must have been watching the local news too, ’cause when it was over the light in her unit went off.

  Oh shit. What did I do now?

  I was sorely tempted to stay up and sit there watching the door of the unit just in case, in the off chance something might happen and I could catch it, and redeem myself for blowing everything utterly so far.

  Like hell.

  I switched off the TV, hung my pants and jacket over the back of the chair, crawled into bed and went to sleep.

  13.

  I DREAMED SOMEONE stole my car.

  It was one of those dreams where you wake up and you can’t remember what you were dreaming. So I didn’t know who, what, why, where, when, any of the circumstances. All I knew was, someone stole my car.

  It was the middle of the night, it was dark, and for a few moments I didn’t know where I was. Then I remembered. I was in a motel room on a mountaintop in the middle of god knows where, and if someone stole my car I was in a lot of trouble.

  I got out of bed, staggered to the window, pushed the curtain aside. No. My car was there. It was also dark as hell, so it must still be the middle of the night. Mental-Note-to-buy-a-watch-Number-207.

  I tumbled back into bed and went to sleep again. This time I dreamed someone was nailing me into a coffin, not an uncommon dream, I’m sure, but then I’m not that inventive. Certainly not a pleasant one. Here I was still alive, and these idiots didn’t know it, and they were nailing the lid on the coffin, and I was yelling and screaming but no one could hear me, and they just kept hammering, bang, bang, bang.

  I woke up and light was streaming through the cracks in the edge of the curtains and so
meone was pounding on my door. Jesus Christ, what the hell time is it, Mental-Note-to-buy-a-watch-Number-208.

  I got out of bed and pulled on my pants. If it was Monica Dorlander wanting to know what the hell I was doing following her, I didn’t want to be standing there in my underwear.

  I opened the door. It wasn’t Monica Dorlander. It was a uniformed cop of some type. I say of some type, because the uniforms I’m used to are New York City uniforms, and this sure wasn’t that. And I wasn’t really alert enough to focus in on what it was. All I knew was that he was a stocky young officer, probably ten years younger than I, and that he didn’t look happy.

  “Yes?” I said.

  The officer fixed me with a cold stare. “Alan Parker?” he said.

  Oh shit.

  I am not at my best in the morning. Till I’ve had a cup of coffee I find it hard to focus on anything. And the last thing in the world I’d want to do would be answer questions for some cop.

  And the first question was the hardest. Alan Parker? How the hell did I answer that? If I said yes, I’d have lied to the police and I’d be in a lot of trouble. And if I said no, the police would know I’d lied to the Woodsman and I’d be in a lot of trouble. Basically, I was in a lot of trouble.

  I tried simple deflection. “What’s this all about?”

  It didn’t work. The square jaw jutted out another inch. “Is your name Alan Parker?”

  I took a breath. “I am registered as Alan Parker. This is my room.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Got any identification?”

  Oh sweet Jesus. “Yeah,” I said. I reached in my back pocket and pulled out my wallet. I flipped it open to my driver’s license.

  He looked at it. “Stanley Hastings. Gee, Mr. Parker, could you tell me what you’re doing with Mr. Hasting’s driver’s license?”

  “It’s my driver’s license.”

  “So you say.”

  “Take a look at the picture. It’s a photo I.D.”

  “Yeah, but chop shops make ’em up for you. You steal Stanley Hasting’s license, put your picture on it. It’s done all the time.”

  “I’m Stanley Hastings. That’s my license.”

  “And who is Alan Parker?”

  “No one. I just signed the name.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want a record of my stay.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t really know the answer. Actually, there was no reason in the world why I couldn’t have written Stanley Hastings in the register. What difference could it have possibly made? Who would have cared? I guess I was just seduced by TV.

  But that wasn’t what he was asking. He was asking what I was doing staying there under an assumed name. And I didn’t want to tell him. So the shrug was as good an answer as any.

  He glared at me for a moment, then grunted, “Put your shoes on.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re going outside. Now you can put your shoes on or not, it’s entirely up to you, but if you don’t, I bet your feet will be cold.”

  I put my shoes on. The guy took my jacket off the chair and handed it to me. I realized he was doing it to see if I had anything heavy in the pocket. Ditto my topcoat. I put it on.

  He jerked his thumb. “Out.”

  He stepped aside and I walked by him out the door.

  And stopped dead.

  The parking lot was a flurry of activity. There were cops everywhere. Some dressed in uniforms like him. Some in other uniforms I didn’t recognize either. There were half a dozen extra cars parked, not in front of the units, but crisscross in the parking lot. The doors of several of the units were open, and there were people standing in them looking out.

  The door to unit seven was open, but Monica Dorlander wasn’t standing in it. Two cops were standing in front of it however. Somehow it seemed to be the focus of attention. As I watched, a third cop came out.

  All in all, things did not look good.

  My buddy prodded me in the back, which I took to be an invitation to start walking. I stepped out into the parking lot. He put his hand on my arm, probably as a helpful gesture to suggest our rate of speed. We marched out into the parking lot and up to one of the parked cars.

  A young cop dressed in the same uniform as my buddy was standing next to it.

  “Got a live one, Chuck,” my buddy said. “Keep your eye on him.”

  Chuck, who couldn’t have been that far out of his teens, snuffled once, said, “Right,” put his hand on my arm, and fixed me with what he must have thought was a steely glare. The kid was young, inexperienced and nervous, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  My buddy left us and walked off toward the motel office. I looked and saw the Woodsman standing out in front of it talking to a couple of other officers. My buddy walked up to him and apparently said something, but his back was to me and it was too far away for me to hear. He turned back and looked over at me. The Woodsman looked at me too, and then nodded his head, and I could see him saying something to my buddy.

  While this was going on a car pulled into the driveway. Or I should say started to pull into the driveway. It made the turn, started up the little incline toward the office, and stopped. Where the car stopped the sun was shining right off the windshield and I couldn’t see the driver at all.

  But I could see the license plate.

  Now, I’m not patting myself on the back here. As I’ve said, I’m not that observant. At the moment I was still groggy with sleep, intimidated by cops, not really sure of what was going on and terrified I was about to find out. So for me to catch a license plate number under those circumstances would be a small miracle slightly on a par with the parting of the Red Sea.

  But it was a New York State plate. And in recent years New York State did a smart thing. There were so many cars in the state the license numbers were getting too long to fit on the plates, so they substituted letters for numbers. That solved the problem, because there are twenty-six letters and only ten numbers. So whereas six numbers would only allow nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine plates, three letters and three numbers could accommodate all the cars in the state. So now all New York State license plates, except the personalized ones, consisted of groups of three letters and three numbers, separated by a picture of the Statue of Liberty.

  In most cases, of course, the three letters were gibberish, but in some cases they formed words.

  Now I know under those circumstances I could never have caught a license plate number. And in fact I didn’t catch any numbers.

  But the first half of the license plate of the car that pulled into the driveway was “POP.”

  Apparently POP changed his mind about registering at the motel. I can’t say as I blamed him. I don’t think I’d register at any motel where a dozen policemen were crawling about. At any rate, POP backed right out the drive, spun the wheel, and took off back the way he’d come.

  I looked around at the officers in the lot. Aside from me, I don’t think anybody noticed. Particularly my buddy, who was already on his way walking back.

  He walked up to me, pointed his finger and said, “You’re the guy.” He looked at Chuck. “He’s the guy.”

  “Is that right?” Chuck said.

  They both looked at me.

  I wasn’t going to ask them what they meant by the guy. For one thing, I didn’t want to give ’em the satisfaction. For another thing, I figured I already knew.

  When I said nothing my buddy said, “You watch him. I’m gonna phone in.”

  “Right,” Chuck said.

  My buddy walked over to the police car, reached in the window and pulled out the microphone of a police radio. He pressed the button and said, “This is Davis, over.”

  The radio squawked something that I couldn’t make out, and Davis said, “I got him. What you want me to do with him?” The radio squawked again. Davis said, “Roger, over and out.”

  Davis swung open the back
door of the car and said, “Get in.”

  I never was big on resisting authority, no matter what form it happened to take. I got in the back of the car.

  I was just beginning to wake up. It had occurred to me by that point that nobody seemed likely to offer me a cup of coffee, and I was gonna have to do without. So I was doing the best I could of brushing the cobwebs out of a severely befuddled mind, and trying to size up the current situation.

  Which wasn’t that hard to do. I mean what with there being so much police activity and all, and people standing around staring and cops going in and out of unit seven, it didn’t take a genius to figure out my surveillance of Monica Dorlander had somehow taken a turn for the worse.

  And when, while Davis was getting the police car turned around, a meat wagon pulled up and joined the cop cars in front of unit seven, I must say I began to have serious concerns for the state of Monica Dorlander’s health.

  14.

  THEY DROVE ME DOWN the mountain along a few twisty roads into a small town and pulled up in front of a police station. I knew it was a police station because the sign on the front door said, “CHIEF OF POLICE.” Otherwise I wouldn’t have had a clue. It was a small frame house just like all the other small frame houses in the town. The sign “CHIEF OF POLICE” was hanging from the front door on hooks, and it occurred to me maybe all the houses in town had hooks, and whoever was getting to be police chief that day, well they just gave him the sign.

  Chuck and Davis got out, and Davis opened the back door. I took that as an invitation to get out and did. They put their hands on my arms and led me up to the police station.

  Surprise. It was indeed a police station, not a private home. It was a large room, outfitted with files, desks, wanted posters, what have you, all the necessary accouterments. It even had a wooden rail with a gate dividing the room in two. This seemed excessive to me, seeing as how the room wasn’t that big. Beyond the gate in the back of the room in the left-hand corner was a large desk. Seated at the desk was a large man. I figured he was the Chief of Police. I also figured he wanted to see me. On both counts I figured right.