When I opened the driver’s-side door, she took off feebly from the ground. I immediately placed my hands under her chest and belly and propelled her up and onto the passenger seat. Humiliated, she turned to glare at me before shaking her hips and settling on her cushion.
Starting the truck, I headed out to the lake road and stopped. There were two routes I could take up to the motel. The first led through town past the campus and followed a state highway most of the way. The other route ran north along the lake. It was a bit longer, but there was always less traffic, and the view was spectacular.
As I drove north, the autumn colors blazed before me in a pageant of red, orange, and gold. They were no more vivid than the mental image of Jordan in his lingerie and the memory of Dennis Wheatley’s head disappearing over the falls. I wondered again if the two events could somehow be connected. Wheatley’s money.
Realizing I hadn’t eaten all day, I stopped at a Quik Mart near the turnoff to Romulus and bought myself a roast beef hero and twenty ounces of coffee. Spreading the butcher paper on my lap, I slowly ate the sandwich as the country road veered left away from the lake and cut northwest through old-growth forest toward Rochester.
Maybe ten minutes later, I realized that the sky had gotten progressively darker. I craned my head out the window for a moment. To the south, massive thunderheads had turned the sky leaden gray. They seemed to be hovering right over the treetops.
As I came out of the forest into an open stretch of country road, a brutal gust of wind shook the cab of the truck and pushed me toward the gravel apron. I had been through several hurricanes during the years I was stationed at Fort Benning, and they were always preceded by the same heavy air, the same teasing gusts of harsh wind. It remained to be seen whether this was going to be a bad one after it had traveled all the way up the Alleghenies.
A spatter of rain hit the windshield and stopped as quickly as it came. I turned on the radio to find out if there was a new forecast, but it gave out only a burst of static.
Twenty miles farther up the road, I began to see the signs for the New York State Thruway. The darkening sky began spitting rain again as I arrived at a neon light stanchion that rose thirty feet up in the air. Glowing red letters spelled out the word “Wonderland.”
I recalled reading in an old state police report that the Wonderland had been built by one of the New York organized crime families back in the 1970s when they thought they had bought off enough state politicians to bring legalized casino gambling up here. The hoods turned out to be right, although their timing was off by forty years, and they didn’t anticipate that the casinos would be owned by much older families like the Mohawks and the Iroquois.
The three-story motel complex looked as if it had been designed by the same people who built the early casinos in Vegas. The front portico of the central building was adorned with gigantic fluted columns, each one painted to look like a peppermint stick.
A circular concrete fountain in the shape of a Roman bath stood forlornly in the middle of the cracked, tar-surfaced turnaround, its modern nymphs ready to spew water into the surrounding grotto if someone turned on the water again. The empty grotto was littered with beer cans and old racing forms from Vernon Downs.
There was also a big truck stop next to the motel. It featured a Mexican/Chinese takeout restaurant called Wonton Pancho’s, a country-western bar named Rhinestone Cowgirl, a massage parlor, three pavilions of diesel and gas pumps, free shower facilities, and an acre of parking for the big rigs.
It was dark when I parked my pickup near the fountain. I rolled both windows halfway down so that Bug would have a cross breeze and stepped outside. The gusting wind felt good against my face as I walked toward the peppermint-striped columns that flanked the motel office.
Inside the double doors, a reception area stretched fifty feet to a red-vinyl-covered front desk. The air in the low-ceilinged room reeked of industrial-strength disinfectant.
A balding man with cherub cheeks was standing behind the desk smoking the stub of a cigar. About thirty, he wore a sleeveless Syracuse basketball jersey over knee-length baggy shorts. A small plastic badge pinned to the jersey identified him as “Buntid.”
“You’re in luck, buddy,” he said, removing the cigar as I came toward him. “We got a special today on all the rooms with a Jacuzzi.”
“I’ve already reserved a room,” I said. “The one with a view.”
“You reserved a room?” he marveled, as if no one had ever done it before.
“Number ten.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Buntid with the light of recognition in his eyes. “The one that looks out on the diesel pumps . . . yeah . . . I saved it for you.”
There was a big gap where his lower front teeth should have been. For some reason, it made him seem more sympathetic.
“Thanks,” I said.
I paid him in cash for the first hour. He spread the two twenties and a ten on the countertop before stuffing them through a secure slot that connected to a lock box below. He didn’t ask for my name and address, and he didn’t offer me a receipt.
“You looking for a little action?” he asked, glancing toward the far end of the reception area. Near the door labeled “Restrooms” were three white vinyl couches. Five Asian women were sitting on them. They all wore loose-fitting one-piece smocks, except in different colors. Two were asleep. One was reading an Asian newspaper. They looked Korean with thick, sturdy bodies and blunt faces.
“That older one in the pink can do things with her tongue you wouldn’t believe,” said Buntid.
“Yeah, well, I’m expecting somebody.”
The red plastic clock on the wall behind him read six forty.
“Sure,” he said, picking up a metal key on a red plastic holder from the rack behind him. “I gotta tell you, if you ain’t out of the room by seven thirty, it’s another fifty. We rent on the hour. No partial rates. We got to change the sheets and all.”
“Thanks,” I said, heading for the front door.
I didn’t ask him where the room was located. He had to figure I knew where it was, since I had specifically asked for it. As I went out the double doors, two elderly men were coming in.
Both in their seventies, they looked like retired Rotarians attending a Halloween party at the local senior citizen center. They wore Stetson hats and matching yellow cowboy shirts over polyester pants and geriatric walking shoes.
The first one elbowed the second and gave him a broad leer when he saw the Asian women at the end of the reception room. They headed for the vinyl couches. Welcome to the golden years.
10
Room number ten was located on the ground floor of the motel, the second to last along the left wing. Beyond the floodlit corner of the motel, I could see a line of commercial rigs parked parallel to one another across the truck stop parking lot.
I inserted the key in the door lock, stepped inside, and shut the door behind me. The room gave off the lingering smell of stale tobacco smoke and forty years of every manner of bodily excretion.
The back window looked down a refuse-littered slope to the nearest pavilion of diesel fuel tanks. An eighteen-wheeler slowed to a stop with the loud hooting of hydraulic brakes next to one of the pumps. I closed the front and back curtains and turned on the bedside floor lamp.
The room decor consisted of mirrored walls, stained indoor-outdoor carpeting, a sagging queen-sized bed, and two vinyl chairs. A fake Tiffany chandelier hung over a Formica side table.
An empty ice bucket and two plastic cups enclosed in cellophane sat on the table. There was a framed poster of a stock car driver with oversized aviator sunglasses above the headboard of the bed. The poster was bolted to the wall.
I stepped into the tiny bathroom. Another mirror hung over the cracked sink. To the left was a white plastic tub-shower enclosure screened by a red plastic curtain. I took a leak in the toilet before heading back into the bedroom.
The wind was gusting outside, but I could also hear the
sounds of a woman moaning in apparent ecstasy through the wall of the room next door. The incredible adventure of it all—the theater—was the way Jordan Langford had explained it to me. It was a long way from Broadway.
I tried to visualize where the camera might have been placed during the video recording of Jordan and the girl. My eyes went to the corner of the room where the Formica table sat under the fake chandelier. The action had to have been shot from that direction. I pulled the chandelier toward me. No one seemed to have tampered with it.
Next door, the woman’s moans were joined by a series of loud grunts, as if a wild boar had begun rooting for ants in the forest. Then it was quiet again except for the wind.
I knelt at the edge of the table. When I tried to move it, it wouldn’t budge, and I saw that it was anchored to the floor. I slowly ran my hand down the shaft of the vertical metal stand that supported the top.
I found the convex lens of the camera about halfway down. Someone had drilled a hole the size of an M&M in the shaft before cementing the lens into position. The camera lens was facing the bed.
Using my pocket knife, I pried the transmitter out of the setting and held it up to the light. It looked like a German wireless transmitting device used by European intelligence agencies. Obsolete by current standards, it was configured to send a wireless signal to a nearby recording device.
I wondered if the rig had been set up just to record Jordan’s adventures or if it was a specialty of the Wonderland. I had no way of knowing if it was still being monitored.
I unscrewed the back of the transmitter and had just removed its tiny battery when there was a soft knock on the door. Tucking the transmitter into my jeans pocket, I walked over and opened the door.
A young woman was standing in the entryway. I could hear the rustling of rain in the tree leaves behind her, beyond the parking lot. It was probably the beginning of the first rainband.
She was holding a black leather briefcase at her side. In the light of the coach lamp next to the door, I saw that her face was Eurasian. She wore a long tan raincoat that covered her slim body down to the ankles and was smiling.
The smile disappeared when she saw that I wasn’t Jordan Langford.
“So sorry,” she said in a lilting voice. “Wrong room.”
She was much lovelier in person than she had appeared in the video, with large almond-shaped eyes and thick black hair that was exquisitely coiled around her head. She was beautiful.
“You’ve got the right room, Leila,” I said, taking her free hand and firmly drawing her inside.
“No Leila,” she protested as she came in.
“I’m Alicia’s sister,” I said, closing the door behind her.
There was something Central Asian about her, a definite hint of Mongol blood in the delicate half-caste face. I had seen Eurasian women with similar features in the melting pots of Jalalabad and Tashkent.
“How is the weather in Samarkand this time of year?” I asked, leaning against the closed door when she was inside.
“What? You . . . crazy . . . I want to go,” she said.
She offered no resistance when I took the briefcase out of her hand, unlocked the fasteners, and spread it open. Inside the case was an assortment of lingerie; a small, powerful vibrator; several tubes of scented massage oil; and a bottle of spring water.
Wedged in the crease of one of the slatted leather dividers was the spine of a book. Letting it slide out, I saw it was a soft-cover textbook. The title was Male Ecology: Social Development from Infancy through Adulthood.
I glanced back at the girl. Her seemingly bewildered eyes suggested that its presence alongside the tools of her trade was one of life’s great mysteries. The backflap of the book had a label that read, “Green Storm: Used Text.” Green Storm was the St. Andrews College athletic symbol. It was also the name of the college bookstore.
“Why don’t you drop the pidgin English act?” I said, still blocking the door. “It needs work.”
“Pliss,” she said, her eyes darting to the window and then back to me. “I want to go,” she repeated.
Considering there was no public transportation within twenty miles, I went through the rest of the briefcase looking for her driver’s license. Aside from an assortment of ribbed condoms and three fifty-dollar bills, there was nothing else inside it. She had probably left her purse and identification in the car. Replacing the book and her money, I closed the briefcase and refastened the locks.
“So how did you get into blackmail, Leila?” I asked, handing it back to her.
“Just pleasure girl,” she said in the same singsong voice.
“I’m an undercover police officer,” I came back with a ferocious stare, hauling out my wallet and flashing my cheesy campus security badge. “You can drop this act and talk to me here, or I’ll arrest you now and take you down to headquarters.”
I had always wanted to use a line like that.
“I would never attempt to blackmail President Langford,” she replied in Oxford-accented English.
It was my turn to be impressed.
“How did you know who he was?” I demanded.
“I’m a junior at St. Andrews,” she said. “I recognized him as soon as he came to meet me the first time.”
“What’s your real name?”
“Miram Shakirov.”
“Where are you from?”
“Uzbekistan. Tashkent. I’m here on a full government scholarship.”
I held out one of the vinyl chairs for her. She opened the buttons of her raincoat before sitting. Her low-cut silk blouse displayed unusual cleavage for an Uzbek woman.
“Are you half Russian?” I asked her in Uzbek Arabic.
Her eyes widened in surprise for a moment before she nodded.
“What kind of policeman are you?” she asked.
“I handle all the Uzbek cases in the New York Finger Lakes,” I said. “So why did you use the fake accent, Miram?”
“I . . . didn’t want him to be embarrassed,” she answered. “I think he’s an amazing man.”
“Right,” I said. “You think he’s amazing. So when did you decide to let the blackmailers know who he was?”
“What blackmailers? I didn’t . . . I never told anyone.”
“Come on, Miram. We both know blackmail pays a lot better than selling yourself.”
“I’m not selling myself,” she said hotly. “I do this because I’m studying to go into the hospitality industry.”
“The hospitality industry,” I repeated.
“I’m raising the seed capital to create a franchised network of legalized sexual service centers,” she said. “My company is called Please Release Me. You can learn all about it on my website.”
When I continued to stare at her skeptically, she said, “It’s true . . . I’ve already received contingent commitment letters from two venture capital firms that have read my business plan.”
The story sounded too ridiculous to believe she was making it all up. The way the world was going, she would probably make a fortune with it. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t also figured out a way to make Jordan pay a share of her capitalization costs.
“Did you ever see anyone else when you were with him in this room?” I asked. “Someone who might have planted a camera to record what you were doing here?”
Her eyes seemed shocked.
“No,” she said firmly. “Never.”
Checking my watch, I saw that it was already seven twenty. Not wanting to shell out another fifty dollars, I decided to walk her back to her car to check her identification and ask about the call-girl service. Maybe she had passed along Jordan’s identity to someone working there.
“All right, let’s go,” I said, standing up.
From the look on her face, I saw that she thought I was arresting her.
“Now that we are both here,” she said, looking up at me with those lovely almond eyes, “might I possibly please you in some way?”
It’s funny, get
ting older. Your knees might be swollen with arthritis and there might be enough crow’s feet around your eyes to inspire Edgar Allan Poe, but part of you wants to believe you’ve still got it. The old magic.
“You’re a very good-looking man,” she said, her eyes posed invitingly.
“Yeah,” I said, grinning back. I could imagine her saying exactly the same thing to the two senior citizen cowboys I had seen in the reception area.
“No . . . you are,” she insisted as I tried to remember the name of the call-girl service she worked with. Friends with All the Benefits . . . that was the name the woman used when I had called to set up the appointment. The girl had to know where they were located, and I doubted it was very far away. That would be my next stop. I decided to take her with me.
“Please don’t arrest me,” she said, her voice going soft.
“Not if you cooperate, Miram.”
I was about to ask her the address of Friends with All the Benefits when there was another knock at the door. She appeared startled at the interruption as I went to open it, expecting Buntid to be there, looking for his next fifty and asking how I was enjoying the view.
A man in a flowered Hawaiian shirt was standing in the sheltered walkway that connected the ground-floor rooms. Behind him, the sky was filled with rain. I could hear its steady rapping on the slanted roof.
“So who are you, man?” he asked with a cocky grin.
He was in his late twenties, short and stocky, with simian arms that nearly reached his knees. His body-builder’s physique was undercut a little by an almost girlish pretty face. He had long dark eyelashes and a button nose. His thick brown hair was tied off in a ponytail.
“You don’t know?” I came back.
“I know you got something of mine,” he said.
In the faint gleam of the headlights passing by on the thruway, I saw a hint of movement in the darkness behind him and realized he wasn’t alone. The second man was standing out in the rain beyond the sheltered walkway.
Dead Man's Bridge Page 9