Prison.
I’d go to prison for borrowing a measly seven thousand, for believing in that son of a bitch Harvey Patterson and his big talk about a sure-thing real-estate killing.
I couldn’t stand being locked up. The idea of spending years in the company of brutal men like that stranger terrifies me so much I can’t think about it without starting to shake and sweat.
Options? Sorry, Petrie, you’re fresh out. All you can do is wait and pray the hold-up notion really is a crazy fantasy and the economy picks up and somebody buys the Indian Head Bay property and you don’t get caught.
Except that I was already caught. That was what was tearing me up inside, making me wriggle and jump and lose my temper and think wild thoughts. More than one kind of prison for a man to be locked up in. Even if I managed to cover the shortage without being found out — caught, trapped, locked up in Pomo until the day I died.
Harry Richmond
Maria Lorenzo couldn’t get it through her thick Indian head that I didn’t want her to do any maid service in cabin six. She kept saying, “But if he stays another night he’ll need clean towels. And the bed — who will make up the bed?”
“He can make up his own bed,” I said.
“No clean towels?”
“I told you, no. Don’t even go near it.”
“How come you don’t want to give this man service?”
“That’s my business. You mind your own.”
“Okay, you’re the boss.” But it still bothered her; she kept frowning and shaking her head. “You want me to clean the office and your rooms?”
“It’s your day, isn’t it?”
“Change the sheets, put out fresh towels?”
Indians! Skulls thick as granite. “Everything, Maria, same as you always do on Fridays.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“Well? What about it?”
“Should I come and clean six then?”
“If Faith checks out. I’ll let you know.”
“But not if he stays? Still no service?”
“That’s right. Nothing. Nada.”
She shook her head again, muttered something in Pomo, and went around the counter into my living quarters. Stupid cow. But she had a nice ass, round and plump. Like Dottie’s when we were first married, before she got hog-fat after Ella was born. I couldn’t get near Dottie the last few years. All that lard... it made me want to puke when I saw her naked. Her own damn fault when she dropped dead of a heart attack. Two hundred and eighty-seven pounds...
I shut Dottie out of my mind and watched Maria wiggle around, bend over to straighten the papers and magazines on the coffee table. Dried my throat to see that ass of hers stuck up in the air, all round and inviting. She was in her late thirties and starting to wrinkle and lose her shape like a lot of Indian women at that age, but she was still attractive enough and her ass was just right. I craved a piece of that every time I saw her. But she wouldn’t have any of me. Some other white man, maybe, but not Harry Richmond. One time I made a pass she shot me down cold. Didn’t get offended or angry, just gave me a reproachful look and said, “I have a husband and three children, Mr. Richmond, and I believe with all my heart in the teachings of our savior, Jesus Christ.” Sure. But what if I’d been thirty instead of fifty and had all my hair and a flat belly? Bet she’d have sung a different tune then. Most Indian women are sluts, and the pious ones are the worst.
Indian women. Maria Lorenzo, that snooty little Audrey Sixkiller... what was it about the attractive ones that made me want it so much?
No use standing around here getting myself worked up for nothing. I went outside to the shed and fetched my tool kit. One of the downspouts on cabin three was loose, and this was as good a time as any to fix it. Maria knew enough to answer the phone if it rang.
Cold this morning. No sun, mist rising in the marshes, a high wind pushing thick clouds inland, with more scudding in behind. Couldn’t tell yet if we’d get rain on the weekend. Probably would, my luck being what it was. If it did rain, I wouldn’t get half a dozen rentals through Sunday night. I ought to be grateful to any guest deciding to stay another night, but not when that guest was John Faith. I’d take his money as long as he wanted to give it to me, but that didn’t mean I had to like it or anything about him. No telling what he was up to around here. Whatever it was, I wished he’d tend to it and go back where he came from. I’d sleep better when he was gone, that was for sure.
I was hammering a new clamp on the drain spout when the police cruiser drove in off the highway. Gave me a jolt to see Chief Novak at the wheel. Lakeside Resort is within Pomo township’s jurisdiction, just barely, but the town cops don’t patrol much out this way. No reason they should, really. I hadn’t had to call in the law in over three years, since the couple from Walnut Creek got into a drunken fight in cabin four and the man busted his wife’s arm for her. She had it coming, if you ask me, the way she kept running him down all the time, but that hadn’t kept me from calling the police. I can’t afford trouble.
Novak spotted me and pulled up. Instead of climbing out he rolled down his window. I pasted on a smile as I walked over.
“Morning, Chief. What brings you up here?”
“You have a guest named John Faith?”
No surprise there. I said, “That’s what he calls himself.”
“Check out already? I don’t see his car.”
“No, he paid me for another night.”
“When did he pay you?”
“About an hour ago. Little after eight.”
“Just one more night?”
“Just one. How come you’re asking about him? He get himself into some trouble already?”
“I just want to talk to him.” Novak’s face, now I looked at it close, was tight-skinned and hard around the mouth and jaw. His eyes were bloodshot and bagged, as if he hadn’t had much sleep last night. “What time’d he leave?”
“Right after he paid me.”
“Tell you where he was going?”
“Didn’t say a thing.”
“You know if he was here between midnight and two A.M.?”
“Midnight and two? Why? Something happen then?”
“Was he here, Harry?”
“Well... not when I went to bed around eleven-thirty. He’s in six and the windows were dark and no sign of that Porsche of his. I was awake another thirty, forty minutes and I didn’t hear him come in.” The wind had chapped my lips; I took out my tube of Blistex. “Tell you this, Chief. Whatever he’s done, it won’t surprise me.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You had a good look at him, up close?”
“Yesterday.”
“Then you know what I mean. Makes me nervous as hell having him here, but I can’t afford to turn down anybody’s business.”
“How’d he pay you? Cash or credit card?”
“Cash. Both times. Wad of bills in his wallet big enough to gag a Doberman.”
“What address did he put on his registration card?”
“Los Angeles, that’s all.”
“No street or box number?”
“Nope. I should’ve asked, I guess, but he’s not somebody you want to prod. Touchy. Mean and touchy. I can tell you his car license number, if you want that.”
“I already know it.”
“Well, how about the cabin he’s in?”
“What about it?”
“You want to take a look inside?”
Novak shook his head. “Not enough cause.”
“I could just unlock the door with my passkey and then go on about my business. Never know it if you happened to step inside for a minute or two—”