Margery rummaged through Donna’s clutch. “There’s some interesting pills and a white powder in here,” she said. “Wait! Here’s the key.” She held it up. “Based on my experience as a landlady, I’d say this belongs to an industrial-grade padlock with a long shackle, good for self-storage units and toolsheds. It’s real, Helen.”
“Now will you take me to my hotel?” Donna said, her voice shaking. “I’m staying at the Five Flamingos on Federal Highway.”
A middling-priced tourist motel, Helen thought. “I’ll be glad to take you. I want you out of my car and my life.”
She texted Broker to meet them in the hotel parking lot. “Park by the back fence,” he texted back. “Ten minutes. Black Dodge Charger. Local backup one lot over.”
Helen, Margery, and Donna rode in silence to the Five Flamingos. “You can drop me off in front,” Donna said, but Helen kept driving around to the back. Phil woke up suddenly and murmured, “My head is killing me. Where are we?”
“Making a delivery.” Helen couldn’t stop smiling. Phil fell back asleep, but he seemed okay. She’d insist on a hospital check when he got the blood test to prove Donna had drugged him. And Margery had that video.
Broker flashed his car lights and Helen pulled next to him.
“Donna,” she said, “let me introduce you to Stanley Morgan. He’ll give you free room and board for a very long time — and some lovely bracelets.”
Going-Away Money
by Michael Bracken
1957
Sean sat at the bus station’s lunch counter, knapsack in his lap, and stared out the window at the thick layer of snow covering everything within reach of the building’s lights. He watched in dismay as the white blanket grew ever thicker. His bus had rolled into the station just before midnight, less than an hour after the first flake drifted from the night sky, and he had been sitting at the counter ever since.
He was one of three passengers the bus had carried. The other two — an older couple who had boarded the bus west of St. Louis — sat in one of the four booths lined up along the window and stared glumly at one another without speaking. He hadn’t seen the driver since exiting the bus.
“Looks like you’re stuck here tonight, hon,” said the blue-eyed waitress standing on the other side of the counter. She was a few years older than Sean, and her pink uniform, which buttoned up the front and had white detachable trim around the short sleeves, did little to hide her bottom-heavy figure. Over it she wore a frilly white apron that was less practical than decorative. Her strawberry-blonde hair had been pulled into a tight bun on the back of her head and she’d pinned a pink-and-white cap into her hair. Her thick-soled orthopedic shoes squeaked against the linoleum floor as she turned and reached for the coffeepot. She refilled his cup. “You might as well finish that pie.”
Sean glanced at his plate. All that remained was a smear of filling, a cherry, and a bit of crust. He ate the cherry, left the crust, and pushed the dessert plate across the counter.
The waitress whisked it away and replaced it with a handwritten ticket as he downed his second cup of lukewarm coffee. He examined it — blue-plate special of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, corn, and biscuit; cherry pie; and coffee — and dug in his pocket for a buck and a quarter, enough to pay for his meal and then some.
As the waitress scooped the coins from the countertop into the palm of her hand, Sean rose with the knapsack held tight, still surprised at how much fifty thousand dollars weighed. He carried it into the station’s lobby and found a place where he could sit with his back to the wall to watch everyone who entered and exited the building.
No one did.
As far as Sean could tell, he was one of seven people in the entire station — the three passengers and the driver from the bus parked outside, the short-order cook and the waitress in the diner, and the old man snoring behind the ticket counter. The maintenance crew had inspected and refueled the bus before heading home.
After a while, the coffee he’d downed with dinner wanted release and Sean made his way to the men’s room. He was standing at the urinal holding the knapsack with his free hand when the bus’s other male passenger entered and stood beside him. Only a thin rectangle of metal jutting from the wall separated them. The man slid his foot under the divider until his worn brown wing tip pushed against Sean’s black high-tops. Sean knew what the man’s wide stance meant but he tried to ignore the signal.
When the man persisted, Sean asked, “What about your wife?”
“She’s not my wife, kid. I’m not married.”
“So the woman you’re traveling with is—”
“A Pinkerton. We’re both Pinkertons.”
Private eyes.
Sean finished and backed away from the urinal. A moment later the Pinkerton joined him at the two-basin sink, and Sean watched his reflection in the mirror. Over a wrinkled white dress shirt, the barrel-chested man wore a thin red-and-black striped tie affixed to his shirt with a gold tie clip, an off-the-rack, gray-checked, two-button sport coat, and dark gray slacks. His nose had been flattened once too often, and his graying hair had been cut into a flattop held upright by a liberal application of butch wax. When he leaned forward over the basin to wash his hands, his jacket fell open and Sean saw the butt of a revolver sticking out of a shoulder holster.
The Pinkerton’s reflection gazed back at him. “So, you’re not interested?”
Sean shook his head.
“I’ve got a few bucks,” the man said. “I could make it worth your while.”
Sean thought about the money in the knapsack and knew he would never have to do that again. “I’m fine, thanks.”
“Young guy like you, traveling across country alone,” the Pinkerton said, “he needs a friend to take care of him.”
The last friend who had sworn to take care of Sean had been shot to death. “I can take care of myself.”
“Suit yourself, kid,” the Pinkerton said. He dried his hands and exited the restroom, leaving Sean to stare at his own reflection.
Many hours earlier, Sean’s finger-length auburn hair had been combed into a ducktail. While he slept with his head against the bus seat, the duck-tail had lost its shape. He didn’t have a comb, so he used his fingers to push his hair back into place before he returned to his seat against the lobby wall. He pulled the knapsack into his lap and hugged it like the teddy bear he’d had as a child in Centralia.
“Mind if I sit here?” Without waiting for an answer, the waitress dropped into the seat next to Sean, lit a cigarette, and took a long drag. After she blew out the smoke, she asked, “You got a name, hon?”
“Sean,” he said. “My name’s Sean.”
“I’m Helen.” She tapped her name badge. “Where you headed?”
“Seattle.”
“What’s in Seattle?”
Nothing. He’d purchased a ticket on the first bus leaving St. Louis with a West Coast destination. He couldn’t think of a lie quick enough, so he shrugged.
“Then what’re you running from?”
A dead body in a fleabag hotel. He hadn’t killed the man, but he had watched him die. He didn’t tell the waitress any of that.
“If you ain’t running toward something,” the waitress continued, “then you’re running from something. It has to be one or the other. Me? I’m running from an ex-husband who thinks I’m a punching bag whenever he gets a snootful. That is, I was running, but this Podunk town is as far as I got. These days I got to fend off Elmer every time I go in the kitchen.”
“So where would you go if you could leave here?”