She said, “Yeah, I guess.”
Colonel Dagoberto Godoy opened the door wearing his red Jockeys and a scowl that changed at once.
As Helene said, “Oh, I’m sorry. Gee, I have the wrong room,” and began turning away.
The colonel reached out and took hold of her arm in a grip that startled her and pulled her around to face him again. “You don’t have the wrong room. This is the room you want. You come to see a man, didn’t you?”
Helene said, “I happen to be staying in this hotel.” Cool, but not quite haughty. “I see now that I got off the elevator on the wrong floor. If you’ll be kind enough to let go of my arm and behave yourself, I won’t have to report this to the manager.”
She could, Helene was thinking, knee him in the crotch. Take some of the spunk out of the arrogant little asshole. But that wouldn’t get her a drink, would it?
She let the colonel tell her, “Oh, please, you must forgive me. You must let me show you how I’m a real nice guy…”
Jack stepped from the elevator to the hall railing and looked down into the courtyard. Helene was seated at the table again. The colonel stood over her talking, bowing over her, taking her hand, kissing it-Jesus Christ-holding onto her hand as he sat down, talking a mile a minute.
He turned and walked back past the elevator to 501, listened at the door, and then used the key to go in.
There was the bottle of wine Little One had delivered, open in a silver bucket. A bowl of melted ice and shrimp tails. Shrimp tails in ashtrays. Letters on the desk by the TV set, the same letters he saw the last time he was here.
Two packages of clean laundry on the bed. That could mean something. The light on in the bathroom. Towels on the floor. A bottle of cologne with the top off, on the wash-basin. Next to it a blow-dryer, the cord plugged into the wall. He didn’t want to be here.
He didn’t want to be here the other night when he came. But this time the urge to hurry up and get out was stronger, the feeling more intense that he was crazy to be doing this. He was too old to be doing this. He wasn’t the same person. He could feel it walking over to the dresser, his body telling him he shouldn’t be here. He felt slow. He had felt alive going into all those other rooms, to score but also to be doing it, to be in there-look at him-getting away with it. But that didn’t make any sense at all now.
It was a show-off thing to do you could only do in front of people who were asleep.
He opened the colonel’s shirt drawer, slipped his hand beneath folds of soft silk, and felt the pistol and two extra magazines. He brought them out, closed his hand around the grip of the Beretta, feeling the solid heft of it as he walked over to the desk. The pink copy of a car dealer bill of sale lay next to the bank deposit and withdrawal receipts.
Helene had to pick up her scotch and water with her left hand. The colonel, hunched over the table in his black silk jacket, wouldn’t let go of her right hand. He held it in both of his, the one with the diamond on top. He looked like a gangster in the movies. Or a record promoter, hard rock. Except when he spoke.
“I’ll tell you something from long experience. I have never seen a woman so attractive as you in my life.”
“Oh, I don’t believe that,” Helene said. “You’re exaggerating. Aren’t you?”
“I have had associations with very beautiful women. One of them was going to be in the Senorita Universo. You know of that? To choose the most beautiful woman in the world. But she got sick.”
“I was homecoming queen at Fortier,” Helene said, “my senior year. I probably could’ve been Sugar Bowl Queen one time, but I didn’t try very hard. You know, why bother? You get in those big pageants I hear it’s just politics. You know, who you go to bed with, and I’m not that kind. I have too much self-respect.”
“Politics, yes, of course. My whole life I devote to the government of my country. Yes, I was in Washington, I know your president very well. He wrote a letter to me I like to show you. He sign it Ronald Reagan, the president. Listen, I’ll get it to show you.”
“No, that’s okay, Dagoberda. What do you like to be called, Dago?”
“No, I prefer with my friends, Bertie.”
“That’s cute. I like that, Birdy.”
“No, not Birdy, like a bird. Bertie. Ber-tie.”
“That’s cute, too.”
“I think you the cute one. Listen, you visiting, uh? From where?”
“Miami.”
“No. Is that true? You from Miami?”
“Have you ever been there?”
“Sure, I been there. I’m going back there, too, pretty soon.”
“Are you? When?”
“You from Miami. You know what this is, how you come to my room and we meet? Is destiny. It was going to happen and we don’t know it. See, and there is nothing we can do to stop it.”
“It’s weird,” Helene said. “When’re you going?”
“You have to give me your phone number and your address, for when I go there.”
“Why don’t you give me your number instead?”
“I don’t know it yet.” He looked up, straightened, letting go of her hand. “Ah, but now I can get it for you, good.” And called out, “Crispin!”
Helene turned enough to see two men coming over from the lobby, both Latins in mod-cut suits with pointy shoulders. The one coming ahead of the other, hands in his pockets, had on sunglasses. Now the colonel was saying, “Crispin, this beautiful lady is from Miami. Elene, Crispin, my associate, is also from there. Crispin, sit with us, have a drink.”
Helene said, “Listen, you guys, I’m gonna have to run in about two minutes.”
Now the colonel was shaking his head, telling her he wouldn’t hear of it. She watched him snap his fingers, once, at the other Latin guy, who’d hung back holding his hands in front of him, but came toward them now as the colonel told him something in Spanish that sounded like an order and tossed his room key in the air for the guy to catch. There, do it. Then turned back to her smiling, Bertie again.
“He’s going to get the letter from President Reagan so I can show you.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Helene said. “I really wish you wouldn’t.”
But the colonel was snapping his fingers now at the giant black waiter and the one named Crispin turned his sunglasses on her to ask, “Where you live in Miami?”
Jack went through the deposit and withdrawal receipts, saw nothing that looked like a transfer to a Miami bank, saw one new account that had been opened and copied all the figures down again, just to be sure. Several more names had been checked on the colonel’s prospect list, others crossed out. He came to the letter on White House stationery and began reading it again, wanting to memorize his favorite parts: the one where our president tells the colonel to “win a big one for democracy,” and the one where he mentions “my friends in the Pelican State.” Jesus Christ, the Pelican State. That closing, in Spanish, Jack had figured out to mean “he isn’t heavy, he’s…”
In the silence, concentrating, he heard the sounds coming from the other room. The key in the lock. Someone coming in, trying to, pushing on the door but having trouble with it. Trying again now. Jack picked up the Beretta from the desk. He moved around to the other side of the bed, by the window, eased down against the wall behind the headboard and hump of pillows and didn’t like it, the feeling of being cornered here. He’d rather be standing and thought of the closet with its sliding doors, closed now. They made a noise when you pushed them open. He’d have to move past the bedroom door to get to the closet. He’d have to hurry. Now he didn’t want to move.
Then did it all at once. Got up as he began to crawl, crossed toward the closet, looking into the sitting room and saw the door knob jiggle, saw it turn. He kept going, past the closet into the bathroom, turned off the light, eased the door half closed, and stepped behind it, against the tiled wall. He held the Beretta upright, almost touching the side of his face, listening.
It was quiet now.
It was dark in front of him, a crack of light along the inside edge of the door, next to him. He waited. He heard nothing until the door moved.