Smith retreated into the room and picked up the telephone.
When the clerk answered, Smith said, "This is Mr. Finlayson in Room 116. Has anyone been calling for me today?'
The pause before the "no" told Smith that someone had indeed been looking for him. It was the car; they had tracked it down.
"Fine," Smith said. "I want you to send over a boy with a laundry cart. Right away. Yes, of course, to my room. And I'll be staying another day. Thank you."
Smith hung up and raised the back of his right hand to his forehead.
He was sweating, he realized. He could not remember having perspired under pressure since the final days of World War II, when he had been captured briefly by the Nazis. They had gotten the ridiculous idea that he was involved somehow with the American OSS, before the American businessman had been able to set them straight.
Smith returned to the window and kept watch on the Cadillac and its occupant to make sure he got no messages from anyone. The man was still sitting at the wheel of the car when there was a knock on the door a moment later.
"Who is it?" Smith called.
"Bellhop," came a young voice.
Smith opened the door slowly. It was a teenage boy, wearing jeans and a white sweatshirt and dragging behind him one of the large rectangular canvas laundry carts that motels used.
Smith moved to the side to get out of the line of sigh to the man in the Cadillac, pulled the door open, and said "Bring that cart right in here. Hurry up."
The boy moved into the room, pulling the cart, and Smith quickly closed the door.
In the Cadillac across the lot, Patsy Moriarty watched the activity, shrugged and relaxed. Just taking sheets off the bed. Standard procedure for a motel.
He decided to wait.
Inside the room, Smith opened his attaché case on the bed and turned to the confused youth.
He took a twenty-dollar bill from the case, closed the case, and handed the bill to the boy. "This is what I want you to do for that twenty dollars," he said. "Now listen very carefully."
It made Smith uneasy to have to put his faith in a young man about whom he knew nothing, but without a weapon, he had no alternative, and desperate situations called for desperate measures.
Across the lot, Moriarty continued to watch the door of the room. The kid was taking long enough to strip the beds, he thought.
The door opened and the laundry cart appeared, the boy pushing it from behind. Outside the door, the kid turned, called inside the room, "Thanks, Mr. Finlayson," pulled the door closed himself, and then pushed the cart in the direction that led away from the office toward the end of the long one-story motel building.
Moriarty relaxed again. Just the laundry. Usual thing. Dirty sheets in a laundry cart. He waited some more.
The boy and the laundry cart disappeared around the corner of the building. Moriarty returned his eyes to the front door of Room 116. Odd. The drapes were slightly apart. He hadn't noticed that before.
Just then there was a movement toward the end oft he building. It was the kid coming back But he didn't have the laundry cart. Where was it?
Then Patsy Moriarty realized. Standard procedure at a motel was to pick up the laundry, but you didn't wheel the cart into the room. The cart stayed outside the door. This cart had gone into the room, so Finlayson could sneak out inside it, under a sheet.
"Goddamn it," Moriarty hissed and jumped from the car, not bothering to conceal his pistol.
He ran up to the youth, who was sauntering back toward the office, whistling.
"Where's the cart, kid?" he said, grabbing the youth by the shoulder.
The youth started to pull away, saw the pistol and froze. He pointed toward the end of the building. "I left it down there."
"And it had somebody in it," Moriarty said.
The youth looked blank.
Moriarty released his shoulder and began to run toward the end of the building. The youth ran in the other direction, toward the office.
Between the two of them, Dr. Harold Smith carefully opened the door of Room 116 and stuck his head out. He saw Moriarty turn the corner at the end of the building.
Smith ran to his tan Dodge, unlocked it, got in and started the engine. It caught quickly. He raced it once, slipped it into reverse, and backed out of his parking spot. Then he dropped it into low drive, and turned it toward the end of the building.
Moriarty, after turning the corner, saw the cart at the end of a long driveway where tall weeds seemed to encroach on motel property. A sheet lay on the ground next to the cart.
The man had run into the weeds to hide, Moriarty realized. He kept running toward the cart. He'd track him down if it took forever.
Too late, he heard the whirring behind him.
He turned, gun in hand, but the tan Dodge was on him. And then he felt the pain as the front of the car, moving at high speed, slammed into his body, and he felt himself crumple, then he was lifted high in the air and it seemed as if somebody else's body was turning those lazy loops. The gun slipped from his hand, and then his body spiraled toward the ground twenty feet away. The last thing he felt was his head slamming against a heavy stone and the last thing he ever thought was to wonder if he had scored the night before or not, and then everything went black for Patsy Moriarty. Forever.
Smith, who had once commissioned a study on the effects of auto impact on human bodies, knew Moriarty was dead. He had seen the pistol drop from the man's dead hand and he got out of the car now and picked it up. It saved him one errand for the day.
Now he would casually drive away. He backed the car up, turned it around and drove slowly out the side entrance of the Happy Haven motel, whistling. It had been a long time since he had been operational, almost thirty years. It felt rather good.
He drove the car until he overtook a bus. He sped up, parked two blocks ahead, then got out and boarded the bus to wherever it went. He would buy another car, and then start making some telephone calls.
His day was just starting.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Services at the funeral home the night before had been a strain on Holly Brbon. IDC personnel from all over the country, wanting to see and be seen, had shown up. And of course there had been the politicians, bankers, brokers, competitors, and the hustlers on the make. Accordingly, there had been a continuous stream of visitors to the small overwhelmed funeral home in the quiet Connecticut town, and Holly Broon had had to be hostess, bereaved daughter and confidante to all of them, and she was tired. So she slept late.
She was awakened by her personal maid who tiptoed to the side of her bed and waited silently until Holly Broon awakened just by sensing her presence.
The young woman opened her eyes, stretched, saw the maid and asked, "What is it?"
"I'm sorry, Miss Broon," the slender blonde girl said in a delicate British accent, "but there is a man on the phone who insists on talking with you."
"So? That's something unusual around here? Hang up on him."
The maid did not move.
"For Christ's sake, what is it, Jessie?"
"I'm sorry, Miss Broon, but he said he had something to tell you about your father, and that you would want to know it."
"Probably that daddy was a great guy."
"No, miss. He said it was about the way your father died."
Holly Broon sat up in bed. She had pretended her father's death had been nothing but a heart attack. So the call might mean something. "All right," she said, I'll talk to him."
"Yes, miss. You're not angry with me?"
"No, Jessie. Go now. I'll take the call here."
Holly Broon waited until the blonde girl had left her room before stretching her left hand toward the telephone.