A few parking places — several filled by locals — hugged the face of the building, but this time of year the front entry and the dining room were shuttered. Alongside the Inn, at the right, wooden steps led up to a little landing, bordering a drive back to an expansive parking lot sloping to some trees that did not block an excellent view of my cottage on the lake. Not a single car in that rear lot, either, to obstruct.
Another interesting fun fact: I owned Wilma’s Welcome Inn. Curiouser and curiouser, as Lewis Carroll said. Or was it Walt Disney?
Back around when I’d first started utilizing the Broker’s list for fun and profit, a guy who I’d worked with in the early Broker days, called Turner, just happened to show up on my turf like this. In that instance, it proved to be a coincidence, but I’d had to treat it like it probably wasn’t and some of the ramifications were... unfortunate.
Starting with Wilma of Welcome Inn fame. She was a big fat gal, one of those Mama Cass-type women who didn’t have to work hard to fill out a muumuu. But she was pretty and funny and really did make the best damn chili in Wisconsin. People in the off-season sometimes actually did drive up here for the comfort food. Beer-batter walleye, too, and barbecue ribs.
Probably not Simmons, though.
Anyway, Wilma. We would kid each other, and flirt, and I’d say tasteless things, like, “If you wanna go upstairs, honey, that’s cool — but we’ll have to hump twice, for me to break even.”
And she and her chins would jiggle with laughter, and the funny thing was I did kind of dig her. But she wound up getting killed, in the Turner fuck-up. So did Turner.
Her common-law hubby was a grizzled bald bartender named Charley who looked like a shaved Shar Pei, and he and Wilma’s teenage niece wound up owning the place. When the girl got to legal age, she sold out to me and so did Charley, who was better at drawing beers than keeping books. The Welcome Inn gave me some income when I needed it and had its money-laundering benefits as well.
I had little to do with the place at first, but I sometimes worked in the filling station’s modest garage — I’d tinkered with cars since high school — and had gradually made the ancient building less ramshackle, without losing its charm. Or mine either, for that matter. So, over the years, some remodeling got done.
I pulled in at Wilma’s and took the last parking spot of the handful in the small front lot. Right next to Simmons. I sat there for a while with the motor running, both the car’s and my own, studying that station wagon like it still had its driver in it. He might come right back out, if he’d just stopped for directions, and I would deal with him right here. Nobody around.
Because, let’s face it, I knew what he was here for.
I was the mark.
All my list shenanigans had finally caught up with me, it would seem, and at this point why and who and how was not my prime concern. Survival was.
My two most basic beliefs may appear contradictory: that life and death are meaningless, and survival is everything. That’s a circle I’ve never spent much time squaring, but if I strike you as deeply philosophical, you really haven’t been paying attention.
So I sat there with my bomber jacket zipper down and my Browning in my lap, attaching the noise suppressor that had been in my right-hand jacket pocket. If Simmons returned to his station wagon, having gotten his directions — which wouldn’t take long, since my A-frame was in spitting distance — I’d be ready. Ready enough, anyway.
I was still operating off the notion that Simmons didn’t know what I looked like. Which was as safe an assumption as any in this unsafe game. A higher risk was that the bastard might — might — recognize me from the Skokie diner. But he sure hadn’t seemed to be scoping out that joint while he chowed down on corned beef.
Of course, he maybe could have made my car. The Chevy Impala was a fairly invisible ride, but this was a pro and he might have tagged it, despite my efforts to never be driving the car directly behind him. Traffic had been light, once Chicago was history, and maybe the Impala and I had turned up too often, in his rear-view mirror.
I hoped I wouldn’t have to kill him here. Right here. Talk about shitting where you eat. And a silenced weapon isn’t like Hollywood would have it. Think about having a bad raspy cough, how when you cover your mouth with a hand or a sleeve, it’s still a cough that people can hear. But nobody was around to hear anything, at the moment, and a life was at stake.
My favorite one: mine.
An eternity of maybe three minutes passed before I slipped the nine millimeter with the noise suppressor into the right-hand bomber jacket pocket, which was plenty deep, a custom job that was almost a built-in holster, reinforced fabric too. I got out, headed around to the side entrance, went up the steps and in, through a little foyer bordered by pamphlets on racks about what a fun time was to be had around here.
The layout of Wilma’s, a result of my do-it-yourself remodeling, now had a longish counter with cash register at right where you could pay for your food and check in or out of a room. During the season, two employees worked back there, sharing the register but with one handling the restaurant and the other the hotel. The rambling two-story structure’s upper floor had the guest rooms. All but two room keys were hanging on the wall of little hooks, so the hotel side was not doing land-office off-season business.
Behind the register was a good-looking brunette with nice tits and a sour attitude. Her mouth had a bruised look glistening with lipstick as red as a red Corvette, half threat, half promise.
“Look what the cat drug in,” she said to her employer.
Brenda had been glowing at the job interview, and we’d fucked pretty much right away — though not at the interview. What kind of boss do you take me for?
But I gradually realized I was the one being screwed, because she pilfered the register — not overdoing, but she did, and I never called her on it. Despite that, she liked me even less than I liked her.
She was the kind of woman who uses sex to get a job and then resents you over it — how’s that for a double standard! The once a month or so that we still fucked, however, was pretty hot. Hate sex has its place. As long as it’s consensual.
“That guy,” I whispered to her, leaning on the counter, “where is he?”
“Why don’t you speak up?” As usual she showed me a half-smirk, which was annoying and, yeah, kind of hot.
“Because I am seeking confidentiality.”
She snorted a laugh and folded her arms on the impressive shelf of her white-bloused bosom, her chin back. “I thought you were out of town.”
“I don’t seem to be. Where’s the customer?”
“He’s not a local.”
“I know. Where is he?”
She jerked a thumb at the wall behind her, which meant he was in the bar, which was also the restaurant this time of year. A closed dining room loomed behind me, beyond which was the convenience store/filling station, with its own register and employee. Brenda would only put up with so much.
I said, “He ask any questions?”
“Yeah.”
God, I could have strangled her.
“What, Brenda, were the questions?”
“Did we have any rooms. I said, what do you think?” Half-smirk again.
“Did he take a room?”
“Yeah.”
“What room, Brenda?”
“Why do you care?”
“Oh, well, maybe I think he’s here to kill me.”
That got something like a real laugh out of her. She of course had no idea who or what I really was. If she’d known, she might lay off the register.
“If I’d had that information,” she said, “I woulda comped him.”