“Well... it’s a Chicago license plate. I was just wondering.”
“Wondering what?”
“Just. Wondering.”
“Confidentiality. Wondering. You have depths I never dreamed of, Jack.”
“I’m an enigma wrapped up in a riddle, Brenda.”
She farted with her pretty lips. “Yeah you are.”
I shrugged. “I’ve had some interest from people in Chicago about buying us out, is all. Thought that might be what this is about.”
Her frown was interested. “Buy us out? What’s my piece of that?”
“A good job recommendation. Look. Don’t say anything to him, Brenda. I was...”
“Wondering, right.” Now she whispered, eyes narrowing, mouth curling up at each corner, taking a hand away from a breast to gesture at it. “Confidentially, I bet you’re wondering when you’re getting some of this sweet meat again.”
“I’ll let you know.” Confidentially, this was the kind of girl who, when she was blowing you, you always wondered if she was about to bite it off.
As I was heading out, I asked, “Has he been up to his room yet?”
“No.”
I looked at the wall of keys. “Which room? Twelve?”
“How did you know?”
“Psychic. He request that?”
“Not specifically. Said he wanted to be on that side of the building, away from traffic.”
“What traffic?”
“Do I give a shit? He paid the thirty dollars.”
The rooms were numbered 1 through 12, and I knew very well that number 12 had a view on the parking lot and the A-frame cottage beyond it. For about half a second I considered going up there to wait in the room for him, but all the consequences likely to follow were just too daunting.
I was going out when she whispered again, in the nearest thing to a nice voice as she could muster for me. “I am a little horny, Jack.”
“Good to know,” I said, and went out.
What now?
If Simmons had gone upstairs, before coming down for a drink, just to stow his things, I might’ve been able to look through that canvas travel bag of his and determine whether he was on active or passive duty. If the latter, he would have a notebook of some kind, probably binoculars, and other gear attuned to stakeout.
And what a perfect stakeout set-up it would make. Put to shame my FOR SALE house two doors down and across the way on Ridgeview Lane back in Naperville. From Room 12 he’d have a window on my world with a restaurant, bar and gas station/convenience store downstairs. I couldn’t remember ever having it that good.
But if all I found was hardware — guns, knives, ammo, noise suppressors, what have you — that meant he was on active, and he could just walk across the parking lot and do what he came for. Wouldn’t even have to move his car.
So I moved mine.
I drove home. No speed, nothing fancy. The two men here to kill me would expect their mark to live his life as usual, and I didn’t want to scare them off — I wanted to invite them in... to deal with them.
And deal with them included getting whatever information I could out of the pair — and I assumed with a target like me to face down, the passive half would linger and play back-up, as was often the case anyway. I could kill one and still have another to play with.
Two bites at the apple.
A low-riding fence was between the Welcome Inn parking lot and my property, no connector. I went out the way I came in, the street in front of Wilma’s almost a half-mile from the turn-off of my graveled lane, which wound back around. The night was dark, overcast, the lake a shimmering gray expanse, the trees around it silhouettes huddling like the Indians we had displaced.
I supposed there was a chance that someone was waiting for me at the cottage. So far I based everything I did on what I knew, which was the Broker’s passive-active approach. No law said some other contract boys might not have their own, very different way of doing things.
So I steered with my left hand and had my riding-gloved other hand around the grip of the nine millimeter. With the noise suppressor, the weapon looked a little like a ray gun. Something modern from outer space. Only it wasn’t — people had been killing with these for a long, long time.
After pulling into the crushed-rock apron and climbing out of the Impala, I went in the front way, up the few stairs to the deck, unlocking the double glass doors and slipping inside, into the big open living room. I had left my own packed bag in the trunk — might be needing to make a quick exit, after all, to someplace that was not here.
Just in case, on entering I dropped to my knees and had the nine millimeter with its extended snout out and ready. The floor was covered in a vintage shag that my knees were grateful for, but nothing else happened. I got as still as I could and listened. Only the refrigerator had anything to say.
I’d left the heat on, low but on; so it was comfy.
I slipped off the jacket, tossed it, got some lights going and opened the drapes on the glass doors, exposing the postcard view that made my property valuable. The moon had slipped out from behind the cloud cover to throw some ivory on the shimmer, but the Indians were still crowding the shores, quietly pissed.
How at once comforting and unsettling it was to be here. This place, purchased with the advance the Broker had given me when I signed on so long ago, had been my home for almost ten years. The cozy familiarity intermingled with the unsettling knowledge that a killer could see the place from his hotel room.
I gave the cottage a cautious search. Two bedrooms were at the rear, a master bedroom (which I did not use, except for dressing, but which might prompt an intruder to make the wrong assumption), a guest room (which is where I regularly slept), and a bathroom with shower.
Also toward the back was a loft with a ladder; up there I could watch TV and read — under it was the laundry room and another couple of rooms for storage and such. The big living room under the open-beamed A-frame ceiling was mostly filled by a sectional couch surrounding a black metal fireplace. Opposite was a kitchenette, behind the counter of which — post-search — I positioned myself with gun in hand.
I squatted there, poised for action or to maybe take a shit; but I didn’t maintain that position long because it was wearing, and anyway this was a time of evening where I could curtail the lighting without making things look suspiciously not normal. In the loft, I put the TV on, volume down, just the tube glowing, football players knocking silently into each other.
Back down the ladder, I switched a lamp on, here and there around the place, to provide enough light for me to know exactly where any intruder might be while keeping him mostly in the dark.
I wandered a bit. Not to get used to moving around in the low light, which I could have done with my eyes closed. No, I would go to a rear window where I could keep tabs on the window that was Room 12, which right now had a light on. Of course, that didn’t mean a lot — you can leave a light on in your hotel room for no better reason than it’s not you paying the electric bill.
A bit later, I got out my spare binoculars from a guest room nightstand, the best pair of binocs remaining in the trunk of the Impala. Then I knelt at the sliding front doors, where I pulled back one drape a bit to be able to take a look at the houses tucked in among those trees, lining the lake.
This time of year, many — most — of those homes were vacant, shuttered for the winter. Most of the locals did not actually live on the water — those cabins (and I use cabin loosely, because many were good-size and some even lavish) — were for the tourist trade or vacation homes.
I did spot something. Not any lights on, rather a flare of reflection, thanks to the security lights outside my cabin — yes, I had a few of those, but no alarm system. I was the alarm system.