I’d had a tingle about her all night, and not just sexual. She was real. She was not some whore sent around to set me up. In the first place, nobody knew I was in town, that I knew of, so nobody was likely to be setting me up. In the second place, the action she got on the phone, getting that after-hours room service, proved she was important in a way even the fanciest hooker can never hope to be. And that fast fuck in the pool had been real. Some sort of emotional purging for her. She was real. Nobody could be that good an actress.
But I had this goddamn tingle about her, and after she fell asleep, after we’d screwed a few times, I went through her purse, and found a picture in her wallet, a picture that I knew was of her late husband, knew it in my head and my gut simultaneously.
The picture was of someone I knew. Used to know.
The woman in my bed was the Broker’s widow.
14
She was gone when I woke up.
For one groggy moment, I wondered where she’d gone, then remembered I’d heard her leaving, last night, around midnight. She’d got up, got her clothes on, got her things together, stopping momentarily to brush my face with her lips before she left. She was barely out of there when I was sitting up in bed, in the dark, pointing the nine-millimeter at the door. But the door didn’t do anything, so after a few minutes I got out of bed, fastened the night latch, laid the gun on the nightstand, and slept through till nine the next morning.
This morning.
On the bureau I found a note she’d left, saying, “Think I’ll pass on the morning swim. Call me this afternoon, if you want another evening one.” Knowing her, that ambiguous use of the word “one” was on purpose. The note was signed, “Carrie,” with phone number beneath.
I decided to pass on the morning swim, myself, and not just because she wasn’t going to be there. Until now, I’d been reasonably convinced no one knew I was in town; but I couldn’t be so sure, now that my easy poolside pickup of the evening before had turned out to be Broker’s widow. I mean, I could hardly afford to just shrug and say, “Oh, so that’s who she is. Isn’t that an interesting coincidence.” Not that coincidences don’t happen, but in my position, chalking things up casually to coincidence could coincidentally lead to things going suddenly black… perhaps at the same time water in a swimming pool was taking on a reddish tone.
Cold needles of water struck my face, and I let them, wanted the water cold, showering and waking up at the same time, still thinking about Carrie and who she was. And the more I did, the less this seemed like a coincidence, or, anyway, the less it seemed a wildly, suspiciously improbable one. After all, I used to meet the Broker at the Concort, and knew that he had money in the place; well, now his wife had inherited his interest, and was it so unusual for her to come around and make occasional use of the pool?
This was, keep in mind, a young woman who evidently had been a showpiece-you should excuse the expression-for a husband twice her age, a bright, probably well-educated girl from a wealthy, sheltered background, no doubt, who would likely know little or nothing about her late husband’s illicit business activities. The fact that Broker died a violent death, which had led to a partial public surfacing of the dark side of his business life, could explain her extended period of mourning, which had apparently ended last night, in the pool, in bed.
I thought about all that, going down in the elevator, and by the time I’d had breakfast, had made my mind up about something.
So far, these several days I’d been in town, I’d kept a low profile, and that had its advantages; but it gets boring in the shadows, after a while, and I never did enjoy doing stakeout work. Besides, after my run-in with Broker’s wife, I was feeling confused, even paranoid, and enough of that. Time to come out.
Time to go see an old friend and say hello.
Time to see Ash.
15
It was almost warm. People were going around without coats. Occasional patches of snow remained, but that was about all. The ground was soft, the streets were slushy, but it was a nice day, for a change.
Then the sun slid under a cloud, the wind got some of its bite back, and I spotted Curtis Brooks going in the Holiday Inn.
I was just getting out of the Buick and was on my way to see Ash, when I saw the lawyer going in ahead of me. I laid back. Yesterday I had seen Brooks coming out of the motel and assumed he’d been to see Ash, and now today I’d be able to confirm or dispel that assumption. Only I was already convinced Brooks had called on Ash yesterday, so this would just get in my way. I wanted to confront Ash, but not with company around. And I might eventually want to confront Brooks, but not both of them at once.
Shit.
Brooks, by the way, seemed about as happy to be here as I was to have him here. All I got was a glimpse of him, before he ducked inside the motel, but that was all I needed to see how irritated he was. He had the frustrated, defiant gait of a constipated man on his way to complain about an out-of-order toilet, and the pained expression of somebody who just found out where his tax money was going. His frown threatened to put a crack in that Florida tan of his, and when a guy spoke to him in the lobby, old Public Image-conscious Curtis Brooks didn’t reply.
I followed him through the lobby, down a couple of halls, and saw him stop to knock at one of the rooms. I walked on by, rather quickly, not especially wanting Ash to see me when he opened the door to let Brooks in.
I heard Ash say, “Can I fix you a drink, Brooks?” in a tone as embarrassingly chummy as it was contrite, and the door closed before Brooks could answer, if he did answer at all.
So. Brooks was pissed off, and Ash was apologetic. What that added up to was interesting enough to make me take back my negative reaction to the lawyer showing up here today.
Obviously, Brooks was here because Ash and the backup man had fucked up last night, and the man’s irritation was, of course, directly related to that. Which not only connected Brooks to Ash and the backup man and a proposed hit, but seemed to suggest Brooks was higher on the chain of command than Ash, confirming once and for all Ash was not the new Broker, and at the same time supplying a replacement candidate: Curtis Brooks himself.
But then, as an attorney, Brooks was a professional go-between, so by no means was it safe to assume he was the one who had taken over for Broker. Perhaps it was more likely that he had simply stayed along for the ride when the control of the Broker’s operation shifted to someone else.
I went back out to the parking lot, back to my old stand, sitting in the Buick watching and waiting, just one more time. When Brooks came out of there, I’d go in.
And an hour later, Brooks came out, and I started getting out of the Buick, and saw Ash following on the lawyer’s heels. Brooks still seemed irritated, but somewhat cooled down. Ash seemed less than totally subservient, but was obviously still trying to placate the man. They spoke for a few minutes, or rather Ash spoke and Brooks somewhat patiently listened, and then they got in their separate cars and drove out of the lot.
I followed.
Both men headed toward downtown Davenport, and once there, at the bottom of the hill, they split up, Brooks driving off toward the left, Ash to the right. I stayed with Ash, followed him onto Third, a one-way that began commercial and dwindled into residential. Ash stopped in an area where commercial and residential were uncomfortably commingled, and went into a diner, whose neon glowed the words “Chop Suey House” even in the afternoon.
I pulled in behind his LTD, and watched through the smudged windows of the place as he found a booth in the back. Inside the front window, two Oriental men in damp white outfits with aprons as smudged as the windows worked short-order style behind the counter, at a stove where two black metal woks were steaming, while nearby griddle and French-frying setups sizzled and smoked.