I went back to the room, and could still hear rustling around in there. No particular effort was being made to be quiet, which was good: it meant that if this was an ambush of some kind, it was in the early stages; whoever it was was presently ransacking the room, and hadn’t got around yet to lying in wait.
I went over the layout of the room in my mind. Directly beyond the door was a brief hall or entryway, and beyond that was the bed, jutting out from the left wall, a nightstand on either side, a cushioned wooden chair in the left corner. The right corner was taken up by the windows, with no furniture to block the Concort’s guaranteed river view; and across from the foot of the bed was a portable color TV on a stand, and next to that a dresser with a mirror. That dresser would not be immediately in sight as I came in, because the bathroom would be to my right and the closet to my left, putting me in a short, cramped hallway that obscured my vision of anything to the right of the TV. Judging from the sounds coming from behind that door, my intruder was presently going through the dresser. But there could be more than one person in there, too, and of course somebody could be in the bathroom or going through the closet, or any number of combinations of possibilities, so I could end up with quite a surprise party on my hands, going in there.
The only marginally sane way to play it was to turn the surprise party around on my guests; in other words, go in fast and let everybody get a look at my gun before they did anything rash.
I was so fast I surprised myself. I turned the key in the lock, shoved open the door, and dove through the entryway, onto the bed, rolled off on the floor, and banged against the wall and wooden chair, but didn’t lose control.
But the guy going through the dresser did.
He was medium-size. He looked like a college kid, but he wasn’t the backup man, and he wasn’t a college kid, either. Like me, like the backup man, like everybody else wandering around town pretending to be young, he wasn’t. He was wearing a University of Iowa sweatshirt and brown jeans and used hairspray to keep his longish hair in place, and he just generally had the look of an insurance man playing dress-up. Or, rather dress-down. He was lean, but it wasn’t the leanness of, say, a junkie; it was the leanness of somebody in shape. And while he had very few lines in his face, it wasn’t from lack of age; it was from lack of emotion. He had those same cold Vietnam eyes as the backup man, and looking at him, I said to myself, This fucker’s a pro, and to this day I don’t know why he went for it.
Maybe he didn’t think I’d shoot Maybe he didn’t know who I was exactly, or had been told I’d probably kill him if I got him in a situation like this, so was grasping for a straw. Whatever the case, he grabbed for the gun tucked in his waistband, a big goddamn thing, a. 45 with a silencer half the size of the gun itself, and he almost had it out when my nine-millimeter quietly lifted the top of his head off and splashed the stuff inside all over the dresser mirror behind him.
He slid down the front of the dresser, his back closing drawers he’d opened. Most of what had been in his head was sliding down the mirror, which wasn’t broken, the slug having been deflected off into the ceiling. His mouth was open and his eyes were rolled up, as if he’d tried, in his last fraction of a moment, to see what was happening up there, to watch his skull fragment and see the blossom of red and the color of his brains.
I got up, crawled across the bed, and shut the door before anybody came by sightseeing. There had been little noise. My nine-millimeter had made its near-silent thudding sound, and the guy had bumped up against the dresser, dying, but other than that, nothing. He hadn’t had time to cry out. And somehow I didn’t think he would have even if he’d had the time.
I gave him a quick frisk. He had a billfold, with maybe ninety dollars in it, a driver’s license issued to James Hoffman, phony probably. Pockets empty, except for some sugarless gum.
So I packed my things. It was a little messy, moving him to one side to empty the dresser, but that was no big problem. I took his. 45 with me, but it was too bulky to stick in my waistband, not with the nine-millimeter already stuck down there, warm against my flesh from recent use. I wrapped the. 45 in a towel and stuffed it under my arm. I only had one bag and a shaving kit to tote, so the towel-wrapped. 45 was no extra burden, really, and I was beginning to think having an extra gun could come in handy, now that the shooting was starting.
I hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, and went after Carrie.
18
I found her one floor below, waiting. Like she was supposed to be. That was encouraging. It had, after all, been her suggestion that we go to the room. I found it not entirely impossible that she might have been setting me up, but the look of relief on her face at seeing me made me tend to feel otherwise. Despite the elements of coincidence in my meeting her, and her turning out to be the target of Ash’s afflictions, she seemed to be for real.
Or the best goddamn actress I ever ran across.
“Who was in there?” she asked.
“False alarm,” I said. “Just a maid.”
“A maid? With the door shut? Where was her cleaning cart?”
“She was in there watching TV and smoking a cigarette. I chased her out, but I admit it threw a scare into me. We’ll have to scratch your idea about using my room to talk. It’s just too dangerous staying around here.”
“I gathered you’d made that decision,” she said, wryly, seeing I was packed to go. “I suppose we can go ahead to the cottage, if you want. If you promise to fill me in on the way there.”
“I promise.”
We took the elevator down to the lobby. I got a few dirty looks from bellboys who saw me carrying my own bags, but I got over it. I walked her over to the front entrance, where a doorman was posted, and people were pulling up in cars, coming to dine at the hotel’s restaurant; that and various other continual activity made it a safe place to leave her, for a short time.
“I’m going to go get the car,” I told her. “Stay right here. Close to people. If anybody tries anything, scream.”
“That’s terrific advice.”
“It’s the best I can do.”
“I’ll just walk with you to the car.”
“No. It’s in the rear lot, and it’s not at all well lit back there. Too good a place for somebody to try something.”
“I must be pretty popular.”
“You don’t know how popular.”
The Concort sat on an entire block of parking lot, none of it lighted adequately except in front. The Buick was well toward the back; it was early evening, but dark. I’d left my bag and shave kit with Carrie, but still had the towel-wrapped. 45 under my arm, and I almost dropped it when the guy jumped out from between two cars and grabbed me, just as I was nearing the Buick.
He slammed me up against a car and shoved a gun in my side and shoved a hand in my jacket and jerked my nine- millimeter out of my waistband and held it against my throat with his left hand, while putting his own gun, a. 22 Ruger automatic with silencer, back in his belt.
It was the backup man, of course.
He pushed me, hard, and stood away from me, his teeth white and grinning in the midst of his matted beard.
“So you followed us here,” I said.
“I followed you here,” he said. His voice was high-pitched and ruined the effect. I hadn’t noticed his voice was high-pitched the other day; or maybe it just climbed the scale when he was excited. He was excited now. But despite that, and the cold eyes and wild beard and all, he didn’t seem very sinister to me. I was having a hard time taking him seriously, especially now that the nine-millimeter wasn’t against my neck anymore.
“What now?” I said. “If you talked to Ash, you know about me. You know killing me’s not a good idea.”
“Killing you’s a very good idea. You’re the cocksucker I bumped into in the hall, last night, aren’t you?”