I’d had a good two minutes to spare.
9
It was cold, sitting in the car, and after a while I turned the engine on and got the heat going. I had no idea how long a wait I’d have. Possibly Ash would stay in his room the rest of the day, on into evening; if he was coordinating the activities of others, subordinates might be coming directly to his motel room for instructions and to make reports, in which case he might not be coming out of there for days, or even weeks.
Of course, he’d already been out once today, which seemed to discredit the notion of his working strictly out of the Holiday Inn; but since he hadn’t been in town long, he might have gone out to set some things in motion, which only now enabled him to settle down in his room for a long winter’s nap.
And then I stopped worrying about it. It was warn in the car now, and I was comfortable, and as long as Ash didn’t stay in there forever, I was going to see him leave. The only way out of the parking lot, which separated the motel from the highway, was around front. And that’s where I was parked, sitting, waiting.
Dusk set in and it got hard to see the faces in the cars pulling out of the lot. I had the Buick parked toward the middle, so I could keep track of both exits, one on either side; but I doubted Ash would be heading out of town, which is the way the exit on the left would take him, so when dusk began turning to dark I moved the car to a free stall next to the exit on the right, assuming when Ash left the motel he’d be heading toward the Cities. At the same time I tried to keep tabs on the cars that were turning out that left way, toward the Interstate, but that was damn near impossible. There were a few streetlights and some light from the motel itself, but that wasn’t enough, and I soon gave up trying to monitor both exits, which is the reason why by midevening I was getting worried again, and bored and hungry, and I glanced at the driver in the car easing up alongside me, and it was Ash.
Again, he didn’t spot me. He was behind the wheel of a Ford LTD, and was looking both ways, checking traffic, and pulled out and drove toward Davenport.
So did I.
I followed him down Brady Street, with its four lanes and constant flow of cars to cover me, followed him down into a neon and plastic canyon of franchise restaurants, auto dealerships, and discount stores, which briefly leveled off exits into an improbably sedate middle-class neighborhood that might well have been offended by having all this traffic running through the middle of it. The intersection up ahead gave off the glare of another commercial district, but before we got there, Brady became a one-way going the other way, and Ash and I and the other cars were guided by directional signs onto a side street that skirted a peaceful-looking, snow-covered park right off a Christmas card, and then around onto another major street, Harrison, a one-way running downhill toward the river, running downhill in more ways than one, cutting through another commercial area that soon degenerated into what might be charitably called a lower middle-class neighborhood, and this is where Ash turned off, taking a right, plunging into the city’s unacknowledged black ghetto, a poorly lit, rundown area where sagging old double-story houses sat so close to each other the curls of peeling paint all but touched.
Up till now, there’d been plenty of traffic to hide behind, but not here. Ash was driving slow. The blocks were short, streets crisscrossing irregularly and often. It was a neighborhood you want to drive through quickly, but can’t. Ash, in his new clothes and expensive car, was out of place, and so was I; I was bound to be spotted by him, before long. I laid back as much as possible, wondering what possessed Ash to cut through this part of town, and assumed he was on his way elsewhere, and then he pulled over.
Pulled over and parked, and I coasted by him moments later, face turned away, acting like a stranger lost and looking for a street address.
I figured he made me, made me a long time ago and sucked me in here and pulled over just to flush me out, and when I circled back around the block expected him to be long gone. He wasn’t. He was just sitting there, motor running, parked. I turned off a side street, to avoid passing right by him again, and came around from the other direction, and pulled in along the curb a block up from him, behind an old Volkswagen, which provided some cover for me but didn’t entirely block my view.
And so I sat. This time I didn’t dare leave my motor on, so I had to sit in the cold. I wondered if this was a Mexican stand-off of some kind. Wondered if Ash had in fact spotted me, perhaps even spotted me pulling in behind the Volks, and was waiting me out. If so, we might both have a long wait. I settled down in the seat, arms folded, hands tucked in my armpits to keep warm; in my right hand, of course, was the silenced nine-millimeter, providing its own sort of warmth.
I saw the kid immediately, rounding the corner just beyond the Volks I was parked behind. A white kid, long straight hair, full-face beard, old Navy surplus overcoat. Looked like a college kid, or perhaps college dropout or hanger-on. Hands in his pockets, strolling along, nice and easy. Maybe he was stoned; anyway, he moved that way.
Heading toward Ash’s parked car.
The kid-if that’s what he was-got in on the rider’s side and soon I could see smoke curling and collecting in there, as he and Ash sat in the car smoking as they talked. And they talked a long time. A solid half-hour.
Superficially, it looked like a dope buy. Rundown neighborhood, guy in a fancy suit and fancy car, talking with hippie type. Making a connection. Anyone in this neighborhood who had witnessed what I had would probably assume that. And around here chances were nobody would think much of it, either.
But it went on far too long for a dope buy, and of course Ash wasn’t into that… at least as far as I knew.
No, this was something else. Something I was beginning to recognize the pattern of.
And when the kid finally got out of the LTD and started strolling back the way he came, I let Ash go and picked up on the kid. On foot.
I walked on the other side of the street, a block back; I was still wearing the same clothes that allowed me to pass as a college kid myself, this morning. He didn’t spot me. Or, if he did, he was good at pretending he didn’t.
Within the space of a few short blocks, the tenement surroundings changed. The crowded-together two-story houses began disappearing, and in their place were grotesquely beautiful onetime mansions. Not that the change in appearance of the neighborhood was an entirely radical one; this, too, was a rundown area, and the Gothic old homes showed signs of decay, were even crumbling in some cases. Like the somewhat similar-if less elaborate- house in Milwaukee where Ash stayed, these homes all seemed to have been converted into apartment houses. Judging by the vans and compact cars in the parking lots carved out of the once well-kept and spacious lawns, I gathered that what had once been the homes of the city’s elite now provided housing for college students from the several nearby campuses.
He entered one of the largest of those huge old homes, a yellow, paint-peeling, clapboard palace with spired towers whose upper windows were stained glass. The place looked like it might hold a dozen or more efficiency apartments, and had a “Rooms for Rent” sign in one of the front windows. As I stood facing the house I could see three windows on the second floor that were dim, as the kid went in, and then after he’d had time to climb a flight of stairs, a light went on in one of those windows, and then went out again moments later. I checked my watch: it was a few minutes before nine. Ash’s long-haired friend either went to bed very early, or was coming out of there again.
Ten minutes passed and no sign of him, through the front way, and I began wondering if he’d seen me, and sneaked out a back door. I was leaned against a tree, gun still tucked under my arm, so I wasn’t worried, and as I was studying from an angle the window of what I assumed to be his room, I saw something glint.