While she was splashing around, I sat on the bed flicking through the news channels. There was nothing about us.
There had been so many other murders in the homicide capital of the USA that we were old hat.
She came out, got dressed, and combed her hair, all without a single reminder from me. I opened an eat-from-the-pack carton ofF root Loops for her and poured in some milk, then headed for the shower.
When I reappeared, all clean and presentable, I said, "We've got to move from here today because the woman wants the room back."
Her face lit up.
"Can we go home now? You said Pat was going to help us go home."
I took her coat off the hanger and slipped her shoes on.
"Really soon, yes we will. But Daddy needs more time to rest. Pat will find out when it's OK," I said.
"But first, we've got to do some stuff. It's really difficult for me to explain to you what's going on just now, Kelly, but it won't be long. I promise you will be home soon."
"Good, because Jenny and Ricky are missing me."
My heart missed a beat. Had I fucked up? Had there been other people in the house?
She must have read my mind.
"They're my teddy bears," she explained. Her face went serious.
"I miss them. And I want to go to Melissa's party."
I started patting the top of her head. She looked at me; she knew she was being patronized. I changed the subject.
"Look, I'll show you where we're going."
I got the map out.
"This is where we are now, and that's where we're heading--just by the river. We'll get a taxi, find a nice hotel, and we'll make sure they've got cable so we can watch movies. If they haven't, maybe we could go to the movies."
"Can we see Jungle 2 Jungle?"
"Sure we can!"
What the fuck was that? Never mind; at least we'd gotten off the subject of family.
After checking out and, to my surprise, being offered a one-night rebate, I went upstairs to collect Kelly and the blue nylon sports bag. I left the USP in the toilet tank. It had only one 9mm magazine; I was carrying three .45s with the Sig.
Leaving the hotel, we turned left and immediately left again. I wanted to get out of sight of the reception desk before somebody thought of asking, "Where's his wife?"
We hailed a cab, and I asked for Pentagon City. The driver was an Asian in his sixties. He had a map on his seat but didn't bother to look at it. We seemed to be heading in the right direction. Kelly had her hat on; I thought of teasing her that she looked like Paddington Bear, but it would have taken too long to explain.
The driver asked where exactly I wanted to be dropped. "The Metro station, please." I didn't have a clue where that was, but it sounded as good a place as any.
I gave the old boy his cash and off he drove. The whole area looked new and high rent, both shopping and residential. There was a Ritz Carlton hotel and, a few minutes away, the Pentagon.
I got my bearings and led Kelly toward the mall. I wanted to visit an ATM to celebrate the start of a new financial day.
We exited and walked across the supermarket parking lot, then on toward the river. It was strange, because for the first time I felt like I was really responsible for Kelly. I still held her hand when we were crossing roads, but now it seemed natural to keep holding it on the sidewalks, too. I had to admit, it felt good to have her with me, but maybe that was only because I knew it looked natural and therefore provided ideal cover.
We walked under the concrete freeway bridge that led to downtown D.C. It was very busy. The traffic sounded like muffled thunder; I told Kelly about the scene in Cabaret in which Sally Bowles goes under the railway bridge to scream when things get too much for her. I didn't tell her that was what I'd been feeling like doing for the last forty-eight hours.
Past the bridge the landscape changed. It was easy to imagine what this area must have looked like maybe fifty or sixty years earlier, because it hadn't been fully developed yet.
It was full of derelict railway-siding buildings, some of which had been taken over as offices, though much of the area was just fenced off into lots or used as car pounds.
I looked left and saw the elevated section of the highway disappear into the distance toward downtown Washington. A concrete wall hid all the supports, and a road ran alongside.
There was no sidewalk, just a thin strip of hard ground, littered with soda cans and cigarette packs. It looked as if people parked up on the shoulders here to avoid the parking charges farther in. There were old, ramshackle buildings everywhere, but the place was still being used. On the right was the dark Street Playhouse, a theater in what had once been a railway warehouse. The tracks were still there, but they were now rusty, and weeds were growing through. From above us came the continuous roar of traffic on the elevated highway.
We passed a scrap-metal yard, then a cement distribution plant where the boats used to come up the Potomac and dump their loads. I then saw something that was so totally out of place it was almost surreal. A late 1960s hotel, the Calypso, was still standing in defiance of progress. It was marooned in the middle of an ocean of chrome, smoked glass, and shiny brick, as if the owners had decided to give the finger to the property developers who were slowly taking over this dying area.
It was a very basic, four-story building, built in the shape of an open square; in the middle was a parking lot crammed with cars and pickups. There were no windows on the outer walls, just air conditioners sticking out of the cinder block.
We turned left; with the highway thundering away above us we walked past the hotel on my right side. We were now parallel with Ball Street, which lay behind it. Kelly hadn't said a word. I was in work mode anyway; if it weren't for the fact that I had hold of her hand, I would probably have forgotten she was with me.
As we got even with the Calypso I wiped the drizzle from my face and peered up into the gloom. On its roof was a massive satellite dish, easily three yards across. It wouldn't have looked out of place on top of the Pentagon. We turned right and right again. We were on Ball Street.
From street numbers on the map I knew that the target was going to be on my left. I kept to the right side for a better perspective.
It was still incredibly noisy; if it wasn't an aircraft taking off from the airport just the other side of the tree line, it was the continuous roar from Highway 1. "Where are we going?"
Kelly had to shout to be heard above it all.
"Down there," I nodded.
"I want to see if we can find a friend's office. And then we can find a nice new hotel to stay in."
"Why do we have to move around all the time?"
I was stumped on that one. I was still looking at the street numbers, not at her.
"Because I get bored easily, especially if the food's no good. That one last night was crap, wasn't it?"
There was a pause, then, "What's crap?"
"It means that it's not very nice."
"It was OK to me."
"It was dirty. Let's go to a decent hotel, that's what I want to do."
"But we can stay at my house."
A jet had just left the runway and was banking hard at what appeared to be rooftop level. We watched for a while, trans fixed; even Kelly was impressed.
As the roar of its engines died down I said, "Come on, let's find that office."
I kept looking forward and left, trying to judge which building it was going to be. There was a hodgepodge of styles old factories and storage units, new two-story office buildings rubbed shoulders with parking lots and truck container dumps. In between the buildings I could just glimpse the trees that lined the Potomac maybe three hundred yards beyond.
We were in the high nineties, so I knew the PIRA office building wouldn't be far away. We walked on until we got to a new-looking, two-story office, all steel frames and exposed pipe work All the fluorescent lights were on inside. I tried to read the nameplates but couldn't make them out in the gloom without squinting hard or going closer, neither of which I wanted to do. One said unicorn but I couldn't make out the others.