“Will you do it, Rita?”
It was useless to fight him. “Yes. I’ll do it. Yes.”
The phone connection was broken.
She sat for a moment in the tangle of sheets and felt frightened. And then she flicked on the bedside lamp, got up, and went to the door to check the locks.
She turned on all the lights in the room.
She took a shower with the bathroom door open. From time to time, she peered out from under the running water to make sure.
Sure of what?
She dressed carefully, clothes comfortable for travel. Her jeans, a light sweater, her suede jacket. She pinned her hair back after brushing it vigorously and slipped on her running shoes.
But she wasn’t going to run away. It was just that Kaiser had frightened her.
She took her purse and all her money and left everything else.
The hall was quiet except for the humming of the ice machine at the other end. She proceeded down it to the side door that led to the street.
And then she hesitated. What had frightened Kaiser?
She retraced her steps along the green carpet to a middle door that led directly onto the beach. She opened the door and peered out into the clear, warm night. A full moon lit up the beach and even illuminated the sluggish black waters beyond.
It was darker here than along the beachfront between the fishing pier and the first high-rise hotels at the other end. But it was empty and wide and she could see someone — if someone came after her — from a long distance.
Rita considered it and then decided.
She closed the door quietly and listened.
No sounds save for the sounds of water, the sounds of a light breeze, little waves dashing gently against the sandy shore.
Across the thick sand to the waterline where the sand was packed harder and made walking much easier.
She looked back at the hotel.
Nothing. She could see the street beyond the hotel.
A gray car parked under a lamppost at the far end.
The gray car that had followed her one morning.
She began to walk very quickly across the sand.
The door of the gray car. She turned back and, indeed, the door opened. Quickly. A burst of interior light from the car, a form in the darkness outlined by the light, the door closed.
She walked toward the pier.
Don’t look back, she thought, and then stopped and turned, frozen for a moment by the sight.
There were two of them, trudging across the loose sand toward her, running.
She turned and cried out, involuntarily, and began to run, too. Not the slow, steady jogging run of the morning but a full-fledged, panic-induced sprint.
They were slowed by the loose sand, but they were running at an angle across the beach and that would cut down on the distance between them.
If only she had gone outside, to the street, she thought. Panic clawed at her throat like an infection; she wanted to scream but she did not have breath for it. She ran and her lungs filled and burned.
They ran very quickly. They were large men in short leather jackets.
She ran into the shadows of the pier, stumbled across a body in a sleeping bag, and fell.
“Hey, what the fuck is going on?” The boy in the sleeping bag shot into sitting position. His companion, in the bag placed next to him followed suit.
“Hey, fuck this shit, what the—”
Rita scrambled up, pushing herself against the sand. The contents of her purse were scattered and she automatically started to scoop them up when she looked again behind her — they were less than thirty feet away.
“Cops are coming!” she said.
She started running again. The kids in the sleeping bags began to stand up, and the two men ran into them, banging their way past.
Now it was better lit and there were even a few people strolling on the far sidewalk, one hundred fifty feet from the waterline. But she couldn’t run there because of the loose sand — it would slow her and they would catch her.
And would it matter to them anyway?
Who were they?
They had frightened Kaiser, she thought. Kaiser knew.
In the parking lot that framed the beach here, kids sat in their vans and watched the three figures running across the sand. They listened to heavy rock music and the air all around them was fetid with the smell of marijuana. It was the usual night beach scene.
One of the kids yelled, “Hey, whatcha chasing that girl for?”
Someone laughed.
Rita heard the laughter. Her lungs were going to burst, her heart was pounding against her rib cage.
Devereaux, she thought. Perhaps she had known that was where she would go.
She ran up the steps of the hotel and turned at the door.
They had stopped, fifty feet behind her.
She could see them clearly in the moonlight. One was very tall, with large hands.
She pushed through the revolving door into the bare, bright lobby. From the bar came the sound of a heavy drumbeat. She went to the clerk at the desk.
The two men pushed through the revolving door behind her.
“Mr. Devereaux,” she said.
The young clerk smiled at her, slowly and insolently, as though they had a secret between them. “Are you a guest of the hotel, miss?”
The two men hesitated at the door.
She said, in an urgent half-whisper, “Listen, kid, I’m his wife and I just got in from the airport and I’m tired and I don’t have time to talk to you. Just call his room.”
The smile faded and turned into a pout. The clerk looked up the name and dialed.
The phone rang.
What if he wasn’t in?
The two men at the door stared at her.
If she ran into the bar — but there was no exit from the bar except through the lobby.
“Doesn’t seem he’s in right — oh, Mr. Devereaux? Sorry to bother you, sir, this is the front desk. Woman here says she’s your wife just came in… what?”
The two men started at her across the brick floor of the lobby.
“Yes, sir.”
“Please—” she began.
He replaced the phone. “Sorry, Mrs. Devereaux, but we have to be strict and—”
“What room?”
“Uh. Fourteen oh three, that’s just—”
She pushed away from the desk and ran into the elevator alcove and the two men turned and started after her.
The door whooshed shut before they could get there.
The elevator ascended slowly. She held her finger on the button for the fourteenth floor. Please God, she thought; her eyes were wide, her nostrils flaring with the exertion of the run, with the feeling of sick terror gripping her body.
The doors opened and she ran down the hall.
He had opened his door and stood in bare feet and trousers.
“Two men—” she cried as she rushed to him. “Chased me—”
“Inside.” His voice was flat and low. He closed the door and locked it and went to the telephone on the nightstand. He dialed the front desk.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “They ask for my room number?”
He nodded at the reply and replaced the receiver.
“Dev, I wouldn’t want to entangle you—”
“Be quiet, Rita.” His voice, still flat and harsh and low, was distracted.
“Kaiser called me and—”
“Tell me later,” he said, this time with more gentleness. “Don’t be afraid now.” He stood at the door and listened, his ear to the door.
They both heard the sound of the elevator bell. Doors opened and closed.
He waited.
Through the thin walls they heard footsteps in the hall.
He glanced at her for a moment as though deciding something. His face was cold, a face for winter, creased with lines around the gray eyes.
He decided.
He reached in the closet for his bag and removed an object from it.
She saw that it was a gun.
Now, standing pressed against the sliding patio doors, she trembled. Who was he? Who had followed her? The entire world had suddenly exploded into betrayal. A sense of madness overcame her. This was what it was to be frightened, she thought, as though she had never been frightened before in her life.
The knob on the door jiggled.
Devereaux put his fingers to his lips. He raised the gun.
“What the hell is going on down here, can’t get no goddam sleep or what?”
“Hey, what are those guys doing down there. That guy’s got a gun, John, he’s got a fucking gun—”
Sounds in the corridor.
Muffled sounds.
Feet running.
Doors were slammed.
“Damned guys had guns—”
Devereaux waited, still, pressed against the wall, gun drawn.
“Burglars,” one of the voices, bleary with drink or sleep, said. “Got goddam burglars in the hotel.”
“I knew we should have gone to the Holiday Inn, I told you—”
“Burglars, ought to call down to the desk—”
“Right here, I never saw anything like it—”
“Like that movie we saw once, that time, with Cary Grant, remember—”
“He didn’t have no gun—”
“What the hell is all that noise—”
“Burglars down there—”
“What? What did you say?”
Devereaux slowly lowered his hand. After a moment of stillness, he turned and replaced the gun in the bag.
The telephone rang.
He picked up the phone and listened and looked at Rita who stood pressed against the glass door that led to the balcony. She was trembling. Her hands were flat against the glass. She stared at him with an expression of horror.
He felt nothing, he thought, but that wasn’t true. He felt the coldness in him again, overwhelming him again.
“No. Not here. I think it was down the hall. No. About fourteen fifteen or so. Yes. That’s all right. Good night.”
He turned and stared at her.
They could not find any words.
Slowly, a humming silence returned — the silence of night in a large hotel. Doors were slammed, shut, water gurgled in the bathroom pipes that connected the rooms, voices were muted and then, finally, stilled.
So he would not have to betray Rita after all, he thought as he stared at her.
Any more than he had.