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?”
“You bumped into me in the hall. I’m not much on sucking cocks, though.”
I was waiting for him to notice the bundled towel under my arm, but I guess he already had; he evidently knew about my swimming with Carrie, and thought nothing of it.
Meanwhile, he was shoving me again, still giving me that nasty white grin.
“You’re in my way, asshole,” he was saying. “I don’t like assholes getting in my way and fucking things up for me. I don’t give a damn what Ash says. Get out of my way, or I’m putting a hole in you.”
“Let me know when you get to the scary part, will you?”
His sarcastic grin disappeared into the denseness of facial foliage, and he swung the nine-millimeter around to slap me with it, and I let the gun-in-towel fall into my hands and gave him a hole in his chest that he looked down at once, unbelievingly, before pitching forward toward me. I stepped aside and let him slump against the parked car behind me, and then he dropped to the pavement like a wet bag of laundry.
Some people drove by in a Cadillac, but didn’t notice anything, and when the lights of the Cad disappeared around the corner of the building, I stooped down and took his Ruger and put the nine-millimeter in his hand. I put the. 45 in his waistband. I wasn’t pleased about being left with a. 22 as my only firepower, but it was just too convenient to pass up: the dead guy in my room had been killed by the nine-millimeter, and the backup man got his from the dead guy’s. 45. So they were tied together in death, whether or not they’d been tied together in life-though I assumed they were-and since there was nothing about the nine-millimeter to tie it to me, except for the fingerprints I’d already wiped off, why not leave a neat, if baffling, package for the police? Some amusing conversations would no doubt ensue when Davenport’s finest tried to figure out how a guy with a. 45 slug in his chest made it down all those floors and to the parking lot without being seen, and without dying first; ultimately, however, they would find the obvious explanation just too tidy to resist. Or, so I imagined. If they did tag me for it, they wouldn’t get past the phony name I’d used at the desk, and I’d be long gone by then.
I picked her up at the front door, she got in, we drove away.
“Now,” she said. “What is it makes you think somebody’s out to kill me, anyway?”
“Oh,” I said, looking at the Concort receding in the rear-view mirror, “I don’t know.”