Red lights and sirens screamed by oiuihe Strip a few feet away, and the deputy turned and watched the excitement. He mumbled something and swaggered out the door. Andy threw the composites in the garbage. He watched the squad cars dodge each other on the Strip for a few minutes, then walked through the parking lot to the rear building. He knocked on the door of Room 38.
He waited and knocked again.
"Who is it?" a woman asked.
"The manager," Andy replied, proud of his title. The door opened, and the man who favored the composite of Mitchell Y. McDeere slid out.
"Yes, sir," he said. "What's going on?"
He was nervous, Andy could tell. "Cops just came by, know what I mean?"
"What do they want?" he asked innocently.
Your ass, Andy thought. "Just asking questions and showing pictures. I looked at the pictures, you know?"
"Uh-huh," he said.
"Pretty good pictures," Andy said.
Mr. McDeere stared at Andy real hard.
Andy said, "Cop said one of them escaped from prison. Know what I mean? I been in prison, and I think everybody ought to escape. You know?"
Mr. McDeere smiled, a rather nervous smile. "What's your name?" he asked.
"Andy."
"I've got a deal for you, Andy. I'll give you a thousand bucks now, and tomorrow, if you're still unable to recognize anybody, I'll give you another thousand bucks. Same for the next day."
A wonderful deal, thought Andy, but if he could afford a thousand bucks a day, certainly he could afford five thousand a day. It was the opportunity of his career.
"Nope," Andy said firmly. "Five thousand a day."
Mr. McDeere never hesitated. "It's a deal. Let me get the money." He went in the room and returned with a stack of bills.
"Five thousand a day, Andy, that's our deal?"
Andy took the money and glanced around. He would count it later. "I guess you want me to keep the maids away?" Andy asked.
"Great idea. That would be nice."
"Another five thousand," Andy said.
Mr. McDeere sort of hesitated. "Okay, I've got another deal. Tomorrow morning, a Fed Ex package will arrive at the desk for Sam Fortune. You bring it to me, and keep the maids away, and I'll give you another five thousand."
"Won't work. I do the night shift."
"Okay, Andy. What if you worked all weekend, around the clock, kept the maids away and delivered my package? Can you do that?"
"Sure. My boss is a drunk. He'd love for me to work all weekend."
"How much money, Andy?"
Go for it, Andy thought. "Another twenty thousand."
Mr. McDeere smiled. "You got it."
Andy grinned and stuck the money in his pocket. He walked away without saying a word, and Mitch retreated to Room 38.
"Who was it?" Ray snapped.
Mitch smiled as he glanced between the blinds and the windows.
"I knew we would have to have a lucky break to pull this off. And I think we just found it."
MR. Morolto wore a black suit and a red tie and sat at the head of the plastic-coated executive conference table in the Dunes Room of the Best Western on the Strip. The twenty chairs around the table were packed with his best and brightest men. Around the four walls stood more of his trusted troops. Though they were thick-necked killers who did their deeds efficiently and without remorse, they looked like clowns in their colorful shirts and wild shorts and amazing potpourri of straw hats. He would have smiled at their silliness, but the urgency of the moment prevented smiling. He was listening.
On his immediate right was Lou Lazarov, and on his immediate left was DeVasher, and every ear in the small room listened as the two played tag team back and forth across the table.
"They're here. I know they're here," DeVasher said dramatically, slapping both palms on the table with each syllable. The man had rhythm.
Lazarov's turn: "I agree. They're here. Two came in a car, one came in a truck. We've found both vehicles abandoned, covered with fingerprints. Yes, they're here."
DeVasher: "But why Panama City Beach? It makes no sense."
Lazarov: "For one, he's been here before. Came here Christmas, remember? He's familiar with this place, so he figures with all these cheap motels on the beach it's a great place to hide for a while. Not a bad idea, really. But he's had some bad luck. For a man on the run, he's carrying too much baggage, like a brother who everybody wants. And a wife. And a truckload of documents, we presume. Typical schoolboy mentality. If I gotta run, I'm taking everybody who loves me. Then his brother rapes a girl, they think, and suddenly every cop in Alabama and Florida is looking for them. Some pretty bad luck, really."
"What about his mother?" Mr. Morolto asked.
Lazarov and DeVasher nodded at the great man and acknowledged this very intelligent question.
Lazarov: "No, purely coincidental. She's a very simple woman who serves waffles and knows nothing. We've watched her since we got here."
DeVasher: "I agree. There's been no contact."
Morolto nodded intelligently and lit a cigarette.
Lazarov: "So if they're here, and we know they're here, then the feds and the cops also know they're here. We've got sixty people here, and they got hundreds. Odds are on them."
"You're sure they're all three together?" Mr. Morolto asked.
DeVasher: "Absolutely. We know the woman and the convict checked in the same night at Perdido, that they left and three hours later she checked in here at the Holiday Inn and paid cash for two rooms and that she rented the car and his fingerprints were on it. No doubt. We know Mitch rented a U-Haul Wednesday in Nashville, that he wired ten million bucks of our money into a bank in Nashville Thursday morning and then evidently hauled ass. The U-Haul was found here four hours ago. Yes, sir, they are together."
Lazarov: "If he left Nashville immediately after the money was wired, he would have arrived here around dark. The U-Haul was found empty, so they had to unload it somewhere around here, then hide it. That was probably sometime late last night, Thursday. Now, you gotta figure they need to sleep sometime. I figure they stayed here last night with plans of moving on today. But they woke up this morning and their faces were in the paper, cops running around bumping into each other, and suddenly the roads were blocked. So they're trapped here."
DeVasher: "To get out, they've got to borrow, rent or steal a car. No rental records anywhere around here. She rented a car in Mobile in her name. Mitch rented a U-Haul in Nashville in his name. Real proper ID. So you gotta figure they ain't that damned smart after all."