I woke up the next morning in a strange bed, in a motel room in Whitehall, Michigan, twenty miles south of Orcus Beach. I had pulled in around eleven o’clock, my eyes burning from driving all day, my stomach empty. The motel was called the Whitehall Courtyard, and each room had a bright green light above the door that made you think you were in an aquarium. I asked the man at the front desk if there was a restaurant open at that hour. He just looked at me and laughed. “In Whitehall?” he said. “That’s the best one I’ve heard all day.”
So I settled for cheese and crackers and Oreo cookies from the vending machine, and then I closed the blinds against the green light and went to sleep. I had disjointed dreams about shotguns and woke up suddenly in the middle of the night, dead certain that I was about to feel the hot blast of buckshot in my chest. It took a few seconds to remember where I was, and what I was doing there. I went back to sleep for a few hours. When the morning came, I sat up in the bed and reached for the telephone. Leon picked up on the second ring.
“Alex!” he said. “Where are you?”
“I’m in a motel in a town called Whitehall,” I said. “I need you to run a couple plates for me.”
“Whitehall? Where’s that? What’s going on, Alex?”
I gave him the five-minute version. Seeing Randy in the hospital, going back to Leopold’s house, then my adventures in Orcus Beach.
“How can you be sure it’s Maria?” he said. “You didn’t even talk to her.”
“I know it’s her,” I said. “It has to be. Let me give you those plate numbers.”
“All you gotta do is call the secretary of state,” he said, “and give them your PI number.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I remember you telling me that now.”
“I’ll do it,” he said. “You’ve got another call to make.”
“What’s that?”
“A Dr. Havlin called here looking for you,” he said. “Early this morning. He had one of our cards, so he tried both numbers.”
“What did he say?”
“They’re going to operate.”
“Is it… I mean…”
“He didn’t say, Alex. He just said you should call him.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll do that.”
“So give me those plate numbers.”
“Here’s Maria’s plate,” I said. I closed my eyes and called up the three letters and three numbers.
“This could get us her current address,” he said.
“It might,” I said. “And whatever name she’s using now.”
“Okay, give me the other one.”
I gave him the three letters and three numbers from the white Cadillac, then told him he’d have to run it two ways, with a Y and a