The Butcher's Boy (13 page)

That was just fine. As watchers went they were tolerable. They didn't hang around close enough to be annoying, and now that he'd spotted them he could relax. He went to the second row of elevators and pushed the button for his floor.

The hallway was empty, so he made his way to his room and checked the space between the door and the jamb. The little ball of blue fuzz was still stuck there, an inch or two above the bright red carpet. Good. No surprises. They must be satisfied for the moment.

He swung the door open and for an instant struggled to remember if he'd left the bathroom light on. As the door swung wider he caught a glimpse of the television screen, which was casting a bright variegated display of moving colors into the dimness. He stepped aside and waited. Then a woman's voice said,

"Come in, baby. You've got the right place."

He stepped across the doorway and caught sight of the whole room at 61

once. She was kneeling in the middle of the bed and she seemed to be wearing nothing. He poked the door all the way open and moved warily inside. There didn't seem to be anyone else. He ignored her for the moment and searched the room for hiding places. There was nobody in the bathroom or under the bed. He checked behind the curtains, then out on the balcony, but there was nobody. He retreated to the doorway and looked at her. "What are you doing here?" he said.

"I'm a present, honey. Compliments of Little Norman ." She crawled toward him across the big bed and he took a closer look at her. She was small and dark, with long black hair and skin like cinnamon and big black eyes.

Mexican or Puerto Rican, he thought. She couldn't be much over twenty.

"How did he get you in here?" he asked.

"Little Norman knows somebody," she smiled. Then she stopped, poised for a second in a parody of thought, kneeling with her knees apart and her body erect to let him get a chance to look at her. "No," she said, "Little Norman knows everybody."

He locked and bolted the door, then leaned back against the wall and looked for something to block the window latch. Now she was off the bed and standing in front of him. "Relax, honey," she said. "I thought you were supposed to be here to enjoy yourself." Her voice was cool and soothing. Her hands were fiddling with his belt. "So loosen up a little." And then she was down on the floor, murmuring something in a soft, kittenish voice, but he couldn't understand it because she was also taking his penis into her mouth.

He stood with his back poised against the wall, careful not to let his mind go completely out of his control, keeping back the tiny part he needed to look and listen, while she took possession of the rest of him. So now there were two of him— one that gave in to whatever she did and seemed all mindless yearning, a rush forward from some dim distant place, and the other part that looked over her shoulder for a flicker of shadow behind the curtain, and shut out the soft cooing sounds of her voice to hear a footfall in the hallway or a click of metal.

After a few minutes the one who kept watch was no longer tense and fearful. It didn't go to sleep, but it let the other part relinquish the safe wall, shed its clothes, and take the girl to the broad, ornate bed. It didn't stop listening and watching, partly because it couldn't, and partly because there was still the marker left in the door that somebody besides the girl had seen and replaced.

He lay sprawled on the bed pretending to be asleep. He had been pretending to be asleep for a long time now but she still hadn't moved. Maybe she wasn't the adventurous type. But how could she not be? Taking in every penis that pointed in her direction, just so long as it had an endowment of a hundred bucks or so to go with it—a few chips the dealers had missed. So now if she thought he was sleeping she'd leave, try to turn one or two more tricks before daylight.

Then he realized she had moved. One minute he had been touching her 62

and the next he wasn't. He tried to sense her movement; he couldn't open his eyes, because he knew she'd be watching his face all the way out the door.

She'd done this before, he thought. She knew enough not to crawl on the bed with her hands and knees; just seemed to slide across the sheets. It was probably a talent that was worth a lot to her: when she'd managed to temporarily exhaust a particularly difficult client, or at times like this when she'd been paid for the whole night in advance. He heard a very quiet swishing sound as she pulled on her underpants, but not even a snap of elastic. A few seconds later he heard the click of a clasp or a button, but that was all. Then he could sense her presence near the door, and more whispers of cloth. It seemed to take a long time. What the hell was she waiting for? Oh yes—the wallet in his pants.

She was the adventurous type.

Then the door opened and closed so smoothly that he didn't hear the click of the latch, just felt it. He opened his eyes and looked around the room. It was as though she'd never been there at all. Perfect. He went to the wall by the door and looked at the pile of clothes he'd left there, picked up his pants and felt for his wallet. Good. At least she hadn't taken the whole thing. He looked inside and counted his money—still better. She had been smart. She'd only taken about four or five of the sheaf of twenties and left everything else intact. Most of the time when she met the trick at two a.m. and smelled liquor on his breath, she could assume he wouldn't even know she'd taken anything. At least he wouldn't be sure. He threw the wallet on the bed and smiled while he chose fresh clothes from the closet. He didn't begrudge her the money. He'd have given her almost that much as a tip if she'd stayed all night anyway. Then his smile turned into a chuckle. If he'd been able to trust her, he'd have given her three times that much to leave now and not tell Little Norman. And as it was, he knew she'd never let Little Norman know she hadn't stayed with him in the room. Not if Little Norman had paid her. Not ever. Not on her life.

He was dressed and ready in a few seconds. It was time to make some quick arrangements. If someone spotted the girl before daylight they'd check to be sure he was still in the room. He slipped out the door and down the hall to the back stairway. Then he was outside again in the mild, sluggish night air, making his way down the street. He did his best to look inconspicuous, but he knew that walking slowly with the few late gamblers wasn't enough. If he was seen at all they'd recognize him and after that their curiosity would be insatiable.

The crowds thinned out and straggled as they moved out on the Strip toward the Hacienda, and he felt his protection slipping away from him. Then the last of his companions turned off into one of the small motels and he was alone 63

again. It was no use trying to do it on foot—he'd have to take a chance on a taxi. He strolled up the walk to the parking lot of the Hacienda. At this hour there were no cabs waiting in the loop, but he knew there would be one in a minute.

He kept to the shadows near the street, strolling toward the front entrance as slowly as he could without attracting attention. Then a cab swung into the drive, bobbed to a stop at the top of the loop, and unloaded a young couple. He broke into a trot and reached the cab just as the driver was getting back in. "Can you take me to the airport?" he said, leaning down to speak so he would be practically shielded from the hotel.

The driver shot him an appraising look and said, "Sure. Get in." There was only a mile or so of empty highway between the Hacienda and the airport, and the driver accomplished it with a grim confidence. They still seemed to be accelerating when the cab swung into the drive.

The Avis Rent A Car agency was near the front entrance, the part of the airport dominated by candy counters and telephone booths. There would be two sets of watchers at the airport, he knew. The other set would be the one the police stationed there to see if any familiar faces were arriving under false names. But they would all be grouped around the ticket counters, baggage checks, and entrance gates; two sets of watchers, staring most of the time at each other. Now and then a face would appear that was a surprise to one side or the other, and then there would be a flurry of activity, one side attempting to surround the new face with disguises and distractions and whisk it away into obscurity while the other attempted to follow it unobserved.

But all of that was going on in the other part of the building, and the car-rental counters were as remote from that activity as any other part of this town could be. There was no trouble with the car. The Indiana driver's license and Mastercard in the name Frederick G. Ackermann weren't forged, after all. The bills were mailed to a post office box in Gary and forwarded. The fact that a nonexistent man paid his bills was sufficient identity.

He drove with a feeling of elation. There was no chance that they had noticed him at the airport, he could sense that. Now he did a few quick turns and then pulled over to the curb on a side street to be sure. After ten minutes he had seen no other vehicle, so that was that.

He drove the car back to the Strip and scanned the buildings and signs. It had to be now, so the stores were out of the question. The pawnshops were too dangerous because you could never tell what silent partners there might be—and what pawnshop would be open at four a.m., even in Las Vegas? No, the only chance was a gas station, the right kind of gas station, and the only way to tell if it was right was by location. He described it in his mind and using that description as a map, he drove out of town and straight through the moonlit desert to it and pulled up beside the air pump. If it were the right place there would be some opportunity. He got out and walked around the car staring at the tires with a look of puzzlement. Inside the lighted cubicle of the station a man in greasy work clothes sat reading a magazine with his feet up on the desk. Faint 64

sounds of a radio floated above the occasional drone of a solitary vehicle rushing past on the distant freeway.

He checked the tires and added a pound of pressure to one of them, now and then glancing at the gas man in his cubicle. The gas man never moved, never looked up throughout the whole operation. He got back into the car and moved it to the gas pumps. He was glad that the car-rental companies had stopped filling the tanks before they rented them. He topped off the tank and entered the station where the stillmotionless gas man sat reading. Now that he could see the magazine he noticed that it was a Newsweek dated June 15. That didn't seem to matter to the gas man, any more than it mattered that he hadn't turned the page. He must have found one that he liked.

"I owe you four fifty," he said, waving one of his twenty dollar bills.

To stand up the gas man only lurched forward, still bent slightly at the hips, as though something about the desert had baked the fluidity out of him while he was sitting there waiting for something to happen important enough to propel him out of that chair. He scuttled to the cash register and stood with his face close to the drawer and his shoulders hunched around it in an unconscious attitude that resembled an embrace.

In a second or two the gas man would be scuttling back to the chair, so there was no choice but to ask him. "Is this place a store, too?"

"Store? Hell no. All the stores're in town," said the gas man. "Buy nearly anything there, lots of things you'd be better off not having." He turned around and laid the bills in the stranger's hand without counting them, as if to say a grown man can damn well count his own change, and if he doesn't do it he's a fool. The stranger didn't move, so the gas man's eyes flitted longingly at his chair, but he didn't follow them: he stayed where he was between the customer and the cash register.

"Oh," he said. "Looked like a store, with all the stuff you've got sitting here."

"That?" said the gas man. "That's something, all right. It's not merchandise. It's security."

"Security?"

"That's right. Folks leave Vegas sometimes without enough gas to get home to L.A. They drive a few miles and then figure they're out far enough to find somebody dumb enough to give them a tank of gas on credit. I'm it."

He only nodded and gave a knowing smile, so the gas man went on, well launched on his favorite proof of the utter folly of mankind.

"I've seen 'em all. Brand-new Cadillacs pull in here and no money at all to buy gas. So they'll leave things. Watches, diamond rings. Damn near anything.

They'll swear up and down they'll be back in a day to give me the money and pick up what they left. Once in a while they do, but mostly not. Even had one once wanted to leave her two kids here for security."

"So all this stuff was traded for gas?"

"No," said the gas man, shaking his head and looking down at the floor.

"Security." He pointed at a man's wristwatch hanging on a utility hook next to a crescent wrench. "That watch was left over two years ago for a tank of premium.

Fifteen gallons, it was. About ten bucks. Watch is worth two hundred easy, and I still got it."

"Amazing," he agreed. "You ought to sell off some of this stuff. Probably make a hell of a profit."

"You're right," said the gas man. "I ought to, but I don't get much chance.

On the way into Vegas they don't stop out here, and on the way out they don't have any money. Just this stuff. Radios, suits, jewelry, guns, suitcases, whatever they brought with 'em and haven't figured out how to trade for chips. You see anything you want, make me an offer."

"Maybe I will," he said. "What have you got?"

"Lots of things. All in the next room here, waiting for 'em to come and buy it back. Take a look."

In the back room, which was also the gas man's toolroom, an entire wall was covered with the miscellaneous belongings of the travelers. It looked like the lair of a burglar. There were piles of suitcases, a rack of expensive clothing, and a pegboard covering the back wall that was hung with cameras, radios, binoculars, jewelry, guns, and even a painting of breakers crashing onto the beach at an imaginary Malibu that had been supplied by the artist with a few indomitable gray rocks. He casually surveyed the hoard, looking more closely at a pair of binoculars and a camera before he let himself turn to the guns.