There were fresh sheets and pillowcases on the bed, fresh towels in the bathroom. No hairs in the bath below the shower. Nothing out of place. Rader checked the nightstand drawer, the space behind the TV set. Then he left and moved down to the office. A heavy lady with a lot of bangles on her wrists was speaking on the phone in Russian. The same clerk who’d left the desk unattended before he left for his meeting with Jill. She was smiling, laughing sometimes. Frowning now as she grabbed at a pen and scribbled. ‘Kakiye daty yavlyayetsya storonoy?’ She kept talking, laughing some more. A moment passed.
Rader waited for one moment longer while she continued to laugh, then he cut the line for her with the side of his hand.
She lowered the phone some inches and stared at him. She was gripping the phone like a brick.
‘Room thirty,’ Rader said. ‘Where’s the guest?’
She still gripped the phone, speaking a few low words through her teeth.
‘Room thirty, lady. Where’s the guest?’
‘No guest. You not a guest here who can learn some manner.’
‘Where’s the guest?’ Rader said.
The woman spoke slowly. ‘She leave.’
‘When?’
‘About an hour.’
‘Where’d she go?’
A smile as she shrugged. ‘I care? Huh?’
‘You spoke to her?’
‘Not a single word.’
‘She left alone?’
‘Alone, yes. Key on the desk, and out. I see her no more. Now you go too.’
Rader barely heard it. He was staring out into the road, thinking about where she’d go without a car. Hitchhike? Or else someone came to collect her. But why leave?
He walked out of the motel, pulling on his shades as he stood in the sunlight again. Kept asking himself that question as a few cars passed. She wasn’t captive: she left on her terms. She was making a statement. He moved back down past the windows, many of them showing blackout curtains, to his room. A single glance round at the empty lot before he turned the key. Rader stepped into the air-conditioned room, his eyes on the sparse furnishings, the bed, the bathroom door. He moved through the room, holding his gun and checked the bathroom. Just as he had left it.
Rader put away his gun and walked around the bed towards the window side, lifting the rumpled duvet. Underneath, on the edge of the pillow, was a folded flyer for a Torrent City taekwondo class. He glanced over at the lock on the door, reminding himself that he had found it secured. That he had the key, and that he’d locked the door on his way to meet Jill that morning, leaving Kerri asleep in her own bed.
He ignored that thought for now and lifted the flyer. Blank on the inside, he saw a lipstick-daubed cellphone number. Rader typed the number on his phone, storing it. Then he made the call. It rang for a moment, and he listened; after five rings he pictured her somewhere, a few miles away, smiling.
She didn’t know for certain that he’d find it, but she expected him to. She didn’t know for certain that he’d make the call, but she expected that as well. When it reached voicemail he killed the line. Rader still pictured her smiling. He sat down, glancing at her lipstick phone number, which she’d just traded for his. Then he looked across at the lock again.
Rader nodded, thinking.
‘You made your point,’ he said.
11
The half-kilo of cocaine filling the bowl on the silver salver lying in the middle of the banquet table back home—that’s what came into Skylar’s mind as Sherry, his assistant, passed around the photos of her niece’s wedding.
Skylar Marquis, his hair the color of burnt cork, his skin an orange-brown tone, and his teeth shining white and straight, top and bottom, pushed the fork around the sushi, and said, before he even saw the first picture, ‘Now that is just precious.’
Sherry, in mauve trousers and heels, walked away from his huge mahogany desk to show the others the pictures while Skylar opened a drawer on Percodan, Demerol, Valium. He rummaged, shaking a pill onto his hand as Sherry chattered. Whose idea of a working lunch ever stooped this fucking low? The chatter faded as Karen Rosen, Skylar’s attorney, and Kirk Masher, the man he called his VP after head-hunting him from the inner circle of an English hotel chain, turned to look at Skylar.
‘Sherry,’ Skylar said, pointing at the door, ‘we got work to do.’
She looked up from the photos, blinking. ‘Hmm?’
‘Will you just get the fuck out?’ Skylar said. ‘Like fucking now?’
‘Of course, I’m sorry. Is there anything else...’
Skylar stood up and came around the desk, his small hands grasping for a paperweight, as Sherry pounded in several long strides all the way across the room, past paintings by Matisse and Monet and Klimt, down to the door and out.
Masher, who was tall in the leg, shorter in upper body, slouched in his chair and waited for Rosen to quit laughing; she had begun just before Sherry opened the door to leave. Masher’s long face was cracked in a few places like old china, and as he spoke Skylar remembered that he liked European-type humor, was always quoting it. Actors and characters he’d never heard of, and didn’t care to.
‘We got a bloody good look at that big thug from the hotel last night. My money’s on him being some casino cheat. He owns a Shelby. That’s a hundred grand, at least.’
Skylar straightened. It wasn’t the only thing on his mind, but it was a start. ‘Oh yeah?’ he said, leaning forward. ‘I already told you I didn’t recognize him.’
‘He’s not one of ours,’ Karen Rosen said. She wore a peach-colored suit, and smelled of cigarettes. Her briefcase open at her feet. ‘One of our enemies.’
‘Well he fucking is now,’ Masher said. ‘You see the damage he got through in one evening?’
‘What about the woman?’ Skylar said. He’d known for days of a rumored plot to rob the hotel, and had briefed his head of security, Jeff McDonald, to be alert to new faces frequenting the casino area.
‘The woman in the piano bar. High-class material at first glance, but he knows her. That’s what’s troubling. They’re part of something.’
Skylar swung his chair gently. Then he looked at Karen Rosen. ‘Any updates on the journalist?’
‘There are some negotiations with Sylvia Merlino,’ she said, looking down at the briefcase. ‘It’s ongoing.’
‘What does that even mean? It’s been ongoing for weeks. When does it resolve? She still has those tapes of our conversations.’
‘Skylar...’
‘Karen.’ He grinned, leaned on the desk and cupped his chin in his hand. The words coming through that grin. ‘Talk to me, Karen, that’s what I pay you for. Getting a little, you know, kinda antsy here with all this.’
‘Skylar, the problem is that she basically...’
‘Go on, Karen. We’re waiting.’
Rosen said, ‘She doesn’t... appreciate any of our efforts to negotiate. It would be very easy for her to do some harm here. Serious harm.’
‘Which is why I have you to make it go away. You’ve threatened the publications that expressed an interest in her story.’
‘You know we have.’