by Thomas Perry
In Detroit he had let them use his face. He’d been young in those days and hadn’t known any better. It hadn’t occurred to him that this day might come and there might still be people around who had thought about that face during the long winter nights, wondering if it would be the last thing they ever saw.
They were nearing the city. He said, “I’ll drive now. Find a place to pull over.”
Maureen nodded and turned off at the next exit. It was a rest stop that consisted of a parking lot and gas station and a Howard Johnson’s with a tiny souvenir shop attached to it. They got out and separated to the rest rooms, then bought gasoline before he swung back onto the highway.
He drove for another half hour, the traffic heavier now, as more and more cars poured onto the highway from the roads that converged on the city. At the Woodward Avenue exit he slipped from the current and guided the car down the ramp to the stoplight.
“What do you want me to do here?” said Maureen.
“Nothing,” he said. “We make one stop and move on. In and out as fast as possible. I’m going inside and you stay with the car so we don’t get a ticket,”
He inched the car down the familiar street from stoplight to stoplight, past large department stores and office buildings and banks. It hadn’t changed much. He searched for a place to leave the car. Anyplace would do now. He passed the Midwestern Bank and turned right.
Maureen said, “What about there? You just passed a parking lot. There’s another one coming up.”
“No,” he said. “Some of the parking lots downtown are owned by people I don’t want to see. I can’t take a chance.”
Just past the next corner a delivery truck was waiting to pull out. He stopped and waved the driver on, then pulled into the empty space. “Stay here,” he said, and got out. He walked back up the sidewalk to Woodward Avenue and looked for a likely store. It took only a block before he found the side entrance to Hudson’s Department Store. He had no trouble finding the right kind of briefcase. It was the kind that the men in this district carried—hard sides and a combination lock.
In ten minutes he was crossing the street in front of the Midwestern Bank. “There is a magic elixir to make you disappear,” Eddie had said. “It’s money. If you have enough of it you can go anywhere and do anything and nobody will ask you where you got it. But that’s only if you’ve got enough of it so you don’t ever have to do anything to get more.”
At the teller’s cage he said, “I’d like to get into my safe deposit box, please.” He made sure she saw the briefcase. A man with a briefcase might be bringing something to put in the box, or might be making an exchange. You never knew. But he was probably taking a minute off from work, and might be pressed for time.
The teller said, “Your name, please.”
“David R. Fortner.”
She made a move with her left hand and a man appeared beside her. He said, “Please come with me.” The man conducted him to a tiny cubicle with one chair and a table in it, then took his key and reappeared with the box. He asked the man to wait outside; he’d only be a second.
When he was alone again he opened the box. Inside were the bills, exactly as he’d last seen them five years ago. There was no point in counting them; it took time to count a hundred thousand in hundreds. They fit neatly into the briefcase. He watched the man lock the box into its place in a wall of identical boxes, then took the key.
As he walked back to the car he looked at his watch. One thirty-five. It had been less than a half hour, and now he could move on, leaving Detroit behind.
Maureen sat in silence as he drove back toward the freeway. Every third block she glanced behind them at the traffic, but after they were on the highway she settled back and lit a cigarette.
He had planned to drive for an hour and then stop, but when the hour was up he kept driving, putting the monotonous miles between him and Detroit. It had gone beautifully, he knew. It had been in and out with little chance anyone could have seen him. But he still didn’t feel what he wanted to feel, so he drove on, checking the mirror every few seconds to see if there could be a car that had been behind them for too many miles. It was just his nervous energy, he knew, and not the sure and reliable sense of caution he’d acquired over the years. But he drove on into the afternoon sun, building up the count of miles between him and the days he’d spent accumulating the stack of money in that box.
He drove past South Bend and Gary and was on the broad eight-lane expressway that poured the westbound cars into Chicago when Maureen said, “I think we’d better find a place to stop for the night.”
He said, “Not for a while yet. We can move faster at night.”
Maureen said, “I’m tired and I’m hungry, and I think we should. A vacationing real-estate man from Syracuse doesn’t drive all night, and his wife doesn’t have to look as though she slept in her clothes. Why don’t we stop at a motel in the right price range and eat supper in the right kind of restaurant? We mustn’t look as though we’re running from something. Use your head.”
Of course she was right. Besides, he thought, they probably wouldn’t want to try for us where it’d cause an uproar. They’d rather have us on a dark highway. If they spotted me. And they couldn’t have. It might be a week before the word reached places like Detroit that a sight of him was worth money. And nobody had ever known about the safe deposit box.
He saw a Holiday Inn sign drifting toward them beside the highway. It was as good as anyplace: the right location for a couple who had been on the road all day and didn’t want to get enmeshed in the city traffic, the right price. And there would be food nearby. He suddenly realized that he’d been hungry for a long time.
In the parking lot Maureen put her hand on his forearm and held him back. “Here’s where I start to earn my keep,” she said. “Do what I say, and you’ll be all right. I’ve been doing this for a long time, most of it with people who weren’t much more than dead weight.”
“What do you want me to do?” he said.
“The cover is my responsibility. It’s part of what you’re paying for and I know it’s good. We’re Mr. and Mrs. William Prentiss of Syracuse until we’re alone again. From now until we’re on the road tomorrow the curtain is always up and you’re always on stage.”
He smiled. “That’s a little extreme, isn’t it?”
She shrugged. “You’re paying for it, you can decide. If the troubles you’ve got involve Carl Bala, it probably isn’t. But you know more than I do about that, too. All I can say is I haven’t lost a patient yet.”
He sat still for a moment and thought. Then he said, “How thick is the cover?”
She said, “It’s about as thick as anything I’ve ever used. The car is registered to William Prentiss, the license is good, the address exists. If we use the credit cards the bills will get paid on time.”
“All right,” he said. He took out his wallet and examined the driver’s license, the car registration, and the credit cards again. They were either very good forgeries or genuine. He got out and started walking toward the motel office.
“Wait for me,” she said, and caught up with him. “From here on we stay together.”
In the office, he went to the registration desk while Maureen wandered to the other side of the room and pretended to look at a rack of postcards. When the desk clerk asked what kind of room they wanted, he hesitated for an instant, and Maureen said, “A double bed will be fine.”
Once inside the motel room, Maureen walked all around, looking under the bed and behind the mirrors and in the bathroom until she appeared to have satisfied herself of something. Then she turned on the television, came close, and whispered in a voice he could barely hear, “You haven’t worked with a woman before, have you?”
He shook his head.
“You’ve got to think differently now. Look at me. If you were my husband, a young real estate man from Syracuse, would you want twin beds? You might take them, sure. But you wouldn’t ask for them. That’s just
the kind of thing that creep would snicker about, and maybe mention to a friend or two.”
Then she brightened and said, “Give me a minute to make myself look human and we can go eat. Check the phone book and see if you can find a restaurant.” She leaned forward and brushed his cheek with her lips, and then disappeared into the bathroom.
The kiss startled him, but he did as he was told. He found a restaurant that appeared to be just the thing; the address was on the same street as the motel. The ad in the Yellow Pages was only mildly pretentious. There was no mention of entertainment, and that was the main thing they’d have to avoid. In some clubs in the Midwest, it was hard for singers and comedians to work unless they were sponsored by the Italians. There was always a quiet man in the audience studying the act, judging the applause, watching for the moment when the performer was ready to be booked into the big clubs in Los Angeles or Las Vegas or New York.
In a moment she was back. “What did you find? I warn you, no more hamburgers.” He was starting to feel a little foolish. They hadn’t eaten anything since they’d left Buffalo.
“This place,” he said. “The King’s Coach. It’s just down the road, and it looks okay.”
Then she took on a look of concern that amazed him. “Can we afford it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It doesn’t look too fancy. But hell, we’re on vacation now, you know.” He felt even more foolish, like a man who had been enticed out of the audience to blurt out a single line on stage.
“I won’t argue,” she assured him, already making for the door. “Come on. I’m starving. We can bring the bags in later.”
He locked the door and joined her in the car. “What the hell was that all about?” he said. “Weren’t we alone?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Get us moving.” He started the car and pulled onto the road. She said, “I checked as well as I could, and didn’t find anything. But we can’t afford to stumble into one of those places that they wire to blackmail businessmen getting a little on the side. The best way to listen in is through the telephone or the TV, especially if the TV is on a cable instead of an antenna; but they’re practically impossible to check unless you take them apart. A video camera is harder to hide. I don’t think they have one in there, but they might.”
“If you thought they could be listening, why did you talk in there?” he asked.
“I had to make sure you knew enough to act the part. The TV will cover a whisper, but if you’d blurted something out in there we’d have been taking a chance to go back. If the place is a trap they didn’t see or hear anything unusual yet. They’ll pay attention to somebody else.” Then she laughed. “Maybe a suspicious-looking couple who really are a real-estate agent and his wife.”
He said, “You know a lot about it.”
Her brightness faded again. “I didn’t ask you where your money comes from, did I?”
“Okay,” he said. “Then tell me about Prentiss. How much money do I make selling real estate? What can I afford to order in a restaurant?”
She thought for a moment, staring judiciously at him, and said, “Well, you’re pretty good at it, but no world-beater. I’d say you make between twenty and thirty thousand. You can afford to eat just about anything on the menu if it’s the kind of place I think it is. But don’t be too imaginative. You don’t want escargot, for instance, because you don’t eat things like that. As long as you stay on the steak-and-potatoes side of things you’re safe. Wine is okay, but not anything extraordinary if your natural inclinations are in that direction. And take it if it’s good or not. And don’t overdo it on the other side either. Don’t try to mispronounce the name of it while you’re ordering. You’re an ordinary guy, not a dunce. Just use your head. And straighten your tie.”
When he pulled into the parking lot at the King’s Coach, Maureen said “Perfect. Pretty ordinary and there are plenty of cars in the lot. Maybe the food will even be good.”
He nodded. It looked safe enough.
“One more thing,” she added. “If we have to wait for a table we’ll go into the bar. I’ll have a martini and you’ll have a bourbon and water, or Scotch, if you like that better. Do you feel up to talking about our kids, or do we have to invent something? I don’t imagine you’re up to much real estate, are you?”
“I think I can handle a little of each if I have to. What are the kids’ names?”
“Tom is four and Jo Anne is two, so no talk about Tom being the captain of the football team or anything. Now let’s eat. I really am starving.”
The meal proceeded uneventfully. They talked for a time, staying with their two subjects. By the time the waiter brought the check, he was reasonably comfortable as William Prentiss. That was the major part of a cover, Eddie had always said. “You have to be who you say you are.” But he wasn’t used to working with a woman, and it worried him a little. There were too many ways to get caught in the open.
At the car he said, “All right, you’re in charge. Back to the motel?”
She thought for a second, then said, “Yes, I guess so. But be careful. When we go in I’m going to check the place out to see if anyone’s been there. If they have, it’ll probably be bugged. If I brush my hair with my right hand, it’s probably all right. If I use my left, watch out. The next thing I do will be to walk over to the place where I think the problem is. Watch me and do anything I say to do. In any case, don’t say or do anything out of character.”
“How will you know?”
“The usual things. You sat on the bed when we came in. There were wrinkles on the bedspread. I balanced a hair on the bathroom doorknob, inside. When I closed the curtains I left them a thumb-width apart. The first thing a small-time blackmailer will do is close them the rest of the way. He may remember to open them a little bit before he leaves, but he won’t measure it. When I turned on the TV I put a smudge on the screen with my other hand. If they’ve put something in there they may change it, or even wipe it off.”
“Anything else I’ll need to know?”
“Only the commonsense things. I’ll have a gun in my purse. Use it if you need it.” She smiled. “I know. I’m putting you through a lot when the chances are a million to one against trouble. But you know it’s not wasted effort.”
“I know,” he said. The practice was never wasted. He had to learn to work with her, and it would have to be her way, if she was to provide the cover.
At the door to the motel room, Maureen prepared to enter first, her hand shuffling busily in her purse as her eyes darted about. He carried the bags, but set them down at the door to search for the key. He watched Maureen as she settled her eyes on the slightly opened curtains behind the window. She nodded and he opened the door, and then she pushed in ahead, her hand still in the purse. He breathed a sigh that he fancied could be the sigh of a husband setting down heavy luggage. He locked the door, regretting that there was no chain, then watched as Maureen made her inspection. She brought a hairbrush out of the purse, walked over and knelt in front of the television, and turned it on. Then she began the talk again, stood up, and walked into the bathroom, still carrying her purse.
He listened to her, waiting for some signal that all was well. “And that waiter,” she was saying. “I was waiting for him to pour your coffee all over the table and wipe it up with your tie. How can they always get the orders switched when there are only two people at the table?” The bathroom door closed.
He forced a chuckle, and stared at the screen, where a detective was grandly wrapping up his case, as he did weekly, by accusing his client of the crime. The client, as always, produced a pistol from nowhere, and jeered as he admitted everything in detail. In a moment the client would be running away from the detective, stopping occasionally to fire a shot or two in the general direction of his pursuer, then turning to run again, always up a stairway or fire escape, higher and higher until he was trapped. At the top he would run out of ammunition, hurl his pistol at the head of the detective, and lose the ens
uing fistfight. In any case he would be on the pavement below in time for the commercials. He glanced idly at the bed as he took off his coat and loosened his tie. There were wrinkles on the bedspread. Were they the same?
In a moment the bathroom door swung open and Maureen came out, her head cocked to the side. She said, “I’d like to have the recipe for the stuff they put on the asparagus, though.” He didn’t bother to answer. As he watched, she gave her head a toss, and began brushing her hair with her left hand. He had to force himself not to whirl his head around to look for it. What was it? A microphone? A camera? What? Watch her. He grunted and waited for her to move.
She stood firm in the doorway brushing her hair, but she seemed to be pondering. She said, “I’m going to try to make it myself. But you’ll have to help test it, because I want to get it right on the first try.” Then she smiled a too-broad smile, almost a wince, and added, “God, the way the prices have gone up, we can’t afford to miss the first time.” She still hadn’t moved from the bathroom doorway. Then that was it. It had to be in there. He could see that light perspiration stains were beginning to appear under her arms. But still she held the grin and went on talking and brushing.
He said, “I’m no cook. You said so yourself.”
She answered, “Yes, but everybody should learn. It’ll keep you alive if the real-estate business falls apart and you can’t eat out anymore.”
Did she mean the cover was no good? She must. But that they wouldn’t be able to run. He said, “Okay, now let me in the bathroom.” He picked up his toothbrush and toothpaste and headed for the door. She stepped aside and said, “All right, but save the shower for morning, okay?”
He froze in the doorway, not believing at first what he knew he felt. She had stopped brushing her hair. He looked at her eyes, which now held an approximation of a coquettish half-lidded sidelong glance, but there was behind it a kind of terror. The hand that held the hairbrush was trembling. He didn’t bother to look down at the hand that was fondling his genitals.
