The Watcher’s Coupe pulled up at the entrance to a seedy looking motel complex, beside a hissing neon sign. The middle two tropical coloured bulbs had blown so in the full dark the hoarding advertised something called Par ise, about as close as the mismatch of rising cones, supplicant chimneys and rows of empty rooms could claim to being paradise. A series of hand-painted white lines marked off parking spaces and a small half-panelled door (boarded up where the glass ought to have been) served as the entrance to the reception.
Around the forecourt windows hung open, some missing sheets of glass in their metal frames; garbage bins overflowed with empty beer cans, pizza boxes and McDonalds wrappers; fallen rain pooled in oil streaked rainbows and hungry squalling seagulls fought over rashers fallen from the bins. He watched their aggressive dance, angled the wheel and rolled the car into a vacant bay outside the reception.
“Now don’t you be getting any ideas about going anywhere,” he said to the dead body on the backseat. “I’ll be right back.”
He slammed the door and ran up the short ramp to the reception.
The unwashed aroma of weeks old sweat clung to the little room.
Behind a battered looking plywood desk a wrinkled Spanish relic sat reading a yellowed copy of The People’s Friend. Looking up as he closed the door, she lifted a pair of fragile horn-rimmed spectacles from her wrinkled nose and cracked him a rictus of greeting. “You want a room, no?” she asked in methodical Pidgin English.
“Yes,” he nodded.
“Ah, good, good. Be so kind… Twenty five dollars, yes…” she mumbled to herself, lifting down the key to chalet 21. “Over on far side, by big bins, coin slot for TV. Takes 50 cents only, hokay?”
“Fine,” The Watcher smiled, fumbling with his wallet for the money. He laid the bills on the counter. Her hand snaked out and snatched them away.
“Sign, sign.” She said, pointing agitatedly at a space in what he took to be the register, then she turned back to her book.