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Four or five miles down the road, I find a motel-no-tell, that fits the bill. It’s got a big sign out front that says, The Rivera Motel, lit up in bright red neon. I pull up in front of the office and put the car in park, let the engine idle. Reaching down past Joanne’s legs, I grab one of the stacks of cash, peel off three hundred bucks, then return the remainder of the stack not to the plastic bag, but my wife’s leather bag.
“Be right back,” I say.
Heading into the dimly lit office, I look for a human being behind the counter. But no one’s there. That is, until a woman appears from behind a curtain that covers a door opening behind the counter. She’s an older woman. Older than me, maybe by twenty years. She’s very small, almost frail. Her hair is silver, and plastic yellow curlers seem to be holding it together. A pair of reading glasses are strapped to her neck with a thin silver chain. She’s wearing a white housedress with little yellow and red flowers printed on it. Something my grandmother would have worn around her house just before bedtime.
“Help you?” she says, with a forced smile.
“I’d like a room with two beds,” I say.
She looks at me for a moment and puts her reading glasses on. She then comes around the counter. That’s when I notice she’s wearing slippers. She walks over to the window wall, looks out at the still idling Volkswagen.
Coming back around the counter, she says, “That your car out there?”
“Yes, mam,” I say.
“You want one room for the three of you?” she asks. Leaning into me a little. “I can smell booze on your breath. You all planning on getting it on or something?” She raises her hand, extends her index finger, points it at me. “Listen, I don’t want no funny business. This is a family establishment, even if most of our clientele is truckers and sale’s people passing through.”
I smile. “Nothing like that. That man in the back seat of the car is my wife’s brother.”
“You say so,” she says with a smirk. She goes back around the counter, reaches under it, produces a clipboard with a questionnaire clipped to it. “Fill this out please.”
It’s the usual first and last name thing. Address. Type and model of automobile.
“A room on the very end would be preferable,” I say. “I’m a light sleeper.”
A wooden box that’s got about two dozen small wood boxes built into it, hangs on the wall beside the curtain.
“I think I can oblige,” she says.
She goes to the box, pulls out a key, sets it on the counter. That’s the room located all the way down opposite the office. Room 16. How many nights will you be staying?”
“One or two,” I say. But I have no idea.
“How can you not know how many nights?” she asks suspiciously. “Say you’re not in any kind of trouble, are you, Mister?”
She’s giving me that look like the hardware salesman gave me a little while ago. A suspicious, Where have I seen you before? look.
“Not at all,” I say. “We’re just taking a road trip is all. No set schedule. Enjoying the early fall foliage. Enjoying ourselves.”
Her eyes burn into mine for a long beat.
“I feel like I know you,” she says.
Ok, so she said it. Exactly what I knew she would say if she decided to put her thoughts into words.
“Not sure how,” I say. “I’m just a mailman. Nobody famous.”
“Well,” she says, shifting her eyes from me to her computer screen, “if you were famous, you wouldn’t be staying in this dump.” She hits a couple of keys on the keyboard, squints at the flatscreen. “It’s seventy-five per night. How would you like to pay?”
I pull out one of the Benjamins.
“Cash okay?”
“I’d prefer it.”
She takes the bill in hand, then goes under the counter again, comes back out with a strong box. Opening it, she makes twenty-five dollars change, and hands it to me.
“I like to use cash too,” I say. “Feels more honest.”
“Cash and honesty,” she says, returning the strong box to its place under the counter. “You must be like a saint or something. Maybe that’s how I know you.” Then, handing me the key. “If you want a decent place to eat, there’s VinceAnna’s down the road if you haven’t had your dinner yet. They serve till eleven, so you still got time. They do a real nice roast chicken. They have a good bar too. There’s a diner further on down the road for breakfast.”
“Thanks,” I say. “We ate a while ago. Think we’re just gonna hit the hay.”
She looks past me at the car again, lit up in the glow from the red neon sign.
“Well then, have a good night and enjoy your stay at the Riviera Motel.”
Key in hand, I head back out to the car. Nobody is saying a word. Sean looks like he’s going through alcohol withdrawal, and Joanne’s face is wet with tears.
“I need to know how Bradley is doing,” she says.
“We’re gonna find out right now on the news,” I say. “Let’s just get inside the room.”
I drive away from the office, pull up outside room number 16. We all get out and stand before the door.
“Jesus, I need a beer,” Sean says while cradling the shoeboxes full of cash.
Joanne and I ignore him. Slipping the key into the lock, I open the door and step inside. Joanne follows, her leather bag in hand. Then comes Sean. As soon as he sets the shoeboxes on the bed and closes the door behind him, I grab hold of his arm, wallop him in the stomach with a swift uppercut he never sees coming.
“That’s for fucking my wife,” I say, the adrenaline racing through my veins.
He’s doubled over.
“Jeeze, Brad buddy,” he spits, his voice painful, the air knocked out of him. “Why’d you have to go and do a thing like that?”
I follow with an upper cut to his chin. He drops onto the floor, out cold.
“And that’s for selling us out to Don Juan,” I say.
“Bradley!” Joanne scolds.
Her face is pale, eyes wide. She’s in shock. But not because Bradley Junior has been shot. It’s because she knows that I know, that she’s been sleeping with Sean.
“How long you been sleeping with him, Jo?” I ask.
But she doesn’t answer. She just looks at me, her mouth agape, her lower jaw hanging somewhere down around her sternum.
“I...I...,” she stammers.
“You know what?” I say. “Don’t even answer that. I’m not sure I wanna know. But what I would like to know is if you’re aware that Sean has been selling us out to Don Juan?”
“I have no idea about something like that, Bradley,” she says, her expression now taking on an angrier tone, like she’s insulted I’d even suggest it. “How do you know he’s been selling us out?”
I slap my mid-section again.
“My gut tells me it’s so. That shiner he’s got? That’s not because of running into a door jamb. It’s because Don Juan’s people must have roughed him up for information. Perez sent me some texts earlier tonight that prove he’s finally figured out where he last saw me, which was where you killed his little brothers. I was delivering mail to Mark and his wife at Little’s Lake. Or pretending to anyway. And when he saw the FBI wanted poster with my face on it and yours, he must have put it all together. He pulled Sean in and made him talk, just to be sure we were the ones who not only killed his brothers but also Mark and Melanie.” I gently kick Sean with my boot tip. “Sean killed them anyway. But we’re gonna take the rap for being coconspirators. You know that don’t you?”
Joanne is back to crying again. I look around the room. There’re two beds, a small table and two chairs, and a long dresser of drawers. Mounted on the wall over the dresser, is a flatscreen TV. A remote control is sitting on the dresser. I grab it and press the green ON button.
“I need you to go back in the car and grab the bag from the hardware store, Jo,” I say.
She wipes her eyes while I try and find the channel for Spectrum News.
“What are you doing?” she asks, stepping past me.
“Trying to find out if anything about our son is being reported.”
She opens the door, steps out into the night. When she comes back in, she’s got the plastic bag in hand. She closes the door, and sets the bag on the table.
“Apply the deadbolt,” I insist. “You never know who might have followed us here.”
I also ask her to plug the phone chargers into the outlets located on the wall between the beds, and to plug the phones in. Meantime, I finally find the Spectrum 24-hour news. But what they’re reporting on has nothing to do with our son.
Going to the bag, Joanne opens it, pulls out the roll of duct tape.
“What are you gonna do with this, Brad?” she asks.
“Help me get him up and into one of those chairs by the window.”
I fully expect her to complain, but she doesn’t. She just quietly assists me with lifting Sean’s deadweight and shoving him in the chair closest to the wall.
“Now,” I say, tearing the clear plastic off the roll of tape, “wrap him up in duct tape so he can’t get away.”
“You really think he’ll try and get away?” she asks, peeling back some tape, sticking it to his left arm, and then proceeding to wrap it all the way around his chest and then the back of the chair.
“When he wakes up and hears what I’m about to tell him,” I say, “he’s most definitely going to want to run.”
She’s wrapped the tape around him maybe six or seven times, before she tears her end off.
“Now get his ankles,” I say.
She drops to her knees, wraps some of the tape around his ankles. Standing, she drops the tape onto the table.
“He’s going nowhere.”
That’s when he starts to come around. He’s bobbing his head up and down, his eyes partially open.
“Beer,” he mumbles. “I want a beer, buddy.”
“So, what are you going to tell him, Brad?” she says.
“The same thing I’m about to tell you.”
“And that is?”
“Tonight, this thing ends. I’m calling Detective Danish and confessing everything. I don’t give a shit what happens to us. I only care if Brad Junior makes it out of this alive.”
“I thought you wanted to kill Perez,” she says. “Bite the head off the snake.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” I say. “Don’t you think enough people are dead?”
“So long as one of them isn’t my son,” she says.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I say.