“HOW LONG’LL YOU BE with us, Mr. Fisher?”
“Why don’t we say two days?” He slid the VISA card across the counter and smiled. “I’ve got to see about this heat.”
The clerk was a small, middle-aged woman, skinny and dried out, with leathery skin, uneven teeth, and clear blue eyes. She didn’t return the smile, but instead frowned as she examined the registration card he’d filled out. Now she looked up at him sharply, as if she were comparing his face with a passport photo. Finally, plainly reluctant, she put his VISA card in the impression machine. As she jerked the lever roughly back and forth, the muscles of her forearm flexed. He signed the VISA chit, put both the card and the receipt in his wallet, took the key to his room, and walked out into the afternoon glare of the desert heat. He would unpack, take a quick shower, change shirts. Then he would drive around town, get the feel of the place, check out the restaurants and the stores—and the local law enforcement. He’d find people who liked to talk—and he’d let them talk.
And then, when he’d gotten the feel of the place, gotten the roads in and out clear in his mind, he’d check out the Ram’s Head Motel, a mile out of town to the south.
The entrance to the Ram’s Head Motel was a wide, graveled driveway that narrowed as it curved in among the dozen-odd cabins that were visible from the road. The cabins had been built at random, in no particular pattern, mingled with wild-growing desert vegetation and trees, some of them low, feathery trees, some tall palms. Cacti grew between the trees, some small, some head high. A tall, white-flowered hedge screened the motel grounds from the road, but the driveway was wide enough to reveal a large oval swimming pool. The motel office was built across the driveway from the pool, closest to the road. Among the trees, Dodge could count three cars parked beside the three separate cabins. A waist-high split rail fence bordered the motel property on two sides, joining the flowering hedge at the road. The cabins were plain stucco, simply built. According to one guidebook, rentals began at forty dollars a day. And the guidebook mentioned twenty-one units, so the property must go back farther than he could see through the cacti and the trees. Beneath the small blue neon Ram’s Head Motel sign, “Vacancy” was spelled out in red neon. Just to the left of the sign, maybe ten feet away, there was a telephone booth—an old-fashioned roadside telephone booth, with folding doors.
To himself he nodded, put the Camaro in gear, began driving slowly south, toward the open desert.
If he’d planned it, he couldn’t have worked out a better layout. Never.
Some layouts were easy, some were hard. Some seemed impossible. Once, in Chicago, he’d spent a whole week working out a plan. He’d even made notes on when the mark came and went, when the patrol cars passed, when the mailman came, and the delivery boys, and the children coming home from school. And there’d been neighbors, too, neighbors all around, living in split-level houses. It had been very complicated, that Chicago situation.
But this situation was simple—deadly simple. There was a woman in a cabin at the Ram’s Head Motel. He’d seen her earlier, a lucky chance, when he’d driven past, still getting the feel of the town. He’d seen her walking from the pool to the motel office. She’d been wearing a black bathing suit, and she’d had a better body than he’d have thought. So she was there, in her cabin, one cabin among twenty-one, built so they looked like they were all natural, all part of the desert, with only a split rail fence that separated the fake Ram’s Head desert from the real desert: no-man’s-land, with only a few scattered houses nearby. Big, low, rambling houses, that had been built to look like they were part of the desert, too.
But all of them were faking it, pretending to be part of a desert they could never live in, not for a minute, not without their swimming pools, and bars, and air-conditioning. Because the desert was nothing but sand and rock and cactus and heat like an oven.
And anything that moved in the desert was noticeable. An animal, a car, a man—anything that moved would be seen—and remembered. And the town was no different: two thousand people, baking in the sun, marking time until the tourists began arriving to open their winter homes, start spending their money. Any new face, even a white face, would be remembered. Already, he knew, people were watching him—and wondering. The people he’d talked to—the woman at the motel, the man at the gas station, the man at the hardware store where he’d bought a few things, just for the conversation—they’d remember him. And they’d talk to each other, too. In small towns, they all talked to each other.
So the longer he stayed, the bigger the risk. Knowing what he knew now, it would have been better if he’d driven into town, found the Ram’s Head, spotted her, knocked on her door, did the job in broad daylight, using the silencer, or else the ice pick, taking a chance. He could’ve been out of town in minutes—out in the desert. Or, better, he could’ve gone back the way he’d come, over the close-by mountains west to Los Angeles, or southwest, to San Diego. Even if he was seen doing the job, it would take the local sheriff a half hour to get organized, get together with the highway patrol, get it on the radio. And a half hour was all he’d need, even in daylight.
But already it was too late for that kind of a plan. Already he was known: a well-dressed black man driving a black Camaro—a real estate man, he’d told them, successful, just passing through, on his way to Mexico. So if anything went wrong, he could be identified. And in daylight, things went wrong. Unless everything was planned, carefully planned, things went wrong.
So he must wait until dark—four more hours, until it was dark. He’d wait, and he’d watch. Whatever it took, he’d do the job tonight.