The last time I’d done a stakeout was just after I’d started with the security company, when I did my one and only bit of husband-following.
A prominent black surgeon was seeing a prominent white lady in the media. His wife was not happy. She engaged us to document what was going on. It was not the sort of work designed to enhance your self-image. After two nights I asked to be taken off the job. It wasn’t a big deal for my employer. He said all right.
Tonight I parked my Datsun in the shadows of a nearby building, waiting for the sight of Davies.
During my wait I went through anger, depression, and a real curiosity about him. How the hell had a slob like him ever coerced a beauty like Jane into bed? The answer had to be Elliot. Somehow he had convinced Jane to do it. For what reason I couldn’t imagine….
Davies came out an hour later, got into a big gray Mercedes-Benz sedan, and drove off. I stayed a comfortable half block behind.
The time was near midnight as we cruised into a shabby section of the city, not quite a ghetto, but working hard at it.
There was no way Davies lived here.
A few times, his driving getting a bit erratic, I wondered if he had suddenly become aware of me. But, no. I decided he was probably somewhat in the bag.
He got a good, long, six-block run going, apparently bored with the sluggishness of his journey, wherever it was he was headed. I had to move to keep up with him.
Five minutes later he pulled onto the driveway of a motel named the Palms. Red neon from the electric palm tree bloodied the macadam. The lights from the office made the front window look greasy and dirty.
What the hell was a man like Davies doing here?
He got out, his unsteadiness as he swung his foot free indicating that I’d been right, he was a tad potted.
He waddled into the office in his cowboy sheepskin coat and pounded hard on the bell.
The man who appeared was tall, skinny, and dressed in a sort of disco style, with a too-snappy white suit and an open white shirt. He did not look pleased to see Davies. The two of them went behind the counter and disappeared into a room on the right.
I sat across the street and watched the cars go by, the noisy teenagers driving rock ‘n’ roll missiles, the older people in rusted and busted vehicles that could scarcely pass safety inspection. Inside a slob rich enough to drive a big Mercedes was doing God knew what with an aging parody of John Travolta.
As I said, I sat and waited. There was nothing else I could do, much as I would have liked to.
* * *
He came out after another hour. He was moving even more unsteadily now. He cracked his head getting into his car, then drove off, jerking and uncertain.
I let him go. I had a sense that the motel clerk could be helpful if I made him so.
The Palms was a four-story job with rusted iron railings running along the exterior hallways on each floor. Salesmen for tightfisted companies would stay here, and working-class high-livers cheating on their spouses. Again, Davies’s visit made no sense.
The office smelled of grease from an empty sack of hamburgers that sat on the desk.
David Letterman was talking to a vivacious guest, deftly putting her down and making her like it, and my friend, the forty-five-year-old disco guy, was enjoying it.
I hit the bell with the heel of my hand hard enough to startle both the clerk and myself.
“Why don’t you hit it a little harder?” he said. “Maybe you’ll win a prize.”
He came over in a cloud of Brut and hairspray, one of those gangly, vaguely criminal specimens who hang out in nightspots and occasionally get busted for small crimes. Once in a while booze or drugs or plain animal heat gets the better of them and then they commit a big crime, usually murder two, and spend several years getting hit on by cons.
This specimen wore several rings, a toupee at least one size too small, and a chain around his neck that could get you through a snowstorm in winter. He stared at me with a mixture of contempt and fear. He must have sensed that I wouldn’t mind smashing his face in.
“A fat man in cowboy clothes came in here about an hour ago,” I said. “I want to know why.”
Nobody his age, which I put at close to fifty, should have giggled the way he did. The noise gave him a hillbilly aspect that collided with his disco getup. “You really think I’m going to answer you?” He shook his head with real pity, as if I’d just asked the ultimate dumb-shit question. I noticed he was already reaching for the wall phone behind him. It was unlikely he was going to call the police. I wondered just who his contact would be.
“Don’t touch the phone.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me.”
He was sensible enough to drop his hand.
“What was he doing here?”
“Who?”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “Who? Phil Davies, you asshole.”
He shrugged. “Just stopped by to have a brew.”
“Right. You and he are undoubtedly good friends. You probably give him clothing tips and like that.” He glanced at his white suit as if I’d just insulted not only his mother but his wife and children as well.
“You got something against my clothes?”
“Yeah. A lot.”
He glowered.
“Davies. Why was he here?”
He started to reach for the phone again.
This time I grabbed him hard enough to give myself a small thrill. I pulled him even with the desk and threatened to jerk him over it.
“Hey, shit, c’mon.” I could tell he was worried about his clothes.
“Why was he here?”
“Jesus, man. Let me go, all right?” He was scared and kept pawing for the phone.
I decided to emphasize my point.
I dropped him, then I went around behind the desk and took the phone off the wall. This was nothing that required strength or brains. It snapped right off its holder, the way Ma Bell intended. I threw it in the wastebasket.
“Hey. God, man. Hey.” He was babbling. I had succeeded in astounding him. The sweat on his face was as bright as the rings on his fingers.
“Hey, yourself, jerkoff. Now answer me.”
He sighed. Touched a hand to his face. A trembling hand. “He gets laid.”
“What?”
“He comes here and gets laid.”
“Who does he screw?”
“Usually some chick named Jackie.”
“Where do I find her?”
“Not sure.”
“Bullshit.” I said it sharply enough that his boozy eyes got nervous again.
“Really,” he said.
“She got a pimp?”
“Uh-uh. She’s only part-time. I think she’s a model or something.”
I looked around the office. At the girlie calendar. The black-and-white TV set. The couch that was sprung and filthy. I couldn’t imagine a model working out of here.
“What kind of model?”
“Over at the Triple XXX.”
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. “You call that ‘modeling,’ huh?”
“Yeah, that’s what they say on the marquee, asshole. `Live models.’”
“Right. Just like Cheryl Tiegs.”
“Who?”
“She’s a model. A real one.”
“Oh, yeah? Nice tits?”
I just shook my head. “Was Jackie here tonight?”
He hesitated.
I put some mean on my face.
He sighed again. He was getting as tired of the game as I was. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that was her.”
“Where would she have gone?”
The way his eyes flicked—for just a moment and to the left—answered my question.
“What room did they use?”
But he had gotten silent again. I reached over and started to grab him, but he backed up and held up a hand to stop me.
“Two-two-three,” he said.
“You sure about that?”
“Yeah. It’s the room they always use.”
“Give me the key.”
“She’s got it. Knock. Just say Larry sent you.”
“Clever material. ‘Larry sent me.’”
“Fuck you.”
And that was how I left him.
From various rooms I could hear TVs and laughter, and from one the sound of lovemaking. With the wind swallowing it all up, everything sounded lonely and futile. The door to Room 223 was ajar. I prodded open the door with my toe, felt to my left, and clipped on the light.
Larry hadn’t been kidding me. Jackie was there, all right, naked and striking a seductive pose across the rumpled bed.
The only trouble was that, with a great deal of precision, in an act apparently long on skill and short on passion, her throat had been slashed. Blood was soaking the sheets around her and giving her poor, small breasts a curious kind of Indian war paint.