"What!" Rudy jumps, startled and suddenly frantic. "What the hell? What the hell are you doing!"
"My tactical baton. Goddamn son of a bitch! I left it on the night table inside the room. It's going to have my fingerprints on it, Rudy."
How could she make such a brain-dead mistake? All went according to plan until she made an oversight, a mindless blunder, the very sort of blunder that catches people on the run all the time. The engine rumbles quietly on the side of the dark street, neither Lucy nor Rudy quite sure what to do. They are free. They got away with it. No one near or inside the hotel saw them, and now one of them must go back.
"I'm sorry," Lucy whispers. "I'm a fucking idiot," she says. "You stay here."
"No. I'll take care of it." Rudy's fear turns to the more manageable emotion of rage, and he resists taking it out on her.
"I fucked it up. I get to fix it." She swings open the car door.
44
BEV KIFFIN RUNS HER FINGERS through a rack of cheap acetate panties and bras.
The women's lingerie section of Wal-Mart is near arts and crafts and directly across from men's athletic shoes, a section of the store she frequently haunts. She is certain, however, that the clerks in their cheap blue vests and name tags don't recognize her. This is the type of business where tired, glazed employees don't pay much attention to common-looking people like Bev who root around for bargains in a discount store that is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
A red, lacy bra captivates her imagination, and she checks sizes, looking for a 38D. Finding one in black, she tucks it up a sleeve of her dark green rain slicker. The bra is followed by two pairs of bikini-cut panties, size large. Stealing lingerie and other items that do not have security sensors is so easy. She wonders why everybody doesn't do it. Bev has no fear of consequences. No frontal-lobe alarm sounds when she contemplates committing a crime, no matter how serious. Opportunities come and go on her radar screen, some bigger and brighter than others, such as the woman who has just wandered into the arts and crafts section, interested in needlepoint.
The thought of such a stupid domestic hobby fills Bev with contempt as she instantly deduces that the attractive blonde dressed in jeans and a light blue jacket is naive.
A lamb.
Bev continues rummaging through the lingerie rack, the target on her radar flashing brighter with each passing second, her pulse picking up, her palms getting clammy.
The woman drops skeins of colorful floss and a needlepoint pattern of an eagle and a flag into her cart. So she's patriotic, Bev thinks. Maybe she has a husband or boyfriend in the military, might be gone, maybe still in Iraq. She's at least thirty-five, maybe close to forty. Could be her man's in the National Guard.
The cart rolls forward, getting closer.
Bev detects cologne. The scent is unfamiliar and probably expensive. The woman's legs are slender, her posture good. She works out in the gym. She's got free time on her hands. If she has children, she must be able to afford having someone take care of them while she's trotting off to the gym or maybe the hair salon.
Bev scans a scrap of paper, a shopping list, feigning that she is unaware of the woman, who pauses in the aisle, looking directly at the rack of lingerie. She wants to keep her man happy.
A lamb.
Good-looking.
An air about her that Bev associates with intelligence.
She can sense when people are smart. They don't have to say one word, because the rest of them is talking. The woman pushes her cart straight to the rack, not even a foot from where Bev is standing, and the perfume crawls up Bev's sinuses, burrowing way up inside her skull, and her focus sharpens to a point as the woman unzips her jacket, picks a sheer red bra off the rack and holds it up to firm, ample breasts.
Hatred and envy electrify every nerve and muscle in Bev's matronly body, her upper lip breaking out in a cold sweat. She wanders in the direction of men's running shoes as the woman dials a cell phone. It rings somewhere for several seconds.
"Honey?" she sweetly, happily says. "Still here. I know. Such a big place." She laughs. "I like the Wal-Mart off Acadian better." She laughs again. "Well, maybe I will if you're sure you don't mind."
She holds out her left arm, glancing at the watch peeking out of her sleeve, the sort of watch runners wear. Bev expected something fancier.
45
ALIGHT, MISTY RAIN DAMPENS the streets of Szczecin as Lucy nears the Radisson Hotel.
This time she doesn't have to wait for the clerk to leave the front desk. The lobby is deserted. She walks inside, casually but briskly, and heads to the elevators. Her finger is about to make contact with the elevator button when the doors part and a very intoxicated man lurches out, knocking into her.
" 'Scussssse me!" he says loudly, startling Lucy and jerking her mind out of gear.
What to do? What to do?
"Now, aren't you the prettiest thing I've seen forever!"
His words slur as if his mouth is numb with lidocaine, and he is almost yelling as he leers at her, checking her out from her hair to her cleavage to her satin cowboy boots. He announces that his party is going strong in room 301 and she must come. He goes on and on. My, my, how beautiful and sexy she is, and obviously American, and he was from Chicago, transferred recently to Germany, and is lonely and separated from his wife, who is a bitch.
The desk clerk rushes back to the lobby, and not a minute later a security guard follows and speaks in English to the drunk.
"Perhaps you should go back to your room. It is late, and you should go to sleep," the guard says stiffly, eyeing Lucy with distaste and suspicion, as if assuming she is the vulgar man's girlfriend, or perhaps a prostitute, and is probably drunk, too.
She stabs at the elevator button, missing it several times, swaying and clutching the drunk man's arm.
"Come on, baby, let's go," she slurs with a Russian accent, leaning against him.
"Now ain't that sweet…" He is about to show besotted surprise and pleasure in her company when she reaches up and kisses him hard on the mouth.
The elevator doors open and she pulls him inside, wrapping herself around him and continuing a long, tongue-groping kiss that tastes like garlic and whiskey. The security guard stares stonily at them as the doors shut.
Mistake.
The guard will remember her face. Lucy's face is hard to forget, and the guard had plenty of time to look at it because Lucy was trapped with the drunk asshole.
Big mistake.
She hits button 2 as the man paws her. He doesn't seem to notice that the elevator is stopping at the wrong floor, but suddenly his new lover is running away, clutching at her clothes. He tries to chase after her, wildly waving his arms, cursing, catching his toe on the carpet and stumbling.
Lucy follows exit signs, turning into another hallway, then into a stairway. She silently makes her way up three flights and waits on the dimly lit landing, holding her breath and listening, sweat rolling down her face and soaking her sexy black blouse. Possibly, it was habit more than instinct that caused her to pluck up a plastic hotel key from the table in Caggiano's room and tuck it in a pocket of her windbreaker. Whenever she checks out of a hotel, she always keeps a key, if it is a disposable one, in the event she suddenly realizes she has forgotten something. Once, and she doesn't like to remember this, she left her gun in a bedside drawer and didn't realize it until she was climbing into a taxi. Thank God she still had a key.
The Do Not Disturb sign hangs ominously from the doorknob of room 511, and Lucy searches the hallway, desperately hoping she is not surprised by anyone else. As she makes her approach, she faintly hears the television inside Rocco's room, and a sick pain stabs her stomach. Fear burns. Recalling what she and Rudy just did is awful, and now she must confront their sin again.