“We can go to the fucking Executive Suite,” Donnie said. “You can take a two-hour bath and wash your hair. Hell, we can have room service. These guys are going to pay me two hundred.”
“I don't have any shampoo.” She lifted a tress of hair and sniffed at it.
“They got shampoo at the Executive Suite, stupid.”
“Did you know Aimee?” I asked.
She turned the scared, luminous eyes to me. “No,” she said, “but Donnie always talks about her.”
“Apple knows all about Aimee,” Donnie said proudly. “I told you I loved her.”
“Apple?” Jessica said.
“It's Nora, really,” Apple said. “But Donnie says I should never use my real name.”
“Which you just did,” Donnie said with some exasperation.
“But they're your friends,” Apple said, bewildered. “Aren't they?”
“Yes,” Jessica said, sitting down and plumping the sleeping bag with one hand. “Sit down.”
“I didn't do anything wrong?” Apple asked Donnie.
“Forget it,” Donnie said magnanimously. “Executive Suite, here we come.”
Apple sat next to Jessica, giving her a microscopic smile. “The man was very nice,” she said to Donnie.
“Listen,” I said. “I know you two are anxious to get to the motel, so let's finish up. Tell me what happened with Warner.”
“He got fired,” Donnie said. “For about a week they slept every night in Robinson's. They chose a different room every night. They were all over the furniture department. Finally they had a party. He bought some red wine, and Aimee got drunk and spilled it all over this Santa Fe couch. It was white, naturally. It couldn't have been red, could it? That would have been too much to hope for. So he went to find something to clean it with, only it didn't work. He got real scared and threw her out. Next day he got fired. Aimee showed up at about four the next afternoon and slept here, and told me the whole thing. The day after that she packed up her stuff and left. And that was the last time I saw her.”
I sat silent for a moment, trying to figure out the calendar.
“Can we go now?” Apple asked. “I'm all itchy.” Jessica moved a fraction of an inch away from her.
“In a second,” I said. “I don't suppose,” I asked Donnie with no hope at all, “that you've got Warner's phone number?”
“Sure,” Donnie said instantly. “When you meet a jerk that big, you get everything you can.” He gazed at me, weighing his chances. “For another hundred,” he said, “I'll send him to you.”
11
The Sleep-Eze was a two-story stucco excrescence, air conditioners protruding from the windows of the rooms like technological tumors. Most of them were off, in deference to the wintry Easter climate, but a few pumped valiantly away. The motel was arranged in a U around the parking lot, and as we pulled Alice into a spot I looked up. Three of the twelve doors were open. In each of them, a very large man sat. Two of them were black and one was white. Dealers, waiting for business.
Jessica and I got out of the car and headed for the front office. You couldn't get into the front office. From behind a window made of about three inches of bulletproof Lucite, the old dame behind the counter accepted my credit card, took one look at Jessica, and demanded her I.D. I produced a twenty and handed it to her.
“Twenty,” the old dame said, studying the bill. “She doesn't look that old.”
“I've led a sheltered life,” Jessica piped up.
The lady looked from her to me and back to her again, then made a clucking sound with her mouth. “Suit yourself, dearie,” she said, “but I've had guys, they showed I.D.'s that said their girlfriend was a hundred. Name your price and get the cash first, if you know what's good for you, which I doubt.”
“He's my godfather,” Jessica said. “I trust him. Golly, he's friends with my daddy.”
I summoned up a grin from some dim subterranean depth.
“And you,” she said to me with a fearsome squint, “you oughta be ashamed of yourself.” She was wearing what had to be the world's last muumuu.
“I'm going into therapy tomorrow. In the meantime, can I have a key?”
She shoved it through the little hole and snatched her hand back as though mine were Germ Warfare Central. “One-oh-five,” she snarled, “all the way to the left.” To Jessica she said, “If anyone knocks in the middle of the night, it'll be the cops.”
Jessica wrapped both arms around herself. “Oh, good,” she trilled. “I feel so safe.”
I grabbed her by the sleeve of her blouse and yanked. “That's what I like,” she said. “Forceful. Young guys are such wimps.” She rolled her eyes. Lillian Gish couldn't have done it better.
“Someone's going to ask for her,” I said to the old dame. “Her name is Aimee.”
“Better and better,” the gorgon said nastily.
“Just make sure he gets the right room,” I said. I held up another twenty, and she started to reach under the plastic for it. I slapped her hand. “Ah-ah,” I said. “Make sure the man finds her.”
“That's what I mean,” Jessica said to her, “he's so forceful.”
When I had her outside, I pinched her arm. “You're overacting,” I said.
“Yummy, yummy,” she said, jerking her arm away, “another bruise.” She lowered her voice. “How do you know no one's listening? Jeez-o-crips, look at all these windows.”
“Just behave,” I said in a whisper. “There are limits on how scummy I'm willing to feel.”
“That's your problem. It wouldn't bother old Blister.” I shut up.
The room was small, dirty, and painted that peculiar shade of pale green that's usually reserved for veterans' hospitals. Fluorescent tubes hummed, and a single queen-size bed offered shade for the cockroaches. Other than that, there was nothing but a chipped desk with a blotter, a ball-point pen, and a couple of dog-eared postcards advertising the glories of Hollywood.
“God,” Jessica said, “it looks like they painted it with Linda Blair's leftover vomit.” She surveyed the room critically. ‘That's got to be the John,” she said, nodding at the far door, “and I get it first. Girls, you know. It has something to do with the relative length of the urethra. What do you think about the relative length of the urethra?”
“I think it means you go first,” I said.
“I'm not real fast.” She started to pull the door closed and then turned back to me. “I don't think this locks,” she said.
“I’d be surprised If it did.”
Fast she wasn't. Eight minutes later, when the knock sounded on the door, she was still inside. I went to the bathroom and rapped twice.
“Don't you dare,” she said.
“Oh, for Christ's sake. He's here. You stay inside until he's gone.”
“Okay,” she said. “But if you get into trouble, I'm coming out.”
“I can't tell you how much better that makes me feel.” I tugged at the door once to make sure it was closed, and wiped my hands on my pants. They were wetter than I would have liked them to be. I hadn't counted on Jessica being around when I talked to someone who might have kidnapped Aimee Sorrell. On the way to the front door I stopped at the desk, picked up the ball-point pen in my left hand, and put it behind me.
He rapped at the door again, more urgently this time. A husky voice whispered, “Aimee?” I positioned myself on the hinged side, counted to three, and then pulled it open very fast.
“Yow,” Wayne Warner said, stepping away. I reached out, grabbed his shoulder, and manhandled him into the room. Before he could say anything else, I slammed him around, facefirst, into the wall-he didn't weigh very much- and pushed the sharp end of the pen into his back, hard.
“Hey, ” he said. “Don't. Don't, please? I thought you wanted to talk.”
I pushed the pen a little harder into a spot just above his left kidney and wiggled it. “I'm not a surgeon,” I said, “but I think I could get that kidney out if I had to. Can you get along on one?”