After lunch, I followed him to his room and discovered he was not only on the same floor as Stockwell and me, but the same wing-in 319. Same side of the hall as Stockwell, too, but not next door (the director was in 313, you’ll remember, and I was in 316).
In my room, I pulled up a chair, cracked the door and sat and monitored Stockwell’s room across the way. It seemed endless, but was only maybe an hour, because around three o’clock, Varnos left his room and went down to the lobby. Then he went to the parking lot and got into the blue Buick Century he’d bought specifically for this job.
I followed him in my Nova into downtown Boot Heel. He parked in the Four Jacks lot. So did I. He went into the Four Jacks casino. So did I. He gambled for an hour or so. So did I.
Varnos was a real gambler, though-he played blackjack and roulette, and routinely bet fifty or more dollars. I was strictly a poker-machine amateur, never more than a buck a throw, but I was always able to find a machine in nice view of what Varnos was up to.
Around five, Varnos left the casino, going out one of the half-dozen doors onto Main Street. He walked two blocks to a movie theater that had four films playing: The Gong Show Movie; The Empire Strikes Back; The Shining; and The Long Riders. He bought a ticket for The Long Riders, a western. So did I. He bought no food. I did-Christ, what’s the point, without popcorn and a Coke? This, and that healthy lunch, he was starting to irritate my ass.
Having him in that movie theater, which was underattended (people didn’t go to a casino town like Boot Heel to go to the movies, and anyway this was a five-fifteen show), did provide a potential opportunity to remove him. I had my nine millimeter in my waistband, noise suppressor in my sportcoat pocket. I also had a retractable knife, a stiletto, which I didn’t love using, but there were appropriate times and places for the thing…
But again-what if something was rigged already to take Stockwell out in his room?
I considered putting the gun in Nick’s back on the way out of the theater, after the movie was over, and walking him somewhere for a talk and a bullet; but the lobby was full-it was a Friday night, which kicked the shit out of my nobody-goes-to-the-movies-in-a-casino-town theory.
So I wound up just following him again.
Back to the Four Jacks. It would be just my luck if I ran into Eric Conrad, with him thinking I’d had a change of heart. Or hard. But I didn’t.
Anyway, Varnos gambled another hour. He had lost this afternoon, but this time he cashed in way more chips than he’d bought. He played nothing but blackjack, and seemed to have a nice rapport with a pretty brunette dealer.
Around nine he went out into the parking lot and smoked a cigarette, standing by his Buick. So he wasn’t a complete health nut, then. Fifteen minutes or so passed, and the little brunette dealer came running out and took his hand. Apparently he’d hit it off with her and she was off work, and they got in the Buick and drove back to the Spur.
Here’s when I started to get really pissed at this guy: he takes her to the Spur for a romantic late supper. All the decent places to eat in a casino town like this, and he makes it so that I have to eat in that same boring hotel restaurant again.
They talk quietly. She does most of the talking. First date, but this woman is in her mid-thirties (Varnos is maybe forty) and, like a lot of Boot Heel gals, this is not her first time at the rodeo. He buys her lobster and has a chef’s salad himself, fucking rabbit. I eat a rare filet that is not terrible with a baked potato that also isn’t bad.
By ten he has taken her up to his room.
Back in my room, I try to dope it out. Is this what it seems to be on the face of it? Has Varnos just had a day off, gambling, movies, dining, picking up a babe for the night? Maybe relaxing before the big day tomorrow when he does his thing, and then hits the road?
Or is he setting up an alibi with some local girl, just in case he needs it?
Or has he already rigged that room for a kill?
I went across the hall to Stockwell’s room and knocked. It was ten-thirty and maybe my client was back from the set. Or maybe Joni was. At this point, I’d settle for her. Shit! What an idiot I’d been, not asking the director for a key to his room-I really needed to get in there and look around.
No answer.
So he wasn’t back yet.
Or he was dead in there, having fallen for some trap that Varnos set.
Back in my room, I was frustrated, kicking things, since I wasn’t limber enough to kick myself. Maybe I could figure out a way to scam a room key off the girl at the desk. Maybe it would be that nice kid Tina down there again tonight.
I went out onto the balcony into a balmy desert breeze, to think about it, to come up with some way to con Stockwell’s room key out of whoever was on duty. I leaned against the railing, then backed off, remembering how Varnos liked to make balconies go bye-bye.
That was when I noticed the lovely woman in the bikini swimming below, a silhouette again in the under-lit pool.
I wore my sport coat down there. The night wasn’t cool enough to warrant it-the whisper of wind carried warmth-but I was taking the nine millimeter with me, in my waistband, and I didn’t want it showing.
She was swimming lengths, her long dark hair streaming free, her bikini tonight a red skimpy thing. I pulled up a deck chair and sat near the shallow end. Again it was past legal pool hours and we had no company. Few lights were on in the windows facing the courtyard-this was Friday night in Boot Heel. Nobody was in their hotel room.
She stood in the shallow to catch her breath, water lapping at her hips, the light from the pool’s floor highlighting the edges of her, but most of her in shadow. Then she noticed me and looked up. Eyes wide, the whites popping out of the darkness.
“Jack,” she said.
“You suggested we talk. We probably should.”
She pushed through the water, and it sloshed gently around her tan body. She leaned against the edge of the pool, just a tiny bit out of breath, face beautifully pearled. “Water’s nice, Jack. Cool but not cold. You still like to swim?”
“Yeah. But no beaches near where I live.”
“Where do you live?”
“Where it gets cold.”
She didn’t press for more. She gestured to the expanse of water. “Care to join me?”
“I already swam today.”
She smiled. “Don’t pout. Go on up and get your trunks and come back down.”
I stood. I unbuttoned the sport coat and took the gun out of my waistband. Her eyes grew large and she seemed to be trying to decide whether to be afraid or not. I wasn’t leveling it at her, but it was there.
“What are you doing, Jack?”
“Making a point.”
Part of me wanted her to think I’d come to kill her. The rest just wanted her to understand that she was in the middle of something serious. Really, deadly serious.
“Your husband is in trouble,” I said, “and I’m helping him.”
“Because of me?”
“For money.”
“Are you some kind of…security person now? Rent-a-cop? Bodyguard?”
“There’s no word for it. But it’s life or death.” I put the nine mil back in my waistband and buttoned the sport coat over it. “Still want me to join you?”
“Yes.”
“I show you a gun and you still want me to go get my swimsuit?”
“You had your chance to kill me, Jack, a long time ago.”
So I went up and got my suit.
We swam together, not racing, just doing lengths, easy, gliding freestyle under the sky with its slightly more generous slice of moon tonight and enough stars to matter.
In the shallow end, we sat on the edge of the pool together, dripping.
“That was pretty melodramatic,” she said. When I said nothing, she prompted me: “Before? The gun?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”