Stockwell was driving a rental Buick LeSabre. An argument could be made for me spending the night in its back seat, waiting to see if Varnos showed up to fuck with it. But according to the Broker’s file, Varnos was strictly a specialist in accidental death, at home and on the job; to my knowledge, he had never done a vehicular homicide.
So I would not camp out in that backseat. What I would do instead is check the interior and under the hood. Which I did, and found nothing. Since the parking lot was at the rear of the building-beyond some shrubbery at the open part of the hotel’s U-there was little risk of being seen by Varnos.
Then I went up to room 313, knocked and said, “It’s Reynolds,” and Stockwell peeked out. He was in brown pajamas now. There were men who still wore pajamas? Fucking kidding me?
I stepped in, closed the door and said, “Car seems fine. Doesn’t mean some tampering couldn’t happen in the wee hours. I still don’t want you driving it to the set.”
Joni was in bed, nightstand light on. Reading the Jackie Collins. She’d always had questionable taste.
I went on: “It’s also possible an accident has been planned that involves running you off the road or something. Strikes me as a thin possibility, but you never know. I doubt with you in a different vehicle-particularly a van with a bunch of other people in it-that our guy would carry such a plan out.”
Stockwell gave me a weary smirk. “I thought you said this was all improv.”
“Oh no- I’m improv. This guy is on script. We just don’t know what that script is…Get some sleep.”
“I still have a little work too. My goddamn job never lets up.”
“I know the feeling,” I said.
The next morning my wake-up call came in right at six; when I said I wanted to order breakfast, the operator transferred me to room service. I showered, shaved and got dressed, then the little breakfast arrived-scrambled eggs and toast and orange juice-and by six-thirty I was standing at my cracked door, watching Mr. and Mrs. Stockwell depart for work.
The director was in jeans and a black t-shirt with the supporting player in jeans and a frilly cream-color blouse. He had a clipboard and notebook, but she carried only a little purse. If they saw me watching, they were sensible enough not to acknowledge it.
I knew that housekeeping would start its run at eight a.m., and that my room would come before the director’s, and that mine would come before Varnos’-at least based on the end of the hall they’d started at yesterday.
So I stretched out on my bed and watched game shows at very low volume, waiting for housekeeping to interrupt me, which I knew they would, since I hadn’t put a do not disturb on my door.
The heavyset Hispanic maid barged in just before nine a.m., and I went over and said, “ Perdoneme,” and she backed out saying the same thing, over and over, while I belatedly hung that do not disturb sign on the knob.
I finished my game show, since I knew it would take the maid a good fifteen minutes to clean Stockwell’s room, and she was conscientious and spent twenty on it. I was no expert on staging accidental deaths in hotel rooms, but I knew that Varnos would not want housekeeping coming in on him in room 313, and even a do not disturb sign was no guarantee, since you never knew when some brat or smart-ass would steal it or reverse it with make up room now facing out.
When the maid and her cart were safely down the hall and around the corner, I slipped across the hall and used the key Stockwell had provided, entering freshly cleaned room 313. I did not put a do not disturb sign on the door-I wanted to be disturbed…
…but not by housekeeping.
I was wearing a polo shirt with my sport coat over it plus jeans and running shoes, looking very much like Jack Reynolds, publicist. But I carried with me a rolled-up towel that had in it my nine millimeter, with sound suppressor attached; and the stiletto was in my jacket pocket. Also, the western paperback was in my back jeans pocket-might be a long day, and there’d be no turning on the TV in here.
In fact-and here’s the unpleasant part-I would have to camp out in the john. Had there been a coat closet with some kind of door, sliding or folding or anything really, I would have had some place to slip into, and momentarily hide.
But there was no door on the closet-it was just an open recessed space with a horizontal pole and clothes hangers with a little shelf where extra blankets and pillows lived.
So the shitter it was.
I kept the door ajar enough to hear, and keeping the light on wasn’t suspicious-a lot of people leave bathroom lights on-so I sat on the toilet, lid down, of course, reading Valdez Is Coming, wondering when Varnos was coming.
Well, I finished it in two hours and-after another hour passed of me staring at white tile walls and yellow-andwhite floor tiles and the nubby glass of the shower stall- I got almost desperate enough to risk going out there and looking for that Jackie Collins.
Almost.
Then, fifteen minutes later, the sound of a key in the lock snapped me to my feet. My silenced Browning was on the counter next to a hair dryer, a brush, and a glass with toothbrushes in it. I had the gun in my hand by the time Varnos was all the way into 313, before he’d even shut the door behind him. I knew the bathroom would not be his first stop-and if it was, he wouldn’t likely have a gun in hand.
Varnos did exactly what I thought he’d do: take the time to put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outer door-knob. So when he closed himself in, and I came out of the bathroom, right on top of him, his back was to me.
He didn’t even see it coming. The extended barrel of the nine mil slapped him on the back of his head and sent him down, hard, in an ungainly pile, slumped against the door he’d just closed.
This was the dodgy part-I wasn’t trying to kill him. I needed him knocked out. But a blow to the head, with any power in it at all, can do one of three things: knock you out; kill you; or not knock you out.
If Nick was down there playing possum, I might have a rough time of it, even with a gun on him.
There was no blood on the back of his head-that was a lucky break-so I turned him over gently with my left hand, the silenced weapon poised to do what was necessary. The mustached hitman’s eyes were half-lidded, unblinking and glassy, and he was either knocked cold or a much better actor than Stockwell could have afforded on Hard Wheels 2.
I gambled on the former.
As I’ve said, Nick Varnos wasn’t a big man. He was wearing a sport coat today, a rust-color polyester one, over a yellow sportshirt, with tan jeans. I patted him down and found no weapon. That did not surprise me-what he’d come here to do wouldn’t require one. If he’d been caught by a hotel employee in the wrong room, the last thing Varnos would want to have on him was a weapon.
What he did have was a key to room 313-I had no idea where Varnos got it; possibly he finagled it out of the desk pretending to be Stockwell. But this was an actual room key, not a dupe or a passkey or a skeleton job. That was interesting but I was too busy to give it much thought.
He had another room key, of course-his own.
And something else, something very interesting, and most telling: a small sealed envelope, about thank-you note size; but its bumpy surface told my fingers what it contained, and I knew at once how Jerry’s partner had intended to stage Stockwell’s accidental death.
So there would be no need for conversation.
Varnos must not have weighed more than 140, because I had surprisingly little trouble hauling him to his feet with just my left arm around his waist. I’m not saying it wasn’t awkward, but I was able to hold his limp frame alongside me as I opened the door and-finding the coast clear-dragged him, sort of drunk-walked him, to his own room, just a short trip down, on the same side of the hall.
The hardest part was keeping one arm around his waist, to keep him from falling to the floor, while I worked his room key in its slot. If he was faking, I could well be fucked here…