I paused, then moved down to the door they’d gone through and listened. I could probably have accomplished the same thing in 50-A with a drinking glass to the wall, but their conversation bled out just fine right here. The rooms at the Coral Court, unlike the glazed-brick-and-glass-block exteriors, were fashioned of flimsy stuff.
Sandy, in a sultry, slutty way that tried a little too hard, said, “Come on, honey, let’s go to bed...”
“Don’t worry,” Steve said, “you’ll get your money.”
“What the hell kind of deal is this?”
“I got you here for one reason and I’ll tell you what it is later.”
Sandy’s voice spiked. “What’s wrong with you, anyway? You got physical problems or something? Shit, I don’t understand this at all!”
Steve yelled back: “Listen, goddamnit! I haven’t slept for five days. I’m half-gone on nerves, whiskey, and dope. The last thing I wanna do right now is fuck! So sit down and shut up!”
“Oh? Well, fuck you, buddy!”
“Fuck you too, you goddamn tramp!”
Sandy shrieked and must have been hitting him, because he said, “Stop it! Stop it! Goddamnit, all I want from you is to run a goddamn errand for me tomorrow.”
“What?”
“You do a simple fucking favor for me and I’ll buy you the biggest fucking bull I can find for that fucking farm of yours.”
Then she was cooing at him and when I heard the Beautyrest starting to sing, I guessed Sandy was plying her trade. I went to my room, got into my pajamas, slipped under the covers, and switched off the bedside lamp. Went over everything I’d heard and seen tonight, feeling more and more convinced that metal luggage held the ransom money.
I mulled calling my wife’s number out in California and talking to my son, but even with the time difference it was too late for that.
Considering what I had on my mind, I fell asleep fast. The knock at my door came so soft, it worked its way into my dream. But it grew louder enough to wake me. I crawled out of bed and cracked the door open.
Sandy O’Day looked at me. For a moment I didn’t recognize her — her hair was short and black now, carelessly bobby-pinned up. Seemed all that blondeness had been a wig. Her too-wide, very red, generously lipped mouth came up with a hell of a smirk.
She said, “That limp-dick jerk-off fell asleep on me. I think I had too much coffee at that dump we ate at. Can I come in?”
I opened the door for her and she swept in, a pink nightgown trailing after like a cape. She let it drop to the floor and unleashed her long-legged body, slightly plump in the best ways, displayed in a Frederick’s of Hollywood-style purple bra and panties. Her hair might have been tousled, but her makeup was working overtime.
“You got anything to drink?” she asked.
“A couple bottles of 7-Up I got from a machine at check-in. A bucket of ice from down the hall. A couple of water glasses.”
“Sounds like a party.”
I poured us glasses with ice and we sat on top of the unmade bed with pillows propped behind us.
“I must be losing my charm,” she said. “When nothing developed in bed, Steve-a-rino took a bath to relax and I crawled in with him and got nothing but the wrong kind of wet. I’m starting to think he has eyes for Johnny or maybe you.”
I shook my head. “He’s just a lush. But he may be a rich one.”
She frowned curiously at me. “Where do you think he got that dough?”
I gave her back a question of my own. “How good a look did you get at it?”
She shrugged. “Just a flash. But, man, it looked stuffed in there like a Thanksgiving turkey.” She showed me small feral white teeth and her eyebrows went up and down and up and down. “You and me could grab those babies and South America here we come. You’re right, he’s a lush. You probably won’t even have to kill him.”
“That’s a relief. South America, huh? Wouldn’t you rather plow your share into your farm?”
Her head went back and she horse-laughed. “Ha! You didn’t buy that load of bullshit, did you, Nate?”
“No. I think you fooled Steve, though. He’s not very bright. Did he ever tell you what errand he wanted you to run?”
She sipped 7-Up, ice clinking, nodded. “Yeah. He’s gonna give me a thousand dollars to fly to Los Angeles and mail a letter.”
“What the hell?”
She repeated that word for word.
But by now I got it: “It’s a letter from him to somebody.”
“Yeah. A lawyer in St. Joe.”
“He thinks the postmark will give him an alibi. Make it appear he’s in L.A.”
“I guess.”
“You have the letter?”
“No. I saw it. He says I can keep anything left from the thousand after air fare and hotel and incidental shit. And he’ll give me enough to buy that Guernsey bull.” She giggled, then got serious and conspiratorial. “Which is all well and good, Heller, but I say take the money and run.”
“He has a gun.”
She glanced at the nightstand, where my nine millimeter was resting. “Looks like you do, too.” She worked her hand in my hair. “I think we’d make a good team. We both been to the rodeo before....”
Hard as it may be to believe, she smelled good. Arpège by Lanvin — a showgirl I dated a while back wore it. And the truth is, over the years, I have dated (to put it euphemistically) all kinds of females — from rich to poor, from brilliant to dumb, and a good number have been strippers and showgirls. Now that I was respectable, with a L.A. office and all, you can add starlets to the list. How can I put it politely? I’d screwed sleazier.
She turned the lamp to a low setting — that was one of Coral Court’s trademarks, although the ceiling mirrors proved to be a rumor, at least in 49-A and 50-A — and the room fell into a kind of dusk. She glided off the bed and slowly stripped off the bra — her breasts full and high and beautifully shaped — then turned her back to me and slid off the panties, revealing a dimpled bounteous ass as smooth as a marble statue. She turned to reveal a plush dark pubic bush and kicked off the heels and climbed back onto the bed and onto me. She slipped a hand inside the pajama trousers’ fly and fished me out and worked me to attention.
She was about to mount me when I took her by the arms and said no.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I have a rubber.” She revealed the coil in her left palm; hadn’t seen that. She was good. Or shall we say, practiced.
“No,” I said. “I’m just not in the mood.”
“You look like you’re in the mood!”
“No. No offense, but... no. I don’t want to give you the wrong idea.”
“The wrong idea?”
“Call me old-fashioned, but I draw the line at murder.”
“I said you probably wouldn’t have to!” She huffed a sigh and scrambled off the bed. She got into the panties and bra in an irritated, unsexy way, stepped into her shoes, and stalked to the door, where she stopped and, clearly frustrated, looked at me as I reached to switch off the lamp.
“Jesus,” she said as she went out. “Doesn’t anybody wanna fuck me tonight?”
Chapter Six
This time the knock at the door woke me at once. Insistent, the pounding was accompanied by Steve’s husky voice saying, “Nate! Are you up? Nate!”