‘Did you tell them? How much more specific—’
‘I told them and they laughed it off as soon as they heard me say “Arkansas”. They said to leave it a day or two. I played the
bad headlines
card, but they know it’s a bluff. It’s department policy. And we don’t rate with them, anyhow.’
‘Goddammit.’ I wasn’t sure there was anything the cops could have done, but it smarted anyway. No help anywhere. ‘What about her cousin?’
‘I spoke with her. She . . .’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing. She’s had no contact in months.’
I blew out a breath.
‘Charlie, what do you want me to do next?’
I glanced at Ella, a dirty taste filming my throat. ‘I’ll take care of it. If you hear anything, call Samuel Masters. Leave word with him.’
‘The Marine guy?’
‘He’s as close to a straight arrow as there is here.’ I gave him the campaign office address to tell the operator. ‘I’ll talk to you.’
I rang off, feeling like I was in quicksand.
‘Do you think she’s still alive?’
I snapped around to look at her.
She was staring at the ceiling, her eyes unfocused. ‘They all talk as though there’s some code – some honour amongst thieves – that makes women untouchable, and yet we always seem to end up in the firing line.’
‘Don’t compare yourself to my wife.’
She lifted her head now. ‘We’re both at the mercy of these men.’
She was right, but she missed her mark by a hair and the indignation came off as false. Just like how she almost made a convincing Hedy Lamarr – but not quite; just like how she’d played aloof to keep me coming back with questions. Under scrutiny, it all showed up as artifice. I fished my wallet from my pocket, coming to the realisation she was forever playing a part. It made my mind up for me. ‘You took the job, though. At the Southern. Dancing.’ I took out what was left of the cash I’d come to give her earlier and set it on the table, holding it in place with my finger. ‘Got a little something for yourself out of it, huh?’
She eyed the money, one arm folded across her stomach and the other holding her cigarette in front of her mouth. ‘What would you have done?’
‘Not that.’ I pushed the bills towards her. ‘All the rest of it I could maybe understand, but no one would have cared whether you went to dance for those men or not.’
‘I’ve been on my own since I was ten years old. I do what I have to just to get by.’
‘You can help me make amends.’
She dropped her cigarette into the glass with the other butt. ‘I have no amends to make.’
‘Then do it for my wife’s sake. You made your choices, she has no part in this.’
She looked at the gun in my hand. ‘At least they have the subtlety not to show their weapons when they threaten me.’
The words stung. I put the gun away, aware now that she wasn’t the only one playing a part she couldn’t carry off. ‘I’m not threatening you. You take this money and you run. Tonight. You can be out of the state before sunrise. All I’m asking is that you deliver a message to Tindall before you go. I won’t force you, it’s your decision.’
‘What’s the message?’
‘That I’ve still got the gun and I’m willing to trade.’
I took my finger off the money. She reached out to take it, tentative, as though it was a trick.
The telephone rang then, cutting the silence like a Tommy gun.
She jumped, whipped around to look at it. She stepped over and answered, then turned her eyes to me, confusion on her face. ‘There’s a man asking for you.’
I went over and took the handset, expecting to hear Acheson’s voice again. I wasn’t even close.
‘So we’re clear from the get-go, this conversation never took place.’
Coughlin.
I was too stunned to say anything smart, words coming on reflex: ‘How the hell did you know I was here?’
‘Not many folks placing calls to Los Angeles right now. We both know the switchboard operators in this town lack discretion.’
‘Where’s my wife?’
‘I’m not a party to that. You won’t believe me, but I swear it’s true. Tindall has contacts in Los Angeles, and he arranged it without my knowledge.’
‘Tell Tindall I want to make a deal. Tell him—’
‘I’m going to say this and hang up, so listen careful: Tindall owns a motel called the Viceroy on the Malvern highway, out near the fairgrounds. He believes it to be a secret, and that’s where he’ll stash Layfield. Remember all he’s done to you when you go there.’ He listed a set of directions. ‘See to this, and I’ll broker a deal with him to spare your wife.’
Then he was gone.
No matter where I ran, they found me.
Ella was staring at me, the money folded tight in her fist. ‘Who was that?’
‘Don’t go to the Southern, forget about the message. Go, now; get as far away from here as you can. Before they catch up with me.’
I staggered out across the small yard in a daze. The car was only as far as the sidewalk, but it felt like I travelled a thousand miles in getting to it.
I climbed in and sat with my head in my hands. Layfield tried to kill Coughlin. Coughlin had every reason in the world to want revenge – and still it reeked of another trap. I’d underestimated Coughlin once already; if I went after Layfield on his say-so now, surely it was playing into his hands.
Desperation wouldn’t let me discard the notion that easy. I reasoned there was a chance Coughlin was sincere: I could only guess at the relationship between him and Tindall, but whatever the truth, it seemed like Cole Barrett’s killing had driven a crowbar between the two men. Tindall let Layfield escape, and now it seemed he was giving refuge to him – two facts that had to stick in Coughlin’s craw. Could be that was enough to make him cross Tindall.
And if there was a chance I could get at Layfield—
It was clear now that, even before tonight, Tindall had gone to significant trouble to protect him – the cover-up with Barrett, killing Jimmy. Layfield had some value to Tindall, and that made me think killing him would only endanger Lizzie further.
Then I realised there was another way to go about matters, and it dictated that I had to take the risk. I was willing to give up my life for Lizzie’s, without hesitation. But if my hunch was right, there was a life that was more important to Tindall than mine or hers.
*
The Viceroy Motel sat on a lonely stretch of Highway 270. It was nestled among a phalanx of red pines. I’d passed a Baptist church a mile back, but nothing since then; figure the remoteness was part of its appeal.
The sign was set back from the road and concealed by the trees such that I didn’t spot it until I was almost outside. I slowed some, so I could scope the place out as I passed, but I didn’t want to telegraph my arrival by slamming the brakes and driving right up to the front door.
It was an L-shaped building in a clearing in the woods. It had white walls and a dark roof, maybe green – hard to tell in the night. I could make out what looked like a reception in the part of the structure nearest the road, then a line of identical doors and windows stretching back and turning the corner to form the L. There was one car parked in the lot, and a light showing from inside the room it was parked in front of.
I cursed Coughlin for luring me to this wasteland to take out his trash. It felt like I was right back where I started, running myself head first into danger to suit someone else’s purposes. Except Robinson’s call had turned out to be righteous; the best I could hope for this time was to come away with the means to save my wife.
That meant taking Layfield alive. He was a career cop and a stone-cold killer, with his back against the wall. All I had was surprise on my side – if Coughlin was good to his word. That, and the bottom-of-the-barrel courage that comes with being out of options.
I drove on another two hundred yards, then ditched the car on the verge and started hiking back to the motel. The grass on the roadside was long and straggly, catching and snagging my feet as I went. I ran short of breath and all the old doubts flooded back in: whether I was doing the right thing or making matters worse. Whether I had the guts to stay the course. I pushed them aside only by thinking about Lizzie – the terror she must be feeling, plunged back into a nightmare she thought had abated.
I ducked into the woods for cover as I came closer, advancing from one tree to the next as fast as I dared. I could hear branches overhead scraping against one another in the gentle breeze, and the incessant call of a whip-poor-will; I remembered the Algonquin Indian legend I’d been told as a boy that the bird’s song was an omen of a soul about to depart.
I looked ahead. Nothing was moving on the motel grounds, no signs of life save that one room with a light visible in the window. It made me nervous as hell. When I reached the property line, the tangle of roots and dirt underfoot gave way to a hardscrabble lot that extended thirty yards from the building. I stopped there and hid behind the last line of trees, watching the stillness.
I was approaching the motel from the front, the long part of the L spread before me, the right-angle and shorter part of the shape off to my right, and the road to my left. The car I could see was parked outside the fourth room, counting along from the office – the one with the light showing. It had an Arkansas plate, nothing else to distinguish it particularly.
I retreated into the woods a few steps and started picking a course parallel to the line of the building. I kept glancing over to the motel as I went, pushing on until I made it to the far end. From there, I looped around so I could get a closer look at the property from behind. My heart was jumping, and a voice in my head screamed there wasn’t time for this caution.
The woods came closer to the motel round back, the tree line only ten yards from the building. I fast-walked along it, surveying the scene. Each room had a single window on that side, all of them closed. There were no back doors or other means of entry or exit. I stopped a few seconds when I came level with room four. The drapes were open but the glow was dimmer on this side, as if it came from a table lamp placed near the front of the room. I stared a moment, half-expecting Layfield to appear in the glass, but everything was still.
I pressed on, and by the time I reached the road again, my nerves were shot. It was as though the place had been deserted. The car and the light said that wasn’t the case.
I got the sense of being watched. My eyes played tricks on me, seeing phantom movements in the darkness, hearing footfalls behind me that weren’t there. There was a malevolence that seemed to come from the building itself. My jaw started trembling then, and I could do nothing to stop it. All the money in the world wouldn’t have made me go any closer. Lizzie was worth more than that.
I steeled myself and broke into a running crouch, skittering across the ground between the trees and the motel. I pulled my footfalls to tread as lightly as I could, but still they were as loud as a pickaxe hitting the gravel. When I reached the building, I flattened myself against the wall and caught my breath, the gun pressed to my thigh, listening for any sign I’d given myself away.
I was between the back of the office and the first room. I moved along the wall until I came to the first window, ducked under it, and carried on until I reached the fourth. I positioned myself next to the glass and listened for sounds from inside, but all I could hear was the flag at the front of the property flapping and tugging against its pole.
I took my hat off and craned my neck to peer through the window. Inside, I could make out an unmade bed; on the small table next to it, a quart of liquor, a mug and a bottle of pills. There was a necktie strewn over the only chair, a fedora on the seat that looked like Layfield’s. The bathroom door was closed. I pulled back out of sight, my pulse seeming to spasm, listening for the sound of running water. Or anything else. Nothing.
My first instinct was to kick down his door and take my chances – but a voice buried somewhere deeper preached caution. I couldn’t help Lizzie if I was dead. I wiped a line of sweat from my forehead and tried to think, feeling like every wasted minute was being taken from Lizzie’s life.
Something about the scene was off. Maybe the way the drapes were open, the light inviting attention. I reasoned it out: if Coughlin sent me here as a trap, surely it should have sprung by now. He had every reason to want Layfield dead – and so far he’d proven good to his word. But still it nagged at me. There was no sign of Layfield, and it was as if it’d been left that way for me to find.
Then I tried a new spin on it: cautious Layfield – room four as a decoy, a way to buy himself a few seconds if someone caught up to him. It felt like a fit. I wondered if he was expecting me.
On instinct, I reached out and touched the glass in the window next to me – just my fingertips on the corner. It was temperate. I moved along a few steps to room three and did the same. It was cold to the touch. I retraced my steps along the wall, ducked under Layfield’s window, and went to room five, reached my hand out.
Pay dirt: the glass was warmer again, barely registering on my fingertips without the temperature difference. I pressed myself to the wall. The sound of my own breathing raged in my ears, and then it warped and magnified, so much that I could swear I was hearing someone else doing the same, as though Layfield was waiting on the other side, only the width of a clapboard separating us. I closed my eyes to block it all out. A half-formed plan swirled, and I was too scared to stay still any longer.
I started moving again, heading towards the road. When I reached the highway, I crossed over to the far side and broke into a jog, certain enough I wouldn’t be visible from the motel in the darkness at that distance.
When I made it back to my car, I jumped in and pulled a U-turn right across the empty highway, then sped back to the Viceroy. I kicked up a trail of dust crossing the parking lot and stopped right alongside Layfield’s car.
I ran up to room four, the light still blazing inside. I set my feet, gripped the gun in front of me and told Lizzie I loved her under my breath. Then I kicked the door in.
It was flimsy and buckled easily. I charged inside, pivoted and flattened myself behind the half-open door, my gun hand next to my head. I held my breath so as not to make any noise, praying he’d take the bait.
I heard the sound of one of the other rooms being eased open, and then a man treading lightly on the path outside. I was stock-still. My heart was like a flood-pump in my chest and I was sure he’d hear it. The barrel of a pistol poked into the room, then the man stepped forward another two feet, just clear of the door. I grabbed his wrist, bringing the butt of my gun down on his head from behind, catching him near the crown. He crumpled to the floor and offered no resistance as I took his weapon from his hand.