“Lots of decent places to eat.” She made a face. “The trick’s finding one that’s reasonable as well as decent. You like Mexican?”
“I’m from Southern California,” he said. “What’d you have in mind?”
“Depends if the place I remember is still here. These little spots, they go in and out of business by the year in these oil towns.”
They cruised southward, soon turned east on the main street. The city still had railroad tracks running through its center. Main street was a melange of neon signs, fast food restaurants and gas stations. It was several minutes before the girl let out an exclamation of recognition and they pulled into a garishly lit parking lot beneath a huge old sign that said Taco Something.
Jake enjoyed watching them order, delighted that someone else would be picking up the tab. It would double the pleasure of their meal. The food, when it finally arrived, was typical for this part of the country: huge portions hotly spiced accompanied by quart-sized glasses of iced tea. Jake dove into it with as much pleasure as his younger companions.
None of them noticed the woman seated across the room. She’d been staring at them since they’d entered. She wasn’t thinking about her own meal, however. Her mind was on something else entirely—a five-letter word for money received in excess of normal salary. Word had been spread around. A phone number accompanied the word.
“You sure it’s him?” said the man on the other end of the pay phone.
“I’m positive.” The woman licked hot sauce from her upper lip and leaned out of the booth to stare into the dining room. The man who’d excited her attention was still there, sifting through a fried burrito. “His picture’s all over the place. He’s not alone, though. Seems to be with a young couple.”
Huddy frowned. He knew that the Ramirezes were still in Port Lavaca. That left a single likely alternative. The couple had picked up an elderly hitchhiker and he was sticking with them.
It was late. That didn’t mean Pickett’s benefactors didn’t intend to drive the rest of the night. He’d have to work fast. Maybe he’d get lucky for a change. He certainly was due.
He gave the grateful woman at the other end a number to call to make arrangements for her reward. Then he made some quick calls of his own.
Yes, it could be managed. Yes, it would be expensive. The best people wouldn’t be available on such short notice. They’d have to go with what was available in the area. Yes, they could be ready to track them if they kept driving.
Huddy received a return call a half hour later. It caught him just as he was heading out the door. They’d taken motel rooms, clearly intended to spend the night. Huddy smiled. At last things were shifting in his favor. It was about time.
“Are you sure we can’t convince you to share our room?” the girl asked him.
“No. The one next door is better for me,” Jake assured her. “I like my privacy.”
“I understand. We’ll see you in the morning, then.”
“I’ll be up, don’t worry.” He shook each of their hands in turn. “And thanks, kids. Thanks a lot.”
He turned and went through the door that connected both rooms, closed the one on their side behind him, then closed and locked his own. He tried the front door to his own room, making certain it was fastened securely.
“Two twenty-six,” said the raised numbers on his room key. They’d had no trouble getting adjoining rooms. That would make it simpler in the morning. He tossed the key onto the spare bed. It was going to be nice to sleep on a real mattress for a change. The bus hadn’t been kind to his back.
Outside the motel the word was passed. The tall man who’d been put in charge of the operation cursed as the description of the sleeping arrangements was given to him. He’d been summoned from a warm bed, no, ordered out of it, and he wasn’t in a pleasant mood. They’d be stuck outside the damn motel for hours, waiting for the loaded hypodermics to reach them, before they could move in. Now the situation was complicated by the presence in the old man’s room of these two kids.
“So he’s sharing a room with them,” said one of his associates. "Shouldn’t make things much tougher.”
“Look, this is kidnapping, Sanford. Not extortion, not fire-for-hire, not any of our usual stuff. And we can’t botch this because the orders come out of Houston. From top people. I tried to tell ’em this kind of things’s out of our league, but they wouldn’t listen. Said they didn’t have time to send more than a few of their own people up and they didn’t know if they’d get here in time to be in on it. So we’ve got to do it ourselves, you and me and Wallace and the rest of the boys. Could be good for us, though.”
“It’ll be dark in the room and we ain’t going to bust in until early morning,” Sanford pointed out.
“Yeah, but these kids could still get a look at us.”
“That’s true.” Sanford shrugged. When he did that he looked like one of those old toy figures where you push a stick protruding from the bottom and make the arms and legs flutter. Sanford was all skinny arms and legs, and nastiness. “If that happens we’ll just have to make sure they won’t tell anybody about it, won’t we?”
His boss was unhappy at the thought. “Complicates things, but I’m afraid you’re right, man. Maybe we’ll be alright. Maybe we can get in and get out in the dark.” He turned and looked up at the motel’s second floor, waiting for the lights in 224 to go out.
A thumping noise, distant through his pillow, woke Jake. He rolled over in the bed to blink wearily at the clock that was bolted to the nighttable. It was somewhere between three and four in the morning.
The sound came again and he raised up against the headboard. It was coming from the other side of the far wall, from the young couple’s room. For an instant he thought it might be something recognizable and he was momentarily embarrassed, but when the muffled scream penetrated the wall he came wide awake.
Abruptly the sounds stopped. There was a click as the door near his TV was opened from the other side. Then someone tried the door on his side of the passageway. When it failed to yield the attempt wasn’t repeated. There was no pounding, no hammering against the thin barrier. That would come soon enough, Jake knew.
Scrambling out of the bed he fumbled into his clothes in the near blackness, not daring to turn on a light for fear of alerting those who surely must be watching the entire motel. Medicine, wallet, he had everything. He spared a frantic minute to make up the bed. Maybe if whoever checked the room saw no signs of occupancy they might not bother to inspect it closely. He started toward the front door. Memories of another motel recently abandoned in haste halted him.
There was a window through to the back. The fact that he was on the second floor didn’t slow him. He had no choice but to take whatever escape was offered.
Sliding the glass aside, he pushed hard on the screen. It fell out, bounced off something, then went sailing like a black kite out into the night to land in the dirt behind the building. Looking out and down he saw what the screen had bounced off of; a concrete ledge perhaps a foot wide. It carried a rain gutter the length of the motel.
I could live without this, he thought as he stepped carefully out onto the ledge. He closed the window, hoping anyone who entered his room wouldn’t remark on the missing screen.
Stay calm, think it through, he told himself as he stood there on the narrow ledge. He tried not to think of what had taken place in the room next to his, though his imagination was working overtime.
Someone had spotted him and had notified the people who were chasing him. They’d traced him to the motel where someone else had seen him enter the young couple’s room. Since he hadn’t come out of that room they’d naturally assume he was sharing it with them. He wondered that they’d located him again so quickly. That wouldn’t surprise Amanda. He wished he could talk to her now.
That young fellow Huddy must want him very badly.
Keeping his stomach pressed against the wall and trying not to look down, he made his way along the ledge until he bumped up against something cold and unyielding. The fire ladder was bolted firmly to the wall.
After a moment’s thought he stepped out onto the rungs and started up instead of down. The roof was flat and covered with loose tarpaper and composition shingles. As he approached the far side he dropped to his knees and then his belly. Too much belly for this kind of thing, he mused as he made his way slowly toward the edge. Soon he’d reached the rim and could just peer out and down into the parking lot.
Several men stood next to a large car parked in the middle of the lot. All of them except one wore western hats. Jake couldn’t see a tie in the bunch, though it was a long ways off and still dark out.
Footsteps sounded on one of the metal stairways. Half a dozen men appeared to the right, running towards those waiting by the car. Both groups entered into a noisy discussion punctuated by much wild hand-waving. Jake wished he could make out what they were saying, but they were too far away and his hearing a little too used up.
