Authors: Max Allan Collins
“Man, I’d like that, Luann.”
She pointed to one of the tourist-trap stores on the south side of the four-lane blacktop and I pulled in. My trunks cost ten bucks, her bikini twenty. Highway robbery. Well, this
was
a highway.. . .
When she pointed to the hotel where she wanted me to pull in, I froze for a second.
She caught it. “What’s wrong, Johnny?”
“Nothing,” I said.
The hotel was a Tudor affair of white stucco and dark wood trim, and the sign on the overhang where you pulled in for check-in said in fancy English lettering:
FANTASY SWEETS
YOUR WISH IS OUR COMMAND
.
What the hell. Like they said on
Hawaii Five-O
, I could case the joint.
We went in a rear door close to the pool, which was in a big echoey area. Along one wall, the sliding glass of motel rooms opened onto this chlorine-scented chamber, with its giant twisty slide for kiddies and a ceiling that could be cranked back in warm weather, closed now. Apparently seventy degrees was arctic weather for Biloxi.
We hadn’t cleared this with anybody, but nobody said a word as we headed into the changing rooms and got into our suits. My boxer-style trunks were blue polyester, her suit a modest two-piece with pink flowers on a royal blue that wouldn’t impress the crowd at Mr. Woody’s.
The water was warm, not too warm, but like Goldilocks said, just right. The best part was that we had it all to ourselves. She didn’t really swim, just kind of walked around
oooh
ing and
aaah
ing in the shallow till she got to the edge of the deep, enjoying the feel of it on her pretty skin. She went down the slide a few times, laughing as she went, as happy as I’d ever seen her, looking distressingly young. Maybe she wasn’t nineteen. Not that it mattered in Mississippi. I figured legal age here must be around fourteen, thirteen for cousins.
I took some nice long laps, though the layout of the pool was odd, sort of scalloped and accommodating that big slide. Still, it relaxed me, and I got used to it. Tonight held real promise for getting this job done. I was starting to feel an attachment for this blonde kid in the floral bikini, and what that meant was, I better wrap this thing the fuck up. I was approaching get-out-of-Dodge time.
She did a little dog-paddling and I swam on my back for a while, and after half an hour we went over to the hot tub and relaxed. Sure, we had one of those back at the Tropical, but this one really put out some heat. There was room to sit back and stretch out your legs and kick a little, too.
Having to work my voice up over the bubble action, I said, “Is this whole place those theme suites?”
She shook her head. Almost had to shout when she answered: “No. This is mostly just a hotel. There’s one wing of those.”
“How many?”
“Oh. Six, I think.” She thought, then nodded. “Six.”
“I hear some of them are pretty wild.”
She nodded again, smiling, but just a little. “You want to fuck in one?”
“You must be in really solid with the management.”
“They know me here. You wanna take a tour?”
“Sure.”
We got dressed. She walked me to the front desk. The interior of the place was similar to the exterior—stucco off-white walls trimmed with very rough wood, cheap stuff painted dark brown, the carpet indoor/outdoor stuff. Not any fantasy of mine. The check-in area was surprisingly small, with a gas fireplace I doubted got lighted much in a wall that was otherwise a bookcase offering up
Reader’s Digest
condensed-book volumes.
Nobody was behind the desk, and an office visible through an open doorway was similarly empty. I was about to ding the desk bell when Luann clutched my wrist.
“Don’t bother,” she said.
She got behind the counter and from a wall of keys plucked an unmarked one from the far left of the bottom row.
She held it up like a prize, grinning. “Master key. We’ll put it back before it’s missed.”
I followed her up the open stairs, also made of that rough cheap dark-painted wood, and down a hallway. She opened a door and we went into a room with a castle motif—gray-silver textured walls with matching hard-foam pillars, a big canopy double bed with gold-trimmed scarlet velvet spread, several decent pieces of faux-period furniture, and a definitely not authentic suit of armor. In an area past a foam archway was that typical Medieval touch: a hot tub. But it was fun. Well-executed crap.
Next was a typical bridal suite centered on a heart-shaped bed with a heart-shaped mirror overhead, plus lots of red velvet and cupids and red faux-leather furniture and so on. We looked at a space capsule room, an igloo room, and a jungle room. In the latter, Luann pulled off her hot pants and leaned over the zebra-print bed under mosquito netting and presented me with a heart-shaped behind better suited to the bridal suite. Not wanting to hurt her feelings, I took her up on it. The roundness and tightness of her made for a quick one.
With her hot pants in hand, she padded on the green-shag jungle carpet into a bathroom with banana wallpaper and freshened up in a traditional tub—the big hot tub with the waterfall in the outer room seemed suited for less practical matters.
“You didn’t come,” I said.
She shrugged. “I will another time. This was just for some naughty fun.”
If you were wondering what kind of fun might seem naughty to a nineteen-year-old stripper/hooker, now you know.
“One more room to show you,” she said. “Caligula Suite.”
I wondered if it came with a horse.
Turned out it didn’t, but nonetheless was the most elaborate of the suites by far. We went in through an employees-only door (guests entered a floor down) onto a balcony that included a round canopy bed supported by faux-marble columns with a pinkish cast, the carpet a deeper pink. Those pink columns were everywhere, including the orgy-size hot tub below where rose petals floated. Several plump couches down there suggested the room could also be used for a swingers’ party. Mirrors, artificial greenery, purple drapes and naked statues of both sexes added to the Ancient Rome effect, even if the projection TV and full bar didn’t.
When we returned to the front desk, a clerk had materialized—a pimple-faced guy in glasses (repaired at the bridge by adhesive tape) and a white shirt and black bow tie and no chin. He apparently misplaced his pocket protector.
He broke out into a big smile, seeing Luann.
“Hiiiii, Lolita,” he said breathlessly. When he stopped talking, he left his mouth open, apparently because you can’t pant through your nose.
“I just gave my friend a tour, Henry.” She smiled at him and held up the master key like a fish she’d just caught. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all, not at all.” He grinned stupidly and took the key from her and placed it back on its bottom-row hook, in its unlabeled position. “Anytime, anything, Lo-li-ta.”
Brother, did that trip off his tongue repulsively.
I took her back to the Tropical and deposited her in her room.
“Mr. Killian has a date tonight,” I said. “And I’m the chaperone.”
“Probably where we just were.”
“Why do you say that?”
She shrugged. “That’s where he always takes ’em.”
I had the uncomfortable feeling she’d been in that Caligula Suite with Killian herself. Why it made me uncomfortable, I couldn’t tell you.
She was saying, “You want me when you get back, Johnny, just knock on the connectin’ door.”
“I probably will, unless I’m really tired. Don’t take it as an insult if I don’t.”
“I won’t.”
“If you get hungry, use room service and charge it to me.”
“Okay. There’s movies on NBC and CBS I can watch.”
“No series tonight?”
“No.
Partridge Family
?” She made a “yuck” face.
Who needed
TV Guide
with Luann in your life?
She gave me a little girl riffle of her fingers that was her wave and closed herself away.
I needed to get ready for tonight. I had an extra nine-millimeter barrel in my suitcase that I replaced on the weapon, having disposed of the previous barrel down a sewer opening last night. Even in a corrupt town like Biloxi, forensics can bite you in the ass.
Also in my suitcase was a silencer for the Browning, but it was a tubular eight-inch affair that would have to be kept in a pocket. That was one thing the tailor at Godchaux’s hadn’t allowed for. My thinking was that I probably wouldn’t need it. A pillow or a shot with the barrel pressed against the flesh should suffice. So in the suitcase it stayed.
I cleaned the weapon, field-stripping it and wiping down the components, even the new barrel, which obviously didn’t need it, applied solvent, scrubbed everything with a toothbrush (not
that
toothbrush, smart-ass), wiped everything down, oiled and greased the parts, then reassembled it.
I also used a slightly damp washcloth on the inside and outside of the shoulder holster, then with the dry part of the cloth worked in a few drops of leather balm. I hadn’t done this for a while, because I don’t usually wear a shoulder holster.
As promised, Killian was alone that evening when we met in the Tropical lobby at 7:45. For once he was not in a dark tailored suit—this was a casual night out for the boss, after all. He wore a kelly-green long-sleeve shirt with pointed collars, a white-orange-and-green Italian silk scarf knotted to one side of his throat, and flared jeans with a green-and-yellow tapestry pattern, like a really ugly Navajo blanket.
Suddenly those black suits seemed just fine. If Godchaux’s had sent threads like that to my room, I’d have gone AWOL quicker than Tommy at the Bottoms Up.
The desk clerk, the smirky blond again, did not appear to notice us pass, busy checking in a guest. I liked the way this was going. None of the black-suit boys upstairs had seen me this evening, and probably Killian hadn’t mentioned me to them, soul of discretion that he was in the adultery department.
At the Fantasy Sweets, we went in the same back way Luann and I had earlier. But Killian did not lead me toward the front of the building and the check-in desk, instead turning down a hallway. Quickly we reached a door with no number on its dark rough surface, just a bronze plaque that said “Caligula Suite.”
Killian turned to me with a sly smile. I was having trouble getting used to him in anything but black. If he poked me in the eye with one of those collars, I would strangle him with that dumb scarf.
“I’m going to be a while,” he said. “Probably a good two hours. There are chairs in the lobby. Get yourself one—but stay alert. With your help, Mr. Quarry, I’ve made new enemies this week.”
“And pissed off old ones,” I reminded him.
He gave me a patronizing pat on the shoulder, used his room key and went in.
I waited about half an hour before heading to the small lobby. No one had wandered down the surprisingly narrow corridor in all that time—place seemed very dead. Off-season rearing its head again.
The nerdy desk clerk (or any desk clerk for that matter) was not behind the counter, a small sign that said “
RING FOR SERVICE
” leaning against the dinger. The clerk’s office door was closed. Napping or whacking off or something. No other guests in the mini-lobby, either.
I had a look out a narrow vertical window beside the entrance, to see if anybody was about to check in.
Nobody.
I slipped behind the counter and plucked the master key off its unmarked hook. I also helped myself to a straight-back chair from the wall adjacent to the Reader’s Digest Book Club shelves.
For another forty minutes or so, I sat with my back to the wall near the door to the Caligula Suite, and tried not to be nervous. Usually my nerves are very steady, and they really weren’t that bad tonight. Just not as good as usual.
Normally I would be in control of a situation. Tonight I had control of certain elements, but no control over others.
There are always unexpected possibilities in the contract business, even when you have first-rate intel on the patterns of a target. I would give the average hit about 90% reliability based upon what the passive half of the team has learned and provided.
But that other 10% was impossible to get rid of—human beings being fucked-up creatures means you never know what curves might be thrown your way. And here in Biloxi I was improvising and bobbing and weaving, and the curves were coming at me from left and right and front and back, like rounds in a firefight.
Speaking of curves, at about the hour-and-a-half point, the door opened and a woman came out, her manner crisp yet casual.
In her well-preserved forties, she was tall and curvy in a top-heavy way, her dark blonde hair up, her narrow face with the high cheekbones of a model and the heavy blue eye shadow of a porn star. She sported a stylish white pants suit with a black-and-white checked vest under a blazer-style jacket, flared trousers, and open-toe white sandals. Like Killian, she had a scarf knotted at her neck, but hers was a solid yellow.
Mrs. Somebody swung her head in my direction, and her gold hoop earrings took the trip. I’d gotten to my feet and she was giving me a Mona Lisa smile and an even smaller nod before walking briskly off toward the rear exit. Not a lot of sex in her gait, just efficiency. Yet she oozed sex just the same—sex and money.
The wife of somebody with bucks, well worth the bang.
She’d seen me. But then I’d seen her. And who was it that said trust was when you have something on the other guy?
I gave it fifteen minutes. All through the nearly two hours I’d been seated here in the corridor, not a single guest or hotel employee had made an appearance. I got up, ditched the chair around a corner, and took the rear stairs up a flight. At the employee’s entrance to the Caligula Suite, I got the master key out, used it as quietly as possible, edged open the door, dropped the key in my suitcoat pocket, withdrew my nine millimeter from under my left arm, and went slowly in.
The smell of chlorine and the bubbling of the Jacuzzi told me where I’d find Killian. The rumpled, unmade bed and his ugly casual clothes on a white pseudo-Roman chair said the same. Edging to the white railing, I peered down at the hot tub in the room’s center.