cheap motel room seemed to have, jarring against ancient peeling wallpaper the color of sand dotted with green cartoon cacti. For that Southwestern flavor. The green shag carpeting gave you the feeling a whole realm of dirt and germs existed down in the underbrush, well out of any sweeper’s reach, not that any sweeper had recently gone on safari there.
If some industrious biographer discovered Alfred Hitchcock had been traveling through these parts in the late 1950s, this bathroom with its shower stall might well turn out to have inspired a certain very famous scene. Of course, this was sheer speculation on my part; after all, Hitch couldn’t have fit inside that bathroom unless they’d built it around him.
Beyond number eight’s natural ambiance, Jerry had added his own touches, namely a stack of well-thumbed men’s magazines (Hustler, Club, Gallery) on the junky dresser, which was also home to a bottle of baby oil, a king- size box of Puffs tissues, a boom box with a scattering of audio cassettes (Boston, Foghat, ZZ Top), two bottles of Dewar’s, one unopened, and a bathroom water glass with Scotch traces, adding more circles to the wooden dresser top. Everything a sophisticate like Jerry required for a rewarding night in.
I didn’t touch much of anything. Whether that was to prevent fingerprints or to avoid catching something, I’ll leave for you to decide. But I found what I was looking for: a spiral notebook in a drawer by the bed that had all of Jerry’s surveillance notes. Each day was dated and ran to three pages. Three weeks and a few days worth.
Everybody in the trade took such notes. But hanging on to them was a dangerous practice. On those rare occasions that I took the Passive role, I made sure my notes were cryptic, never including the name or even initials of the target or any secondary subjects.
And by the time the Active half of the team showed up, a month or more of such information would be distilled- “He takes breakfast at the diner on Vermont Place every morning around seven,” “She walks the dog when she gets home from work, between five and five-thirty,” “He smokes a joint in the hot tub on his deck every night at eleven,” and so on. You transferred information along verbally, like the Indians used to pass their lore from generation to generation.
And any notes were disposed of. Burned, usually.
Jerry had names or initials and times and dates. Perfect for my purposes. But also another reason to wonder why he’d lasted as long as he had, or why somebody as skillful as Nick Varnos-staging accidental deaths was maybe the hardest kind of hit to pull off-had for ten fucking years put up with this douchebag.
Part of why I stopped by the Saddle Up was to remove any trace of Jerry. So I packed his suitcase, including everything from his clothes (here at least he did well- they were as bland as mine, a page out of a Sears catalogue) to his stroke books, from his Dewar’s to his boom box with blues-rock cassettes. Toiletries, too. Included among the deceased’s effects were a. 38 Colt Super Automatic from his nightstand drawer and the box of slugs that went with it.
I saved out a HENDRIX LIVES t-shirt (Hendrix maybe, not Jerry) and used it to rub away any fingerprints I might have left. Better than going near that box of Puffs.
When the one-room suite was devoid of Jerry’s personality and had been returned to its own natural charming state, I hauled the suitcase out and stuffed it in his trunk. Jerry had another handgun in there-a Colt Diamondback revolver in a little belt holster-and two boxes of ammunition for it. Just sitting there.
Fucking idiot-what if a cop, suspecting a DUI, had stopped him and found this? Or worse, what if just now I’d gone through a stop sign or something, unfamiliar with Boot Heel, and got stopped, and the fuzz checked the trunk when they ran my driver’s license (a phony) and found it didn’t go with a red Mustang?
Shit, if I hadn’t already killed that fuckwad, I’d have gladly done so now. It was all I could do not to drive back to that lonely road and run over him a few more times.
Anyway, I used the Hendrix t-shirt to wipe any potential prints off any surface I touched, then drove the Mustang back into Boot Heel. I found a parking space not far from the Four Jacks in front of the Old West Museum amp; Gift Emporium-open but doing scant business-and (with some more Hendrix wiping) left the Mustang there.
With the keys in the dash, and the windows rolled down.
I had checked the registration and Jerry’s name wasn’t on it-at least, not any name I knew him by. Probably he’d bought it specifically for this gig, paying cash and using false I.D. Should any cops lay hands on it, there was no reason to think it would lead to Jerry, either the Jerry who lived somewhere with a straight cover story, or the Jerry who lay on a dirt highway with a head looking like a Halloween pumpkin some nasty neighbor kids kicked in.
Might have made one of the more interesting wagers in Boot Heel tonight-betting somebody how long it would take the Mustang to disappear.
Personally I didn’t give a shit where the Mustang wound up. I was just looking to get rid of it and simplify matters in a way that would buy me a day or two. With his skidmark puss, Jerry was unrecognizable, and when (next county over) he was found, whenever he was found, the wheels of justice should grind fairly slowly. At least as slowly as mine had over Jerry.
Identifying the body would take a while, if it ever was identified; and his death-mysterious as it was (had a drunk stumbled out into that road and got run over?)- would hardly make headline news. Jerry had said his part of the job was over, so I didn’t figure Nick would be looking to get in touch with him. If the local paper in a day or two carried a little story about the weird death in the boonies, well, why should Nick think it was about Jerry?
And assuming somebody helped himself to the Mustang, it would either wind up in a Vegas chop shop or be merrily driven off by some lucky winner. Admittedly, that winner would have an eye-popping moment or two, discovering the weapons in the trunk of his new car. Or maybe not. If it was a pro and not an amateur who took the Mustang, the guns might just be something else to fence.
Everybody wins.
With the Mustang dumped, and the Hendrix t-shirt stuffed in a trash bin, I returned to the Four Jacks and found my way through slots and poker machines and bluehaired patrons to the snack bar, which was off to the right. Open onto the busy casino, Jack’s Shack was fashioned after an old-time soda fountain with tables and a few booths, its back wall decorated with cartoon cut-outs of cowboys and Indians and gunfighters. I got myself a sugar cone with Rocky Road ice cream and sat in a booth licking and nibbling it, while I thumbed through the dead man’s notebook.
I could bore you with details, because Jerry had filled almost sixty pages, and there was a lot to piece together. But I won’t. What I learned boiled down to this: the target was Arthur Stockwell, film director.
The first two weeks of Stockwell’s activities proved irrelevant because this period represented something called pre-production. His hours were erratic, as he apparently was spending time at various film locations in Boot Heel, and sometimes checking with production staff who were staying at three hotels (including the Spur but not, you may be shocked to learn, the luxurious Saddle Up). Halfway through the second week, Stockwell began rehearsing with actors in a conference room at the Spur, but the times were all over the place.
For somebody in the murder business, dealing with a target involved in such a constantly shifting activity was your worst fucking nightmare. You want to deal with your mark in his or her daily life, where there’s a routine to discern. Patterns, predictability- so important when you’re planning to kill somebody.
What I didn’t get was why the hit was going down here, and now — why not wait till after the film wrapped? (That was the term, wasn’t it?) Why not wait till the director would be back in Beverly Hills or wherever, living a normal life? Not that people lived normal lives in Beverly Hills. Even so, that life certainly had some order, some structure, not this movie-making chaos.
Speaking of which, why hadn’t Stockwell been snuffed before he came to Boot Heel to shoot a movie for weeks at a time or maybe months? (Jerry’s notes gave me no indication of how long this-or any-movie production might last.)
Last week the film had started shooting. Again, the times were all over the place, with the only common thread the director working very long hours. He would be on the set as early as six a.m. and get back as late as nine or ten or even midnight. The sets ranged from a desert location just outside town to, well, the Four Jacks Hotel amp; Casino. Apparently they’d shot a scene in this very snack bar.
A local home and an apartment had been used as sets and were (according to Jerry’s notes) “shot out.” Had Jerry ingratiated himself with crew? He seemed to have picked up the jargon.
And it seemed one full day had been spent at the local sheriff’s office. Great place to be shadowing a subject! This seemed more and more like madness…
A dozen names of cast and crew appeared in Jerry’s notes. Either he was a hell of a back-up guy, soaking up
