Denise stood next to Wagner's wheelchair, her arm hanging loosely around his shoulder.
'I'll be happy to listen,' Brolan said, trying to keep his eyes from the TV screen.
'How about calling that detective and telling him the truth?' Wagner said.
'An hour ago that might have worked,' Brolan said. 'But now that they've found the body-' He sighed, dropped his head into his hands. Then, abruptly, angry at Foster for having set him up so elaborately, he raised his head and said, 'I'm going to see Charles Lane.'
Wagner nodded to the TV. 'The police will be looking for you now.'
'I know.' Brolan stood up. 'But right now I don't have any choice but to risk it.'
Wagner said, 'Somehow you've got to get Foster to confess.'
'Maybe I could just write a confession for him, and he'd sign it?' Brolan was immediately sorry for the undue sarcasm of his tone. 'Sorry, Greg.'
'If we could just figure out some way to smoke him out.' Brolan smiled bitterly. 'Well, if you come up with any brainstorms, let me know.' He glanced around the duplex. The place looked comfortable. He'd planned to stay here a while, relax, figure out what to do next. The live TV report changed all that, of course.
Denise said, 'Maybe I've got a brainstorm.'
'What's that?' Wagner said.
'What if I call Foster and tell him I'm the girl he tried to kill Wednesday night, and that I want him to bring me some money tonight, or I go to the police?'
Brolan shook his head. 'If you saw what he did to Emma, you wouldn't want to get anywhere near him. You're lucky to be alive as it is.' He nodded to Wagner. 'I don't want to have to worry about her,' Brolan said. 'Just make sure she doesn't do anything stupid. All right?'
Wagner patted Denise's hand on his shoulder. 'She'll be fine.' Brolan said, 'I appreciate your trying to help me, Denise.' She sounded young and defensive and hurt. 'I was just trying to-'
Brolan leaned over and kissed her on the forehead and gave her a hug. 'I know what you were trying to do, Denise. And I appreciate it, I really do. But I'm going to have to handle things this way. All right?'
She sighed and returned his hug. 'Good luck, Frank.' Then he was gone, back into the cold, dark night.
32
The motel didn't have much style, but its three sections stood angled against the night, offering, at the very least, comfort from the screaming wind and the biting snow. Snow was starting to pile up on the slanting red roofs and in the parking lot. Already several cars looked as if they would be buried till a snowplough came and started earnest work. People bent their heads into the whipping wind and ran from their cars to their respective sections and rooms.
Brolan stood in the blast of snow, finishing his cigarette and staring in the motel's front-office window. He was freezing, but somehow the cold only made him all the more resolute about dealing with Charles Lane and then with his partner, Stu Foster. He flipped his cigarette into the wind, which promptly slammed it, tossing and turning, against the rear end of a canary-yellow Buick with a JESUS LIVES! sticker on its bumper.
In the office Brolan went up to the counter. A man in a blue cardigan and a blue button-down shirt and a red-and-blue holiday bow tie stood watching him. The man was white-haired and wore rimless glasses. He was probably sixty. He was applying chapstick to his somewhat prim mouth. There was something obscene about this to Brolan, as if it were a dirty secret the man should not be so willing to share with others.
'Hi,' Brolan said.
The man nodded, continued what he was doing.
'I'm looking for Charles Lane.'
'Do you have an appointment?'
'Afraid not. But I'd still like to see him.'
The man did Brolan the favour of putting his chapstick away. 'Then, I'm afraid you can't see him. He's very strict about appointments.' The man raised serious blue eyes to a clock on the wall behind Brolan. 'Especially after horn's.'
Though Brolan wasn't experienced at this sort of thing, he slid a ten-dollar bill from his pocket and laid it on the desk. 'I'd appreciate any help you could give me.'
The man smiled. 'You must be a bad-movie fan.'
'I beg your pardon?'
The man nodded to the ten-dollar bill on the counter. 'Bad movies. Somebody's always trying to bribe somebody else.'
'You don't want it?'
'I'd rather have my job than ten dollars, my friend.'
Feeling foolish, Brolan picked up the ten. 'You sure?'
'Positive.'
Brolan said, 'You're an asshole, you know that?'
'I've been called a lot worse than that. Asshole is almost a compliment.'
And with that the man turned his attention to a small portable TV set on a desk behind him. On the screen Pat Buchanan and Michael Kinsley were calling each other names on Crossfire.
Shaking his head, sliding the ten back in his pocket, Brolan slunk back to the parking lot.
He stood in the blast of wind and snow wondering what to do next The desk clerk had given the impression that Charles Lane was definitely somewhere inside. Therefore, instead of standing out there feeling sorry for himself, Brolan should be inside, combing the halls and looking for the guy.
That wasn't too hard to figure out.
So, he went inside and started combing the halls and looking for the guy.
Brolan hated motels. Walking the narrow hallways, no windows in sight anywhere, always gave him the claustrophobic feeling of being in a submarine. At least the carpeting was new and the corridor paint recent, so the place didn't look grungy on top of everything else.
He moved toward the centre of the place, where the three buildings merged, assuming that there he'd find the places where guests congregated. He was right. The first thing he found was the swimming pool. Two small kids swam quickly and smoothly up and down the water lanes, spitting silver water at each other as they moved and laughing about their ingenuity. A sour woman in a lime-green one-piece swimsuit that revealed too much hip and too much cellulite watched the kids with a kind of smouldering, nun-like authority. The next place he found was the workout room, taken up by two wonderful-looking young women in leotards who were being shown the weight machine by a curly-headed guy who couldn't have been half as neat as he obviously held himself to be. Brolan leaned in and said, 'Excuse me, I'm looking for Charles Lane.'
The curly-headed guy shot Brolan an irritated expression, turned slightly from the ladies, and said, 'What?' He happened to glance at his formidable biceps as he said this.
'I said, I'm looking for Charles Lane.'
The muscle boy looked at the girls and winked and said, 'Good for you.'
Then he went back to demonstrating the equipment. Brolan's next stop was the aerobics room. There were maybe twenty women working out. Some of them looked pretty tasty.
The instructor was a very serious-looking redhead in a mauve leotard and a lot of sweat. Parts of the mauve looked almost black. Brolan went on down the hall. Halfway along he saw a man who wore a blue blazer and a white shirt and a red regimental-striped tie and grey slacks and black loafers with big tassles and a lot of TV- minister hair spray. He had a little dealie on his breast pocket that read 'Manager'.
'May I help you, sir?'
He sounded as hearty as a Jaycee trying out a new pitch. He was big, maybe six two, and chunky, and there was a certain operatic quality to his manner.
'I'm looking for Charles Lane.'
The manager frowned only slightly. 'I probably should refer you to the front desk.'
'You mean, you don't know where he is?'
