SUVs. Bobby flashed back to Eastern Market, and saw Karen getting out of a car just like it. Lloyd said he was going to start knocking on doors. He'd check every goddamn room if he had to. He wasn't leaving till he found the money. Bobby had a better idea. You want to get people out of their rooms? Create an emergency.
Karen brought the suitcase down the stairs and saw Johnny's
BMW parked across the driveway. She'd get her car later.
'Hey, miss, your brother's looking for you.'
She heard the voice, a southern accent, and saw this sleazy-looking guy coming toward her. He was talking to her. She slipped her hand in the shoulder bag and gripped the Mag and said, 'I don't have a brother.'
'Well he's here looking for you. I'm Gregg with the motel.'
She moved toward the BMW and he went with her.
'You were supposed to meet him.'
She wondered if this Gregg with the motel was all there. 'Listen to me,' Karen said, 'he's not my brother, we're not related.' She approached the BMW and opened the trunk and Gregg helped her load the suitcase in it. Then the alarm went off and God was it loud, like the sound of a car alarm but twenty times louder. Gregg turned and looked around and said, 'If you'll excuse me, I've got to check this out.'
He took off heading for the office and people started coming out of their rooms now, trying to figure out what was going on. There was a guy with a towel wrapped around his waist and shaving cream on his face. Was there really a fire? Karen didn't see any smoke or anything. She turned and saw Bobby coming through the breezeway, locking his gaze on her as she got in Johnny's car. Things were happening fast. She heard sirens and people were scrambling all over the place. Karen slid the Mag out of her purse and put it on the seat next to her. She put it in reverse and backed up as Bobby ran to the BMW, standing in front of it, blocking her. She knew he couldn't do anything with all the people around.
Karen accelerated and the BMW took off and Bobby jumped out of the way. He tried to keep up with her, he ran next to the car, yelling something at her until she punched it and saw him fade in the rearview mirror.
Chapter Seventeen
O'Clair ordered lamb and rice and Roditis that was served up to the brim in a little juice glass. He sat in a booth and ate, watching the room with its fake Greek decor-plaster columns and plastic olive vines and black and white photographs of Greek monuments framed on the walls. The lunch crowd was about gone at 1:30 in the afternoon. People had eaten and headed back to work. O'Clair studied Lou Starr, watching him greet people as they came in the door, wondering why a guy who owned twenty-five restaurants didn't hire someone with a little more personality to do it.
'Welcome to the Parthenon,' Lou said in a flat voice that had no enthusiasm. The voice saying I don't care if you eat here or not. He didn't have a Greek name. He looked Greek though, stocky, bull of a man, with a surly hardass edge. Nothing like Anthony Quinn in Zorba the Greek, who made being Greek look like a lot of fun, dancing and drinking wine.
O'Clair cut a piece of lamb off the shank. He piled some rice and tomato sauce on his fork and shoveled it in his mouth. The lamb was dry and hardly had any taste. He washed it down with a swig of wine.
Lou Starr said something to the hostess and disappeared down a hallway. O'Clair had seen it when he came in. There was an office and restrooms. O'Clair thought Lou should let somebody else greet customers and concentrate on making the food better. He'd have given it one star if he were a restaurant critic, one out of four. He got up and paid his bill.
The cashier said, 'How was everything, sir?'
'The lamb was dry and the rice tasted like it was made yesterday, other than that it was okay,' O'Clair said.
The cashier, a chunky bottle blonde about forty, in a beige uniform that had Lou Starr's World Famous Parthenon embossed on her chest, stared at him, wondering if he was trying to be funny. 'Thanks for visiting us,' she said. 'Remember, everyone's a star at Lou Starr's Parthenon.'
'Is that right,' O'Clair said. 'I don't feel like a star. I feel like someone who just had a second-rate meal.' She tried to hand him a black and white photo of the restaurant exterior. He shook his head and moved past her, trying to dig a piece of lamb out of his teeth with his fingernail that wasn't long enough. He tried sucking the meat out now as he went down the hall toward the rest-rooms. He should've grabbed a toothpick.
Lou Starr was sitting at his desk, adding up the day's receipts. Business had been off for a while, the check average was slipping at all his restaurants, which he blamed on a combination of things, the stock market, the slowing economy, people weren't dining out as much, they were hanging on to their money. He felt the presence of someone and glanced up at a guy filling the doorway. It was amazing how many people stopped here thinking it was the rest- room. Lou wanted to say, Hey, you see any toilets? No? Then it's not the men's. He'd been thinking it for a while and finally put it into words. The consumer was a fuckin' idiot. Lou said, 'It's down the hall, door on the right.' He didn't want him going in the ladies' by mistake, give some broad a heart attack, get sued by that loudmouth attorney, Fieger.
The guy came in the room and pointed to one of the animal heads, hunting trophies he had covering the wall. He was big, six feet, two twenty. 'What's that?'
'A dik-dik,' Lou said, 'it's a kind of antelope.'
'How about this one?' the guy said.
'Rocky Mountain ram. That one made book, Boone and Crockett.'
No reaction. He didn't know what Lou was talking about. He wasn't a hunter.
'They really bang horns when they fight?'
Lou said, 'I saw two rams go at it forty minutes without stopping.'
'Why do you have all these heads in here?'
'My fiance, ex now, didn't want them in the house,' Lou said. 'They made her nervous.' The guy surprised him, caught him off guard. 'Before you start your spiel,' Lou said, 'I've already got a cigarette machine. You may have noticed it when you came in the door. I don't need another one. So you're wasting your time.' He sure looked like a salesman.
'What're you talking about?'
Or was he a cop? Maybe he had the guy all wrong. 'Is this about the robbery? Have you found them yet?' The guy made him uncomfortable, sitting on the edge of the desk like it was his office.
'Where's Karen?'
Lou said, 'How the hell should I know?'
He came around the desk, on Lou's side now.
'Let's try it again,' he said. 'Where is she?'
'I don't know,' Lou said. 'We were engaged to be married, she just moved out. Left a note on the refrigerator. That's what I get after living with her for eight months and spending a fortune on her-a goddamn note.'
'Did Karen ever mention a guy named Robert Gal? Goes by Bobby.'
Lou shook his head.
'Bobby Gal, that doesn't ring a bell?'
'No,' Lou said.
'She has family in the area, right?' O'Clair remembered that from her days living with Samir.
'Her mother, a born-again, lives in Garden City,' Lou said. 'And her sister lives in Ferndale and works at this freak show store called Noir Leather.'
'Where is it?'
'Royal Oak.'
'What's her name?'
'Virginia.'
