hot coals, and I’ll emboss
I hoped Slater was getting an earful. I looked at the clock: the plane took off in three hours, I was almost home free. The day was ending on a wave of nickel-and-dime bookstuff. I asked her to define anal-obsessive chucklehead, please, and tell me how that particular characteristic expresses itself. She laughed and slapped my hand and said, “Get out of here, you damn fool,” and the night wound down. We drank a toast to the defilers of good books— scribblers, embossers, and the remainder goons at the Viking Press—may their conversion to the cause be swift and permanent. At eight-thirty she asked if she could mail a letter. She sat at the table and scratched out a few lines on hotel stationery: then she turned away, shielding the letter with her body so I couldn’t see it. I knew she had taken something out of her purse and dropped it in the envelope with the letter. I was riddled with second thoughts, but there wasn’t anything to be done about it: I could either be her jailer or her friend. She licked the envelope, sealed it, and called for a bellhop to mail it. And I sat mute, her friend, and watched it disappear.
I was a bit curt with her after that. She asked when we should leave and I told her not to worry about it, I’d let her know. I had decided to linger here until exactly seventy minutes before takeoff, then haul ass for Sea-Tac in a cloud of smoke. I hoped the TV would cover our sudden retreat. I’d let Slater listen to the
Duck soup, I thought, an even-money standoff.
I always bet on me with odds like that. I had forgotten that line from Burns about the best-laid schemes of mice and men. I should read more poetry.
15
At 9:35 the telephone rang. We looked at each other and neither of us moved. I let it ring and after a while it stopped. Now we’d see, I thought: if it had been a test, somebody would be over to see if we were still here.
At 9:43 it rang again. By then I had rethought the strategy of silence, and I picked it up.
“It’s me.” Slater’s voice sounded puffy, distant.
“So it is,” I said flatly, with a faint W. C. Fields undertone.
“We need to talk.”
“Send me a telegram.”
“Don’t get cute, Janeway, your time’s running out.”
I gave a doubtful grunt.
“We need to talk now. I’m doing you a favor if you’ve got the sense to listen.”
I listened.
“Come out in the hall.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m in the room next door.” His voice was raspy, urgent. “I need you to come out in the hall so we can talk.”
Then I got a break I couldn’t have bought. Eleanor got up and went to the bathroom.
“You must think I was born yesterday,” I said as soon as she closed the door.
“This is on the level. I know you’re on the eleven-eighteen. I’m giving you fair warning, you’re never gonna make it.”
“Try and stop me and you’re a dead man, Slater. That’s fair warning for both of you.”
“It’s not me that’s gonna stop you, stupid. Goddammit, are you coming out or not?”
I thought about it for five seconds. “Yeah.” I hung up.
I opened my bag and got out my gun. Strapped it on under my coat and waited till Eleanor came out of the bathroom.
“Just a little problem with my bill, no big deal,” I told her. “I’ve got to go upstairs and straighten it out. You sit right there, we’ll leave as soon as I get back.”
She didn’t say anything but I could see she wasn’t buying it. She sat where I told her and clasped her hands primly in her lap, her face a mask of sudden tension.
I opened the door and eased my way out into the hall. I had my thumb hooked over my belt, two inches from the gun.
Slater was down at the end of the hall, looking at the wall. I pulled the door shut and he turned. I think I was ready for anything but what I saw. His face had been beaten into watermelon. His left eye was battered shut, his nose pounded flat against his face. His right eye was open wide, a grotesque effect like something from an old Lon
