The waiter came and we ordered our dinners. Koko gravitated toward the vegetarian items but we were now officially living dangerously and she chose the blackened grouper. We talked over wine and made some decisions. We would stay three more days in Charleston, giving Erin another crack at Archer and us a shot at whatever the Robinsons might know. Erin would move out of the Mills House and take a room near us in the Heart of Charleston. On Wednesday we would see where we were and go from there.
We walked back in a warm summer night. But in two blocks the air became heavy, the humidity bore down, and in the distance lightning flashed over the sea. We left Erin where we had found her, in the lobby of her hotel, and she hugged us both.
“We’re gonna be fine,” she said.
“Of course we are,” Koko said. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
Erin vanished into the elevator and Koko and I walked up the street together.
“I like her,” she said. “I was determined not to, but she’s a good girl.”
“She likes you too.”
At the motel a message had arrived from Koko’s friend Janet in Baltimore. The fire department had officially classified her house as arson. Janet had talked to the reporter at the morning paper, who was still digging around. Yesterday he had put it in the paper that Koko had apparently gone to Charleston. “So they know we’re here,” I said.
We had to assume they had known for almost two days.
CHAPTER 33
In the morning the rain finally came, a steamy downpour that billowed across Meeting Street and left the world slick-looking and empty. I talked to Erin soon after daybreak and she was moved over to our motel by nine o’clock. She circumvented the afternoon check-in by paying for the extra day and was settled into a room near Koko’s with two hours to spare before her meeting with Archer. She had called Lee again and had received instructions to walk out if Archer was abusive or difficult. “Neither of us thinks anybody’s going to go near what Lee’s offering.”
At ten o’clock Erin and Koko sat playing cards at a table in Koko’s room while the rain drummed against the window. I was watching the TV in a stupefied state with the sound turned down. A preacher with larceny in his eyes and lust in his heart was on Channel Five, and on Channel Two I got some kind of political discourse, with the eyes of the senator just like the eyes of the preacher. I could tell from their faces the attitude and vacuous nature of what was being said, and none of it tempted me to turn up the volume. This country is doomed, I thought, not for the first time, and I closed my eyes and sank into boredom.
At ten-thirty I got up and moved to the door. “I’m going out for a little while.”
Erin was immediately suspicious. “Where to?”
“There’s a movie I want to see.
“I heard that doesn’t have much of a plot. Where are you really going?”
“To the store for some male needs.”
They looked at each other and tried not to laugh.
“Hey, I don’t ask about your female needs.”
“Just don’t try anything foolish, like ditching us and going after people on your own.”
“I’ll bet he’s going to buy a gun,” Koko said. “He couldn’t bring the one we had on the airplane, so he’s going to buy another one.”
“Is that where you’re going?”
“Jesus, lighten up. You can’t get a gun on Sunday. I need some razor blades.”
“I only ask because as your lawyer I’m the one who’s got to worry if there are laws here against carrying concealed weapons. Just in case I need to defend you or bail you out.”
“It’s Sunday, Mama,” I said again. “You guys play cards and I’ll be back in a while.”
I walked up Meeting Street in the rain, looking at people on both sides of the street. The gun felt snug against my back.
John Wayne’s ass. These women had no clue.
Erin had left to meet Archer when I got back and Koko was gazing at the same stupid TV fare with the volume off. “So what caliber razor blades did you get?”
“Big enough to fit a size thirty-two razor.”
“Even on Sunday.”
“Rexall’s always open.”
She smiled foxily. “I saw that man again. Same one who followed me up the street.”
“Where?”
“Out on the street. I had to go to the store for some female needs.”
