“I didn’t think of it. I don’t know about sports. I didn’t even know when they were being held or where. I just know Paul had tickets for them.”
Hawk said, “It’s pretty much on the way home anyway, man.”
“There’s a restaurant in Montreal called Bacco’s that you’re going to like,” I said.
“What we do with fancy pants here?” Hawk said.
“Please don’t be dirty.”
The white linen dress was very simple, square-necked and straight-lined. She had a thick silver chain around her neck and white sling high-heeled shoes with no stockings. Her wrists and ankles were red and marked from the ropes. Her mouth was red and her eyes were puffy and red. Her hair was matted and tangled from her long struggle on the bed.
“I don’t know,” I said, “she’s all we have.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said. Her voice was small when she said it. Quite different from the one she’d used when she said she’d kill us when she could. Didn’t mean she’d changed her mind. But it didn’t mean she hadn’t. I figured between us we could keep her from killing us.
“She change sides awful fast,” Hawk said.
“They got changed on her,” I said. “We’ll take her. She may be helpful.”
“She may stick something in us when we ain’t looking too.”
“One of us will always look,” I said. “She knows this Zachary. We don’t. If he’s in on this he might be there. Maybe others. She’s the only thing connected to Paul we have. We’ll keep her.”
Hawk shrugged and drank some wine.
“In the morning we’ll check out and get the first flight we can to Montreal.”
“What about the two stiffs?”
“We’ll ditch them in the morning.”
“Hope they don’t start to stink before then.”
“We can’t ditch them before that. The cops will be all over the place. We’ll never get out of here. What time is it?”
“It’s three-thirty.”
“About nine-thirty in Boston. Too late to call Jason Carroll. I only got his office number anyway. ”
“Who Jason Carroll?”
“Dixon’s lawyer, He’s sort of in charge of this thing. I’ll feel better when I’ve talked with Dixon about our plans.”
“Maybe your wallet feel better too.”
“No, I think this one will be on me. But Dixon’s got a right to know what’s going on.”
“And I got a right to sleep. Who she sleep with?”
“I’ll put a mattress off the floor and she can sleep on the box spring.”
“She look disappointed. I think she had another plan.”
Kathie said, “May I take a bath?”
I said, “Sure.”
I dragged the mattress off the bed closest to the door, and stretched it out across the doorway. Kathie went into the bathroom and closed the door. The lock snicked into place. I could hear the water running in the tub.
Hawk stripped to his shorts and got into bed. He took the shotgun under the covers with him. I lay down on the mattress with my pants still on. I put my gun under the pillow. It made a lump, but not as big a lump as it would make in my body if Kathie got it in the night. The lights were out and just a thin line of light came under the bathroom door. As I lay in the dark I began to smell, only vaguely so far, a smell I’d smelled before. It was the smell of bodies that had been dead too long. It would have been a lot worse without air conditioning. It wouldn’t get better before morning.
Tired as I was, I didn’t sleep until Kathie came out of the bathroom and stepped across me and went to bed on the box spring of the near bed.
21
In the morning after we checked out, Hawk stole a laundry hamper from a utility closet whose lock I picked. We put the two bodies in the hamper, covered them with dirty linen, put the hamper in an empty elevator and sent the elevator to the top floor. We did all this while keeping a close eye on Kathie, who didn’t show any sign of wanting to bolt. Or kill us. She seemed to want to stay with us as badly as we wanted her. Or I wanted, her. I think Hawk would have dropped her in a canal if he’d been on his own.
We got a bus from the KLM terminal in Museumplein and caught a KLM flight from Schiphol to London at nine- fifty-five, connecting with an Air Canada flight to Montreal at noon. At one-fifteen London time I was sitting on the outside seat with Kathie next to me and Hawk on the window, drinking a Labatt 50 ale and waiting for the meal to be served. Six hours later, early afternoon Montreal time, we set down in Canada, changed money, collected luggage, and by three o’clock we were standing in line at the Olympic housing office in Place Ville Marie waiting to get lodging. By four-fifteen we had gotten to the man at the desk, and by quarter of six we were in a rented Ford heading out Boulevard St. Laurent for an address near Boulevard Henri Bourassa. I felt like I had gone fifteen rounds with Dino the Boxing Rhinoceros. Even Hawk looked a little tired, and Kathie seemed to be asleep in the back seat
