His answers were largely bullshit, but they were good bullshit. I had years ago learned that it was useless to debate zealots. They had spent most of their adult life thinking intensely about the object of their zealotry. Normally their debaters had not. I wanted to stand and ask him if in fact he were wearing lifts in his shoes. But I was there to watch and listen and I didn’t want to get into it with Horn Rims or any of the other preservers of our heritage. So I shut up. Which is a ploy that often works well for me.
When it was over, Quant was escorted out by his keepers and the cops. It was raining. A small group of students were standing across the street, getting wet, chanting “Two, four, six, eight, USA can’t use your hate.” I wondered why protesters so often demeaned their deepest-held convictions by reciting them loudly in doggerel. Nobody in Quant’s party paid any attention to them. And, in fact, neither did many people in Quant’s audience. Shielded by an umbrella one of the security guys deployed, Quant got into his black Lincoln and departed with three bodyguards. The other security guys got into a large van. The protesters chanted at them until they were out of sight. Then they stood somewhat aimlessly for a few moments and then drifted away in various directions.
I suspected that Quant hadn’t convinced anyone who hadn’t come convinced. But he had made them see that he was pleasant, and that he spoke as if what he espoused was both reasonable and kind, and they were puzzled. And maybe they didn’t enjoy doggerel much, either.
My car had a parking ticket on the windshield issued by the Fitchburg State College Campus Police. I took it off my windshield and tucked it carefully under the wiper of the car next to me. Then I got in and drifted along behind Quant with the windshield wipers making long steady sweeps across my glass, their sound like the rhythm of music that wasn’t playing.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
At about 10:30 with the rain coming down steadily, the Quant limo pulled off of Route 495 near Chelmsford and into the parking lot of a big motel that looked like the Disney version of a Norman castle. The van kept on going. I followed Quant, and got into a slot in the next row and watched as Milo and his bodyguard deployed umbrellas and walked across the glistening parking lot into the hotel lobby. The place was more hotel than motel, in that it was four stories high and entry was through the front door. For my purposes, I would have liked the conventional one- room one-door approach, but the more I live the more I don’t always get what I want. I sat for a while and thought. While I was doing this Hawk opened the passenger door and slid in, the rain beaded on his smooth head.
“Ah ha!” I said.
“Ah ha indeed, my good man,” Hawk said. “The game’s afoot.”
“Amir,” I said.
“Yowzah,” Hawk said. “Rents a car this afternoon, comes out here ‘bout three o’clock. I see him pull in and I take a chance and get into the lobby ’fore he do. There a phone booth right by the desk. I’m in it with my back turned and the phone at my ear when he gets to the desk. He’s got a reservation. He’s in room four seventeen.”
“Good to know,” I said.
“Well, I got nothing much else to do so I hang around, sit in the bar, read a paper, drink some Perrier with a nice wedge of lime, have a club sandwich, drink some more Perrier and about five minutes ago in come a group of people and one of them is our man with the horn-rimmed glasses. They got reservations. Their rooms are four fifteen and four nineteen.”
“Either side,” I said.
“Un huh.”
“There were four bodyguards, right?”
“Including the limo driver,” Hawk said.
“Plus Quant.”
“Two bodyguards in four fifteen,” I said. “Two bodyguards in four nineteen. Where’s Quant go?”
“Four seventeen,” Hawk said. “Want to take a look?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why don’t I register and we can look at the room setup.”
“Call from the car,” Hawk said, “make sure they have a room.”
I did. They did.
“Okay,” I said. “Stay here. I’ll call you.”
I left the motor running, took a gym bag from the trunk of my car, and walked toward the lobby. The gym bag looked right, but all it contained were burglar tools. I checked into the lobby. They gave me room 205. I went up and let myself in and put the gym bag on the bed and called Hawk.
“Room two-oh-five,” I said.
“Fine. Is the desk clerk a man or a woman?”
“Woman.”
“Good. I’ll come in tell her I’m Amir and I’ve lost my key.”
“They often want to see ID,” I said.
“She’d be scared to ask me,” Hawk said. “Scared I say she racist for asking.”
“And if she remembers Amir at all it’ll be that he’s black and so are you, so you must be him.”
“Un huh.”
“See you soon,” I said.
And I did. In about ten minutes he knocked on the door and I let him in. He smiled at me and held up the plastic key card.
