After he was finished distributing the money, he locked up the suitcase and went to bed. He fell asleep right away but within half an hour he was awake again, and he wasn’t sure why. He lay on his side, trying to go back to sleep, and finally he rolled over on to his back and smoked a cigarette and stared at the ceiling, wondering why he couldn’t sleep.
And when he thought about it, it was simple. Another change from the years when he’d had Lynn. During the planning of a job, the build-up and the waiting, he’d never been any good with a woman, not even Lynn. But as soon as the job was done and turned out right he was always as randy as a stallion with the stud fee paid. After the jobs, before this, there’d always been Lynn, and before Lynn there had always been someone. This time there wasn’t anyone at all.
He finished his cigarette, and then he gave up and got out of bed. He dressed in the dark, took all but a hundred dollars from his wallet, and stuffed the other nine hundred under the mattress. Then he went out to the Ford and drove back north to Richmond.
He didn’t know Richmond very well, only having been through the town once or twice before, but finding a woman was never hard in any town big enough. You just go where the neon is mostly red.
Chapter 2
IN THE MORNING he left her and went back to the motel. He picked up his gear and headed south again. He stopped in Petersburg and opened a checking account in the Petersburgh & Central Trust Co., with an initial deposit of four hundred dollars. A bank in Raleigh got three hundred sixty and a bank in Sanford four seventy. After that it was too late in the day, the banks were all closed.
He crossed into South Carolina that night and stopped at a motel just north of Columbia. He locked the money in the trunk of the car, so he could bring the whore from Columbia back to the motel. He sent her to the motel lunch counter alone for breakfast in the morning while he got some more cash from the car. Then he drove her back to town and stopped off to deposit four hundred twenty dollars in a Columbia bank.
Augusta got three fifty, and for the rest of the day the towns were too small to take a chance. He crossed into Florida at nine-thirty and got just south of Callahan before picking his motel for the night. Jacksonville was twenty miles away, so that’s where he went for a whore. She was the same as the Richmond whore and the Columbia whore, disinterested all he hurt her a little. He didn’t get his kicks from hurting whores, it was just the only way he knew to get them interested.
Thursday morning he put four hundred forty dollars into a bank in Jacksonville, and Thursday afternoon he deposited three hundred eighty more in a bank in Daytona Beach.
The stopping at banks and the late starts because of the whores were slowing him down, so he didn’t make Miami Thursday night the way he’d planned. Around midnight he M stopped at Fort Pierce, a hundred and thirty miles north of the city. He slept alone that night, having rid himself of most of the urgency. He could now wait for something decent in Miami, something that wouldn’t have to be slapped before she’d get interested.
A Fort Pierce bank got three hundred ten the next morning, and around noon he stopped at West Palm Beach, off the Sunshine State Parkway, long enough to leave three hundred and seventy more. Then he got back on to the Parkway, with thirteen thousand five hundred still in the suitcase.
He hit Miami in mid-afternoon, got back on to route 1, went south past Coral Gables, and stopped at the Via Paradise Hotel, a huge lumbering white sand castle that looked like a pueblo rebuilt by Frank Lloyd Wright. The doorman who helped him out of the car and the bellboy who ran to get the two suitcases both looked dubious, because he was rumpled and mean-looking from the trip. But both had been working there long enough to know you couldn’t tell a guest by the way he looked when he showed up.
Parker gave the doorman a half and asked him to take care of his car. Then he went inside, following the bellboy. This was a resort hotel, which meant too many bellboys, so they had to work the guests’ luggage in a sort of relay race. Parker was ready with another half dollar when the bellboy abandoned his suitcases at the desk.
Tourists tip quarters and spenders tip dollar bills and people who live in resort hotels as a way of life tip half dollars. Now both the doorman and the bellboy knew that the rumpled clothing and the unprepossessing Ford could be discounted.
The desk clerk caught the tone in the bellboy’s “Thank you, sir,” and came over smiling. “You have a reservation?”
“Yes, I have.” Parker’s voice was softer now, his expression more civil. He wasn’t working now. “The name is Willis. I wasn’t expected till Monday, but there was a change in plans. I hope it isn’t inconvenient?”
“Not at all, not at all.” The desk clerk went away, and came back with an outsize card. “Is that Charles Willis?”
“That’s right.”
“No trouble at all, Mr Willis.”
A couple of months from now, when it got colder up north, it would be a lot of trouble, but not now.
“Is Edelman around?” Parker asked.
“Yes, sir, I believe he is. His office is–-“
“I know where it is.”
“Yes, sir.”
The desk clerk got him signed in and told him his room number, and bellboy number two appeared. Parker gave him a half dollar and the suitcase with the clothes in it. “Take this up to my room, will you? I’ll hold on to the other one.”
“Yes, sir.”
The bellboy went away, carrying the suitcase, and Parker went around the corner and down the hall to the door marked “Samuel Edelman, Manager” on the frosted glass. He went inside and the, secretary stopped typing and looked at him.
“Charles Willis to see Mr Edelman.”
“One moment, please,” The girl went inside to the inner office, and Parker waited, holding his suitcase. After a minute she came out. “Mr Edelman will see you.”
