The struggle was a short silent flurry. The most dangerous thing was that it would occur to the drunk to lean on the horn, but surprise and fear and drink combined to keep that from happening. Instead, he lunged around as best he could, flailing his arms, kicking out with his feet, scratching with his fingers against the cloth of Devers’ sport-jacket sleeve. Devers kept the pressure steady, and the struggle tapered quickly away, alcohol cutting down the reserve oxygen in the body, bringing unconsciousness a little closer to begin with.
The drunk sagged, his chin against Devers’ elbow. He fluttered twice more, like a beached fish, and then he was still.
Devers cautiously released him, a bit at a time. No movement, though the drunk’s breath could still be heard— and smelled. Devers reached around him, found the room key in his shirt pocket, and got out of the car.
It was a ground-floor unit in a two-story section of the motel. Devers opened the door, then went back and got the drunk and carried him inside. Dumping him on the bed, he shut the room door, then went through his pockets. Eighty-seven dollars in the wallet, plus credit cards. Sixty-two cents in change. Nothing else of interest.
There were Venetian blinds over the window. Devers cut the pull cords loose and used them to tie the drunk’s hands and feet. A towel made a useful gag.
Next, the phone. Devers picked it up, and when the motel operator came on he said, “This is room three twenty-seven. I want to leave a call for eleven in the morning.”
“Eleven o’clock. Yes, sir.”
“Thank you.”
The
It was a diesel, the only diesel automobile sold in America. The fuel gauge was three-quarters full. Devers backed out of the slot, made a U-turn, and drove out of the motel to the highway. The city he’d left was to the east; he turned west.
A diesel accelerates slowly, but otherwise runs smoothly and quietly. Devers was impatient till he got the car up to sixty-five, but then he switched on the radio and listened to rock music while driving along.
Check-out time back at that motel was noon. When the eleven o’clock wake-up call wasn’t answered, the operator wouldn’t worry much; people do that sort of thing all the time. It would probably be shortly after twelve when the manager would finally decide to unlock the door and see what the story was. Meaning that Devers had a good eleven hours to be somewhere else. At sixty-five miles an hour, there were a lot of somewhere elses he could get to.
Four years ago Stan Devers had been an Air Force enlisted man, having been kicked out of ROTC in college because of a dislike for discipline combined with a contempt for one particular officer. He’d been a Finance Clerk, on a base where the payroll was still in cash—that kind of setup didn’t happen any more—and he’d worked out a way to take the payroll one month. He’d gotten involved with a few professional thieves, and they’d done the robbery, but things had gone wrong and Devers’ connection with it had become known. He’d had to leave, and had lived in various ways ever since. One of the other people in on the job, a guy named Parker, had sent him to a retired ex- thief named Handy McKay, now running a diner in Presque Isle, Maine, and McKay had gotten him in on a few jobs since. But some bad luck had happened over the last few weeks, and the end of it was Devers walking out of that city back there with nothing in his pockets but lint.
Well, now he had a car. and eighty-seven dollars and sixty-two cents, and a wallet full of identification in the name Matthew Dawson, and several credit cards in the same name, and a good eleven hours to go someplace where he could see about changing his luck around.
He drove west steadily until nine-thirty in the morning, and” then dropped in to a little town with a diner, where he had breakfast and phoned Handy McKay. When Handy came on, Devers identified himself and said, “I’m really ready for you to have something for me.”
“As a matter of fact,” Handy said, “I got a call about you just yesterday. Our mutual friend would like to see you.”
Devers smiled. He hadn’t seen Parker since the Air Force job. “That would be very nice,” he said.
Two
Lou Sternberg stepped out of the plane and went carefully down the steps toward the tarmac, turning his raincoat collar up around his neck. He preferred airports where you went directly from the plane to the terminal, through an enclosed walkway. The sun was shining and the air was fairly warm, but there was a breeze; no sense looking for trouble.
He wasn’t going to be met at the airport, which was just as well. Give him a chance to relax a bit from the trip before having any business discussions. He carried his small brown suitcase into the terminal and out the other side to the taxi stand. The driver he drew was young and long-haired and hungry-looking; he had cowboy written all over him. Unfortunate, but there wasn’t much choice. Sternberg hoped the motel wouldn’t be too far away.
A short and stout man, Sternberg had difficulty getting into the back seat of most cars, including this one. He pushed the suitcase ahead of himself along the seat, then puffed and grunted himself into position, while the driver watched him alertly—even, perhaps, impatiently—in the rear-view mirror. “First Standard Motel,” Sternberg told him as he shut the door behind himself, and the driver immediately flipped down the metal arm to start the meter and tromped his foot on the accelerator. The cab jerked away from the curb, snapping Sternberg’s head back. He pursed his lips, and braced himself for the ride.
He did try to keep quiet, keep his opinions to himself, but the driver was just too recklessly incompetent. After running a stop sign at the terminal exit, he began to dart and weave through fairly heavy traffic, bouncing Sternberg and his suitcase back and forth on the rear seat, until at last Sternberg leaned forward, clutched the seatback in front of him, and called, “I’m not in any hurry.”
“I am.” The driver hunched over his wheel, and didn’t slacken speed.
“Perhaps I should take another taxi,” Sternberg said. He could feel his emotional state becoming increasingly unstable, just what he didn’t want before a business meeting.
“Look, fella,” the driver said, “I got a living to make.”
