ones.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t be looking for a manuscript after all,” she said. “Maybe we should be looking for a hotel claim check clipped to the sun visor. Or microfilm that was tossed into the glove compartment. Or maybe—”
“You going to put that coat on or not?”
She looked down at the polo coat she was still holding, slipped into it quickly and said, “Let’s go.”
Haynes went out the motel room door first, stopped, stared and said, “Well, shit.”
The exterior light above the room’s door shined directly down onto the Cadillac’s flat front tire. The left one. Erika glanced at it and said, “No big problem.”
“Not if there’s a spare.”
They hurried to the rear of the car, where Haynes unlocked the trunk lid. There was a spare. He also found the jack and the lug wrench. He handed the wrench to Erika and said, “You can start on the lugs while I get the spare out.”
She nodded and went back to the flat tire. Haynes watched as she knelt, used the chisel end of the lug wrench to pop the hubcap off with one deft blow and started loosening the wheel nuts.
Haynes unscrewed the big butterfly nut that anchored the spare. With the aid of the trunk’s interior light, he noticed that the spare’s tread apparently had never touched the ground. After wrestling the heavy wheel out of its well, he stopped, balancing it on the lip of the trunk, and stared down into the wheel well at the thick, slightly curved manila envelope that the never-used spare tire had been resting on.
When Erika McCorkle returned from her mission to McDonald’s, bearing two Big Macs, two large fries and two large coffees, she found Granville Haynes still sitting on the edge of one of the twin beds, still wearing his topcoat and still staring at the unopened manila envelope that lay on the opposite bed. The .38 Chief’s Special in his right hand was still pointed at nothing in particular.
“I thought you’d be starting Chapter Three by now,” she said, placing the food on the desk.
“I didn’t open it.”
“Why not?”
“I wanted a witness.”
“Now that you have one, what do we do first—eat or open it?”
“Let’s open it,” he said, put the revolver back in his topcoat pocket and reached for the twelve-by-fourteen-inch envelope. After weighing the envelope and its contents by hefting it in the palm of his right hand, Haynes said, “Around three hundred and seventy-five pages.”
“How d’you know?”
“Because it weighs about three times as much as a screenplay for a feature and they usually run one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty pages.”
“Open it, for God’s sake.”
Haynes used a forefinger to rip the envelope’s flap. He removed a 2?-inch-thick manuscript, quickly flipped through it and looked up at Erika. “No blank pages,” he said.
“I noticed.”
He turned to the last page. “Three hundred and seventy-four.”
“You were close.”
“So I was.”
“How d’you want to work it?” she asked.
“Work what?”
“Do we eat first, read first or do both at the same time?”
“Let’s eat first,” he said. “Then I’ll start reading and hand you each page when I’m done.”
“You read fast?”
“Very.”
“Good,” she said. “So do I.”
Chapter 41
At 8:32 P.M. that Monday, just as Granville Haynes and Erika McCorkle reached page 102 of
After the stately, if imaginary, procession came to a halt, Herr Horst gave two newly arrived diners one of his whiplash nods and said, “Mr. and Mrs. Pouncy. How nice. I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of your company since June of last year. June fourteenth, I think it was.”
A flattered Detective-Sergeant Darius Pouncy used gruffness to conceal pleasure. “Didn’t make a reservation.”
Herr Horst smiled. “We’ve just had a cancellation. Will a booth be satisfactory?”
“Yeah, that’ll do.”
