surrounded him. A great barrel-chested rainstorm came rolling westward, darkening the sky. The dreariness spread and overtook him and went on before.
By the time he cruised into downtown, the streets seemed duller to him than the wilderness. This was in spite of the lights, in spite of the morning crowds. The Taurus passed beneath the arching sign: ' RENO ,' in large red letters and underneath in yellow: ' THE BIGGEST LITTLE CITY IN THE WORLD.' Beyond that, on either side, were the hotels and casinos outlined in neon now. Thick traffic clogged the way ahead, pickups and hulking SUVs shouldering against each other from intersection to intersection. Late gamblers from the night before and early tourists moved in small groups along the sidewalks under the shadows of domed roofs and the lancing angles of high-rise hotels.
Weiss found himself checking faces as he drove. The sinewy cowboy in the truck alongside him. The obese salesman coming out of the casino with a whore. The bored, irritated honeymooner with his unhappy bride in tow. Weiss examined them without thinking, compulsively trying to prove to himself that the nightmares were wrong, that he would, in fact, recognize the killer if he saw him again. But it was no good. He didn't know what to look for. The killer's face was gone.
He drove on to the address the kid at the Super 8 had given him. Adrienne Chalk's address. Another of his Weiss hunches, another slender thread of a lead. The woman had stayed in the motel room paid for by Andy Bremer, and Weiss had a feeling that had something to do with Julie. That's all he had. That Weiss feeling. But he'd been right about Bremer, it turned out. And if Bremer was Julie's father, maybe Chalk was her mother or something. Or maybe not. Maybe it was nothing, a dead end.
He found the place easily enough. It was just a couple of blocks from the center of town. The Taurus turned the corner onto a long broad boulevard that led out to the low suburbs and the mountains. There were strip joints lining one side of the street. Their shabby signs jutted over the sidewalk, nightclub names in blinking neon: Fantasy, Femme Fa-tale, Gangster Pete's. Weiss parked the car under twinkling lights that spelled out The Black Hand.
On the far side of the boulevard, there were four- and five-story buildings with glass-fronted shops and taverns at the ground level, brown brick apartments up top. Weiss got out of the car, lifting his eyes to some of the windows above a liquor store. A figure pulled away behind curtains on the third story. Weiss figured: So what? But he felt edgy. He sensed something was coming. Maybe it was just the bad dreams.
He crossed the street, dodging a red pickup with country music booming from its radio. When he reached the sidewalk, he moved to the entrance alcove next to the liquor store. There was a bright red door. There was a line of names on a brass panel next to it, a line of buttons next to the names. The Chalk woman's name was there. Weiss pressed the button next to it. Almost immediately, the door buzzed, unlocked. Fast, as if she was expecting him. Weiss pushed in. He didn't feel good about this. He was sorry he'd left his gun in the car.
He couldn't tell if the lobby was run-down or if it'd just been built to look depressing as hell. Yellow paisley walls. A long mirror with his large, paunchy figure and his sad-assed face staring out of it. A cheap table under the mirror with throwaway real estate papers and papers advertising escorts-whores. No elevator he could see. Threadbare runners on the stairs. Weiss started climbing.
The Chalk woman's door was halfway down the third-floor hall. That was about the right place if she'd been the one at the window. Was she expecting him? Did Bremer call ahead to warn her the way Julie called to warn him? He knocked. No answer. But the door swung in. It was off the latch. As if someone inside was waiting for him to walk in. What the hell?
He walked in. Nudged the door shut behind him.
The place smelled. Cigarettes: new smoke and the old stuff that sinks into the furniture and stinks like vomit. other than that, the apartment was a dive. Sofas and chairs with corrugated upholstery. Framed magazine pictures on the cracked plaster walls. A kitchen through an archway, a bedroom beyond a door. Windows onto the street, one open. Traffic noise filtering through and a desperate trickle of damp Reno air. As far as Weiss could see, the dump was empty, but it didn't feel empty somehow.
'Hey,' he said. 'Anybody home?'
No one answered. He cursed silently. He moved slowly toward the bedroom door, looking all around him.
'Hey?'
He stepped into the bedroom. Small, tight space. The double bed filled the center of it. There were narrow corridors of wood floor on one side of the bed and at its foot. The blankets and sheets were in a jumble on the mattress. There were newspaper pages in the jumble too. on the bedside table, there was a pile of papers and manila envelopes. There was a brass ashtray full of butts. And there was a romance novel with a red cover. A Ring for Cinderella.
The smell of smoke was stronger in here, not so stale. The smoker was around somewhere or had been recently. Behind that open closet door to the right of him-that was a good place for someone to hide. Then there was a bathroom ahead of him to his left. Someone could be hiding in there too.
He guessed the closet. He went for it fast. He was light on his feet for a big man, and he crossed to it in a heartbeat. He flipped the door shut with one hand, the other hand ready to strike.
'You're fucking dead,' came the throaty voice behind him. Weiss sighed, annoyed with himself. It was the bathroom all along.
He turned and faced her. She had a gun trained on his belly. Not your lightweight lady's toy either, but a Smith amp; Wesson 500 revolver. The recoil would probably blow her out into the street, but not before she'd put a hole in Weiss the size of a basketball.
'You're so dead it's not even funny,' she said.
The kid at the hotel had been right about Adrienne Chalk. She thought she was something. Weiss could see it in the way she came toward him along the side of the bed, swaying her hips and keeping her chin lifted as if she were moving into the camera for her big close-up. She had dyed blond hair and a mean face. Maybe her face had been pretty once in a cheap kind of way, but now it was just cheap and mean. Her lipstick was too red, and she wore too much makeup on her cheeks and too much whatever that stuff was called-mascara-under her eyes. She wore a blue suit, skirt and jacket, that might've been meant to give her some style. It didn't. She had too much ass for it, especially the way she swayed.
She came to the edge of the bed. She gripped the gun tight, kept it trained on Weiss's midsection. Weiss didn't like it. He had a temper. He got angry when people pointed guns at him. Guns, knives. They just pissed him off somehow. Chalk's smirky little smile didn't do much for his mood either.
'Where do you want it, fat man?' said Adrienne Chalk.
'Put that down or I'm gonna slap you,' Weiss told her.
Adrienne laughed. 'Slap me? I'm gonna shoot you, you dumb shit. No court in the world'd convict me.'
Weiss slapped her-a good one with the back of his hand. She fell over onto the bed. He reached down and took the gun away from her.
'You son of a bitch, you hit me!' she gasped.
He slipped the gun into his jacket pocket. He kept his hand on it. 'So what? You been hit before, haven't you? Sure you have. I'll bet you been hit plenty.'
'You bastard,' said Adrienne Chalk. 'How about I start screaming?'
'You start screaming, I'll shoot you,' said Weiss-which he wouldn't have, but how the hell was she supposed to know?
She touched the side of her mouth. Looked at her fingertips. Either her lip was bleeding or her lipstick was smeared, Weiss couldn't tell which. Neither could she, it looked like.
She sat up on the bed slowly. 'Ya fuck,' she muttered.
Weiss shook his head. What a world. People pulling guns on you. Women pulling guns, for Christ's sake. He could never shake the idea that women ought to be better than that somehow.
If anyone could've changed his mind, it would've been this prize piece of work. He stood, looking down at her. He searched her face for any sign that she could be Julie's mother. He didn't find any, but then he didn't want to find any.
'All right,' he said. He leaned back against the wall. He had his hands in his jacket pockets, one hand on the gun. 'What is this?'
' Aaah, ' she said, angry. She wiped her sore lip with the meat of her hand.
'I mean it. You pull a gun on me?'
