There was a vestibule, with a grid of cubbyhole mailboxes nailed to either wall, and beyond that a hallway to the left, a wall with a few doors to the right, and in front of me directly was a stairway, going up to that second floor where Ash’s backup man had a room. Of course, that part was supposition: his being Ash’s backup man. And that was why I’d come here, to poke around the guy’s room while he and Ash were busy talking in that fancy-ass Ford a couple blocks over.
The place was pretty rundown. Both floors displayed faded, curling, ugly-to-begin-with wallpaper, and throw rugs that were as frayed as they were colorless, with good solid wood floors showing around the edges of the rugs, floors which unfortunately hadn’t been varnished for decades. There had been some remodeling done, however: a cheap, sloppy job of remodeling that neither the people who hired it done nor the people who did it could feel any pride about, as evidenced by the modern-style light-color plywood doors stuck in the middle of walls otherwise trimmed with dark, rich, occasionally carved woodwork dating back to the turn of the century, easy.
The numbers on the doors were black numerals on a cheap glitter-gold background, those stick-on things you can buy at a hardware store to put on an outdoor mailbox. I was trying to figure out which room was the one I was after, remembering the approximate position of the window where I’d seen the guy doing apparent stakeout duty; I passed numbers 4 and 5, and when I came to 6 remembered that scrap of paper in Ash’s motel room that had said “apt 6” on it, and smiled.
I looked around. The hallway was empty. I could hear rock music, seeping out from under the door across from me. I could smell various cooking smells, mingled together. People were around, but none of them were in the hallway, at the moment.
I put my ear to the door, in case number 6 somehow turned out to be somebody else’s room, after all, and just to see if anybody was in there, a shack-up girl maybe… though if this was a stakeout point (as I was almost sure it was) no one else would be in there. Not a girl, not anybody. It’s not the kind of job you take your wife or lover along on, and you even stay away from pickups and whores. If you get horny, you just whack off, and that’s all there is to it.
I used a credit card to unlock the door. I have a dozen keys on a ring that I always carry with me, and between them, those keys will open about any door outside of a bank vault. But I rarely have to use those keys. The typical apartment door these days is the type that you can open with a credit card, and in the Midwest, which hasn’t as yet got as paranoid as elsewhere (with the possible exception of Chicago and a few other of the larger cities), you don’t often run into doors with night latches and/or other safety lock sort of features.
Did I mention I was wearing the college kid getup, again? Well, I was. Did I mention I had the nine- millimeter in my right hand, with my raincoat slung over my arm to cover the gun? Well, I did.
With the door unlocked, I stepped to one side, nudged it open with my foot, and waited for something to happen. When nothing did, I went in. Low. Cutting to the left, getting a quick look around the room from the admittedly dim light of the hallway, before shutting the door with my heel.
I stood there in the darkness for a couple minutes, not breathing, listening to see if anybody else was. When I was convinced I was alone in there, I found the light switch on the wall behind me, flicked it on, and dropped to the floor.
When still nothing happened, and seeing no one in the room, I did one final precautionary number with the closets (there were two), and finding them empty (of people), got to work.
I didn’t have much to do. Ash’s backup man had done it for me. And he was Ash’s backup man, no doubt about that. An easy chair had been pulled around by the window, and binoculars were on the sill. On the arm of the nearby couch was a notebook, recording activities of the subject in the brown brick castle across the way. There was no name, of course, just a time chart of “Subject’s Movements.” I couldn’t risk giving the chart more than the most cursory of examinations, but it didn’t take much of one to see that this particular subject wasn’t going to make the toughest target in the world, considering said subject lived alone and seemed to stay home constantly.
I glanced through the binoculars, over toward the brown brick place. I studied all the windows, but saw no one; all drapes were drawn. I looked over at the garage, which was a separate little brown brick building near the house, and saw the double door go up, suddenly, thanks to some automatic device, I guessed, and a car drove out, a Pontiac Grand Prix. The garage door shut itself, and the Grand Prix pulled out into the street and was gone.
I hadn’t got a look at the driver, but whoever it was, this marked a significant departure from the backup man’s time chart, a departure that would go unrecorded, and I took some mild pleasure in knowing that Ash and his pal had unwittingly screwed up. Since the record didn’t show any visitors tonight-and, judging by my quick flip through the notebook, there had never been any visitors since the stakeout began, either-I could safely assume the person who had driven off in that Grand Prix was the mark. Meaning a screwup serious enough to cost Ash and his pal an extra week of work, maybe, till they were again sure they had the mark’s schedule down pat.
I didn’t want to hang around too long, of course, so I began giving the rest of the one-room efficiency apartment a quick onceover. There was the usual second-hand furniture, more faded wallpaper, more frayed throw rugs, a kitchenette over in the corner, and the couch that would open out into a bed. In the chest of drawers I expected to find a box of slugs or, anyway, something of that sort among the guy’s clothes.
Only there weren’t any clothes in the chest of drawers.
But there was a suitcase, I finally noticed, over by the wall.
Packed and ready to go.
Which meant one thing, and one thing only: Tonight, as the saying goes, was the night.
The backup man would be coming back here, soon probably, to sit at the window and watch the brown brick house while Ash went in and did his thing. After which both of them would split.
Which was what I had to do, and fast.
I took a quick look around to make sure I hadn’t left any signs of my poking around, and got out of there, holding onto that nine-millimeter like a mother holding onto a kid. Or, maybe it was the other way around. I locked the door behind me as I left, and on the stairs I bumped into him.
The backup man.
I said excuse me and went on.
He said, “Hey…”
I turned around. Smiled.
I hadn’t seen the guy up close before. As I’d expected, he didn’t look quite so young, up close. He was on the short side, but wide in the shoulders and probably a strong son of a bitch. The long straight hair and full face beard gave him the desired hippie effect, but the cold little eyes said Vietnam. I hoped he wouldn’t see the same thing in my eyes. One item in my favor: his hands were exposed, and had nothing in them. He didn’t seem to realize how close he was to dying right now, closer to dying than a guy in a VW on a mountain road with two semis coming straight at him. Which is to say, he didn’t seem to realize what was under the raincoat slung over my arm.
He said, “I haven’t seen you around here before.”
I said, “I never been here before.”
He said, “Why not?”
I said, “Because it’s the first time I got the bitch to fuck me in a bed instead of in my fucking back seat, if it’s any of your fucking business, you nosy asshole.”
He studied me a second.
And then grinned.
“Sorry, man,” he said. “We had some guys rip us off here last week. Just checkin’ you out.”
I shrugged. “Forget it.”
We both waited a second for the other to leave, and finally he went on up the stairs, keeping an eye over his shoulder at me as he went, but smiling, waving a little as he disappeared from view.
I went on down, not looking back, wanting to, but not doing it. If he was up there, looking down at me, like I knew he would be, I couldn’t afford to be looking back. That could be enough to confirm suspicions he might have. And I could feel his eyes on my back, and my hand tightened around the gun and Jesus I wanted to look back, but I didn’t.
And then I was in the Buick again, starting it up, driving out of that goddamn neighborhood, and I noticed Ash, on foot, on the sidewalk, on his way to that brown brick palace with a gun in his pocket.
Which struck me funny, since nobody was home.
