thing.
Then I realized I was still in that stupid jacket I’d bought at the truck stop, and took it off and threw it on a chair. I also got out of the black Isotoner gloves.
She sat on the edge of her twin bed facing mine almost primly, hands folded in her lap. She looked beautiful in that fashion model way of hers, dark hair stopping at the white leather shoulders on its way down her back, eyes as big and brown as ever, mouth as fully lush if sans lipstick; but with an edge of controlled hysteria about her.
“Jack…Do you mind if I take a shower?”
“No. Let me in there for a couple minutes, first, would you? I neglected to use the bathroom at that rest stop, having other business to attend to.”
That actually made her smile.
So I went into the bathroom and I took a fairly major shit and emptied my bladder while I was at it; afterward, I turned on the ceiling fan, gentleman that I am, and splashed water in my face until I felt slightly alive. I mention all this not to share the fascinating details of my toilet activities but to demonstrate that I was giving Annette every opportunity to bail. She was alone out there, with my gun on the nightstand, with fan noise going behind the closed bathroom door, and I was doing my best to display trust. And to give her an opportunity to do the same.
When I emerged lighter and renewed, she was hanging up her coat in the closet. She smiled at me. She seemed calm enough.
She said, “I guess I haven’t thanked you.”
“It’s okay. I’ll hit your father up for some kind of bonus.”
She came over and touched my face. “You aren’t as tough as you pretend. I have a feeling, underneath it all, you’re a pussycat.”
I smiled. “I guess you’ve got my number.”
On the other hand, those dead assholes in the rest-stop john might’ve had a different opinion, if they’d still been in any shape to have opinions.
A terrycloth robe was hanging in the closet, with a CONCORT INN logo stitched on its breast pocket, and she took the robe with her into the bathroom and shut herself in.
I went over to the phone and had the desk put me through to the Broker’s emergency number. Three rings this time.
“I’m at the Concort Inn,” I said.
“What the hell are you doing there?”
“I’m in a room with our client’s daughter. She’s taking a shower. You wouldn’t want to come over here and have a talk with me about what I’ve been up to lately?”
A long pause. “I believe I would. What room are you in?”
I told him.
“I’ll get the key to another room nearby where we can talk.”
“How long?”
“It may be an hour.”
“Call from the lobby.”
“All right. Quarry?”
“Yes?”
“What have you done?”
“I’ve done fine. You’ll be pleased.”
She came out of the shower, her hair in a turbaned towel, her nice shape wrapped up in that terrycloth robe. She came over and sat on the edge of her bed, facing me where I sat on the edge of mine, having just got off the phone.
“Why don’t you take a shower?” she asked. “I feel like another woman.”
I felt like another woman, too, but I said, “Only one robe.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’ll be refreshing.”
Hell.
I went in and showered. When I came back out with a towel knotted around me, all the lights were off and she was under the covers of my bed. But the drapes were open on the window onto the river and River Drive, so some flickery illumination came in and turned the room blue-gray.
Her hair, towel-dried and a little frizzy and lots of it, framed that model’s face of hers; the covers were pulled up above her breasts but her shoulders were bare except for where her hair touched them.
She asked, “Don’t you want a reward?”
I came over and said, “Who’s that sleeping in my bed?”
She giggled; it did seem kind of funny at the time. On the other hand, she was about half out of her gourd, after all she’d been through.
“You know,” I said, looming over her, “your father, though I repeat I’ve never met him, hired my agency because he didn’t like the idea of you sleeping around with your professor.”
“You’re not my professor.”
“How do you know I’m interested? Maybe I’m gay.”
She pointed to where the towel was pointing back at her.
“Touche,” I said.
She giggled at that, too. I’m telling you, it was funny. I was wittier than Oscar Levant on the Jack Paar Show. You had to be there.
Of course, I was there, lucky me, and when she flipped the covers back, she showed off an olive-toned body that was perhaps more slender than to my usual taste, but those legs were as shapely as they were long and her waist was supernaturally narrow and the breasts, while small, got help from a prominent rib cage and had dark brown aureoles with nipples that were looking right at me, daring me to make something of it.
“Do me,” she said, and parted her legs and in the midst of a brown thicket, pink glistened and I buried my face down there and made it glisten some more. She came quickly and hard, and then I was on my back on the bed and she was kneeling between my legs now, and she was very skillful, thorough and even loving.
She got on top of me after that, riding me with no mercy, her eyes rolling back in her head as she came again, just as hard; but we wound up with her on her back and us fucking frantically, as if our lives depended on it, those long legs kicking the air past me, and me rutting like a goddamn dog, as if we’d almost lost our lives together tonight, and hadn’t we, almost?
For all that frenzy, the bang ended with a whimper as she began to cry and I felt my eyes tear up as I held her close and nuzzled and kissed her neck. Emotions were stirring in me, emotions I thought were gone. I hadn’t felt like this since my honeymoon and I had thought I would never feel like this again, and hadn’t really wanted to.
Then she trotted off to the bathroom again. I wiped myself off with my towel and leaned back against my pillow, propped against the headboard, and thought about Dorrie, sad, pretty Mrs. Prof. So far on this job I’d killed three guys and screwed two very lovely women. I’d done it all, in a very short time.
Everything except the job I’d been hired for.
The phone rang, and the Broker said, “I’m in 714, just down the hall from you.”
“Okay,” I said.
I got my clothes on and went over to the bathroom door, behind which water was running.
I said, “I’m going down to the front desk and get us some toiletries-toothbrushes and toothpaste and stuff.”
“Okay!” she said.
“Won’t be long.”
In 714, the Broker and I sat by the window at two chairs on either side of a small round table with a built-in lamp, which was the only light going. His expression was stern. He wasn’t staying long, judging by the camel’s hair topcoat remaining on.
“I have to make this fast,” I said, “or Annette will be suspicious.”
“You’re calling her ‘Annette’ now?”
“That’s right, because she isn’t Doreen or Cheryl or even Cubby.”
