coffee.
When the clock said it was time, I turned off the VCR and the lights and dropped the empty coffee cup in the garbage. After a quick stop in the washroom halfway down the walkway outside my office, I went to my car and drove to the Texas Bar amp; Grille to pick up Ames and commit a felony.
7
Ames wore his well-worn jeans and a plaid shirt and denim jacket. No slicker. No shotgun. No Stetson on his head. This was a simple break-in.
“Mornin’,” he said, getting into the car and handing me a cardboard cup of coffee. He had a cup too.
“Thanks,” I said. “Flashlight?”
Ames reached into his pocket and came up with a black penlight not very different from the one I had in my pocket.
Ames didn’t put on his seat belt. He never did. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe they worked. He just didn’t like the government, any government, telling him what he had to do to protect himself.
Ames didn’t really like anyone telling him what to do for any reason. Even Ed was careful when telling Ames that there was something he wanted done in the Texas Bar amp; Grille. “Would you do the windows today?” or “Mind getting the garbage out early tomorrow?” were the ways Ed respected Ames’s self-respect.
There wasn’t much traffic at one-thirty in the morning, but there was some. I sipped coffee, drove and didn’t turn on the radio.
“Saw Flo, Adele and the baby,” I said. “They’re fine.”
I glanced at Ames, who nodded to indicate that he had heard, registered and approved of what I had said. That was all we said for the twelve-minute ride. I drove at about ten miles an hour after I turned down the narrow road that led to the Seaside from Beneva.
The front-canopied entrance to the Seaside was dark behind the glass doors. There were cars, seven of them, at the end of the lot. Some of them must have belonged to the night staff. A few of the cars might even belong to residents still able to drive. I didn’t park near the other cars. Ames indicated that I should pull into a corner space under a tree where the parking lot lights didn’t hit
“We go in over there.”
He pointed to the side of the one-story brick building. We put our coffee cups in the holders by the dashboard, got out and closed the doors quietly. I didn’t lock them. We might want to or have to get out of here quickly.
I followed Ames into the darkness at the side of the building. The sky was clear but there wasn’t much of a moon, not enough light to keep me from tripping over a bush and pitching forward, losing my hat.
Ames helped me up.
“Lost my cap,” I whispered, squinting around my feet.
“Here,” whispered Ames, handing it to me.
A light came on in the window three feet from us. We pressed our backs against the wall and inched away. We stopped when we heard the window begin to open.
A tiny woman, white bushy hair, glasses on the end of her nose, leaned out, pulled her robe around her and said, “Jerry Lee?”
She didn’t look in our direction, just squinted toward the trees straight ahead of her.
“Is that you, Jerry Lee?”
Something shuffled in the grass by the trees. Whoever or whatever it was came slowly toward the window. When the light from the window hit the gator, which was a good or bad seven feet long, it turned its head up toward the woman, mouth open. Its eyes were a glassy white.
Ames moved slightly at my side. I turned my eyes but not my head and made out a gun in his hand. The gator grunted and turned its head toward us.
“Jerry Lee, be quiet,” the old woman whispered.
She threw something out the window into the gator’s open mouth. The gator made a gulping sound, took a few steps forward and opened its mouth even wider. The old woman threw something else out the window. Jerry Lee the gator snatched it from the air.
“Jerry Lee,” she whispered. “You’ve got to be quiet. You know I’m not supposed to… Someone’s in the hall.”
She closed the window and a few seconds later the light went out. I could only make out the vague shape of Jerry Lee and hoped his appetite had been satisfied.
There was a click from the gun in Ames’s hand as the gator turned its head in our direction and took a short step toward us.
Ames moved past me, took four steps and stood in front of the gator, gun in hand.
“Get out of here,” Ames whispered, aiming his gun directly down at Jerry Lee’s left eye.
The gator grunted. Ames brought his booted right foot down on Jerry Lee’s snout and took a step back, gun steady in his hand.
“Your move,” Ames said calmly to the gator.
The gator shook its head back and forth, trying to decide what to do. Then it turned right and scuttled across the long grass into the darkness between the trees. There was a splash in the darkness.
Ames walked back to me, tucking the gun into his belt under his denim jacket.
“Let’s go,” he said.
I followed him without tripping to the fourth window, where he stopped and reached up. He pushed the window up and whispered, “It’s empty. Least it was this afternoon, when I unlocked the window.”
Ames boosted himself up and went through the window headfirst. He made almost no noise. When he was in, he reached back to help me up. I was reasonably quiet.
Ames turned on his flashlight. There was nothing in the room but a bed with a rolled-up mattress, a wooden night table and a wooden chest of drawers with nothing on top of it. There were no pictures on the walls.
Ames motioned to me and turned off his flashlight. We went to the door. He listened, ear to the door, for a few seconds and then turned the knob. He opened the door slowly. The lights in the hall were night dim. He stepped out and motioned for me to follow him.
In the hall, Ames moved to his right with me behind him. There was a turn in front of us with a long hallway. From far down that long hallway came a man’s voice. I couldn’t make out the words, but could tell that the person was probably talking on the phone because of the silent pauses.
Ames went to the end of the corridor and peeked down the long hallway. Then he turned and motioned for me to follow him. He moved quickly across the hallway and into an alcove. I followed, glancing to my left, relieved to see nothing and no one.
I knew where we were now, right in front of Amos Trent’s office. Ames tried the door. It was locked. He pulled his jackknife from his pocket, found a thin blade that looked like a toothpick with a tiny forked tip. In no more than four seconds, the door opened. We went in. Ames’s flashlight came on as the door closed. I turned mine on too.
We both knew what we were looking for. I went to the desk. Ames went to the file cabinet. We worked fast. I found a few interesting things, including a clearly marked medicine bottle from Eckerd’s drugstore containing two Viagra pills, five low-carb chocolate bars, a tube of Thomas Valerian’s toupee paste, and a thin catalog of items guaranteed to “embarrass or gross out” your friends and enemies.
Ames was on the second drawer, thumbing through file folders.
“Wrong place,” came a voice from the door.
I froze. Ames turned his light toward the voice.
A figure in a blue robe pushed the door closed. I turned my light on him. He was ancient, pudgy, pink-faced, with sparse white hair carefully brushed to the right of his age-spotted scalp. He stood with both hands on a walker.
“Saw you here this afternoon,” he said to Ames. “Or maybe it was yesterday. It’s easy to lose track of days or time in here.”
