just watching him. And there was the money too—a lot of trouble for nothing. His leg started to ache a little at the thought of it.
And now he couldn’t leave. If he did, they’d think he’d done it—broken the rule and violated the truce the families had agreed to among themselves and imposed on everyone else for almost thirty years. Especially the way his face looked, and the fact that Orloff had been seen with him—the fat, stupid pig. Now he’d have to stay put and hope that would convince the dozen old men locked in their houses and hotels that he represented no threat or inconvenience to them. At least with Orloff he could be sure whoever had wanted Claremont dead didn’t know about him. Orloff had never been stupid enough to make his services as middleman unnecessary. He’d known his life depended on it. So he could forget about the three men unless somebody saw the connection between the pile of dead meat in the van and the Cruiser and had the resources and the persistence to find him. And Cruiser would probably be in Mexico by late afternoon.
The ringing of the telephone startled him. He snatched the receiver off the hook and snapped, “Yes?”
“Hi, kid. It’s Norman.” The deep, velvety voice was quiet and imperturbable.
He collected himself. “Hello, Norman.” So it was starting already, the test. “What can I do for you?” He added, “It’s pretty early yet for either of us, isn’t it? What time is it?”
“Almost ten, kid,” said Little Norman. “I figured you’d be up for hours by now. Maybe playing tennis. You like to keep in shape, don’t you?”
“Sure, Norman.”
“Well come downstairs and I’ll buy you breakfast. I’m in the coffee shop.”
“I’ll be there.”
He quickly got undressed again, showered, shaved, and put on a coat and tie. At the closet he lingered for an instant, thinking about the gun taped to the wall, then felt ashamed. Whatever happened he wouldn’t need a gun between the room and the coffee shop. This wasn’t the time to indulge his nerves.
In the coffee shop Little Norman seemed to take up one side of the booth, his arms spread out along the top of the seat in a gorilla’s embrace so that the camelhair sport coat looked like upholstery. When he sat down, Norman didn’t smile. “You’re having ham and eggs, kid,” said Little Norman. “I ordered them while I was waiting.”
“Thanks, Norman. That’ll be just fine.” He added, “Sorry to keep you waiting, but you pulled me out of the sack.”
“I came to tell you something,” said Little Norman.
“What’s that?”
“I just heard Harry Orloff died.” His dark eyes didn’t flicker; they seemed to sharpen and hold him for impaling.
“So?” he said. “Sorry to hear it. He should have lost some weight.”
“Don’t play that on me, kid,” hissed Little Norman, leaning forward on his elbows so his big face loomed only a foot away over the table. “I was the best before you were born. You were with him two days ago.”
“Sorry, Norman,” he said. “What now?”
Little Norman leaned back again to give the waitress room to set the plates on the table between them. Finally he smiled. “That’s better.”
“I didn’t do it, you know,” he said. “I don’t work in Vegas.”
“I know you didn’t,” said Little Norman. “I heard he owed you money.”
He picked up his knife and fork and started to saw at the slice of ham. “Easy come, easy go,” he said.
“Not this time, kid,” said Little Norman. He leaned forward again and his voice dropped. “You’re gonna get paid, and then you’re gonna leave. Tonight at nine you play blackjack at the Silver Slipper.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He was already standing by that time, and then he was moving off toward the door, the broad tan back of his perfectly tailored coat swaying slightly as he leaned to the left to avoid a scurrying keno girl whose stacked wig barely reached his shoulder.
“WHAT THE HELL DOES that mean?” said Padgett. The computer clicked and the lines of green print swept into view across the screen. “A car stopped at a red light, was blocked in by two others, and three men walked up and shot a whole family inside it.”
“That supposed to mean something?” asked Brayer.
“That’s the fourth, fifth, and sixth,” said Padgett. “It has to mean something. How can it not?”
Elizabeth pressed the hard-copy button and waited for the machine to roll out the warm, damp sheet. She scanned the report of the Las Vegas police, and it suggested nothing at all. A husband, a wife, and a boy of ten. Stopped at a corner waiting for the light to change. “If we had a little more it might tell us something,” she said.
“What do you want?” asked Brayer.
“Anything. What he did for a living, where they lived. What they had with them, I guess. And maybe which direction they were going.” She looked out the window into the second heavy snowstorm of the month, and tried to picture it: a bright, sunny morning in Las Vegas and the car stopped in traffic. Maybe the man and woman in the front seat, and the little boy in the back. And then screeching tires, cars lurching to a stop at odd angles, and the sound of guns blasting in the windows, the impact of the slugs at first punching circular spiderweb shapes into the glass, then spattering the glass into tiny crystals like diamonds spread all over the bodies. “I guess that would be first,” she said. “Which way was the car going?”
HE WAS AFRAID. It was as if fear were a thick, oily liquid that had somehow seeped into his entrails and stuck there, holding him in a kind of paralysis. Somehow his body had stopped digesting; his food had turned into a greasy, immovable mass. He could feel it—his body wanted to do something, fight, run, turn light and fly—but the thing was in there, holding him down.
No. He’d seen it too many times. They’d sit there staring at him, maybe their fingers fluttering involuntarily like birds while their eyes went stupid. After it was too late they’d do something—the hands would reach for whatever was nearest, or the leg muscles would tense for a spring, but by then they’d be dead. It wasn’t going to be that way with him. He sat on the bed and thought about it. Little Norman had said they were going to pay him. That was something to think about.
He felt a little better. They were going to pay him. That meant that they acknowledged the debt and that Orloff had done something else. No, that didn’t work unless they thought Orloff had told him where the money was going to come from. And that he had some way to make it worth paying him. He looked at his watch—almost noon. Nine hours left, so he might as well reassure them now.
He reached for the telephone and asked for the United Airlines number. Even as he made his reservation he wondered who would take an eight-o’clock flight from Las Vegas on a Saturday morning. Probably the other passengers would all be people passing through—or maybe it was just that so many people arrived here on Saturday mornings that the only other choice was to fly the planes out empty. He’d probably never know, he thought.
It was going to be tough to give himself an edge in nine hours, most of it daylight. They’d be watching him too closely. He knew he’d have to get started if he was going to make it.
He looked about the room to see what there was to work with—the bed, the shower, the telephone, the air conditioner—all standard. It would have to be the Magic Fingers machine on the bed. He studied it carefully. The metal box had an electric alarm clock besides the mechanical massager. The coin box was impregnable, but the wiring was easy enough to get to. Once he had the back open it was fairly simple. The wires that went to the alarm buzzer fit through the crack in the back once they were stripped of insulation. He set the alarm for noon and tested the wires. The spark wasn’t much, but it would do. He put the Magic Fingers machine back together and trailed the wires beside his pillow. Then he went to the dresser and brought back his bottle of after-shave lotion and read the label: 98 percent alcohol. He set the alarm, poured the lotion into a paper cup, set it on the bed, and arranged the wires. It wasn’t much, but it might help. If he wasn’t back by two A.M. there would be a fire in Room 413.
That was one of the things Eddie had been able to give him. “Know everything. If there’s nothing you can know that the mark doesn’t know you better make something happen.” The main thing would be getting out. He had the car, and there was the off chance that he might use his plane reservation. Then there were trains and buses. He’d have to get those set up during the afternoon. But that late at night there wouldn’t be many of them, and he might not be able to get where he had to be to get on one.
It was probably just nerves, he thought. They weren’t going to kill him in the Silver Slipper, and they weren’t
