running from something. Use your head.”
Of course she was right. Besides, he thought, they probably wouldn’t want to try for us where it’d cause an uproar. They’d rather have us on a dark highway. If they spotted me. And they couldn’t have. It might be a week before the word reached places like Detroit that a sight of him was worth money. And nobody had ever known about the safe deposit box.
He saw a Holiday Inn sign drifting toward them beside the highway. It was as good as anyplace: the right location for a couple who had been on the road all day and didn’t want to get enmeshed in the city traffic, the right price. And there would be food nearby. He suddenly realized that he’d been hungry for a long time.
In the parking lot Maureen put her hand on his forearm and held him back. “Here’s where I start to earn my keep,” she said. “Do what I say, and you’ll be all right. I’ve been doing this for a long time, most of it with people who weren’t much more than dead weight.”
“What do you want me to do?” he said.
“The cover is my responsibility. It’s part of what you’re paying for and I know it’s good. We’re Mr. and Mrs. William Prentiss of Syracuse until we’re alone again. From now until we’re on the road tomorrow the curtain is always up and you’re always on stage.”
He smiled. “That’s a little extreme, isn’t it?”
She shrugged. “You’re paying for it, you can decide. If the troubles you’ve got involve Carl Bala, it probably isn’t. But you know more than I do about that, too. All I can say is I haven’t lost a patient yet.”
He sat still for a moment and thought. Then he said, “How thick is the cover?”
She said, “It’s about as thick as anything I’ve ever used. The car is registered to William Prentiss, the license is good, the address exists. If we use the credit cards the bills will get paid on time.”
“All right,” he said. He took out his wallet and examined the driver’s license, the car registration, and the credit cards again. They were either very good forgeries or genuine. He got out and started walking toward the motel office.
“Wait for me,” she said, and caught up with him. “From here on we stay together.”
In the office, he went to the registration desk while Maureen wandered to the other side of the room and pretended to look at a rack of postcards. When the desk clerk asked what kind of room they wanted, he hesitated for an instant, and Maureen said, “A double bed will be fine.”
Once inside the motel room, Maureen walked all around, looking under the bed and behind the mirrors and in the bathroom until she appeared to have satisfied herself of something. Then she turned on the television, came close, and whispered in a voice he could barely hear, “You haven’t worked with a woman before, have you?”
He shook his head.
“You’ve got to think differently now. Look at me. If you were my husband, a young real estate man from Syracuse, would you want twin beds? You might take them, sure. But you wouldn’t ask for them. That’s just the kind of thing that creep would snicker about, and maybe mention to a friend or two.”
Then she brightened and said, “Give me a minute to make myself look human and we can go eat. Check the phone book and see if you can find a restaurant.” She leaned forward and brushed his cheek with her lips, and then disappeared into the bathroom.
The kiss startled him, but he did as he was told. He found a restaurant that appeared to be just the thing; the address was on the same street as the motel. The ad in the Yellow Pages was only mildly pretentious. There was no mention of entertainment, and that was the main thing they’d have to avoid. In some clubs in the Midwest, it was hard for singers and comedians to work unless they were sponsored by the Italians. There was always a quiet man in the audience studying the act, judging the applause, watching for the moment when the performer was ready to be booked into the big clubs in Los Angeles or Las Vegas or New York.
In a moment she was back. “What did you find? I warn you, no more hamburgers.” He was starting to feel a little foolish. They hadn’t eaten anything since they’d left Buffalo.
“This place,” he said. “The King’s Coach. It’s just down the road, and it looks okay.”
Then she took on a look of concern that amazed him. “Can we afford it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It doesn’t look too fancy. But hell, we’re on vacation now, you know.” He felt even more foolish, like a man who had been enticed out of the audience to blurt out a single line on stage.
“I won’t argue,” she assured him, already making for the door. “Come on. I’m starving. We can bring the bags in later.”
He locked the door and joined her in the car. “What the hell was that all about?” he said. “Weren’t we alone?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Get us moving.” He started the car and pulled onto the road. She said, “I checked as well as I could, and didn’t find anything. But we can’t afford to stumble into one of those places that they wire to blackmail businessmen getting a little on the side. The best way to listen in is through the telephone or the TV, especially if the TV is on a cable instead of an antenna; but they’re practically impossible to check unless you take them apart. A video camera is harder to hide. I don’t think they have one in there, but they might.”
“If you thought they could be listening, why did you talk in there?” he asked.
“I had to make sure you knew enough to act the part. The TV will cover a whisper, but if you’d blurted something out in there we’d have been taking a chance to go back. If the place is a trap they didn’t see or hear anything unusual yet. They’ll pay attention to somebody else.” Then she laughed. “Maybe a suspicious-looking couple who really are a real-estate agent and his wife.”
He said, “You know a lot about it.”
Her brightness faded again. “I didn’t ask you where your money comes from, did I?”
“Okay,” he said. “Then tell me about Prentiss. How much money do I make selling real estate? What can I afford to order in a restaurant?”
She thought for a moment, staring judiciously at him, and said, “Well, you’re pretty good at it, but no world- beater. I’d say you make between twenty and thirty thousand. You can afford to eat just about anything on the menu if it’s the kind of place I think it is. But don’t be too imaginative. You don’t want escargot, for instance, because you don’t eat things like that. As long as you stay on the steak-and-potatoes side of things you’re safe. Wine is okay, but not anything extraordinary if your natural inclinations are in that direction. And take it if it’s good or not. And don’t overdo it on the other side either. Don’t try to mispronounce the name of it while you’re ordering. You’re an ordinary guy, not a dunce. Just use your head. And straighten your tie.”
When he pulled into the parking lot at the King’s Coach, Maureen said “Perfect. Pretty ordinary and there are plenty of cars in the lot. Maybe the food will even be good.”
He nodded. It looked safe enough.
“One more thing,” she added. “If we have to wait for a table we’ll go into the bar. I’ll have a martini and you’ll have a bourbon and water, or Scotch, if you like that better. Do you feel up to talking about our kids, or do we have to invent something? I don’t imagine you’re up to much real estate, are you?”
“I think I can handle a little of each if I have to. What are the kids’ names?”
“Tom is four and Jo Anne is two, so no talk about Tom being the captain of the football team or anything. Now let’s eat. I really am starving.”
The meal proceeded uneventfully. They talked for a time, staying with their two subjects. By the time the waiter brought the check, he was reasonably comfortable as William Prentiss. That was the major part of a cover, Eddie had always said. “You have to be who you say you are.” But he wasn’t used to working with a woman, and it worried him a little. There were too many ways to get caught in the open.
At the car he said, “All right, you’re in charge. Back to the motel?”
She thought for a second, then said, “Yes, I guess so. But be careful. When we go in I’m going to check the place out to see if anyone’s been there. If they have, it’ll probably be bugged. If I brush my hair with my right hand, it’s probably all right. If I use my left, watch out. The next thing I do will be to walk over to the place where I think the problem is. Watch me and do anything I say to do. In any case, don’t say or do anything out of character.”
“How will you know?”
“The usual things. You sat on the bed when we came in. There were wrinkles on the bedspread. I balanced a hair on the bathroom doorknob, inside. When I closed the curtains I left them a thumb-width apart. The first thing a small-time blackmailer will do is close them the rest of the way. He may remember to open them a little bit before he leaves, but he won’t measure it. When I turned on the TV I put a smudge on the screen with my other hand. If they’ve put something in there they may change it, or even wipe it off.”
