The Hellfire Club

of it went away when they turned into old ladies. Husbands are dead. Nobody on earth is interested in listening to them. Except me. I could listen to them all day long. Love those soft, elegant, smoky voices full of hidden razor blades, but even more I love their stories. They're so corrupt. They don't even begin to know how corrupt they are, can't, don't have the moral machinery for it. The only thing they regret is that the good part didn't last another ten years, so they could have gotten their hooks into one more rich sucker who got off on hearing about his great big cock. I love the way they look - hair all stiff but made to look fluffy and soft, makeup put on so well you can hardly see their wrinkles, their hands covered with rings so you won't notice the brown spots and the veins and lumpy knuckles. Nobody can tell me I don't like women.'

'Did you sleep with your old ladies?'

'Haven't had sex with a woman under sixty-five in at least nine or ten years. No, sixty-two, I forgot about Gladys.'

'But you killed women,' Nora said.

'Wasn't personal.'

'It was to them,' Nora said.

'I was killing clients, understand? Every time I murdered someone, another chunk fell off the old man's business. Along about the time I did Annabelle Austin, that book agent, he spent two days saying. Couldn't somebody else's clients get killed? If I could have done another ten, he'd be tearing his hair out.'

'But you always chose women clients, and always a certain kind of woman.'

Dart's eyes went flat and two-dimensional.

'Oh. You didn't like the way they lived.'

'Could put it that way,' Dart said. 'Those people went around acting like men.'

His tone gave her an insight. 'Did they behave well around you?'

'The times they came into the office, when I came up to them and said something flattering, they could barely bring themselves to speak to me.'

'Unlike your old ladies.'

'I would never have murdered my old sweethearts… unless they were the only clients left'

'What about me?'

He smiled, slowly. 'Do you mean, am I going to kill you?'

Nora said nothing.

'Dear Nora-pie. We'll know more after our reality lesson.'

'Reality lesson?'

He patted her knee. 'Lots of motels in Massachusetts. We want one with a nice big parking lot.'46

On the far side of Springfield, Dart pointed at a three- story, sand-colored building with white balconies outside the windows. 'Bingo!' It stood at the far end of a half-filled parking lot the size of a football field. A vast blue-and-yellow sign stretching across the roof said CHICOPEE INN. A Swiss ski lodge called Home Cooking faced the lot from the left. 'Get over, we don't want to miss the exit.'

Nora crossed two lanes and left the highway. 'Forgot I was talking to Emerson Fittipaldi,' Dart said.

She drove a short distance down the street and turned into the lot.

'Darling, we'll always have Chicopee. And home cooking, too! Don't you love home cooking? Mom's famous razor blade soup, that sort of thing?'

'Should I park in any particular place?' Nora was weary with dread.

'Right in the goddamned middle. Do you have some favorite alias, my dear?'

'Some what?' She drew the Lincoln into an empty space approximately in the center of the lot.

'Need new names. Have any suggestions, or shall I choose?'

'Mr and Mrs Hugo Driver.' She closed her eyes and slumped back against the seat. 'The Drivers.'

'Love the concept, tremendously appropriate, but using the names of well-known people is usually an error.' He turned sideways and tried to reach the bags on the backseat. 'Hell.' Dart knelt on his seat and leaned over, almost touching the top of the car with his buttocks. Nora opened her eyes and saw the pocket containing the gun hanging a foot away from her face. She considered the energy and speed necessary to snatch it out of his pocket. She wondered if she knew how to fire a revolver. Dan Harwich had instructed her in the operation of the safety on the pistol he had given her, but did revolvers have safeties, and if so, where were they? By the time this baffling question had occurred to her. Dart was pulling himself and two brown paper bags back over the top of the seat. He pushed the bag containing the bottles into her lap. 'You carry this one and the one in the trunk. One more thing: please refrain from giving people these bone-chilling looks of anguish, okay? World loves a happy face. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen you smile, and I smile at you all the time.'

'You're having a better time than I am.'

'Smile, Nora. Brighten up my day.'

'I don't think I can.'

'Rehearsal for the wonderful smile you're going to give the moron behind the desk.'

Nora faced Dart, pulled back her lips, and exposed her teeth.

He gave her a long, considering look. 'Call on some of the old fire, Nora-pie. Let's see the blazing figure who beat the shit out of Natalie Weil.'

'Too scared to come out.'

He gave an exasperated sigh. 'This is a project.' He made the sign of the cross over his heart.

'A project?'

'Inside.' He took the keys and got out. She waited for him to pull her across the seat, but instead he walked to the front of the car and looked back at her, eyebrows raised. Nora left the car and looked around at a vibrant blur. She blotted her eyes on her sleeve and moved toward Dart.

A young man with shoulder-length blond hair lowered a half-liter Evian bottle to an invisible shelf in front of him, smiled across the desk as they came into the chill of the lobby, and stood up. His lightweight blue blazer was several sizes too large for him, and the bottoms of the sleeves were rolled. A silver tag on his lapel said that his name was Clark. 'Welcome to the Chicopee Inn. Can I help you?'

'Need a room for the night,' Dart said. 'Sure hope you got one for us. Been driving two days straight.'

'Should be no problem.' His eyes moved to the bags they were carrying, then from Dart to Nora and back again. His smile vanished. He sat down in his chair again, pulled a keyboard toward him, and depressed random- seeming keys. 'One night? Let me set you up, and then we'll take some information.' He brushed his hair back with one hand, exposing a circular gold ring in his ear. Keys clicked. Three twenty-six, third floor, double bed. Is that okay?' Dart agreed. Nora slumped against the counter and regarded the bright, unreal green of the carpet. 'Name and address, please?'

'Mr and Mrs John Donne, Five eighty-six Flamingo Drive, Orlando, Florida.'

At the boy's request, he spelled out Donne. Then Dart spelled Orlando for him. He supplied a zip code and a telephone number.

'Orlando's where they have Disney World, right?'

'No need to leave America, you want to see exotic places.'

'Uh, right. Method of payment?'

'Cash.'

Clark paused with his hands on the keyboard and looked up. He flicked back his hair again. 'Sir, our policy in that case is to request payment in advance. The rate for your room is sixty-seven dollars, forty-five cents, tax included. Is that all right?'

'Policy is policy,' Dart said.

Clark returned to the keyboard. The tip of his tongue slipped between his lips. A young woman in a blazer identical to his came through a door behind him to his right and gave Dart a double take as she walked past the desk to another door in the wall to his left.

'I'll get your keys and take the payment.' He opened a drawer to remove two round-headed metal keys. He put them into a small brown folder and wrote 326 in a white space at the top of the folder. The boy stood up and slid the folder across the desk. Dart placed a hundred-dollar bill beside it. 'You can swing your car right up in front here to bring in your bags,' the boy said, his eyes on the bill.