I got the beer—Samuel Adams—he took the ten, set seven back on the bar, shoved the picture back at me with a finger, and said, “Haven’t seen her, man.” Then, “Holy Christ, that’s one hot babe.”
Huh? A high school kid and this guy thinks she’s hot?
Then I saw where he was looking. I turned on the stool in time to see Holiday arrive at the pool table, blond hair still windblown. She picked up a cue stick, two guys ogling her as if they hadn’t seen a woman in twenty years.
Not like Holiday, they hadn’t.
Aw, shit.
I wandered over and said, “You about ready to head out, sugar plum?”
“I’m a little dry after that drive. I could maybe use a drink.”
“Well then, how ’bout we mosey on over to the bar and get you one, then mosey on out of here?”
“Sounds like a plan.” She held up a picture of her sister to the two guys, a rough-looking pair in T-shirts, three-day beards, and long hair. After they’d dragged their eyes away from Holiday’s chest, they slowly shook their heads as if drugged.
I pulled Holiday away. Forget Sarah. Sarah was gone. In that outfit, she was 99 percent Holiday Breeze even if there was a certain applicable word she didn’t like.
“Sonofabitch,” I said, once we were outside and the pool guys hadn’t come running out to kick my ass and haul the maiden off to a cave in the hills. “Know what we learned in there?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Not a damn thing.”
“Those two guys haven’t seen Allie. I learned that.”
“With you dressed like that, they wouldn’t have recognized her if they’d spent all last month with her on a beach in Acapulco.”
She bit her lower lip and looked away. “Sorry.”
“Well, shit.” I stared at the empty desert to the south. With no moon it was dead dark, a dry, infinite wasteland. We hadn’t gotten anywhere. And we didn’t have enough gas to get out of town, which pretty much put the next big problem front and center.
Holiday-Sarah looked down at her feet, then said, hitting the nail on the head, “Looks like we better get a room, huh?”
“Two rooms.”
“Well, yeah, of course, that’s what I meant.”
We walked over to the motel, found a wooden sign on a post, lit by a baby flood: FOR ROOMS, INQUIRE IN THE CASINO.
“Stay put,” I told her.
“Right.”
“I mean it.”
“Yeah. I got it, Mort.”
“Sonofabitch,” I said. “Okay, c’mon. Just . . .”
“Just what?”
“I don’t know. Cross your arms over your chest or something.”
“What I think you mean—my arms don’t really go across, they pretty much go under. Which”—she smiled—“sort of lifts.”
Sonofabitch.
Back inside at the bar I held Holiday’s arm and tucked her into my side, doing my best to hide her from the rest of the room.
The bartender came over, gave her a quick once-over.
“We need a couple of rooms,” I said. “At the motel.”
“No can do. We’re full up.”
“Full? You got nothing?”
“Not a thing, man. It’s huntin’ season.”
Perfect. I looked around the room, then back at the guy. “What if I came up with an extra fifty bucks?”
“Don’t see how that would put another room on the motel.”
“How about a hundred?”
That slowed him down. He closed one eye and stared at the surface of the bar, doing some sort of intricate calculation. “I got a no-show on a reservation,” he said at last. “Said they’d be in at nine and it’s a little after ten now.”
“Uh-huh.”
“They could still show up, though. Probably will, too.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I got a motor home out back.”
“Uh-huh.” I figured I could keep this up as long as he could.
“So if they show, I could put ’em in that, charge ’em half price, maybe only a third. They’d probably go for that.”
He was getting there. Hundred-dollar tax-free bribe made a guy smarter, more flexible. I could’ve told a relevant IRS joke right then, but decided to keep it to myself. In the punch line, the IRS guy ends up getting a promotion. Damn good joke, but the timing wasn’t right.
He looked around the room, then at me, then at Holiday, then back at me, which was a surprise since I wasn’t the main attraction. “That hundred. It’d have to be cash, man.”
Of course.
I dug out my wallet and came up with sixty-eight dollars. “Got any money?” I asked Holiday.
“In my purse. I left it in the car.”
“Go get it.”
She went. The barkeep’s eyes tracked her all the way to the door. When she went out, he shook himself like a dog. “Man, that there’s one mind-blowing girl. If you don’t mind my sayin’.”
“Nope.”
“Two rooms?” He gave me a look. “You wanted two rooms? What the hell for?”
“She snores.”
“Don’t see that as an insurmountable problem, dude.”
“Mouth open?”
“Still don’t see it.”
“And she leaves crumbs in bed.”
He grinned. “Okay, yeah. Gotta draw the line somewhere.” He held up a fist and we bumped knuckles—pigs of a feather. “Name’s Dave,” he said. “But if you ever get tired of that snoring—”
Holiday came back. She dug out two twenties and gave them to Dave. He pocketed five twenties then ran my credit card, sixty-two dollars for the room, handed Holiday the key. “Unit nineteen, next-to-last room at the far end.”
I walked to the motel. Holiday drove the Audi over, parked in front of the room, got out, and opened the door to nineteen. I took a last look behind me, then followed her in.
Generic seventies room. Cheap print on a wall, peeling walnut veneer desk and chair combo, tiny alcove closet, door in back to the bathroom, small television hung on a wall, heavy drapes, threadbare carpet, forty-watt bulb in a ceiling fixture full of dead bugs.
And one bed, queen-size, with a sag in the middle.
Sonofabitch.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHE SAT ON the bed and bounced, all of her.
Wonderful.
I stuck my head in the bathroom, checked out the washbasin, toilet, shower, turned on a tap, got reasonably hot water in about ten seconds, then came back out.
Holiday had kicked off her heels and unbuttoned her top. It hung
