Again, the land went deathly quiet. Then that ethereal sound of western music got me moving quietly around the back of the diner, alert for further signs of activity.
As I passed the shed, the music got louder, coming from the vicinity of the house trailer.
I walked closer, not knowing what to expect. If anyone asked, it was a nice night and I was out for a stroll. Weak, yellow light came from the trailer’s windows. I was circling around the far side of the diner when a woman’s low voice said, “Whatcha doin’?”
“Walking,” I said. I couldn’t see her. I headed toward the sound of her voice.
“Pretty dark out for walkin’.” Sounded young, a lot younger than the fiftysomething lady in the diner who’d taken our money for the room and very likely made the Shanna videos.
“Uh-huh. Stars are bright though.”
“Always are, out here. Most nights, anyways.”
Finally I saw her, a dark shape in what might’ve been a lawn chair beside the trailer. The end of a cigarette flared as she took a drag, then it was just a dim red-orange glow again, like a firefly about out of gas.
“You live here?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.” Silence. Then, “You in the motel?”
“Room One,” I said.
“Shower head in there drippin’ all the time.”
“That’s the one.”
Five seconds of quiet, then, “Anyways, hi. I’m Melanie. Not many folks come out back here, ’specially in the dark like this.”
“Mort,” I said.
“What’s a mort?”
“That’s my name.”
“Funny name. Sounds like, I dunno, some kind of a bug.”
“Blame my mother.”
She laughed. “I do the rooms. Cleanin’. In the morning if the people’re gone. Then I waitress all day till six or seven. Later if we got enough business. That don’t happen often, though.”
“You work a lot.”
“Not so much. Four rooms is all. Half the time nobody rents one, even in summer. Diner is empty a lot, too.”
She wanted to talk. Good. “I’ve heard there’s a helicopter that comes and goes out there in the desert.” I was at the edge of a yellow glow emanating from a window. I pointed out behind the diner.
“Yeah, it does.”
“Know whose it is?”
“Nope. Just some tall skinny guy’s.”
“I think a girl flew out with him a while back. Not long ago. Maybe a week or two.”
“Yeah, I remember that. Girl was in the diner for about an hour, had an ice tea, then off she goes with that guy.”
“Were you her waitress?”
“Nope. Arlene tole me to take a break, said she’d handle it.”
“So, the guy left with the girl, then he flew her back the next morning.”
Melanie was quiet for a moment, then: “I don’t think so.”
“No?”
“Uh-uh. I mean, she come back all right, but in a car. One of those SV whatchamacallits.”
“SUV?”
“Yeah, that. It was a big one. Black.”
“She didn’t fly back?”
“Nope. Some guy at the motel left early. I was doin’ the room when that girl come back in what you called it, that SVW? Big one—almost like new.”
“Tall girl? Blond?”
“Yep. Great big titties, too, like holy Jesus big.”
Nothing identified Shanna like her breasts.
“Pink streak in her hair?” I said.
“Uh-huh. You know ’er?”
“I’ve seen her around. She been in here before?”
“Don’t think so. I’m here ’bout always. My man’s the cook. Kirby. He’s twenty-seven. I’ll be twenty-four in August.”
“Hey, if I don’t see you in August, happy birthday.”
“Yeah, right. Twenty-four. I’ll be freakin’ old.”
Which made me what? Prehistoric?
“Anyway,” Melanie said, “that helicopter guy come back later that afternoon. He flew in, walked over from that building out there, kinda hunched over like he was hurting, and took off in that black car, the one the girl left. She was already gone, drove off in a car she left overnight outside the diner.”
“You remember all that?”
She shrugged. “Ain’t much goin’ on here. I pay attention to stuff. Like in that shed back of the diner there’s a safe Arlene bought like a week ago on Craigslist, except she didn’t get the combination so she can’t open it. Not like her to be dumb like that, not get the combination to open it for chrissake. So then this guy had to come out all the way from Henderson to look at it, try to bust it open or something. It still ain’t open yet. He’s gonna try again in a couple days. Kirby tole me about it since he works in the kitchen an’ the storeroom in back with the shelves and the freezers. Heard ’em talking in a back room, Arlene an’ her kid, Buddie.”
“Buddie. Guy with a beard? Big guy?”
“Like holy Jesus big, yeah.”
A safe. I would have to think about that.
“Helicopter guy looked like he was hurting, huh?” I said.
“Pretty much. Looked like he got kicked in the balls. Hard, too. Like you see in the movies, guy gets kicked. Except in real life they don’t get up so fast an’ keep on fightin’.”
“Which way’d he go when he drove away?”
She pointed. “That way. Toward Vegas. Came back like four hours later, late afternoon. Looked like he was feeling better. He flew off in that chopper.” She took another drag and blew out a stream of smoke that hung almost motionless in the air. “Christ, I hope I don’t get knocked up an’ have a kid to keep track of, too. That’d be a bitch and a half, everything else I gotta do.”
So, Jo-X had flown back in, hunched over. Maybe kicked in the nuts. Sounded like his luck with Shanna was quite a bit worse than she’d told us. That morning she’d returned in an SUV, not in his helicopter like she said. Another lie.
And the woman who ran the place bought a safe without the combination. If I bought a safe, Craigslist or new, I’d be sure I could open it before I took delivery. I looped around the front of the diner and went back to the motel. In the room, Lucy was in a towel too small to wrap and tuck. She held it pinched at her waist as she glared at me.
