I worked on the meat loaf and the potatoes and the peas and a growing depression. There were questions, and the questions bothered me, but I hadn’t been hired to answer questions or even to get Karen Shipley to admit that she was Karen Shipley. I had been hired to find her whereabouts and I had done that. The rest was up to Peter Alan Nelsen. So what if Karen Shipley didn’t like it, and so what if I didn’t like it. They don’t pay me to like it.

I ordered two more of the Rolling Rock to bring back to my room. A couple more Rock and I’d probably like it just fine.

Out in the parking lot the guy in the string tie met a white Thunderbird and said something to the driver. They talked for a minute, then the guy in the string tie got in on the passenger’s side and the Thunderbird crept away around the side of the motel.

The waitress brought the beer in a little brown paper bag and the check and a single peppermint. I signed for the check and went out through the lobby. My room was on the ground floor, off the parking lot on the west side of the motel, halfway down a two-story row of rooms and just past a little alcove with an ice machine and a Pepsi machine and a stair leading up to the second floor. The Taurus was parked outside my room and a green Polara station wagon was parked closer up on the street side of the lot. A Peterbilt eighteen-wheeler took up most of the far end of the parking lot, looking like a supertanker in dry dock. No white Thunderbird.

When I got to the stairwell, the guy in the string tie and another guy stepped out. Guess they put the Thunderbird on the other side.

The guy with the string tie said, “Hey, Joey, you think this is the guy?”

Joey was shorter and wider than me with a round cannonball head and caviar zits and a thick fleshy body that made him look sort of like an overgrown Pillsbury dough boy. He was wearing a blue Navy pea coat open over two layers of flannel shirts. The shirttails hung out. He said, “Yeah, this is him. Looks like a fuck from out of town who don’t belong around here. Like he needs a little help to find his way home.” He was maybe twenty-six, but he looked younger. He also looked mean.

The guy with the string tie nodded and made a sort of snickering sound. The snickering sound was a nose whistle. “Fuckin’ A. Let’s get him on his way.”