Or was Barney keeping something from Hoffa?

* * *

I swung the Cadillac up the modest incline between the two welcoming low-slung fieldstone entrance walls in the blush of the pink-and-red neon sign. A buzzing secondary neon promised a VACANCY in white. About two-thirds of a full moon cast its ivory tinge onto the gleaming beige and brown ceramic tiles of the rounded units of the Coral Court, their occasional glass-brick windows glowing—not every couple had gotten round to turning off the lights or else were fine following their desires with the lights on.

Returning to the scene of the crime—and I had to stay somewhere, didn’t I?—made a certain kind of perverse sense. Special Agent Grapp had told me Sandy O’Day resided here and of course so did owner/manager Jack Carr, who I’d yet to meet.

But I’d read Grapp’s notes. Carr had done a stretch at Leavenworth for armed robbery a decade prior to opening his motel and was rumored to have pushed his first wife down the stairs to her death—that should qualify him for the $300,000 blood-money sweepstakes. And Sandy, now a madam for call girls at Carr’s motel, seemed an acquaintance well worth renewing.

The office was just inside those fieldstone walls, facing Watson Road, a building in the same Streamline Moderne style as the double units but twice their size, as it included the owner’s living quarters. I pulled in front, got out and went up a few steps into a spacious pink-walled lobby, large enough to accommodate a long ebony registration desk, a desk sign at left saying

BY THE WEEK

BY THE DAY

and another at right announcing

HOURLY RATES—

WELCOME TRUCKERS

and maybe implying something that rhymed with “truckers.”

The walls were decorated with framed photos of attractions in the St. Louis area, including the Coral Court itself, and both side walls had elaborate wooden racks of tourist brochures. Modern furnishings, appropriate to the place’s styling, were here and there, with a corner coffee station and table and chairs, in case a rush on check-ins was on.

The rush was not on.

A tall slender man in a white short-sleeve shirt and bolo tie stood behind the desk at left; his hooded eyes were a gun-metal blue with heavy black circles, his black hair going white—pushing sixty, he had a weather-beaten handsomeness like the first mate on a ship considering mutiny.

“Welcome to the Coral Court.” The voice was a mellow baritone with a sandpaper edge. His smile was slight but it hung around.

I nodded, flicked a smile. “Glad to be here.”

We went through the check-in ritual—it was a reasonable $8.50 a night and $39.50 for a week, and I took the latter. I signed my name in the register, but he said, “Thank you, Mr. Heller,” without glancing at it.

“How is it you know me?” I said. “I’ve never been here before.”

“Sure you have,” he said.

That damn almost-smile kept at it.

“Okay,” I admitted. We were skipping a round or two in the game. “Only you weren’t working the desk when I checked in, five years ago.”