“So you said.”

“How can I live with this?”

To cool things down, I said, “You didn’t mean for it to happen. You just…set the stage. It went sour because you didn’t size up that psycho Hall right.”

He raised the gun, pressed the barrel to his head and his finger was on the trigger when I lurched across the desk and yanked his hand away from his head and it went off between his shoulder and his chest. Not near enough to his heart to matter. I already knew he would live. So did he. Maybe that’s why he skipped yelling in pain as the blood bubbled and went straight to crying.

There was no getting away from tears on this fucking thing.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Jack Carr, trimming hedges along the curved honey-color exterior of the Coral Court office, saw me coming and put his clippers down. In a sweat-stained t-shirt and shabby jeans, he might have been the motel’s gardener at that, or maybe a drifter in a James M. Cain novel planning to help some bimbo kill her husband.

“Checking out?” he asked, not unpleasantly.

“As requested,” I reminded him.

“I’ll get you myself,” he said. “Desk girl’s on her break.”

I followed him in and he got behind the counter, that almost smile still hanging around and not turning into anything. The black-circled eyes might have indicated he’d had a rough night too, but I knew they were nothing new.

“Normally I don’t do a refund,” he said, “when somebody who pays weekly rate leaves after only a few days. But seeing as I asked you to go, you have fourteen dollars coming.”

Considering that fair, I signed the receipt he gave me, and slipped the cash in my billfold.

“Seen the papers?” he asked, leaning on the counter, looking like a friendly emissary of the undead. “Catch the TV news maybe?”

“No. I slept right through to my wake-up call.”

That had been eleven A.M. It was noon now—checkout time on the dot.

“Very lively day yesterday,” he commented. “Dispatch gives the O’Day shooting a lot of play. Some other juicy stuff didn’t make it in before deadline, but the TV had it. Seems Joe Costello shot himself cleaning his gun at home—in his rec room. He’ll live.”

“How about an Ace Cab employee who didn’t?”

“Nothing that made the TV news. Afternoon paper may have it. Oh, there’s a message for you.” He went and got it from the Red Room’s slot on the wall of key cubbyholes.

I opened the folded note “If you’re still around, call me,” then the number and the caller: “Barney.”

“Hope you had a pleasant stay,” Carr said.

“Call it memorable,” I said.

But as I pulled out onto Watson Road, AKA Route 66, I didn’t bother giving the array of yellow-glazed and glass-brick bungalows, shining in the sun, a last look. I remembered what happened to Lot’s wife.

* * *

Barney and I arranged by phone to have an early supper at Pelican’s, the massive gothic three-story, turreted red-brick building at South Grand and Shenandoah. Just what I needed—another castle. At least this one wasn’t modernistic with a moat.