MODERATE RATES

—and the marquee below gave some particulars:

Room Phones

Free Television

Air Conditioning

The rest had been filled in on a St. Louis job of mine just after the war when I stopped by the Coral Court office looking for a client’s wandering wife. I found her in what I was told then was one of the new “Mae West” bungalows, so-called because of their rounded bays. I’d got a real eyeful, not just of my rich old client’s pretty young wife, but the double life of the Coral Court.

That it was the ultimate No-Tell Motel with hourly as well as nightly rates—the hourly (minimum four hours) were ostensibly to allow truckers to come in off Route 66 for a few hours of Z’s—did not stop families from making annual trips or honeymooners making legal whoopee. Some World War II newlywed brides, who never saw their husbands again, would remember their night at Coral Court forever.

Despite my previous visit, I had never stayed here. I pulled up at the office near the highway, joining Hagan, who was already out of his cab.

Hagan sent me in and I paid a reasonable $5.50, single occupancy, for the room reserved next to the one Steve Strand had booked earlier today as Mr. and Mrs. Robert White. The desk clerk was an almost good-looking red-lipstick brunette about forty in pink angora, her sultry friendliness suggesting a secondary business transaction was a possibility.

“Beds are comfy,” she said with a Groucho lift of the eyebrows. “We’re strictly Beautyrest mattresses at the Coral Court.”

“Good to know,” I said, and took my fifty cents in change.

That seemed to disappoint her a little. Still, there was promise or maybe hope in her voice as she said, “50-A’s next to 49-A—upper floor in the middle one of the new buildings.”

These proved to be a trio at the rear of the property, more conventional two-stories that hadn’t been here on my previous stop, but the same brick-and-brown-trim minus the bungalows’ rounded curves—two rooms above, two below. Paired garages were on the first floor in front with two more in back, where Hagan stowed his cab in Strand’s. I slid the Caddy into 50-A’s adjacent garage. You accessed the upper floor by an outer staircase snugged along the building’s side and leading to a little hallway off of which were, as promised, 50-A and 49-A.

I stowed my overnight bag in my room, which had none of the moderne motel’s exterior style but did maintain yellow walls and brown trim with serviceable modern furniture and a double bed, presumably with the promised Beautyrest. And that bed looked good to me. It had been a long day with a long drive, and of course yesterday with that ransom drop had taken its toll.

Nathan Heller was not as young as he used to be.

In a personality-free hallway, Hagan—some clothes draped over his arm and a bottle of I.W. Harper in one hand—knocked at 49-A.