Ed Gorman - Night Kills

"Hi," Brolan said.

The man nodded, continued what he was doing.

"I'm looking for Charles Lane."

"Do you have an appointment?"

"Afraid not. But I'd still like to see him."

The man did Brolan the favour of putting his chapstick away. "Then, I'm afraid you can't see him. He's very strict about appointments." The man raised serious blue eyes to a clock on the wall behind Brolan. "Especially after horn's."

Though Brolan wasn't experienced at this sort of thing, he slid a ten-dollar bill from his pocket and laid it on the desk. "I'd appreciate any help you could give me."

The man smiled. "You must be a bad-movie fan."

"I beg your pardon?"

The man nodded to the ten-dollar bill on the counter. "Bad movies. Somebody's always trying to bribe somebody else."

"You don't want it?"

"I'd rather have my job than ten dollars, my friend."

Feeling foolish, Brolan picked up the ten. "You sure?"

"Positive."

Brolan said, "You're an asshole, you know that?"

"I've been called a lot worse than that. Asshole is almost a compliment."

And with that the man turned his attention to a small portable TV set on a desk behind him. On the screen Pat Buchanan and Michael Kinsley were calling each other names on Crossfire.

Shaking his head, sliding the ten back in his pocket, Brolan slunk back to the parking lot.

He stood in the blast of wind and snow wondering what to do next The desk clerk had given the impression that Charles Lane was definitely somewhere inside. Therefore, instead of standing out there feeling sorry for himself, Brolan should be inside, combing the halls and looking for the guy.

That wasn't too hard to figure out.

So, he went inside and started combing the halls and looking for the guy.

Brolan hated motels. Walking the narrow hallways, no windows in sight anywhere, always gave him the claustrophobic feeling of being in a submarine. At least the carpeting was new and the corridor paint recent, so the place didn't look grungy on top of everything else.

He moved toward the centre of the place, where the three buildings merged, assuming that there he'd find the places where guests congregated. He was right. The first thing he found was the swimming pool. Two small kids swam quickly and smoothly up and down the water lanes, spitting silver water at each other as they moved and laughing about their ingenuity. A sour woman in a lime-green one-piece swimsuit that revealed too much hip and too much cellulite watched the kids with a kind of smouldering, nun-like authority. The next place he found was the workout room, taken up by two wonderful-looking young women in leotards who were being shown the weight machine by a curly-headed guy who couldn't have been half as neat as he obviously held himself to be. Brolan leaned in and said, "Excuse me, I'm looking for Charles Lane."

The curly-headed guy shot Brolan an irritated expression, turned slightly from the ladies, and said, "What?" He happened to glance at his formidable biceps as he said this.

"I said, I'm looking for Charles Lane."

The muscle boy looked at the girls and winked and said, "Good for you."

Then he went back to demonstrating the equipment. Brolan's next stop was the aerobics room. There were maybe twenty women working out. Some of them looked pretty tasty.

The instructor was a very serious-looking redhead in a mauve leotard and a lot of sweat. Parts of the mauve looked almost black. Brolan went on down the hall. Halfway along he saw a man who wore a blue blazer and a white shirt and a red regimental-striped tie and grey slacks and black loafers with big tassles and a lot of TV-minister hair spray. He had a little dealie on his breast pocket that read 'Manager'.

"May I help you, sir?"

He sounded as hearty as a Jaycee trying out a new pitch. He was big, maybe six two, and chunky, and there was a certain operatic quality to his manner.

"I'm looking for Charles Lane."

The manager frowned only slightly. "I probably should refer you to the front desk."

"You mean, you don't know where he is?"

And then the manager gave Charles Lane away. Just the way he glanced down the hall to an office marked Private. Maybe in time Brolan would have figured this out for himself, but the manager had done him the favour of confirming the obvious suspicion.

"I think he's gone home, sir." He made a big deal of thinking hard for a moment-sort of like an eighth-grader in a play about Einstein contemplating nuclear energy-and then said, "Yes, now that I think about it, I'm sure I saw him pulling out of the lot about twenty minutes ago."

"Darn," Brolan said. "I'll just have to try again tomorrow."

"Is there a name you'd like to leave, sir?"

"No. I'll just try him again tomorrow."

"Well, see you, then."

"Thanks," Brolan said, waving goodbye.

He went back down the corridor, glimpsing the babes in aerobics, sneering at muscle boy, who was still demonstrating the weights to the two helpless damsels, and then sucking up the odours of chlorine as he passed the swimming pool.

The manager was not around. The door marked Private stood unguarded.

Brolan put his hand on the doorknob. He was surprised to find it unlocked.

He turned the knob and pushed inside.

The office was spacious, done in earth tones with mahogany wainscoting and mahogany furnishings. A long row of filing cabinets stood on one wall; a smaller desk with a phone and adding machine was pushed against the other. The overall effect was of a serious rather than simply decorative place.

One other thing: The office was empty.

This confused Brolan. The way the manager had looked nervously at the door, Brolan had expected to find Charles Lane in there.

A few seconds later a noise came from inside the closet door at the rear of the office. At first Brolan thought it might be a furnace kicking on. But then the faint but unmistakable noise came again. Inside the closet something was swaying against the wall.

Brolan walked across the office to the back. He leaned carefully to the door and listened.

He heard somebody saying, "Go, babe. Give it to her, babe."

What the hell was going on here?

Brolan pulled the door open and found out for himself.

Inside the small closet a videotape camera had been set up flush against a piece of one-way glass. On the other side of the glass, an old man was humping a frail young girl who was probably not much older than twelve.

Brolan recognized the man immediately. Say hello to Harold McAlester, the client with the bald head given to leather jumpsuits, the man Brolan had seen earlier that morning in the office with Foster. The motel room was a mess of whiskey bottles and food trays.

The man operating the camera-the man urging McAlester on-turned, abruptly aware of Brolan's presence, and it was just then that Brolan hit him hard enough on the side of the face to draw blood from his nose. The man slammed against the wall, and the camera fell in a noisy heap as the man started to stumble.

If McAlester, on the other side of the glass, heard anything, he didn't let it deter him.

He turned the little girl over on her stomach so he could back-door her. Even in a glimpse a naked McAlester was an obscene sight, white chest hair and sagging little titties. The little girl looked virginal as an eight-year-old on First Communion Sunday. Brolan wanted to go in there and kick in McAlester's face.

But right then Charles Decker Lane was closer, so Brolan proceeded to kick in his face.

It took Foster an hour to find Greg Wagner's place. Not that it was hidden or anything, just that the roads were getting that bad.

He parked across the street and sat there for a time thinking about winter, how it howled, how it raged, how it made almost anything going on seem insignificant. You could lose yourself in winter and its furies, and that's just what he did for a time. Shut off the engine. Listened to the trees above creaking with ice. Listened to wind rattle shutters. Watched a city snowplough moving down the street like a giant yellow electric monster. Thought of his mother and father. His father, especially. Sometimes he imagined himself reaching out across die black gorge separating life from death. Touching his father's hand. Comforting his father. As his father had comforted him. Somewhere his mother was still alive. He hadn't talked to her in fifteen years and didn't plan to; he had not even gone to her when that heart condition showed up, and she pleaded with him to come to Rochester and see her there in the hospital. No fucking way, bitch. Why don't you count on your football player now? The man who'd been such a cutie and such a celebrity and such a hunk was now a lard-ass alcoholic who spent his time talking about what pussies the new generation of ballplayers were. Yeah. Hope you're enjoying yourself, Mom. Nobody deserves it more than you.