Reed Coleman - Hose monkey

“Is it? I’m sorry.”

“And look at this place. It’s a mess.”

“I know,” Bob confessed. “It’s not only the emotional things you lose when your wife dies.”

“At least get a cleaning lady in once a week.”

“Okay, George.”

“So like I was saying before you tried to poison me, the lab’s going to do that second set of tests on all the blood samples from the Reyes crime scene. You’re sure the Strohmeyer kid did him, right?”

Bob hesitated. “Well, no. I think maybe he did. But I’m not sure. Last night before he… In his state of mind he might’ve done anything that would have gotten Cathy’s attention.”

“Cathy?”

“Forget it.”

George pulled his attache case onto the table, opened it up, removed a manilla folder.

“Here are those police reports you wanted.”

“What reports?”

“The Highway Patrol logs for the L.I.E. from-”

“Oh, right. Sorry. Thanks, little brother.”

“That’s it from me, though, bro. Go back to being retired before you get something more vital shot off than the bottom eighth inch of your fucking earlobe.”

“Maybe I’ll take up painting.”

“Very funny. Remember how well that worked out for Van Gogh.” George stood, leaned over, and kissed his brother on top of the head. “Go find somebody to love.”

It wasn’t a half-bad idea, Bob thought. Besides, he’d never been much of an artist. He went to the phone and tried Serpe’s numbers again.

Maria parked her cleaning wagon directly between Rooms 217 and 218. She checked over both shoulders one last time to make certain neither the desk clerk nor the motel manager was around. She slid her passkey into the lock, gave it a twist, and shuttled Marla and Joe inside. Maria held up her right hand to indicate they had five minutes. Joe nodded his head that he understood. Maria closed the door behind her. They waited. They heard her knock on 218. No answer. They listened to her step inside and close the door behind her.

Joe turned to Marla. “Get on the bed.”

“What?”

“Come on, I need to see the angle so I can figure out where the camera would be.”

Joe straddled Marla as Tatiyana had straddled blondie and he looked back over his left shoulder. It didn’t take more than thirty seconds to find where the camera had been. There was a television in the upper right hand corner of the room held in place by a metal bracket. Just beneath the bracket was a fresh patch of joint compound about three inches in diameter. The camera had been removed. This wasn’t a good sign. People were covering their tracks.

Truthfully, Joe had very little to go on besides the DVD, a wall patch, and his suspicions. Neither the wall patch nor the DVD proved a thing by themselves. With Frank still unconscious, Joe couldn’t even prove blackmail. As things stood now, the only thing Joe had viable proof of was that Frank had cheated on Tina with at least two women and that he might even have enjoyed having it filmed.

“Let’s go,” he said to Marla.

Joe put his hand on the door paddle, but he heard the sound of clickety-clackety heels coming their way.

“It’s the desk clerk,” Marla whispered, peering through a slit in the brown and orange drapes.

Joe turned to Marla, his index finger across his lips.

The heels stopped right outside their door. “Vere are you, you fat bitch? Maria, vena ca! ” She pounded on the door of 217. Stopped. Pounded again. Stopped. She stepped to the right, pounded on the door of 218. “Maria! Maria!”

Joe looked over at Marla, saw her shaking. Caught her eye and mouthed, “We will be okay.” She smiled. Her smile convinced no one, least of all herself.

Maria wasn’t answering the door at 218. Now they heard the jingle of keys and the heels moving back to their door. A key slid in the lock, turned, the paddle pushed down…

“Lo siento, lo siento, Ilana,” Maria was breathless in her apology and began reeling off rapid fire Spanish.

Joe caught the word bano, Spanish for bathroom, several times.

Though it was nearly impossible to understand Ilana’s perversion of Russian and Spanish, it was pretty obvious she wasn’t pleased with Maria.

Joe gave Marla the thumbs up and waved his palms at her to stay calm. The wheels of the cleaning cart squealed as Maria pushed it away. Ilana’s heels smacked the pavement, moving off in the opposite direction.

Letting another minute pass, they stepped out into what was turning into a sunny, if chilly, March morning. Neither the chambermaid nor the desk clerk were anywhere in sight. They walked back to their original room quickly, but not at a run. Marla was still shaking when they closed the door behind them.

Detective Jones opened his mouth to speak, but his partner, Detective O’Brien, put up his palms, then pointed straight up at the underbelly of the United 747 passing over head. They had quickly grown weary of screaming above the noise and then having to repeat themselves anyway once the jets passed.

“I wanna show you something,” Jones said, his hair blowing in the jets backwash. “Over here.”

They ducked under the tape back to where the dead girl’s body waited to be bagged.

“What, you notice something?” O’Brien asked.

“Yeah.” They knelt down over the corpse. “Let’s roll her over. Ready? One. Two. Three. See that tattoo?”

“Yeah, and so.”

“She was probably Russian. Maybe a pro or at least into S amp;M.”

“Who are you, Sherlock fuckin’ Holmes?”

“The tattoo means slave in Russian.”

“And a schmuck from the Bronx knows this how?”

“Spent four years in the bag in the Six-One Precinct.”

“Brighton Beach. Russia in Brooklyn.”

“Correct. Now let’s get outta here. These jets are giving me a fucking headache.”

As they rode back to Marla’s apartment, Joe tried waiting her out. Silent and ashen, she seemed completely spooked by what had gone on back at the Blue Fountain. Serpe could have kicked himself. He had let the job ruin his marriage. Now his single-mindedness about Frank and Cain had let him get someone involved in things she had no business being mixed up in. He resolved not to let her get in any deeper and was about to say so.

“How did you do it, Joe? All those years on the street, how could you not be scared?”

“Only idiots and the dead aren’t scared. I was scared all the time. The trick is not showing it. If the trick was not being scared, no one would ever step outside their house.”

“How do you learn not to act frightened?”

“You just do, but you don’t have to worry about it. You’re out of it now,” he said.

“Where are we going, Joe? My apartment’s that way.”

“We’re going to rent a car. You need to have your life back.”

“I don’t want it back, not the way it used to be.”

“Take it back, just for a few days. For me.”

Three weeks ago it took Bob Healy several minutes to recognize Joe Serpe. Now all he could do was worry about the guy. He couldn’t seem to get a hold of him and couldn’t believe Joe hadn’t somehow heard about last night. Healy resolved to try both of Serpe’s numbers one last time and to keep himself occupied until he finally heard back from the man. He looked around and decided George was right about a lot of things. The house was a complete mess. Healy picked up the police report logs and began thumbing through them.

He didn’t like having Marla use her credit card to rent the car for him, but he had little choice. Plastic is a luxury men with bad credit histories can’t afford. The divorce and the legal fees from his troubles had ruined Joe financially. He was better now, having been named Vinny’s sole beneficiary and working a job that paid him a nice chunk of change in cash, but until Marla he hadn’t felt the need to reestablish himself.