W.E.B Griffin - The Murderers

“The question is what are we going to do. You understand?”

“OK. We,” Helene said, and tried to smile.

“OK. So you’re not going back to your mother’s. That’s one thing.”

“What is she going to say? What do I say to her?”

“What did you say when you left the house?”

“I told her I had to go somewhere, and that I would call. She didn’t like it at all.”

“OK. So you call her again, and tell her you have to go away for a couple of days, and that you’ll call her.”

“She won’t like it.”

“Honey, for Christ’s sake! They called you there because they knew you were there.”

She nodded a grudging acceptance of that.

“So where do I go?”

“My place,” he suggested without much conviction in his voice.

“I can’t do that, and you know it,” Helene said.

“OK. We’ll talk about that later. Tonight we’ll go to a motel.”

“Not we, Wally. I’m not up to anything like that.”

“OK. We get you in a motel. You go to bed. Get your rest. I’ll think of something.”

“Something what?”

“I don’t know. Something,” Milham said. “One thing at a time.”

She looked at him and squeezed his hand.

“Helene,” Wally said. “Everything’s going to be all right. You’re not alone.” She squeezed his hand. “I love you,” Wally said.

She squeezed his hand again.

He stood up.

“Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“You think maybe they followed me here?”

“Of course not,” he said.

But when they went to his car, he looked up and down the street to make sure there was nothing suspicious, and as they drove to the Sheraton Hotel, on Roosevelt Boulevard and Grant Avenue, he made three or four turns to be absolutely sure no one was following them.

He didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone, but he understood why she didn’t want him to stay with her, and he knew that he couldn’t press her about that; she would think that all he wanted to do was get in bed with her.

He got the key from the desk clerk, who sort of smirked at him, making it clear he thought that what they were up to was a little quickie.

He stood outside the motel door.

“Get the room number off the phone, and I’ll call you in the morning,” Wally said.

“OK,” she said, “wait here.”

She came back with the number written inside a match-book, and handed it to him.

“I’ll call you in the morning,” he said.

“Yes.”

She looked at him, and leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

“Thank you, Wally,” she said.

“Aaaah. I’ll call you in the morning. Just lock the door and get some sleep.”

“Right.”

“Good night, Helene. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Right.”

He had taken a dozen steps toward his car when she called his name.

“Wally?”

“Yeah?”

He walked back to her.

“Wally, I love you, too,” Helene said.

“I know,” he said. “But thank you for saying it.”

“I don’t want you to go,” Helene said.

She took his hand and pulled him into the motel room.

Matt’s door buzzer sounded.

He pushed the button that opened the door and went to the top of the stairs to wait for Amanda.

The doorway was filled with a rent-a-cop, a huge one Matt did not know.

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Payne, but there’s a young lady here says you expect her.”

“Of course,” Matt said, and ran down the stairs.

“Thanks a lot,” Matt said to the rent-a cop.

“Hello,” Amanda said softly, and walked quickly past him and up the stairs. She was wearing a suit with a white blouse. He could smell soap.

He closed the door in the face of the rent-a-cop and went after Amanda, carefully averting his eyes so that she wouldn’t have any reason at all to suspect he was looking up her skirt as she went up the stairs.

She waited for him at the top of the stairs.

“You know what he thought, don’t you?” Amanda asked.

“No. What did he think?”

“He thought I was a call girl.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not being silly. He as much as accused me in the elevator. And why not? Who else would be going to a bachelor apartment at this hour?”

“A friend,” Matt said.

“God, I’m sorry I ever got started on this!”

“I’m not.”

“I meant it, Matt, when I said I’m here as a friend.”

“Absolutely. I know that.”

She met his eyes, and then quickly averted hers.

“Do you know how to warm up a hamburger?” Matt asked. “I put the coffee in a pot, and we can heat that. But the hamburgers are cold.”

“You put the meat patty in a frying pan,” Amanda said. “You have a frying pan?” He nodded. “And-you said french fries?” Matt nodded again. “You put french fries in the oven.”

“I’ve got one of those, too,” Matt said.

“Good,” she said. “Show me.”

“I’m glad you came,” Matt said. “Thank you.”

“Just as long as you understand why I came,” she said. “OK?”

“Absolutely. I told you that.”

She went in the kitchen. He turned the oven on and handed her a frying pan.

When she bent over to put the french fries in the oven, he looked down her blouse and told himself he was really a sonofabitch.

When she stood up, he could tell by the look in her eyes that she knew he had looked down her blouse.

He backed two steps away from her and smiled uneasily.

“If anybody finds out I came here,” Amanda said, “they wouldn’t understand.”

“Nobody will ever find out,” Matt said. He held up three fingers in the Boy Scout salute. “Scout’s Honor.”

“Oh, God,” Amanda groaned.

“Bad joke,” he said. “Sorry.”

“And they would, of course, be right,” Amanda said. “Oh, hell! ‘In for a penny’- oh, God! -‘in for a pound.’”

“Excuse me?”

“You know what my reaction was when I heard Penny was dead?”

“What?”

“Thank God. She was going to suck Matt dry and ruin his life.” She looked intently at his face, then moaned. “Oh, God, I shouldn’t have told you!”

“Isn’t that why you came here, to tell me that? Amanda, that’s really-decent-of you. And it really took balls.”

“Balls?” she parroted, gently mocking.

“It took courage,” he corrected himself. “But you’re not the only one who felt that way. Penny…Penny apparently did not enjoy the universal approval of my friends. Half a dozen people told me exactly, or paraphrased, what you just did.”

“That’s not why I came,” Amanda said. “I wanted to be with you.”

“You’re a good friend,” Matt said.

She met his eyes, then looked away, and then met them again.

“Maybe that, too,” Amanda said softly.

“Jesus, Amanda.”

“Does that come as such a surprise? Am I making as much of a fool of myself as I think I am?”

He reached out and touched her cheek with his fingers.

She moved her head away and looked to the side.

“For God’s sake, don’t feel sorry for me,” she said.

“What I’m doing is wondering what would happen if I tried to put my arms around you.”

She turned her face to look at him. She looked into his eyes for a long moment.

“Why don’t you try it and find out?” Amanda asked.

Matt Payne rolled over in bed, grabbed the telephone on the bedside table, and snarled, “Hello.”

“Good morning,” Amanda Spencer said, a chuckle in her voice. “Somehow I thought you’d be in a better mood than you sound like.”

Still half asleep, Matt turned and looked in confusion at where he expected Amanda to be, lying beside him. He was obviously alone in his bed.