Richard Ford - Independence Day

But when I wheel into the little half-moon lot (it’s the Sea Breeze, though no sea’s near enough to offer breezes), there’s a commotion in progress. Motel guests are out of their rooms in bathrobes, slippers and tee-shirts. The state police are abundantly present — more blue flashers turning — while a big white-and-orange ambulance van, its strobes popping and its back door open, appears ready to receive a passenger. The whole lot has the backlit, half-speed unreality of a movie set (not what I’d hoped for) and I’m tempted just to drive on, though again that would mean conking out on the car seat and hoping no one kills me.

All the police activity is going on at one end of the lot, in front of the last unit in line; so I park near the other end, beyond the office, where lights are on and a customer counter is visible through the window. If I can be assigned a room away from the action, I may still get one-third night’s measure of sleep.

Inside the office the air-conditioning’s cranked up high, and a powerful cooking smell from a rear apartment beyond a red drapery makes the air dense and stinging. The clerk is a slender, dull-looking subcontinental whose eyes flicker up at me from a desk behind the counter. He’s talking on the phone at a blazing speed and in a language I recognize as not my own. Without pausing, he fingers a little registration card off a stack he has, slides it up onto the glass countertop, where a pen’s attached to a little chain. Several hand-lettered and unequivocal instructions have been pressed under the glass, relating to one’s use of one’s room: no pets, no calls charged, no cooking, no hourly rates, no extra guests, no operation of a business (none of these is currently in my plans).

The clerk, who has on a regulation dirty-collared, short-sleeved white shirt and black slacks, goes right on talking, even becoming at one point agitated and loudly vociferous while I finish filling out the guest card and slide it across with my Visa. At this instant he simply puts the receiver down, clears his throat, stands and starts scribbling on the card with his own ballpoint. My needs are apparently enough like other guests’ that we can skip pleasantries.

“So what’s happened down at the other end?” I say, hoping I’ll hear everything’s all over and wasn’t any great shakes to begin with. Possibly an on-site demo of police practices for the benefit of the Ridgefield town fathers.

“Don’t worry,” the clerk says in a fussy voice guaranteed to make anyone worry. “Everything is fine now.”

He whips my Visa through the credit-check box, glances at me, doesn’t smile, just takes a weary breath and waits for the green numbers to certify I’m a fair risk for $52.80.

“What happened, though?” I feign absolute no-worry.

He sighs. “It’s just best to stay away.” He’s used to answering questions only about room rates and checkout times. He has a long, slender neck that would look much better on a woman, and wisps of little mannish mustache hairs that shadow the corners of his mouth. He does not inspire wide trust.

“Just curious,” I say. “I wasn’t planning on wandering down there.” I look back through the window, where the police and ambulance lights are still buffeting the dark. Several gawker cars have stopped on Route 7, their drivers’ faces lit by the flashes. Two Connecticut state troopers in wide Stetsons are conferring beside their cruiser, arms folded, their stiff, tight-fitting uniforms making them seem brawny and stern though unquestionably even-handed.

“Some people maybe got robbed down there,” the clerk says, pushing a Visa receipt out for my Frank Bascombe. At this moment a short, round-waisted thick-haired woman in a red-and-black sari and a badgered expression appears at the doorway drapery. She buzzes something to the clerk, then vanishes. For some reason I sense she’s been talking via extension to whomever he was talking to, and he’s now required again — possibly to catch hell from relatives in Karachi about whatever’s happening outside.

“How’d it happen?” I say, putting my name on the dotted line.

“We don’t know.” He shakes his head, comparing signatures, then pulling the delicate leaves off the receipt, having never even acknowledged the woman who came and left. She, I’m sure, is the person responsible for the venomous cooking smell. “They check in. In a little while some big agitation in there. I don’t see what happened.”

“Anybody get hurt?” I stare at my Visa receipt in his hand, wishing I hadn’t signed it.

“Maybe. I don’t know.” He hands me my card, receipt and a key. “Get the key deposit when you check out. Ten o’clock is the time.”

“Swell,” I say, and smile hopelessly, thinking of heading to Danbury.

“It’s on the other end, okay?” he says, pointing toward the hoped-for wing, smiling perfunctorily and showing his straight little teeth. He has to be freezing in his short sleeves, though right away he returns to the phone and begins muttering in his tangly tongue, his voice going to a hush in case I might know a word or two of Urdu and spill some important beans.

Back out on the lot, night air feels even more electrified and stoked. Other motel guests have started to drift back, but police radios are crackling, the bugged-up red MOTEL sign hums and an even denser feeling of subsonic noises vibrates off the cruisers and the ambulance and the cars stopped along the highway. Somewhere close by a skunk has been aroused, its hot scent swarming out of the trees beyond the lights. I think of Paul, not so far from here now, and will him to be in bed asleep, as I should be.

The last door in the line of motel doors has been opened now, and harsh lights are on inside, with shadows passing quickly. Several policemen, local Joes, are standing around a two-tone blue Chevy Suburban parked directly in front of the room, all its five doors open, its interior lights on. A Boston Whaler is in tow behind the Suburban and is filled with recreation gear — a bicycle, water skis, some strapped-together lawn furniture, scuba tanks and a wooden doghouse. The local cops are shining flashlights around inside. A big leering Bugs has been stuck to a back side window with suction cups.

“Y’ain’t safe no mo’ nowhere,” a man’s thick voice says, and actually makes me jump. I look around fast and find an immense, heavy-breathing Negro standing behind me wearing a green Mayflower moving van uniform. He’s holding a black attaché case under his arm, and above his breast pocket, under a red Mayflower , the word Tanks is stitched within a yellow oval. He’s watching what I’m watching.

We’re right behind my parked Crown Victoria, and the instant I see him I also notice his Mayflower van parked across Route 7 in the turnout for a seasonal produce stand, closed at this hour.

“What’s going on down there?” I say.

“Kids broke on into some people’s room owns that Suburban, and robbed ’em. Then they killed the guy. They got ’em both over there”—he points—“in that po-lice car. Somebody oughta just go over there and pop ’em both in the melon and be done with it.” Mr. Tanks (first name, last, nickname?) breathes in again momentously. He has a lineman’s wide smudge-pot face, a huge big-nostril nose and all but invisible deep-set eyes. His uniform includes ludicrous green walking shorts that barely manage around his butt and thighs, and black nylon knee socks that show off his beefsteak calves. He is a head shorter than me, but it’s no chore to feature him bear-hugging an armoire or a new Amana down several flights of stairs.

The two troopers, I determine, are standing guard at their car, which is stopped in the precise middle of the lot with its headlights still on. Through the back window I can make out in the darkness first one white face and then a second one — boys’ faces, tilted forward to indicate both are handcuffed. Neither is talking, and both seem to be watching the troopers. The boy I can see more clearly seems to smile in reply to Mr. Tanks’s having pointed him out.