Thomas Perry - Blood Money

Jane reached the street where the hotel entrance was, but she didn’t cross at the intersection. Instead, she turned and walked up the sidewalk across from the hotel. When she had achieved the proper angle, she could see the reflection of the chandelier on the shiny floor of the brightly lit lobby. When she had gone thirty paces farther, she knew that she would be able to see the parking lot.

She knew that it was unlikely that she would see that Rita and Bernie had taken the Explorer and run, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth checking. The Explorer was still there, exactly where she had parked it when they’d arrived. She half-turned to go back to the intersection and cross the street, but something made her stop.

There was a van in the guest parking area. It was nearly midnight, a bit late for deliveries, and this wasn’t a van that somebody used as a car, because the back door had printing that said, “How am I driving? Call (800) 555-1100.” She kept walking on, trying to achieve the proper angle to read the name of the company on the side. When she had reached the right spot, she could see the name: Mayfair Products. She knew she might be letting weeks of extreme caution overrule her sense of proportion, but she decided to satisfy herself.

Jane kept walking until she found a pay telephone on the front of a discount drugstore a block away. She pulled from her purse the little folder the clerk had handed her at check-in to hold the key cards, read the telephone number, and dialed. When the operator answered, she said, “Room 224, please.”

The telephone rang three times before she heard a click and the sound of breathing. She didn’t wait for Bernie to speak. “Bernie? It’s me.”

His voice was hoarse from sleep. “What? Where are you?”

“I’m across the street and down one block at a pay telephone. I was on my way in, but I saw something that worried me. Has anything gone wrong since I left?”

“I haven’t seen anything. We haven’t left the place. The only time either of us has been out of the room was when Rita went down to eat dinner. She said there was nobody but old codgers. What did you see?”

“There’s a delivery van in the parking lot. It might be fine, but it’s parked in kind of an odd place—not near a loading zone, but close to the side door where the first-floor rooms are. It says ‘Mayfair Products’ on it. I remembered Trafalgar Flowers, and—”

“Trafalgar Square Flowers, Parliament Park grocery stores, Belgravia Broadcasting.”

“Then it is Delfina?”

“I don’t keep track of everything the bastard owns, but do you want to bet it’s just some schmuck who misses London?”

“No,” said Jane. “Wake Rita up. If they know we’re here, then they know the Explorer’s ours. I’ve got the rental car parked on a street parallel to the front of the hotel, one block over. Do you remember what it looks like?”

“Remembering things isn’t my problem. White Chevy, license number—”

“Enough,” she interrupted. “I’ll leave the keys on the ground behind the right front tire. You and Rita come down the stairwell, then out the door by the swimming pool. Go through the garden by the restaurant, and out to the street on that side. Go one block up before you cut over to the street where the car is.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to watch the van and the parking lot and the front entrance to see if they go after you. If they don’t, I’ll be at the car before you are. If they do, I’ll meet you somewhere.”

“Where?”

Jane said, “I don’t know … Evansville, Indiana. I’ll be in front of the police station at nine o’clock tomorrow night.” She didn’t wait for him to raise an objection. “Wake her now,” she said, and hung up.

Jane turned away from the hotel and walked another block before she doubled back to the street where she had left the car. She walked briskly to it, bent to slip the keys beside the curb and under the right front tire, and kept going. There was nobody walking on the street, so she was confident that her move had not been seen. The keys would not be picked up by the headlights of a passing car, and the next pedestrian’s view would be blocked by the curb.

Jane turned the corner and kept walking until she was directly across from the hotel again. She stepped into the dark space between a small bookstore and a closed restaurant and stared at the van. She couldn’t see any heads in the windows, so she turned her attention to the other cars in the lot. There were definitely more of them tonight than there had been last night. She was sure that the hotel kitchen closed at ten, and the small bar off the lobby would not have seated more than a dozen people comfortably.

Then Jane saw the van move. It was a small, subtle motion, just a shifting of weight as someone in the back moved from one spot to another, but she was sure. Then she saw another movement in the shadows near the other end of the parking lot. A man stepped to the back of a parked car and opened the trunk. The light in the trunk didn’t go on. It looked like a new car, but the light didn’t work. The man took something out and stepped back into the darkness again.

Jane waited, and time seemed to stop. If Bernie and Rita could only slip out of the building without being seen, she could get them out of here. She stared along the front of the hotel, past the facade to the old-fashioned veranda outside the restaurant. She could see no sign of them. She let her eyes go unfocused and stared toward the garden, waiting for the shapes of Bernie and Rita to stand out from the dim tangle of bushes and twining vines to reassure her.

There was movement in the parking lot. Now there were three men standing near the van. Car doors opened across the lot, and three more men stepped out into the light. They seemed to be looking away from the hotel, in the direction of the big drugstore where Jane had made her telephone call. One of the men lifted his hand to his face, and she could see that there was something in it—a black rectangle. He was talking into a radio as he stared up the street.

A moment later, from that direction, she saw a vehicle appear. It was a big Suburban, and it was moving quickly up the street. It turned into the lot, paused for a second beside the group of men, then swung away and parked near the edge of the lot. There was some more discussion between the man with the radio and someone in the Suburban.

Jane looked anxiously toward the other end of the building. What was taking so long? Where were they? In a moment she detected a moving shadow, then another. They were walking along the outside of the building beside the restaurant.

Jane looked back at the parking lot. The man with the radio in his hand waved his right arm. Three men began to walk toward the side entrance to the hotel, near the Mayfair van. Jane sucked in a breath. In a couple of minutes, they would know the rooms were empty.

She looked at the far end of the building. Rita and Bernie had stopped. They seemed to be standing in the shadow of an arbor, waiting for something. “No,” Jane whispered. “Keep moving.”

Then Jane saw it was the Suburban. It had moved to the back of the lot, then around the service road toward the other side. It seemed to be parked there, right in Rita and Bernie’s path.

Jane turned her attention to the parking lot again. The man with the radio pointed, and the three men he had left began to walk along the outside of the building. Jane realized he must be sending them to watch the other exits. Rita and Bernie were already outside, but they were trapped in the garden. Those men were walking straight toward them.

Jane squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her teeth. She felt a swelling of strong, explosive emotions—anger at these men who had come to shake an old man and a teenaged girl out of their sleep and drag them off, frustration at Bernie and Rita for being too slow, too tentative to survive, shame for not having been smart enough to have avoided this. She felt an overpowering sense of outrage as she pretended to make a decision. But while she was doing it, her hand was in her purse, feeling in the inner pocket for the second ignition key she had gotten when she had bought the Ford Explorer.