Hush Money

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

At about 10:30 with the rain coming down steadily, the Quant limo pulled off of Route 495 near Chelmsford and into the parking lot of a big motel that looked like the Disney version of a Norman castle. The van kept on going. I followed Quant, and got into a slot in the next row and watched as Milo and his bodyguard deployed umbrellas and walked across the glistening parking lot into the hotel lobby. The place was more hotel than motel, in that it was four stories high and entry was through the front door. For my purposes, I would have liked the conventional one-room one-door approach, but the more I live the more I don’t always get what I want. I sat for a while and thought. While I was doing this Hawk opened the passenger door and slid in, the rain beaded on his smooth head.

“Ah ha!” I said.

“Ah ha indeed, my good man,” Hawk said. “The game’s afoot.”

“Amir,” I said.

“Yowzah,” Hawk said. “Rents a car this afternoon, comes out here ‘bout three o’clock. I see him pull in and I take a chance and get into the lobby ’fore he do. There a phone booth right by the desk. I’m in it with my back turned and the phone at my ear when he gets to the desk. He’s got a reservation. He’s in room four seventeen.”

“Good to know,” I said.

“Well, I got nothing much else to do so I hang around, sit in the bar, read a paper, drink some Perrier with a nice wedge of lime, have a club sandwich, drink some more Perrier and about five minutes ago in come a group of people and one of them is our man with the horn-rimmed glasses. They got reservations. Their rooms are four fifteen and four nineteen.”

“Either side,” I said.

“Un huh.”

“There were four bodyguards, right?”

“Including the limo driver,” Hawk said.

“Plus Quant.”

“Two bodyguards in four fifteen,” I said. “Two bodyguards in four nineteen. Where’s Quant go?”

“Four seventeen,” Hawk said. “Want to take a look?”

“Sure,” I said. “Why don’t I register and we can look at the room setup.”

“Call from the car,” Hawk said, “make sure they have a room.”

I did. They did.

“Okay,” I said. “Stay here. I’ll call you.”

I left the motor running, took a gym bag from the trunk of my car, and walked toward the lobby. The gym bag looked right, but all it contained were burglar tools. I checked into the lobby. They gave me room 205. I went up and let myself in and put the gym bag on the bed and called Hawk.

“Room two-oh-five,” I said.

“Fine. Is the desk clerk a man or a woman?”

“Woman.”

“Good. I’ll come in tell her I’m Amir and I’ve lost my key.”

“They often want to see ID,” I said.

“She’d be scared to ask me,” Hawk said. “Scared I say she racist for asking.”

“And if she remembers Amir at all it’ll be that he’s black and so are you, so you must be him.”

“Un huh.”

“See you soon,” I said.

And I did. In about ten minutes he knocked on the door and I let him in. He smiled at me and held up the plastic key card.

“She thought I look like Michael Jordan,” Hawk said.

“You know how to play that old race card,” I said. “Don’t you.”

“I do,” Hawk said.

The room was standard B-class hotel. Tile bath and shower in the short hall as you came in the door, king-sized bed, small table and two chairs by the window, built-in bureau with a large television set on top of it. The door unlocked electronically with the plastic card and could be chain bolted from the inside. I looked at the chain bolt. The chain was attached to the door frame by two small brass screws. I took a small pry bar from the gym bag.

“Bolt the door,” I said.

I took the room key and went out and shut the door. I heard Hawk set the chain bolt. I opened the door with the plastic card, slid the pry bar in through the opening, and popped the chain loose without much effort. I went back into the room and closed the door.

“Shouldn’t be hard getting in there,” I said.

“Once we in what we going to do?”

“I guess we’ll ask them what they’re doing here,” I said. “And then we’ll see what happens.”

“What you want to happen?”

“I want everyone to get so percolated that they start saying things they will later regret and we might finally know something concrete.”

“And what we going to do they start hollering and the bodyguards come dashing in?”

“I thought you had that covered,” I said.

“‘Course I got it covered,” Hawk said. “I just meant you want me to shoot them or quell them with a stern look?”

“Stern look will probably cause less ruckus,” I said.

“I’ll work on it,” Hawk said, and we went out and took the elevator to the fourth floor.