In a Small Motel

3

For a moment the question dazed her, it was so meaningless. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I had my lights out and I’ve been watching you out here, talking and talking.” He moved his head a little and the floodlights of the gas station across the way caught the lenses of his glasses. The man sounded righteously indignant.

Ginny stood up, a small shivery feeling at the nape of her neck.

Mr. Brown said, “I suppose you told him I put my car in back.”

Don had stood up. “Relax, my friend. Neither of us has the slightest interest in you.”

“That’s so easy to say,” Mr. Brown said. “I heard the plane, too. And the cars slow down when they go by. You must all think I’m a fool, or blind. Why are you all waiting?”

Ginny held her hands clasped tightly. Across the way the small radio was tuned to brassy jazz. A distant truck moved toward them, the sound beginning to smother the music.

Don said, “I don’t think you’re well. Why don’t you go back in your room and let Mrs. Mallory phone a doctor for you?”

Brown took a slow backward step. “Would it be — a doctor?” he asked softly. He turned his head toward Ginny and once again his glasses caught the light. “I suggest you do not use the phone, Mrs. Mallory.” The truck roared by, the motor sound changing to a minor key as it rushed south down the dark road. Mr. Brown turned and walked away, his stride long and slow. They watched him go into his darkened room, and they could not hear the door close.

Ginny giggled, and it was a strained thin sound. Don said, “A crazy, darling. Pure and simple. Persecution complex. I don’t know what else. A paranoiac, maybe.”

“He seemed all right when he registered. He just wanted to put his car in back instead of in front. I didn’t think anything about that.”

“I don’t like this. He might be dangerous.”

“What can we do?”

“I can phone to town, to the police.”

“Maybe he’ll go to sleep now. And leave in the morning.”

“And hurt somebody on the highway, further down the road? We have some responsibility, I think.”

“He said not to phone.”

“How would he know? Come on.” He walked beside her. “Don’t walk so fast, darling. He’s probably watching out the window.”

It’s — creepy.

“He just needs help.”

They walked slowly to the office, and Ginny went in first. Don followed her and she heard the click of the lock after he shut the door. He went briskly behind the counter, took the phone from under it, listened for a moment, hung up. “Somebody’s using it,” he said.

She stood, waiting, and she felt that it was grotesquely melodramatic. The man was just a bit odd. She heard a small clicking against the glass panel of the locked door. She turned and saw Mr. Brown standing outside the office door. He held his elbow a bit away from his side. He tapped again on the glass, metal clicking against glass. A small round metal eye against the glass. He motioned to her with his free hand. For a moment she did not comprehend.

Don said, and his voice trembled a bit, “I think you better let him in.” She turned and stared at Don and he was looking beyond her, at the door, and he ran his tongue quickly along his underlip. She moved to the door and she had the odd feeling that she was floating, her feet not touching the tiles. The world looked bright and faraway, as though she were looking at it through a long tube. She unlocked the door and the round metal eye looked up a little; looked, it seemed, at her throat. She put her hand there instinctively. The screen door was slanted against his shoulder. Across the way Johnny was hosing down the concrete near the pumps.

“I want you and your friend to come and help me, Mrs. Mallory,” Brown said.

“We’ll be glad to help you,” Don said quickly.

Brown moved back a little, “What is your name?” he asked Don.

“Ferris.”

“Mr. Ferris, please walk beside Mrs. Mallory. Walk down to my room and go in and turn on the light as you go in. Don’t walk fast.”

The concrete walk that led down the length of the court was roofed. Metal chairs were aligned against the wall on the right. They walked side by side. Don whispered, so that she could barely hear it, “Do exactly what he says.”

She turned on the lights and they stood inside the room, their backs to the screen door.

“Mrs. Mallory, please stand right there. Mr. Ferris, please close the blinds on the windows.”

As Don worked the cords on the blinds, Ginny heard Brown come in and close the door. She knew that he stood close behind her. She thought she could feel his breath stir her hair. The sudden blow against the back of her head shocked her. It drove her head forward, hurting her neck. She stumbled a few steps and her knee struck the edge of the bed and she fell awkwardly, catching her weight on her hands. She realized that he had hit the back of her head with the heel of his hand. She turned quickly. Brown looked at her calmly. She had not looked at him closely when he had registered, receiving only the impression of paleness and height and dark clothes.

He had a thin face, receding dark hair, prominent frontal bones in his forehead. His glasses had thin gold rims, and his face and eyes had an oddly colorless look — the face of a severe, dedicated and trustworthy clerk. His dark suit was poorly cut, and he wore a gold wedding band.

“Mr. Ferris, please place the large black suitcase on the bed and open it. It is not locked.”

Ginny saw the metal eye follow Don as he moved. It was a thick-looking revolver with a very short barrel. It had a sullen, dangerous look. Mr. Brown’s fingers, wrapped around it, looked long and white and frail.

Don put the suitcase on the bed and opened it. Ginny glanced into it. Apparently the money had been packed with great care, but in moving it about the top layers of wrapped bills had slipped from their orderly stacks. It all had the cold impartial look of money stacked in a teller’s cage.

“Sit beside Mrs. Mallory, please,” Brown said.

Don sat so close beside her that their thighs touched. Ginny felt a small tremor of his body. “It isn’t Brown, of course,” Don said. “I saw the pictures.”

“Very old pictures.” Brown leaned his back against the frame of the closed door and closed his eyes for a second or two, then opened them very wide. “I am sorry to ask you to do this.” His smile was quick, thin, almost shy. “All my life I have handled money. Now, for some reason, I find it impossible to count this. I begin, and each time I seem to become confused.”

“How did you manage it?” Don asked, and Ginny sensed his attempt to be casual. Her head had begun to ache as a result of the unexpected blow.

“It was not difficult, Mr. Ferris. A matter, actually, of merely walking out with it at precisely the right time. Mrs. Mallory, I suggest you get that paper and pencil from the desk. Call the totals off to her, Mr. Ferris. The numbers on the wrappings are correct.”

Ginny wrote down the neat numbers as Don called them out in a flat precise voice. It took a long time. She had to make two long columns. At Brown’s request she added them, announced the meaningless total. Three hundred and seventy-two thousand, Eve hundred. Brown had Ferris recheck her addition.

“There was more at first,” Brown said. “One bundle I checked and I cannot seem to remember where.”

“What will you do now?” Don asked.

Brown looked at him, expressionlessly. “I should like to sleep, of course. I rather imagine I am expected to make some sort of attempt at escape. But they’ve watched me for years. They’ve forgotten that I know precisely what it feels like to be watched. I haven’t slept in a long time.”

“You’re sick,” Ginny said.

He looked at her and he seemed to be puzzled. “Perhaps.”

“Where were you planning to go?” Don asked.

“I had never completely decided that.”

“They’ll catch you,” Don said.

“An error of fact. They already have. They caught me — a long time ago. Now they’re letting me travel, trying to make me think I’m still — free. I suppose it is a form of torture. I’ve seen them in the restaurants and on the highway. When I turned in here, I knew this was where they had planned I would stop. But I was too tired to leave. I can tell by your eyes that you know all about it. Both of you.”

There was silence in the room. Ginny saw Brown’s arm tremble. He steadied the gun hand by holding his wrist with the other hand.