Misery Loves Maggody

13

The door slammed into me. I staggered backward, fighting without success to keep my balance as pain ripped across my face and shoulder. I hit the floor with a thud. The man stepped over me as he came into the room and snapped the deadbolt. The sound was as loud as a gunshot. Bad sign.

"Where is it?" he said.

"It?"

"The bag." He dragged me onto the bed and looked around the room. "I ain't in the mood for a guessing game. Just give me the bag and live to tell your story in the morning."

"Help yourself," I said as I gingerly examined my nose. Blood was dripping freely, but the basic structure seemed to be intact. "Take the toothbrushes and plastic cups in the bathroom while you're at it. I only have twenty dollars in my purse, but you're welcome to every one of them. Need an extra pillow or blanket?"

"Shut up." He grabbed Cherri Lucinda's duffel bag and dumped its contents on the other bed. "Where's the other bag?"

In the tradition of Lady Macbeth, I pointed a bloody finger at my overnight bag. "It's yours for the asking. I'm sorry I didn't bring my red flannel pajamas or whatever it is you want so desperately."

"You got some nerve. Has it occurred to you that you might just be in a real bad situation? The last thing you need to be doing is making me mad, you know?" He emptied my bag on the floor, pawed through my underwear and shirts, then looked down at me. "I don't know why the fuck you think you can get away with this. You know who you're dealing with?"

"No, I don't," I said. "Any chance you're going to tell me?"

"I don't have time for this shit. Get up."

"Get up and what?" I countered, assessing my chances of overwhelming him and dashing out of the room. His age was difficult to pinpoint, but there was little doubt he was several inches taller than I was and more than fifty pounds heavier. I would have preferred to take on the ladies from Tuscaloosa en masse.

"Get out of your clothes."

"You're not my type," I said as I wondered how effective the remote control might be as a weapon. If I clicked a button, could I change him into the Disney channel or Nickelodeon? "I don't know who you are or what you want, but if you leave right now, I'll give you a ten-second head start before I call security."

"You're not my type, either. You either strip or I'll do it for you. I won't be all that gentle."

"So you can rape me? There's nothing gentle about that." I may have sounded like a leather-clad warrior princess, but all of my internal organs were quivering with panic. He was too big, too assured-and possibly too experienced. In all my years in Manhattan, I'd only once been threatened on the street, and then by an asthmatic veteran in a frayed pea jacket that reeked of urine. I'd ended up admiring faded photographs of his children.

"I ain't gonna rape you," he said disgustedly. "I'm a professional. Now strip and let's get this over with."

"A professional what? A masseuse building up a clientele? A gynecologist who attacks women in hotel rooms in order to conduct pelvic exams as a form of community service?" Adrenaline was now controlling my mouth as well as my mind. I abandoned the idea of the remote control as a potential weapon and looked wildly at the room service menu. Thick, but plastic. Not promising.

"All right, then," he said, "just go out on the balcony."

I forced myself to suck in a breath and keep my pitch low as I said, "I don't think so. If you take one step toward me, I'm going to scream so loudly that the mayor of Memphis will hear me. I will scratch, kick, punch, and make every effort to claw your eyes. I'm not a black belt, but I had training in self-defense at the police academy."

He sat down on the other bed. "You're a cop? What the fuck are you doing here?"

"This is my room," I said, "which pretty much explains my presence. Your turn."

"This whole thing's a goddamn nightmare. You know that lady with the bright red hair that sort of looks like a fire hydrant balanced on her head? Where is she?"

"I don't know where she is. Who are you?"

He rubbed his eyes. "Like I said, I'm a professional just doing my job-okay? What do you know about this broad called Stormy? A lot shorter than you, big blond hair, enormous boobs? She went skydiving this morning, except she forgot to take along a parachute. She went splat." He slapped his palms together to re-create the sound.

I was beginning to think I might get out of this alive. "Let's talk about the woman with the red hair. What's she got to do with anything?"

"I wish I knew," he said. "Is she a cop, too?"

"Would it matter?"

"Okay," he said, standing up. "I don't have time to hang around and yak. Let's go out on the balcony."

"I wish you'd stop saying that. I'm not going anyplace with you."

He grabbed my arm, yanked me up, and propelled me out to the balcony. "You scream and I'll wring your neck. Understand?"

I nodded. He stepped back into the room, locked the sliding doors, and closed the curtains. I fell into a chair and put my head between my knees until the balcony stopped swaying and the roar in my ears began to fade. It occurred to me that I was ill-prepared to be outside, since I was wearing only a cotton shirt and jeans. This was, of course, infinitely better than being buck naked.

I looked over my shoulder at the curtains. There was not so much as a crack through which I could see what my uncivilized guest was doing in the room-if he was still there. I rose unsteadily and gauged the distance to the balconies on either side. Ten feet at a minimum, I concluded, and well beyond my prowess, since I had been thrown out of gymnastics class at the age of seven for declining to hop and skip across a balance beam six feet above the floor. A movie heroine would have climbed onto the railing, teetered for a tension-building moment, and then leaped onto the next balcony.

Lacking a stunt double, I leaned over the railing and looked down. Cars were pulling in front of the entrance to the hotel. Bellmen were taking suitcases out of trunks and piling them on carts. A woman with a dog on a leash appeared in the driveway, paused to light a cigarette, and headed for the nearest strip of grass.

Which happened to be directly below, proving there was no major cosmic plot against me.

"Psst!" I hissed as loudly as I dared.

The woman turned her head to stare at the bushes alongside the building. Her dog glanced up, then resumed sniffing the grass for the perfect spot to defile. After a few seconds, the woman looked down at him and murmured what I assumed were words of encouragement.

I made sure the curtain hadn't twitched, then bent down and said, "Up here."

The woman was clearly nobody's fool. Rather than responding, she began to speak in an urgent voice to the dog, which was in engaged in the performance of an imperative biological process.

"Please," I said, trying to sound as whimpery and pathetic as a puppy. "I need help."

The woman tilted her head and scanned the facade; eventually spotting my fluttering hands. "Are you addressing me?"

I leaned over as far as I dared. "Please send security up to my room. I've locked myself out."

"That's ridiculous. How could you have done that? Are you drunk?"

"No, ma'am," I said. "Just go to the desk and tell them there's an emergency in eight-eleven. They'll need a passkey."

"Is this some kind of practical joke? I have no intention of embarrassing myself in front of hotel staff. Hurry up, Bertie. Mumsy wants to go back inside." Ignoring Bertie's yelps, she dragged him toward the entrance.

I straightened up and put my ear against the door. I heard nothing, but the glass was apt to be double-paned to withstand the increasingly cold wind. If the man had left and Cherri Lucinda had returned, she hadn't turned on the TV or gotten into a telephone conversation.

All the balconies I could see were vacant. Even during daylight hours the view was far from entrancing; it was hard to imagine why anyone would venture out in the dark to admire a skyline more than thirty miles away.

The chairs were too flimsy to break the glass. However, they might make serviceable missiles to catch somebody's attention. I made sure no was standing below the balcony, then held my breath and dropped a chair over the railing. It hit the grass and bounced into the bushes. I was about to try the second one when I saw a bellman staring up at me from the curb. Before I could call to him, he scurried into the hotel.

I put the chair back in place and sat down, confident that the report of a deranged woman throwing furniture off a balcony would bring a battalion, or at least a platoon, of security men. The Luck of the Draw did not tolerate adolescent mischief, or so I'd been told.

Jim Bob limped along warily, shrinking into doorways whenever a car or truck went by. Damn few of them did. He didn't know how many folks lived in the pissant little town, but most all of them must have been holed up at home watching Saturday night wrestling. The local town council was a sorry group, he thought as he went past burned-out streetlights and piles of garbage bags and boxes. Obviously, none of them had ever been to a Municipal League meeting and spent endless hours in seminars listening to bureaucrats make no more sense than Kevin Buchanon when he whined about the work schedule.

He reached a corner and leaned against a crumbling wall as he thought about what to do. There was no getting around the fact he was a fugitive. Japonica was uppity, but she wasn't dumb. She probably hadn't waited ten minutes before forcing the door and discovering the open window. She'd have been real pissed. Mrs. Jim Bob was likely to have thrown a fit unlike anyone had ever seen since the volcanoes erupted in Italy or wherever.

He reminded himself of his predicament. The hotel was a good ten miles away. His ankle throbbed from landing on a splintery crate. His coat was in the cell, and his wallet was in Japonica's desk. This wasn't the kind of town where taxis cruised, especially the kind willing to accept welfare cases.

There were a few coins in his pocket. If he could find a pay phone, he could call Cherri Lucinda and have her pick him up. He couldn't go back to The Luck of the Draw, but there were plenty of cheap motels in the area and she'd surely brought some money to buy souvenirs. Come Monday morning he'd start looking for a lawyer to get him out of this damn mess. Mrs. Jim Bob could be dealt with later.

He must have walked for most of a mile before he spotted a brightly lit convenience store. There were no cop cars in the parking lot or uniforms bustling around inside. He tucked in his shirt and tried to look like a man on an evening stroll.

Inside, it was blessedly warm. He pulled out his change, hoping he'd have enough for a burrito once Cherri Lucinda was on her way. It didn't look promising, but he went on over to the pay phone. If there'd ever been a directory, it was long gone, so he continued to the counter, where a bored woman was thumbing through a magazine.

"Got a directory?" he asked.

"Yeah, somewhere."

"Can I see it?"

"I s'pose," she said, setting aside the magazine, "but only if you're buying something. The directory's for the use of customers."

Jim Bob fought off the urge to roll up the magazine and jam it down her throat. "I'll buy something after I make my call. I can't make my call until I look up the number, and I can't look up the number till you pass over the directory. You follow all that?"

"Ain't no need to get nasty," she said as she bent down and came back up with a thin directory. "This stays right where I can see it."

Jim Bob found the number of The Luck of the Draw, shoved the directory back at her, and was heading for the phone when a woman came into the store. Her hair was spiky and a bizarre shade of red, and she had safety pins stuck through her eyebrows and her cheeks. She was wearing a bulky jacket, but her legs were bare below very short shorts. Bare and shapely.

Despite the importance of calling Cherri Lucinda, Jim Bob stopped in his tracks and stared.

"Hey," she said, smiling, then went over to the case and took out a six-pack of beer. On her way to the counter she added a bag of potato chips and a handful of beef jerkies. "How much you want?" she asked the clerk.

Jim Bob forced himself to dial the number of the hotel and ask for Cherri Lucinda's room. When no one answered, he tried his own room in case she was sitting in there, feeling bad about what all had happened to him just because he'd done her a favor.

She wasn't there, either. He hung up the receiver and took his change back out to see what he had left. He figured he couldn't buy a bus ticket for seventy-seven cents, or a pack of gum, for that matter. The clerk wasn't gonna let him hang around for long, even if he had enough money to keep calling Cherri Lucinda till she got to her room.

The peculiar-looking woman came over to him. "You in trouble?"

Jim Bob did his best not to gawk at her choice of jewelry. "Yeah, somebody was hiding in the backseat of my car. He took my money and dumped me out on the road down a piece. All I want to do is get back to my hotel. Any chance you can give me a lift?"

"Sure," she said, going out the door.

He trotted after her, wondering if there was any way to get not only a ride, but also a beer and a beef jerky or two. "This is real kind of you to do a favor like this for somebody you don't know. What's your name?"

"Joy. Get in the car."

He was feeling downright giddy with his good fortune as he got into a big old Buick. The woman now known as Joy got into the driver's side, but before he could make a passing reference to the beer, a very bulky figure climbed in next to him and slammed the door.

"Who's he?" the man demanded, jabbing Jim Bob's shoulder. Unlike his companion, his hair was blond and pulled back in a frizzy ponytail. His eyes looked like pennies imbedded in a wad of dough. "Fer chrissake, Joy, I leave you for thirty seconds and you're already picking up some scrawny little asshole."

"Shut your mouth, Saddam," she said. "You're the only asshole in this car. I have just about had it with you. The only reason I came here was to play in the slots tournament. The minute I turned my back, you took all the money out of my purse and bought a goddamn chainsaw. Now all we can do is drink beer and watch television-if you haven't hocked your set. You're not only an asshole, you the biggest fuckin' asshole in the world!"

"You'd better watch it," he rumbled.

Jim Bob was about to suggest he leave them alone to work out their disagreement when the car squealed out of the parking lot and went flying down the highway. "If you could drop me off at The Luck of the Draw-"

Joy stomped down on the accelerator. "Do you realize how long I saved up for the tournament? The foreman was so mad when I called in sick this morning that I may not have a job on Monday. That wouldn't have mattered if I'd won some money, but that ain't gonna happen. You know what you can do when we get to your place, Saddam? You can fuck yourself, that's what?"

"You owed me three hundred dollars from when I bailed you out. I was just takin' what was mine."

"It was mine to enter the tournament," she retorted, swerving around a car and narrowly averting a head-on collision with a semi.

Jim Bob licked his lips. "I think my hotel's back the other way."

"Shut up," said Saddam. "Okay, maybe I should have said something before I took the money. I got all of twelve dollars in my pocket, and that's not gonna pay your entry fee. What do you want me to do?"

"Replace it," she said, then slammed on the brakes and spun into a U-turn so abruptly that Jim Bob sprawled across Saddam's substantial thighs.

When he sat back up, he saw they were approaching the convenience store. It looked a helluva lot cozier than it had a few minutes earlier, like an oasis in a desert of darkness. Joy pulled in and leaned across Jim Bob to open the glove compartment.

"You should be able to get a couple of hundred," she said as she pulled out a knitted cap.

Saddam pulled the cap over his head and down to his chin. Lopsided holes exposed his mouth and eyes. "Yeah, it's Saturday night. I'll be back in a minute."

Jim Bob watched in shock as Saddam got out of the car, took a gun from his coat pocket, and pushed open the door of the store. "Maybe I should get out here," he said, barely audible. "It was real generous of you, but I can see you're busy. I'll catch another ride."

Joy clenched his arm. "Can you imagine the nerve of that Saddam stealing money from me? If we were married, it'd be one thing, but this is fuckin' different. I worked overtime every chance I got to save up so I could play in the tournament. Then he goes and buys another chainsaw. I mean, how many goddamn chainsaws does he need?"

Jim Bob figured he was gonna have to leave his arm in the Buick if he got out. He was trying to squirm out of her amazingly tight grip when Saddam ran out of the store and dived into the backseat.

"Haul ass," he commanded.

As the car shot forward, Jim Bob saw the clerk standing at the window. She was staring at his face as if memorizing every last detail, from his beetlish forehead all the way down to his slack jaw.

It was possible that a certain amount of adolescent mischief was tolerated at The Luck of the Draw Casino & Hotel. Throwing chairs off balconies might be a time-honored Mississippi tradition, a unique display of gratitude for hospitality. The lawn maintenance crew might expect to pull some number of chairs out of the bushes each morning. I hadn't seen any other chairs fly by, but I was preoccupied with my plummeting body temperature. There'd been a heavy frost the preceding night.

The telephone inside the room had rung, but if my guest was still there, he hadn't answered it. The telephone in the adjoining room had rung, too. The lights were off, though, so I'd assumed no one was there.

I reached my limit for freezing my butt off. I picked up the remaining chair and stood by the railing. This time I'd aim for the roof of a car. Damage might result, but I wouldn't be ignored.

The light went on in what had been Jim Bob's room. I pulled the chair back and leaned out, hoping to see someone inside the room. By this time I was almost convinced the man responsible for my present situation was long gone. Then again, I was reluctant to scream and find out my supposition was wrong. I wanted no starring role in a second splat.

I lifted the chair over my head and flung it at the neighboring balcony. It landed with a satisfactory clatter, knocking over the chairs and table and almost going over the far railing.

The sliding doors opened and a head popped out. I'd been anticipating Mrs. Jim Bob, so I was pleased to see Japonica's braids.

"Over here," I said softly.

"Arly?"

"On the next balcony."

"You must be mighty bored tonight. There's a casino downstairs, you know. If you're not in the mood to gamble or drink in the bar, you can go to the show. Carlette saw it last weekend, and she said she damn near believed Elvis was gonna step down from the stage and give her a shiny new Cadillac."

"I need help," I said, glancing back at the curtains.

"A gambler, huh? There's a twelve-step program for that. You ought to do something before you get yourself in bad trouble. I got a cousin that lost his house-"

"A man came into the room, made me come out here, and then locked the doors. I don't know if he's in there or not. If he is, you need to be careful. He's the size of a refrigerator box, and his attitude is bad."

"Who is he?"

"Japonica," I said hoarsely, "I am turning an unflattering shade of blue. Can we discuss this once I'm inside?"

"How long have you been out there?"

I picked up the table and staggered to the railing. "See this? See that Mercedes pulling up? Want to make a small bet as to whether I can hit it or not?"

She went back into the room, and within a matter of seconds, slid open the door and let me inside. I immediately crawled under the covers of the nearest bed. "I am so cold," I groaned. "I was most definitely not an arctic explorer in a previous life. You did look in the bathroom and the closet, didn't you?"

"And under both beds," she said. "You want to explain whatever you were carrying on about?"

I told her what had happened. "Don't bother to ask," I went on, "because I have no idea who he was or what he wanted. It has something to do with Stormy, though." I sat up and pulled the blankets around my shoulders. "She must have been followed from Farberville. Estelle saw some suspicious characters at the motel the first night. Stormy demanded a new hair style and color, most likely to alter her appearance so she could get away. It didn't work, since one of the men was at Graceland, and possibly in this hotel earlier in the day."

Japonica shook her head. "This isn't some best-selling suspense novel with Mafia thugs. You had the bad luck to encounter a burglar. You're damn lucky you didn't find yourself out there without your clothes. Then again, the bellman wouldn't have scratched his head and gone off to polish the elevator buttons."

"So you're still convinced you have the killer in custody?"

"I'm still convinced we had the killer in custody until about an hour ago. He climbed out the washroom window and went hightailin' into the back streets. We'll find him before too long."

I did not allow myself so much as a tiny smirk. "So that's why you gave Mrs. Jim Bob and Brother Verber a ride back here. Where are they now?"

"Down in the restaurant. I told 'em not to come up here until I made sure he wasn't in the next room. His car keys are still there, as well as a couple of hundred-dollar chips from the casino. I wanted to check, even though there's no way he could have walked all this way. He's probably hiding in some vacant building not a hundred feet from the police department. I wouldn't be surprised if he was already pounding on the door, begging to turn himself in for a hot meal and a bed with blankets."

"The man wanted something from Stormy's bag," I said mulishly. "He's got to be involved in some way."

She gestured at the scattered clothes on the floor. "Well, he didn't find it in either of the bags out in plain sight. The bag in the closet has been emptied, too. There's no way of knowing if he found something in it. If he did, it's likely to be the last of him." She crossed her arms. "That doesn't mean he wasn't an ordinary burglar thinking he'd find jewelry or a stash of spending money. This is the time when most folks are downstairs enjoying themselves."

I crossed my arms. "He said Stormy's name. He knew what happened to her."

"Most everybody who works here has been gossiping about it all day. That's all the more reason why he'd expect the room to be empty. He was dressed up like a plumber so nobody'd notice him wandering around the floors. I'm surprised you fell for it, being a cop and all."

I let my arms drop. "I had plenty of time to think about it while I was out on the balcony, feeling like a damn fool. Don't you think you ought to dust for fingerprints?"

"And compare 'em with what?" Japonica said. "There are hundreds of folks on the staff, and thousands of customers in the casino. I don't think the hotel management would look kindly on me if I suggested they all get in line to be fingerprinted. Guys like him work one area for a few weeks, then move on like a tent revivalist making the circuit."

A beeper concealed somewhere on her body chirped. She slapped her pockets until she found it clipped to her belt. After squinting at it, she said, "I got to make a call. You mind if I use your phone?"

"Help yourself," I said as I leaned against the headboard and tried to come up with theories that would persuade her to reconsider the investigation.

"This is me," she said into the receiver, then paused. "That little store near the bait shop? Anybody hurt?" She gave me a curious look before turning around. "I've been on duty for more than twelve hours, Chief, and there's not really anything we can do tonight. On my way home, I'll stop by and see if she has anything else to add. I'm not about to set up a roadblock on a Saturday night."

When she replaced the receiver, I gave her a sympathetic smile. "You have had a long day, haven't you? A murder, an escaped prisoner, and now this. While you were running all over the place, did Chief Sanderson spend the afternoon watching basketball on TV?"

"He's got a hot tub on his patio. Most of the time he sits out there and lets his wife bring him beers while he listens to classical music. God only knows what he'll do when he actually retires." She began to zip up her coat. "Stay away from plumbers, you hear?"

She left before I could offer further arguments. I stayed in bed for a few more minutes, racking my brain for inspiration, then got up and went into the adjoining room. As Japonica had said, a ring with keys and a short stack of black chips were on the dresser next to a bottle of bourbon that was half empty (or half full, depending on your perspective; in that Brother Verber had not poured the devil's poison down the drain, I had a pretty good idea of his). Jim Bob's wristwatch was on top of the television.

A suitcase was overturned on the bed, as was a second one that had been set in a corner. The jockey shorts and undershirts were of no more interest to me than they had been to my assailant. Nor, for that matter, had been the items of obvious value (the chips) or of dubious value (the watch).

My assailant was after something that had been in Stormy's bag. He might have found it in the closet, but then why had he come into Jim Bob's room to root through more bags while I shivered on the balcony? There'd been more bags on the C'Mon van, I realized. Todd and Taylor had brought theirs, as had Rex. Baggins might have been allowed to bring a steamer trunk, but I doubted it. Estelle and Ruby Bee were the only ones of the group I felt confident were not transporting contraband across state borders.

It seemed prudent to alert the others to the possibility of a rogue plumber showing up at the door. Taylor, in particular, was in the most danger-unless her fiance had returned with a damned good explanation. Having heard quite a few of them in my day, I would have been skeptical, but hormones can blind the best of us.

I'd picked up the receiver to call the hotel operator and ask for Taylor 's room when I realized I didn't know her last name. Odds were good that the operator didn't, either. Baggins, on the other hand, was a last name, if one that summoned vague, unfocused images of hairy-footed creatures battling trolls and gremlins.

The hotel operator dialed the room, then came back on after a dozen rings and gently suggested that he wasn't there. She had a point.

I decided to see if I could find him in the casino.