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Jerry Gee rubbed his hand on top of Smiley’s head, then patted it for extra measure. “You’re a cute little guy. Keep using that deer urine. The right broad is waiting for you out there.”
• • •
AFTER THEY WERE gone, Smiley bathed in a claw-footed tub down the hall and dressed in clean underwear and an unpressed khaki shirt and green cargo pants and pink tennis shoes with Mickey Mouse’s face embossed on the rubber toes. He snugged a baseball cap on his head and walked painfully down the stairs and got into his car and drove to the storage shed he rented on the edge of town. Inside were his survival gear, a box of passports and driver’s licenses, a suitcase filled with clothes, his stamp and coin collection, boxes of comics that he read over and over and did not think of as collectibles, a scoped 1903 Springfield, a Taser, half a dozen pistols, a Browning automatic rifle, an M107 sniper rifle, an AK-47, the classic British commando knife, flash grenades, and a box that contained a weapon he had tested but never used on the job.
He unlocked the box and reached inside and hooked the thick straps of the unit in his hands and dragged it free. His face and hands were tingling like chimes blowing in a tree or the music of an ice cream truck. In minutes he was on his way to Morgan City, the night sky clearing, the stars shining as brightly as they did on Wonder Woman’s short pants.
He passed a boatyard and a series of docks and a ramshackle nightclub. Next door was a motel that advertised porn and hourly rates. Smiley drove back and forth in the parking lot of the club, then circled the motel, but he saw no sign of the two men or their midnight-blue Buick. He drove to the motel entrance and went inside. A man about thirty, with a mustache and sideburns as shiny as black grease and pipe-cleaner stems for arms, wearing a vinyl vest with no shirt, sat behind the counter, working a crossword puzzle.
“Hi, hi. Can I have a room for thirty minutes?” Smiley said.
“Thirty minutes?” the clerk said. He looked beyond Smiley out into the dark. “You with somebody?”
“I have to poop.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“I have to go poop real bad.”
“Go to the club next door.”
“People wee-wee on the seat.”
“You need to get out of here, man.”
Smiley kept the back of his head to the surveillance camera on the wall. “You don’t have to get nasty.”
The clerk set down his pencil. “Want me to walk you to your car?”
“Have my friends Marco and Jerry Gee been here?”
“We don’t give out the names of our guests. What does it take for you to get the message? Out!”
“Maybe I’ll come back later. I like crossword puzzles.”
“That’s it,” the clerk said, and got off his stool.
“You are bad. You’ll see what happens to bad people,” Smiley said. The bell above the door tinkled as he went out.
• • •
HE PARKED BEHIND some Dumpsters, with a view of both the club and the motel. At 12:17 a.m. the Buick pulled into the parking lot, and Marco and Jerry Gee went inside the club, flipping away their cigarettes, Jerry Gee’s against the wall. At 1:48 they came out the front door with two women. One was thick-bodied and wearing a shiny black skirt. The other was a rail, dressed like a cowgirl, unsteady on her feet, her jeans hanging on her hips. The four of them got into the Buick and drove to the front of the motel. Marco went inside, then came back out and got behind the wheel and drove the four of them to the rear of the building. None of the nearby rooms were occupied. Jerry Gee and the woman in the black skirt went into one room, Marco and the cowgirl into the one next door.
For the next twenty minutes Smiley sat motionlessly behind the wheel, his eyes half closed, his face as insentient as wax. He got out of the car and walked across the parking lot and squatted down by the back of the Buick and eased the tip of his stiletto into the air valve and watched the tire settle on the rim.
At 3:18 a.m. Jerry Gee stepped out of his room, flexing his neck and shoulders, his coat on, the thick-bodied woman now wearing only panties and a bra behind him. She looked like she was cursing at him. Then she closed the door. A moment later Marco came out of the other room. The cowgirl looked at him briefly through the curtain, then closed it. While Smiley watched from his car, Marco and Jerry got into the Buick and started to back out. The steel rim of the flattened tire sliced through the rubber and crunched on the concrete.
Smiley pulled a .22 semi-auto from under the seat and got out and circled around the far side of the motel. He entered the front door and came back out moments later, wiping something off his cheek with his shoulder. He circled back to the Dumpsters and unlocked his trunk and dropped the semi-auto on the mat and worked the straps of his newly acquired weapon over his arms and shoulders. The brace and propane tanks fitted comfortably against his back. The wand and igniter were simply designed and as weightless as aluminum; the hand-grip trigger was a pleasure to squeeze. He walked softly across the parking lot as Marco and Jerry Gee were spinning off the nuts on the tire.
“Hi, hi,” Smiley said.
Both of them were on their haunches. They looked at the object in Smiley’s hands and on his back, and th
eir faces drained.
“Get in your car,” Smiley said.
“Jesus Christ,” Marco said. He slipped sideways and had to right himself on the concrete.
