to assess them both, to determine what it would take to manipulate each of them should it ever come to physical means. While her protector looked around, Melody stared at the ground, and when he walked forward to the motel, she followed him like a child.
As they disappeared out of view along the side of the building, I pulled my car around to the far end of the motel and observed them walking down from the other end. The marshal seemed relatively on guard, looking behind all the hidden crevices of the facility—between vending machines, under the staircases, behind the shrubbery—with the level of interest he might have if he were teaching tactical techniques to a class of new recruits; he possessed all the passion of someone completing a checklist. And the entire time Melody’s eyes were fixed on the Bay Bridge-Tunnel, watched the cars and trucks crossing over with the sustained amazement of a little kid’s first visit to a large city, her head twisted as far as possible before having to turn around and walk backwards.
They moved down the sidewalk next to the doors of the rooms. Without knowing it, they shuffled closer and closer to my position, aimed directly at my grille. I turned off my car before they got any nearer, didn’t want my running engine to catch the marshal’s attention. A few steps farther, they paused in front of a set of rooms at the center of the motel, stood the distance of their rooms apart, each with a hand on the knob to their doors. I read the numbers on the doors of the rooms nearest me and counted up to determine their locations.
Melody: 130.
Marshal: 132.
They remained that way for a too-casual amount of time. I could see Melody’s face, her awkward smile as she made idle chat with him, a breeze making her bangs dance on her forehead as they spoke. She glanced inside a plastic grocery bag the marshal handed her, tipped her head at him like she was waiting for a hug that never came.
Then she opened the door to her room, and two things occurred that really bothered me. First, the marshal did not go in before Melody to scope out the room. It struck me as a significant misjudgment, as though the guy were more aloof than I’d imagined, that at some point he had stopped caring about his job—or this witness. But what bothered me more: Just before Melody stepped inside, she lunged forward and kissed the marshal on the cheek. The whole event seemed weird: the way she looked at him, the hope in her expression like she might finally be safe, his nonbusiness reaction of holding her hand for a moment and returning her glance. I was surprised at how much that scene concerned me. I wanted the other marshal back; despite his clear physical preparedness and attention to the mission at hand, at least I knew who my adversary was. With this guy, I didn’t know what I was getting, with all his hand-holding, his stroking-of-the-fur approach to protection, as though he could seduce her to safety. It annoyed me that he wasn’t paying closer attention. If my family was thinking I might not be up to the task of offing Melody, they could have sent someone else to find and kill her.
I needed the marshal to protect her as much as she did.
They walked into their motel rooms and closed their doors at the same time. I watched and waited, and with each passing minute my adrenaline waned, my heartbeat and breathing slowed. I opened a new pack of cigarettes, lit one, took a victory hit.
And this is how the race ended, my horse having pulled into first, crossed the line at the photo finish. There was only one thing left to do: Go to the winner’s circle and claim my wreath.
In those down moments I tried to consider what I would do with Melody. My instinct was to explain what had led me there, what had brought me to her life at that moment. Talk about a long story. I didn’t even have a fraction of the time required to enlighten her properly.
I progressed to the idea of telling her how the government operation was being jeopardized by an addicted employee, and that no matter where they relocated her, she would be found again within hours. But that would make her pass the information back to the marshal she seemed so enamored of,