Mag was sprawled on the carpet, hands tight against her face.
He got up and went to her.
He kicked her in the ribs.
“Even-Steven,” he muttered.
She just stayed there sobbing while Charlie gathered up the man’s clothes and toiletries and took them to the suitcase.
In a pants pocket, he found a wallet with almost three hundred dollars tucked inside the bill compartment. He didn’t dare take any of the twenties. He’d be in trouble, sure, if he tried that. A few months back, Edgar’d been on clean-up and the next day Nasty Nancy spied him paying for a quart of bourbon with a ten-dollar bill. When you went on clean-up, it was okay to keep clothes. But nothing else.
Edgar claimed he found his ten on the beach. Nobody bought the story, though, and they’d made him “walk the house.”
Charlie fingered through the money again. Along with the twenties and a few tens in the man’s wallet, there were eight one-dollar bills. Charlie thought he might take a chance on some of those. Who was to say he didn’t get them from some generous marks?
He glanced over his shoulder at Mag. She had rolled onto her side, and her head was turned away from him.
Nobody’d ever know.
But suddenly his last sight of Edgar filled his head and Charlie shuddered, legs going weak and shaky, scrotum shrinking tight, ice in his stomach, gooseflesh crawling up his spine.
With trembling hands he closed the wallet and slipped it into the pocket of the man’s pants. In a front pocket he found a key case. He kept that, and put the pants inside the suitcase.
As he shut the suitcase, Mag came up beside him. He cringed and raised his arms to protect himself, but she didn’t strike.
“Let me in there,” she said. Charlie stepped back. She brushed past him and stepped to the corner near the wall. There, she opened the woman’s suitcase. She peeled the nightie off. Charlie squeezed his eyes shut. “Damn fool,” she muttered. When he opened them again, she had on shiny pink panties and was stepping into a pair of green slacks. She fastened the slacks. Grinning at Charlie, she lifted a black bra out of the suitcase and draped it over his face. Then she lifted out a green pullover sweater. She put it on. Sighing, she rubbed it against her belly and hanging breasts. “Nice,” she said. “You get yourself some nice duds, Charlie.”
“I like what I got,” he told her.
“Damn fool.” She unclasped the pearl necklace and dropped it into the suitcase. She tossed in the rings. She took the earrings from her bloody lobes. Charlie saw that the earrings were for pierced ears, and hers weren’t pierced. At least they hadn’t been.
She took white socks and tennis shoes from the suitcase, put them on, then went to the closet and came out wearing the woman’s nylon windbreaker. She retrieved her clothes from the bathroom and stuffed them into the suitcase. After that, she wandered around gathering the rest of the woman’s things.
“You got the keys?” she asked.
Charlie held up the key case. She plucked it from his hand.
They latched the luggage, and Mag went to the door. Charlie lifted both suitcases off their stands. He followed her outside.
In the east, the sky was pale. But the sun wouldn’t be up for a while yet. From the balcony’s height, he had a good view. He saw no one. The street in front of the motel was deserted. There were about ten cars in the parking lot.
Mag hurried ahead of him. He struggled along with the heavy suitcases. By the time he came to the bottom of the stairs, Mag had already found the car to match her key. It was a blue BMW. She opened the trunk while Charlie hurried across the parking lot.
He swung the suitcases into the trunk.
Mag, in the driver’s seat, leaned over and unlocked the passenger door for him. He climbed inside. The car smelled new.
Its engine thundered to life. Mag backed it up, then swung it toward the exit.
“How ’bout a ride?” Mag asked, gunning it onto the street.
“I wanna get back,” Charlie said.
“Yer too late for the fun.”
Maybe not, he thought. “I don’ care,” he told her.
She muttered something that Charlie couldn’t make out. But she took him toward Funland, the car weaving a little as she raced it up the middle of the street and sped through the blinking