In the night room Page 0,78

you doing?” Willy asked.

“Yes, that’s his partner,” Tim said. “Willy, Mr. Davy and I are working something out.”

“Mr. Davy?”

“Listen to me, now,” said Mr. Davy. “For Mrs. Halleden’s sake, I am going to act against type. That lady not only never robbed a bank, she never did a wrong thing in her life. And that man in the parking lot is a scoundrel. When you hear a loud noise, or you see that blond-haired creature start to run out of the lot, leave your room. Three doors to your right, you’ll find a maid’s staircase that will take you down to the back of the hotel. Get in your car as quickly as possible and take off. Pay no attention to the fracas when you drive by.”

“The fracas?”

“Don’t worry about me.” He hung up before Tim could reply.

“Now what?” Willy asked.

Coverley was pacing beside Tim’s car, growing more impatient with every second. He pulled a yellow pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, lit one with a match, and exhaled a plume of smoke.

“Giles smokes?” Willy sounded almost shocked. Every bit as startled as his beloved by this display of character treachery, Tim once again felt that loosening of the ground beneath his feet that occurred whenever Willy acted independently of the template he had made for her. An elegant character like Giles Coverley wouldn’t smoke, but here he was, puffing away anyhow, acting like a human being instead of a character in a novel.

Below, Coverley spotted something hidden from the occupants of Room 119 by the trees on the near side of the lot. He threw away his cigarette, gesticulated, pointed at the hotel, raised his arms in an angry query.

“Uh-oh.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked him.

“Our friend Mr. Davy was counting on Roman Richard staying in the Mercedes. He was going to create a diversion, and I think this one-armed creep was supposed to play some kind of role in it.”

On cue, Roman Richard Spilka strolled into view, suit jacket slung over his left shoulder, right arm encased in a plaster cast supported by a broad white sling. He was making conciliatory gestures to Coverley, half-turning to nod at the hotel. Again, there was a slight disconnect between the way Tim’s characters actually looked and the way he had imagined them when depicting them on the page. Where Giles Coverley was slimmer, taller, and more decadent-looking than the man bearing his name in In the Night Room, Roman Richard was heavier, more solid, more obviously a thug. From the back, his close-cropped head resembled a bowling ball.

“You know he had a broken arm? Tom told you?”

“I guess,” said Tim, wishing he hadn’t mentioned it.

“That’s incredibly interesting.” Willy turned her head to look over her shoulder. A hint of suspicion darkened her eyes. “Tom knew that I knocked him down with my car, but he didn’t know about the cast until a minute or two before he was killed.”

“Then I knew about it some other way.”

“There is no way at all you could know about it,” Willy said. She turned her head back to the window.

Tim and Willy watched Roman Richard moving across the lot toward Coverley. Both of the men indulged in a good deal of pointing and arm waving. Whatever camaraderie they might once have enjoyed had shredded under their multiplying frustrations, and now they were just two guys trying to make the best of a bad deal.

Then two things happened at once: a good-sized explosion at the front of the hotel rattled their window and shook the pictures in their frames, and Roman Richard and Coverley looked at each other and sprinted off across the parking lot with the reflexes of former soldiers. Roman Richard had worked out a more efficient way to wear his pistol, which was in his hand before he disappeared beneath the trees.

Tim took Willy by the elbow, spun her around, picked up the bags, and pushed her into the hallway. Three doors down to the right, he opened a door marked FOR STAFF ONLY and clattered down the dark, narrow set of stairs with Willy close behind. A door opened by pressing on a metal bar swung out onto a little paved area with uncapped garbage cans lined up on both sides of a dumpster.

“What’d he do?” Willy shouted behind him.

The sunlight drenching the parking lot shimmered on the tops of the cars. Underhill pounded toward the Lincoln. He was only ten feet away when the button on his key ring unlocked the