I, on the other hand, had all the time I wanted to explore my motives for sitting in my car outside the office of the Hideaway Haven. Was I in the throes of a quest for truth and justice? Was this indicative of my dedication to law and order? Was I genuinely concerned about Debbie Anne Wray-or any of the blasted Kappa Theta Etas, their lovers, or even their painters? Or could it be that I was going to show Lieutenant Peter Rosen that I was not the least bit interested in his extracurricular activities and was perfectly content to meddle in someone else’s official investigation?
I snatched up the packet and went into the office. “Excuse me,” I said coldly, “but Pd like you to see if you recognize any of these girls.”
“What are you-a high school principal?”
I spread out the photographs. “I do not care to discuss my personal life. Have any of these girls ever rented rooms here?”
Clearly daunted by my steely demeanor, he studied each photograph with great care, occasionally whistling softly or holding one so closely his breath clouded it. He licked his lips so often that soon his chin was glistening, but no more so than his beady little eyes. I was finally getting somewhere, I told myself smugly as I waited for his response.
“No, never seen any of them.” He picked up the tabloid and flipped it open. “Can you believe this about Elvis? I for one think he’s deader’n a doornail, but people keep seeing him all the time. I don’t see how he can keep popping up like this if he’s dead.” He scratched his head with enough enthusiasm to send flakes of dandruff adrift.
“Elvis is dead, and you have seen these girls before,” I retorted, a shade less smugly but determined to hear the truth if I had to shake it out of him. “If you refuse to admit it, I will call the police and report indications of prostitution and drug transactions on these very premises.
He wrenched one eye off the “actual artist’s depiction” of Elvis entering the White House. “You got no proof.”
“No, but I’ll tell them I do, and once they start poking around, I’m sure they’ll find plenty of evidence. If nothing else, there must be enough violations of the health and fire codes to close you down.”
He plucked the cigarette butt from his mouth and gaped at me as if I’d arisen from the page in front of him and, like the Peoria housewife, claimed to be capable of spontaneous combustion. “But that’s lying, lady.”
“It most certainly is, and I must warn you that I’ve had a great deal of practice at it and will be quite convincing. Would you like to take another look at the photographs?”
“Maybe I ought to ask Doobie,” the man said as he dropped the butt and ground it out on the floor. “He’s usually on the night desk, but he wanted to switch so’s he could watch some fool basketball game. Won’t take more than a minute.” He gathered up the photographs and disappeared through a doorway, the door closing behind him before I could protest.
As I waited, I became aware that I might as well have been on the screen of the drive-in movie theater. The darkness outside emphasized the lights of the office, and I knew I was visible from the far reaches of the parking lot, if not the highway. Unlike the Kappa Theta Etas, I was not haunted by the specter of a tainted reputation, but the thought of having to explain my presence at the Hideaway Haven was so chilling that goose bumps dotted my arms and whatever hackles I possessed rose on my neck. I was tempted to hide behind the lurid pages of the tabloid, then considered the additional hardship of explaining both my presence and my reading material to anyone who drove by. Such as a cop.
Nearly fifteen minutes had passed by the time the manager returned, the photographs in his hand and a deeply distrustful look on his face. I closed the tabloid, thus doomed never to find out the facts about Bigfoot’s amorous attack on a Canadian farmwife, and smiled expectantly.
“Doobie ain’t seen any of them,” he reported, avoiding my eyes and speaking with all the animation of a dead Elvis. “He sez they’re welcome anytime, dressed or otherwise, and in particular that piece of angel food cake with the black hair, but he ain’t seen any of them. But”-he held up a grimy hand to stop me from retorting-”Doobie sez Hank might have been on duty some of the time, so you can come back next week and ask him. Hank took his wife to a bowling tournament over in Sallisaw, on account of it being her birthday.”
“It took all this time for Doobie to say that?” I said.
Once again dandruff rained softly on his shoulders as his fingernails dug into his scalp. “Doobie studied the pictures real carefully before he decided he hadn’t seen them girls. We get all kinds of college kids out here, especially on the weekends, and they all look the same, a bunch of Kens and Barbies in designer clothes and fancy athletic shoes.
As I put the photographs back in the packet, I decided to take one last shot. “There’s someone else who might have been here frequently,” I began, then proceeded to describe John Vanderson.
The manager flinched, his eyebrows furrowing for a second, his lips suddenly in need of a lick. “No, nobody like that.”
I’d seen the recognition in his eyes, the same flicker I'd seen in Winkie’s when I’d rattled off the description in her suite. I said as much, but he steadfastly denied having seen John Vanderson, and at last took his tabloid and went into the back room. This time the door slammed a sullen goodbye, although I suspected in his mind it was a more colorful idiom involving areas of his anatomy-or mine.
Lacking the courage to storm after him, I went back to my car As I reached for the handle, I heard a faint groan, and swung around to stare at the impenetrable darkness of the parking lot alongside the building. “Hello?” I called tentatively. “Is someone hurt?”
A second groan was as slight and insubstantial as the breeze that carried it. It was not the whimper of a sick animal, I decided as I moved toward the corner, crushing the packet in my damp hand, keenly conscious of my vulnerability and my inexperience in dealing with mishaps at brothels.
A few cars were parked in front of motel units, but heavy curtains kept any light from spilling onto the pavement. Across the narrow lot stretched a vast field that undulated like a serene expanse of ocean, dotted only by stubby, skeletal trees and the rotted remains of a car.
I stopped in the oblong of light from the office, shielded my eyes, and peered for some indication of the location of the groaner. “Is someone there?” I called.
Headlights came to life, blinded me, startled me as if I were a deer on the highway, left me rooted and unable to so much as blink. An engine roared. Tires dug into the gravel, spinning and shrieking. The headlights charged me. What flashed before me was not an encapsulated version of my thirty-nine years of life, but a much more vivid image of what I’d resemble if I didn’t move pretty darn soon. Pancake batter came to mind.
I flung myself into the side of the building. The headlights veered at me, then swept past while gravel pelted me like hail. I peeled myself off the wall in time to see swirling taillights as the car squealed onto the highway and sped away.