01. Labyrinth of Dreams (12 page)

They parked the car and got out just as I approached, paying me no attention at all. So here they were at last, I couldn't help thinking. We'd played all the long shots and we'd won.

What everybody had been telling us about them was definitely true. They didn't look just enough alike to be brother and sister, they looked nearly identical. Well, not quite. Amanda Curry looked like Whitlock perhaps ten or more years younger; there was a smooth and youthful look to the face, and a slighter build. Both were dressed casually in jeans and work shirts and boots, pretty much as I was. There was no real sexual confusion in the two dressed like this, but her hair was cut almost in a crew-cut fashion, as short as Brandy's, in its own way. Removed from the three-piece suit and cultural background, Whitlock's face was strikingly androgynous. It, too, was smoother and softer than you'd expect, and his hair was cut in much the same short fashion as hers.

She had been described as butch, and she was certainly that. Her mannerisms, her way of walking and moving, were culturally quite male, and she was clearly aggressive and in charge. They locked the car, and then she went to the door and opened it, and he followed. The door closed.

I wandered slowly past their room with my drink and there was a small gap where the two curtains hadn't completely closed, but I couldn't see much without standing there, and I thought better of that.

Brandy met me at our door and we went in. She took the Coke and drank a fair amount, then put it down. "Well? What do you think?" she asked me.

"I think everything we heard is true. The real question is what we do now. There are several possibilities, including going up and introducing ourselves, or trying to bluff our way past that gatehouse. The trouble is, that place looked
huge,
and there's no way to know if there's anything up there worth looking for, let alone what it might be."

"Little Jimmy thought there was something crazy goin' on up there, something dangerous."

"There's only one thing it can be. This corporation's some kind of blind or legitimate front for some rival in organized crime. Whitlock was into this bunch, and they forced him to double-cross the old bunch. Now that old bunch is busted, there's two-million-plus profit from the deal, and Whitlock's under their protection since the eastern mob doesn't forget and loves to make examples."

"And this dyke twin of his? What about her?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I sure can't figure where she came from and why she looks so much like him, but it's clear she was in it because of that striking resemblance. Some part of the scam involved him being in two places at once, maybe leading Kennedy's crew away, or maybe Little Jimmy's boys. I'm sure the resemblance is natural. If it was some kind of plastic surgery, they'd have used a man with the same general build. Now she's got to get away as well, to keep the old mob guessing as to how the thing was worked, that's all. Face it, babe—it's over. It was one hell of a case, but in the end it was just an ordinary, ugly war between two rival mob factions. I don't know if old Marty likes to wear his wife's panty hose or not, but it's either true or something cooked up to ease the sense of doubt when the male and female Marty switched long-range identities. It doesn't matter. There's no more case."

She sighed. "I guess you're right. They're bound to figure that anybody still chasing them has a contract with the old mob. So what happens now?"

"Nothing. We stay here tonight, check out tomorrow, and very visibly go back to the airport and then back to Frisco. Then we call somebody back home, get our mail sent out, and see if Little Jimmy really came through with the referrals. If he did, we'll see if we might want to relocate and work for somebody else. If he didn't, well, I think we got about two grand in cash left. After that— the Delaware shore, as before."

"I guess," she sighed. "Still, I—"

Her words were broken by the sound of a loud shot from one big gun and the immediate crashing sound of a broken window. Since it wasn't our window, Brandy grabbed the magnum and I instinctively dove for and hit the lights, then we both peered out the window from the side of the curtains.

It was dark out there; somebody had extinguished all the lights along the parking area, and the red neon motel sign gave little light. "You see anybody?" she whispered.

"Uh uh."

"I got some cover with the car. I'm goin' out there."

"What! Why?"

"They might just have got the wrong room the first time, and in case you never noticed, lover, these places ain't got no back doors."

She crouched down, and I slowly and quietly opened the door enough for her to crawl out on her hands and knees. She made it to the car grille, but I could see someone lying prone further up, someone who just might have been either Whitlock or Curry. I not only couldn't tell if it was dead or alive, with the light this poor, I could hardly tell which way the body had fallen. Clearly, though, nobody, not even Brandy, could safely move against an unknown potential assassin out there someplace, maybe with a sniperscope, unless there was a diversion. I crouched down low to the floor and opened the door a bit wider.

"Hey!"
I shouted at the top of my lungs through the cracked door. "What the hell is going on out there?"

A shot came right through the middle part of the door, about where I would have been standing had I not been born cautious. Brandy, however, had taken the opportunity to move down, since if the bastard was shooting at me he wasn't looking four doors down. I risked another peek and saw she'd reached the downed figure. A third shot roared and struck the pavement, sending sparks flying, but it was a good several inches from her. Whoever it was hadn't moved fast enough.

I wondered where in hell the cops were. Surely some of the other guests, or at least the manager, had called them by now. It wasn't too clear, though, if maybe our man had cut the lines, and in back I heard loud noises and the shifting of heavy cargo. That damned train was still blocking access to town! ,

I heard Brandy whispering frantically to someone, but I couldn't make out the words. There was another shot, and I heard somebody say, "I see him now! Other side of the road. Too far to hit with that cannon."

"Maybe not, but I can make it hot for him," Brandy responded. "Sam! You okay?"

"I'm in one piece, if that's what you mean." It suddenly occurred to me that the woman with the gun had such lousy vision she couldn't have hit the damned motel, let alone a guy a hundred yards away. Well, she could shoot in the general direction, and
he
wouldn't know that.

"The man's hit! It's not bad, but we're sure as hell pinned down here. That shooter's got a clear field of fire and—oh
shit!"
I heard her suddenly squeeze off three shots with the magnum, and I heard a scream from further down the walk.
"Got him!"

Just great, I thought. Two of them. And how many more? Just what we needed at the end of the trail. No big payoff, and caught in the crossfire of a hit squad. Brandy had been lucky, too. The guy had missed with his shot, and she had only to brace and sight along the motel's front wall to nail him. I bet she still couldn't see the Coke machine.

"How many bullets you got?" I called to her.

"Just used three. That leaves five left in the clip."

"All right." I went back, found her box of cartridges, and went back to the door. "I'm coming out low to the car and bringing the bullets. Give me cover if I need it."

I didn't need it, because just then the lights of two cars illuminated the area in front of the motel, coming in toward town from the north. They both illuminated and somewhat blinded the shooter, and I took advantage of them to make it out and to toss the box to Brandy before dropping down to the far side of our car. I had no idea if the shooter saw me at all, but if he didn't, I had an idea. I made it around to the car door, figuring that it would be out of the shooter's line of sight, providing he hadn't taken the opportunity to move. I opened the car door carefully, keeping down, and eased inside, then fumbled for my keys. The shooter had a rifle and a good night scope at a range of maybe a hundred yards. Child's play for anybody with any skill at all.

"Give him a full clip!" I called to Brandy. "I don't want him to hear the car starting up!"

She fired off the remaining five and I started the car. He returned fire, three shots in their direction, one busting the back windshield of their Olds. Hertz, I decided, wasn't going to like any of us one bit.

There was no way I could use the car for cover, and a getaway for any of us was unlikely, but there was one way to buy a fair amount of time if they were ready to move. The end of the rear unit was only eight rooms from where they now were, and that would give them cover and two exits. The trick was to make it that far. I only hoped that, in fact, the bastard was using a sniperscope.

"As soon as I stop, you move!" I told them. "Don't stop for
anything!
Now—you reloaded?"

"Yeah!"

"Give me all you got, slow, one at a time!"

I put the car into reverse and gunned it backward at her first shot, then whirled it around as a shot came right through the windshield. I hit the brights, full, threw it into park, and dove for the couple of yards I needed to get in back of the motel office.

Sure, I knew he'd eventually shoot out the headlights, but with a sniperscope those brights blinded him almost instantly, and now they illuminated the whole stretch of parking lot, road, and tree-filled embankment on the other side where he was. Those damned lights were full in his face, and until he got them out, everything in the darkened motel in back was invisible to him except maybe the Coke machine.

When you mount a sniperscope, it's for a specific purpose. It takes time to shut it off, then remove it (since it's a big sucker) so you can use the standard pin sights. The guy was good; he'd just finished shooting out the last of the four headlights in less than thirty seconds with a couple in the grille for good measure, but now it was going to take him almost that long to remount and recalibrate his scope again. I looked back, trying to adjust my own eyes for the dark, and I didn't see a soul in the back units.

I did, however, hear the unmistakable sounds that the train was now moving, not just rumbling back and forth as cars were switched and disconnected up front. That meant traffic would soon be clear, and there'd be an open run from town to here and back again. This had already gone on longer than the shooter figured, I thought with confidence. He counted on maybe nabbing one clear, then keeping them pinned down until his partner could get to the room and finish the other off, counting on the train to block both traffic and loud shots. Clearly they hadn't expected third-party intervention, and particularly not third-party-with-a-big-peashooter-of-their-own. At this point, our boy would either have to run for it or come to us.

He was determined, that was for sure. I saw him now run down along the road, carrying the rifle as bold as you please, and then run across to the nearest block of units. He was pretty good, really; Uncle Sam had apparently shown him the proper way to do things with a rifle and against hostile fire. Clearly he was going to come up in back of that block of motel units, maybe all the way back to the tracks, then try and stalk them— and here I was without a weapon to my name.

I went forward, worried about Brandy but also having enough common sense to realize that I had to act independently with what I had. I made my way around to the motel office and found the door ajar. Inside, there was nobody, but the switchboard phone had been ripped out and all the connector cords had their plugs cut off. It was still connected, though; the thing buzzed like a hornet's nest and there were four lights flashing.

Under the reception counter, however, I thought I found what I was hoping for. Two buttons; one red, one white. If the phone
lines
were still connected, the odds were that these were, too. I pushed them both, and bells and alarms started going on all over the place. God bless Oregon for a strict fire code. About thirty seconds later I heard a loud siren from off toward town; clearly the fire alarm had triggered the volunteer signal, something I hadn't figured on at all but didn't mind in the least.

Two cars with flashing red lights arrived within a minute, but they weren't who I expected. Both were white cars with security on them in big black letters. These weren't from town; they were from the corporation. I didn't care who they were. They had on plant-blue uniforms and they wore .38s. I went up to the nearest of them.

"Two guys started opening up on the middle unit," I told them. "One from over there, one from the end. The one at the end's been taken out, but the sniper is moving up in back there and he has a scope!"

"Who're they after?" the private cop asked, drawing his weapon.

"Two guests and my wife are back there someplace, with one gun."

There was a sudden sharp exchange of fire from in back of the motel. I heard the rifle go twice, and Brandy's magnum go three times, but it was hard to tell the order and impossible to say who got who. They didn't wait, though. One car went to each end of our middle unit and they got out, using the doors as shields, acting like real pros.

Red and blue lights from a sheriff's car appeared, and it too roared up, followed by a very large fire engine. I shouted for the firemen to get down—it was a sniper, not a fire—then threw caution to the winds and ran back up to the middle unit. Both rent-a-cop teams had moved in back, while the deputies split to cover the rear of the two end units. I wasn't worried about myself, but I was terrified as to what those shots might mean for Brandy. I suddenly realized just how much I needed her.

It had been over, however, before the reinforcements arrived. As I went around in back of the rental cops, I heard Brandy shout and then saw the cops move in back and switch on their flashlights. I followed, and found the trio in the culvert between the back of the motel and the tracks, with two of the company cops now putting away their weapons and leaning down to help the wounded. Two others were examining a form about twenty feet away.