Drifter's Blues (Erotic Noir) (14 page)

‘And then?’

‘Then, we start depositing it. A little at a time, here and there. It’ll have to be in my accounts. You can’t open any new accounts at the moment, Kyle. Your face is going to become too well known around the southern states.’

‘Okay.’

She looked at him. ‘We need to change your appearance. You’re too conspicuous. Too good-looking. Not a lot we can do about that, but I need to give you a shitty haircut. And you need to grow a mustache.’

‘Not a beard? A goatee, maybe?’

‘No, too trendy. Just a mustache.’

‘Jesus. Never had one before.’

‘I’ll still think you’re hot.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’ Donna grinned.

*

The motel was a large, corporate-looking one, a world apart from the fleapit Kyle had been staying at. It appeared to cater mainly for travelling salesmen or businessmen who’d taken a trip to Montgomery at the last minute and couldn’t get a place in one of the city’s hotels.

Donna checked them in at the front desk while Kyle hung back in the car. She emerged and he joined her, carrying his rucksack as well as the small suitcase Donna had packed herself. They went along to the room. It was clean if drab, didn’t smell, and the bedsheets looked like they were changed frequently.

Kyle sat on the bed, bounced up and down a few times, glanced at donna suggestively. She gave his shoulder a playful slap.

‘First things first. I need to get a few things for you. Hair dye, some scissors. You hungry?’

Kyle stood. ‘I’ll get the stuff. Plus something for us to eat.’

‘No, Kyle. I should go.’

‘Donna, I can’t stay cooped up. I’ll go stir crazy. Plus, there are things I need to get myself.’ He went to the door as if to consider no further argument. ‘There was a n all-night grocery store down the road. I’ll walk. A half-hour tops, okay?’

And he was gone.

Donna sat on the bed and stared at Kyle’s rucksack on the chair opposite her. She wondered why she’d let him go, in spite of the risk they ran of somebody recognizing him from the TV.

Then she wondered why he’d been so insistent on going himself.

Dona stood and went over to the window. She peered out between the drapes. Nobody in the forecourt. In the distance she saw Kyle, heading along the road toward the store.

She went back over to the bed and sat down again. Stared at the rucksack.

It would be the easiest thing in the world.

Donna reached over and lifted the rucksack. She unzipped it and slowly drew out the two-by-three-feet package in its oilskin sack.

She sat hefting the sack, looking at it.

The easiest thing in the world. Walk out, get in the Mercedes and drive away.

But something didn’t feel right.

Why had Kyle been so eager to go to the store himself?

Donna turned the package over. She’d never held the Allevi painting but this felt just about the right weight. The sack was held closed by string wrapped tightly around the height and width of the painting.

With a final glance out the window, Donna sat back down and began to pick at the knots in the string.

Her nails broke, one by one, and she grimaced. The knots were so tight it would have been far easier just to cut the string with a pair of nail scissors. But she didn’t want to do that.

Time passed. Donna wished she’d made a note of the time Kyle had left. The green display on the digital bedside clock said it was twelve forty-five a.m. She estimated ten minutes had gone by.

A knot proved too much for her nails, and she began to nibble at it with her teeth to loosen it. While doing so she glanced at the clock display. Twelve fifty-one.

Her scrabbling at the knots became increasingly frantic and she started to struggle more. Donna forced herself to stop, take deep breaths, try again.

When, at twelve fifty-six, one end of the latticework of string was free enough that she could pull the sack out, she darted over to the window again. The humid heat had broken and a light drizzle had started. Through the skein of rain Donna saw a figure in the distance. Kyle, heading back from the store, his arms laden with bags.

Quickly she pulled the sack free, found the opening and reached in, feeling wood. A corner got stuck on the material of the sack and she tugged it free, taking care not to tear it.

What she pulled out was no painting. Instead, it was an empty frame, not the one that usually housed the Allevi.

She’d been set up.

Feeling the thrill of panic, Donna shoved the frame back into the sack and replaced the string and began to tie it tight with trembling fingers. Just as she’d secured it she heard a rapping on the door.

‘Donna, it’s me,’ came Kyle’s voice softly.

Hoping against hope he couldn’t see in between the drapes, Donna pushed the wrapped package back into the rucksack and zipped it shut. She replaced it on the chair, then hurried over to the door and unlocked it.

Kyle stood there, dripping with rain, holding several paper bags with groceries.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was in the john.’

His smile was bedraggled but affectionate. She helped him with the bags.

‘Got hair dye, scissors, Slim Jims, corn chips, Diet Coke, Marlboros – oh, and a couple six packs.’ He looked round at her. ‘Thought we’d have a little celebration.’

Donna forced a smile onto her face. ‘Sounds romantic,’ she said wryly.

She cut Kyle’s hair using the paper bags from the store to collect the trimmings, catching her breath as the first blond ropes fell to the floor. By the time she’d finished he had an approximate crew-cut. It didn’t suit him, but it also didn’t look so stupid that he’d stand out. Donna thought it gave him an almost military look, quite different from the grungy surfer image he’d had before.

The dye he’d chosen was a good one, a light brown which suited his skin tone and once again made him look very different but not outlandishly so. When they were finished Donna stared over his shoulder at his reflection in the dressing mirror.

‘Very Alabama,’ she remarked.

‘I look like an asshole,’ Kyle said.

‘But a handsome asshole.’ Still holding his gaze in the mirror, Donna reached up and poked her tongue into his ear. He put his hand to the side of her face, pressed her head against his.

‘Let’s eat.’

‘Did you bring plates?’

‘I don’t mean food.’

What followed was more intense, more prolonged, than any time before. They coupled on the bed, on the floor, seated on the chair by the dresser, changing position and sometimes location in mid-fuck before resuming with increased urgency. The first time was violent, almost as fast as it had been in the car out under the stars; the second slower and more relaxed; the third, after a break for beer and food and languid stroking, forceful and rough again.

Two hours in, Donna was on her hands and knees on the floor. Beneath her was the full-length mirror from inside the closet, which Kyle had prized off the door. Kyle knelt behind her, thrusting into her with long, steady strokes. Their bodies were slick and sheened with sweat. Reflected below Donna, her heavy breasts bounced with each thrust, and at the apex of her trimmed pubic triangle Kyle’s thick, shining erection appeared and disappeared between the lips of her vulva like a piston rod.

Over her shoulder Kyle gazed down at the mirror, his expression rapt, his face flushed with exertion and animal lust. Donna studied his face, the youthfulness of it, the somehow innocent strength.

Where’s the picture, Kyle?
she asked him silently.
Where’ve you hidden it? And how much longer are you going to hold out on me?

*

Dawn crept in through the thin drapes of the motel room, and Donna lifted her head, blinking.

A dull throbbing in her skull reminded her of the beers she’d consumed with Kyle the night before. Correction: just a few hours before. She peered fuzzily at the clock display by the side of the bed. Six thirty-five.

A dull throbbing in her lower abdomen, and a soreness between her legs, reminded her of other stuff.

She’d been lying on one arm and it had gone to sleep. Donna rubbed the sensation back into it, then rolled over, reaching for Kyle.

The other side of the bed was empty.

Donna sat up. There were no tell-tale shower sounds from the bathroom.

She got up as quickly as her grogginess would allow her and felt a tide of nausea sweep in. Pausing for a moment to collect herself, she padded naked to the bathroom door.

It was ajar. She pushed it open.

‘Kyle?’

No reply. She stepped inside.

He was gone.

Donna went back into the bedroom, alarm rising in her. Then she saw the folded piece of paper, tucked into the frame of the mirror on the dresser.

Lying in his arms after their final bout of lovemaking in the night, when both of them had realized they’d reached the limit of their endurance, Donna had murmured: ‘Just out of interest, where
did
you hide the painting?’

‘Just around.’ Had he hesitated before replying? She snuggled against him.

‘You can tell me. It doesn’t matter now, does it?’

‘Why’s it important?’

‘I’m just curious, is all.’

‘Just around,’ he repeated. ‘A locker I found at a bus station.’

‘The Amtrak station by the river?’

‘Yeah. That’s the one.’

He was lying. There was no such place.

She needed to know where he’d hidden the painting because in all likelihood it was still there. Donna didn’t know what game Kyle was playing, but he’d surely have to own up in the morning when her contact called her to set up a rendezvous in order to check the painting out. Was Kyle intending to skip out on her and run off with the picture himself? In which case, why hadn’t he done so already? Why come all the wait out here to Alabama with her only to go back the following day? Was it just for the sex with her?

Now, alone in the motel room at sunrise, Donna snatched the folded note from the mirror with trembling fingers. She opened it. In surprisingly neat script, Kyle had written:

Dear Donna

Please forgive me for running out on you like this, and for tricking you. But please, read this note all the way through before you judge me.

That wrapped object in the rucksack isn’t the painting after all. It’s a decoy. You see, I had my doubts about you. I thought you might try to doublecross me, and run off with the painting on your own.

I realize now I was wrong, and I bitterly regret doing what I did. Last night I went out to the store on my own to see if you’d take the package and drive away. I was testing you. You didn’t, and I’m truly ashamed that I doubted you.

Donna, honey, please understand you mean the world to me. I love you, and I want to spend my life with you. I want to make this work between us. I was a fool to think you’d betray me, and I’ll never make that mistake again.

I’ve gone to get the painting. The real one this time, cross my heart. I hid it in the chalet back at your home. There wasn’t time to sneak out and hide it somewhere else, so I wrapped it up and stuck it under the floorboards down there. The same place we’ve spent so many wonderful hours together. I figured the cops wouldn’t have any reason to go searching there because Blair got killed up at the house.

That’s how I know that girl, Madison, never saw me leaving the house. Because I never left. Only later, with you, went we went back to my motel. And she didn’t say she’d seen you. So she was making it all up.

So I’ll rent a car from the motel and should be back just about in time for breakfast. (I’ve taken your house keys – sorry – but left the ones for the Mercedes.) Then, if you want, we can meet this guy of yours and get the painting valued, then collect on the money. If you want to. If you don’t want anything more to do with me after the way I’ve deceived you – well, it’ll break my heart, but I understand. That’s why I’ve left your car.

Donna, please don’t call me. If you do, I won’t answer the phone. Not because I don’t want to talk with you. But because I need to do this, without interruption, without you trying to persuade me it’s too risky for me to go back. Because I need to do this myself. I need to make good.

I’ll see you, I hope, around nine a.m., back at the motel.

Whatever happens, please remember that I love you.

Yours,

Kyle

Donna read the note through a second time. Then she flopped back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

Despite herself, she smiled.

The chalet. Of course. It was obvious.

Maddeningly, the painting had been right under her nose the last ten days.

She sat bolt upright, checked the clock by the bed. Six forty-three.

I’ll see you… around nine a.m.
, Kyle had written.