The Book With No Name (50 page)

1 New Message.

After a frenetic and extremely passionate lovemaking session that had left them feeling extremely relaxed, Dante and Kacy had set about checking out of the motel. Since the moment she had allowed him to persuade her to remove her underwear, neither of them had been able to remember quite why they had been so desperate to get out of town in such a hurry. Sure, the cops might be looking for them, but with the number of dead bodies around that day, there would be potentially hundreds of avenues for the police to explore before they tracked down the two young lovers.

They had packed their remaining possessions and changed clothes without feeling a fraction of the anxiety they had endured, pre-fuck. Dante was now wearing the blue jeans Kacy had thrown at him, along with an unexceptionable red short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt over a clean white undershirt. Kacy had thrown on a pale blue miniskirt and blue high-heeled shoes. Her outfit was topped off with a low-cut white T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of a blue 1966 Thunderbird flying off the edge of the Grand Canyon.

After driving the yellow Cadillac round to the rear car park, they made their way back to the front of the building. Dante kept one arm wrapped tightly around Kacy’s shoulders. With all they had been through together in the last few days he felt more protective of her than ever before. She was more important to him than anything in the world, so he was keeping her close during their remaining time in Santa Mondega.

The loved-up young couple were in good spirits as they arrived at the reception desk to settle their bill. Making an attempt at being discreet, they both wore sunglasses to cover at least a little of their faces. Kacy was wearing Dante’s Terminator shades, while he wore a pair of aviators that he had picked up from one of the bodies in the Tapioca. He didn’t feel the least bit guilty about this. After all, the guy had been dead.

Carlos, the motel manager, was sitting behind the reception desk, with his feet up, reading a copy of
Empire
magazine. Even though Dante and Kacy were about to settle their bill and make him some money, he still didn’t welcome the intrusion on his reading time. He was a short, middle-aged Hispanic with tufts of thick black hair around his ears but little or none on top. He compensated for this by displaying an extremely dense black moustache that grew from out of his large nostrils and down past the corners of his mouth.

The lobby had a faint but unpleasant musty smell about it. Whether this came from the dirty maroon carpet, the decaying brown wallpaper, Carlos, or a combination of all three, was hard to tell. It was a small stuffy reception area only slightly
bigger than the bedroom they had occupied. It had only one window, situated near the corner farthest from the desk. It was small and narrow, and its broken handle ensured that it couldn’t be opened.

‘Yo, Carlos, my man, we wanna settle up,’ said Dante cheerfully, throwing a set of keys over the reception desk at the manager. The keys hit the cover of Carlos’s magazine and fell to the floor. Disgruntled, he put the magazine down and took his feet off the desk, then reached down and picked up the keys. ‘What’s this?’ he asked suspiciously, holding them up.

On the ring was the motel room key, but also a car key that he didn’t recognize. He fingered it free of the other key and the heavy metal tag attached to the ring.

‘It’s a thank-you gift for letting us stay here,’ Dante replied, smiling.

‘What the fuck is it?’

‘Take a look out the back window,’ said Dante, nodding at the small window in the far corner.

Carlos got up from his seat and gave Dante a dirty look, then he smiled at Kacy and winked. He made his way over to the window and looked out. About twenty yards away in the private car park out back was the yellow Cadillac he had seen outside one of the apartments the night before. Just then it was the only car in the lot.

‘You’re giving me your car?’

‘Yep.’

‘What’s the catch? It stolen?’

‘Oh no, nothing like that,’ Kacy chimed in with a broad smile.

‘You might wanna get it sprayed a different colour though,’ said Dante.

Carlos took a few seconds to think over the offer.

‘Might wanna get the licence plate changed, too?’

‘Might,’ Dante agreed.

Carlos made his way back behind the reception desk and sat down. He flicked through the guest book and stopped at
a page with a list of names on it. Halfway down the list were Dante and Kacy’s signatures and the details of their stay.

‘The room’s a hundred and fifty dollars,’ he said, looking hard into Dante’s sunglasses.

‘Tell you what,’ said Dante leaning over the counter to get in Carlos’s face. ‘How about you give us the room for free as a thank-you for the car I just gave you.’

Carlos closed the register and picked up his magazine, flicking back to the article he’d been reading.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Do you want the page of the guest book with your names and signatures on, too? You know, to take with you as a souvenir of your stay?’

‘Er, actually, yeah, that’s probably a good idea,’ said Dante. ‘Thanks.’

‘That’ll be a hundred and fifty dollars, then.’

Dante’s patience had worn thin.

‘Now you look here, you cheeky fuckin’ spick,’ he said spitefully. ‘I just gave you a fuckin’ car. Don’t push your fuckin’ luck.’

‘The price is a hundred and fifty. You don’t like it, you know what you can do.’

Kacy felt the need to interject before Dante got them into any more trouble than was necessary. She jumped forward with a great beaming smile on her face and put her hands on Carlos’s desk, leaning forward to show a little cleavage as her arms squeezed her breasts together. Her welcoming expression seemed to say
These are my tits. They could be yours … for a while.

‘You know what, Carlos? How ’bout you call a cab for us, while we count the money out for you?’

‘Sure,’ said Carlos, all the while staring down Kacy’s T-shirt with a wry smile on his face. ‘There’s a charge of five dollars for the call, though.’

‘Fuck you, you prick,’ Dante growled at him. ‘I’ll ring the fuckin’ cab myself. Come on, Kace, let’s go.’

‘Dante, please just give him the money. Just do it. It’ll put my mind at ease.’

Dante was about to respond when a silver-haired man in a grey trench coat walked in. Carlos recognized the guy and greeted him immediately.

‘Good afternoon,
Detective
Somers,’ he called out cheerily, as if he was pleased to see him.

‘Hello, Carlos,’ said Somers solemnly.

The detective walked up to the reception desk and stood alongside Kacy, giving her a quick smile. ‘Hello, miss. Mind if I just butt in ahead of you? It’s police business.’ He held his badge up.

‘Oh, no. I mean, sure,’ said Kacy replied nervously.

She was praying that Dante would keep his mouth shut. It might already be too late. He had pissed off Carlos and now here was a detective standing right alongside them.

‘Carlos,’ Somers began, displaying a fake smile and slipping a twenty-dollar bill over the counter to the manager, who took it happily. ‘I’ve heard a rumour that you’ve got someone staying here who drives a yellow Cadillac. That Cadillac has been stolen, and the owner –
who happens to be me –
an officer of the law, wants his car back. He also wants to know the name of the driver, if you’ve got it to hand. Be good if you could help me here. Thanks.’

Kacy watched as Carlos took stock of the situation.
Why, oh why had Dante gone and pissed him off? Now they were in trouble again.
She took a step back from the desk to try to catch her boyfriend’s eye. It was hard to tell through his dark aviator sunglasses if he was even looking at her. And if he was looking at her, she couldn’t read his eyes. Evasive action was required. If Carlos gave the game away, they were going to prison. The suitcase full of money, the stolen car, and probably the eyewitnesses from the Tapioca would see to it that they were in jail and poor once again. Not to mention in danger. Kacy didn’t trust anyone in this city, not even the cops. Especially not cops, although she thought the old guy actually looked okay.

Carlos rubbed his chin as he considered his response to Somers’s question, at the same time quickly pocketing
the twenty-dollar bill.

‘Yeah, there was a yellow Cadillac staying here. I remember the guy who was driving it.
Real asshole, he was.
Let me see if I’ve got his name in my guest book,’ he said, once again putting his magazine to one side and looking down at the register lying open on the desk.

Dante took a step back from the desk too. ‘You know what, Carlos?’ he said pleasantly, stretching his arms as if he were tired. ‘We’ll come back later. Thanks.’

‘Don’t you go anywhere,’ said Somers grabbing hold of Dante’s arm tightly. ‘I’ll only be a minute. You an’ this pretty lady can wait, can’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ smiled Carlos, still looking at the guest book. ‘You can wait. This’ll only take a minute. Once I’ve given this officer the information he requires, I’ll get to you, don’t worry.’

He flicked through the pages of the guest book again and stopped on the page with Dante’s and Kacy’s names on it. As he ran his finger down the list he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Kacy was moving away from the desk a little. He sat back and looked up, first at Somers, then, as if he were deep in thought, over at Kacy. He began to drum his fingers on the open page of the book.

‘What is it?’ asked Somers.

‘I’m just trying to remember somethin’,’ said Carlos, holding up a hand to signal to the detective that he’d be glad of a few more seconds of his patience. There was a distracted look in his eyes, as though he was desperately trying to remember something.

Actually, he was staring at Kacy. Where Somers and Dante were standing at the desk, they were unable to see what he saw. Kacy, having moved out of their line of sight, had lifted up her T-shirt to confirm his earlier suspicion that she was not wearing a bra. Carlos stared contentedly at her magnificent breasts, marvelling at the pert pink nipples as he pretended to be deep in thought. Eventually, after a satisfyingly long time, she lowered her T-shirt again and Carlos snapped out of his trance.

‘I remember now,’ he said, turning his gaze back to Somers. ‘The guy in the Cadillac was called Pedro Valente.’ He pointed to the name on the page of the guest book. ‘He checked out about twenty minutes ago. You might catch him, said he was heading out of town.’

‘You got an address for him?’ asked Somers.

‘’Fraid not. He wasn’t the kind of guy that had an address, and certainly not the sort I’d pester for one, either.’

‘Okay,’ said Somers, stepping back and staring at Kacy. ‘I might be back if I don’t find this guy. Thanks for your help, Carlos. And sorry to have stepped in and interrupted you, miss.’

After admiring Kacy for a few seconds – she really was amazingly pretty, he thought – he turned to Dante to offer his appreciation.

‘You’re a very lucky guy,’ he said. ‘You take good care of that girl.’

‘I always do.’

‘Good.’

Somers walked past Kacy and winked at her as he headed back out of the lobby to where Miles Jensen was waiting in the squad car.

Dante reached into his back pocket and pulled out just over two hundred dollars. He threw it over the desk to Carlos.

‘Thanks, man, I owe you one.’

Carlos shook his head.

‘Keep the money,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’ll call you a cab for nothing, and you can have the page from the guest book, too, in case the cops come back. I was only kidding earlier.’

‘Wow, thanks, man,’ said Dante, taking back the money Carlos was holding out to him. He turned to face Kacy and shrugged his shoulders to express his bafflement at the previously obstructive motel manager’s change of heart.

Kacy offered a baffled shrug of her own. She, of course, knew perfectly well the reason for Carlos’s sudden generosity, but she’d keep it to herself. Dante was openly brave, always looking for a reason to protect her. If only he knew the things
she had to do to protect him from himself.

As Somers was disappearing into the motel, Jensen was using his thumb to press the ENTER button on his cellphone to play his new message. He put the phone to his ear. To his surprise, the message was from Lieutenant Paolo Scraggs.

‘
Hey, Jensen, it’s Lieutenant Scraggs here. Listen carefully, I’ve found that book you’ve been looking for. If Somers is anywhere near you, get the fuck away from him. I think he’s the killer you’re hunting. The whole Bourbon Kid thing is a red herring … or something … I’m not sure. Just call me or the Captain, but don’t talk to Somers. There’s a picture of him in the book. Says he’s a Dark Lord or some shit like that. Call me.
’

Jensen sat for a few seconds, frowning as he replayed the message in his mind. Somers? The killer? Couldn’t be … could it? Why would Scraggs lie? Scraggs didn’t like Somers, but then Somers didn’t like Scraggs. And hold on a minute, it was Somers who had come to Jensen’s rescue the night before when Scraggs had turned up in the barn. But … wait … Somers was late because his yellow Cadillac had been stolen. What if Somers had got to him
before
Scraggs had showed up? And come to think of it, hadn’t Carlito taken Jensen’s cellphone outside with him for a few minutes while he was tied up in the barn? What if he’d used it to make a call? Jensen flicked through the menus on his phone. And there it was: CALLS MADE – YESTERDAY – SOMERS – TIME 23.52 – DURATION 1:47

Carlito had used Jensen’s phone to call Somers while Jensen was left tied up in the barn with Miguel. After speaking to Somers, Carlito had then come back in with the scarecrow in the wheelbarrow. Somers had mentioned nothing of this phone call from Carlito.
SHIT.

The keypad on Jensen’s phone had never seemed so small. He pressed at least three wrong keys in his frantic attempts to call back Lieutenant Scraggs. He needed to speak with him before Somers returned from doing whatever he was doing in
the motel.

‘
Sorry, the cellphone you are calling has been switched off. Please try again later.

This isn’t funny,
thought Jensen.
Is it Scraggs playing a practical joke? No. It can’t be. That wouldn’t explain Carlito’s call to Somers on my phone. And … er … talking of Somers … here he comes now.