The water was warm. I lay in it, naked, alongside
the boat, with one hand on the gunwale, trying not
to think of anything except the motor. I can’t wait all
day, I thought. If I don’t do it now I’ll lose my nerve.
Shutting my mind to everything, to all thought, I
took a deep breath and dived. I seemed to go on for
a long time, pulling myself down with powerful
strokes of my hands, wanting to turn back but
forcing myself to go ahead. It must be twenty feet
deep instead of twelve, I thought wildly, and then I
felt the soft mud under my arm. I was against the
bottom. This was the terrible part of it now. Pulling
upward against the water with my hands to keep
myself flat against the mud, I groped around with
them, feeling for the motor. There was no use in
opening my eyes to try to see, for at this depth in the
discolored water there would be no light at all. I
River Girl — 155
swung my arms around wildly and felt nothing. My
lungs were beginning to hurt and I thought of the
boat above me, knowing I had to come up carefully
as I approached the surface or I might bang my head
into it. I couldn’t wait too long. Putting my feet
against the mud, I sprang upward, bringing my arms
up over my head to feel for the boat. I missed it and
came out of the water gasping for breath.
I can’t give up, I thought, my mind still focused
with that terrible intensity on just one thing—the
motor. I gulped a deep breath and dived again.
When I was against the bottom I started sweeping it
again with my arms, and then my left hand brushed
against something just at the ends of my fingers. I
turned toward it, feeling my skin draw up tightly
with revulsion. It was a shoe. Bringing my right hand
around, I groped with it, moving a little, and felt the
canvas coat. I was fighting desperately now to keep
from being sick here twelve feet under water and
drowning myself with the retching.
I had my hands
on the frame of the motor, and with some detached
portion of my mind that still hadn’t quite given itself
up to the wildness I was able to orient myself. It was
tilted against his doubled body in an almost upright
position, just as I had thought it would be. Fighting
at the panic, I ran my hands along the frame, feeling
for the valve, and found it. It was tightly shut.
Bringing my feet under me, I squatted upright
alongside the motor and lifted, rolling the whole
wirebound and terrifying mass of his body and the
motor over 180 degrees until he was lying on his
other side with the outboard upside down and its
tank stuck into the soft and sucking mud. It wasn’t
until then, until I had started to shove upward
toward the air and clean sunlight, that I felt the final
horror, the thing I had feared more than all the rest.
It brushed against my naked leg, hard and solid and
cold, and then when I threshed wildly it was gone
somewhere into the darkness. It was a turtle.
I held weakly to the boat, and in a minute I was
able to climb in and collapse naked and dripping on
the seat, waiting for the wildness to go away.
River Girl — 156
Eighteen
When I had dried a little in the sun I put my clothes
back on, felt for the envelope that contained the
money to be sure it was still safe, and sat looking out
at the surface of the lake. No more drops of oil came
up, and I felt sure I had solved it. As for that already
spread out over the water, there was nothing I could
do about it. I decided against trying to spread and
disperse it by running though it, on the theory that it
would do more harm than good. It would look more
like an accidental spillage if it were all in one place.
I started the motor and headed back to the boat
landing. After tying up at the float, I finished the job
I had started before, filling the gasoline tank, and
looked at my watch. It was three-fifteen. I went up
the trail through the trees and out into the hot
sunlight of the clearing. The old hound was nowhere
in sight. When I went into the house, nothing had
changed at all. It was all exactly as I had left it,
except that the spot on the floor that I had scrubbed
was dry now. I walked out into the kitchen and
looked around there, finding nothing out of place.
There wasn’t a chance anyone had been here.
Going back into the front room, I stood there for a
moment before the dresser, remembering the day
she had taken out the hook for me and how beautiful
River Girl — 157
she had been even in that terrible dress and with the
roughly cut hair uncombed. I could almost feel her
there with me in the intense, hot stillness, and I
wanted suddenly with an almost overpowering
longing to see her now. It’s only until tonight, I
thought, or early tomorrow morning. I’ll see her
then. And then, all at once, I was conscious there
was something different about the room. Something
that had always been there before was gone now,
and I missed it. Then I knew what is was. I no longer
heard the ticking of the clock. It had run down and
stopped. It doesn’t matter, I thought. I’d better get
out of here now, before I start seeing him instead of
her. I took a last look around. There was nothing
that could do us any harm, and I went out, leaving
the door open, and walked back to the boat. I should
have taken another look.
From now on it’s got to be good, I thought. I
stepped down off the float into the rental boat and
sat down on the seat. Taking out my knife, I slashed
a small incision on the side of one of the fingers on
my left hand. When the blood started, I picked up
one of the oars and smeared it rather sparingly up
near the round, heavy end just below the hand grip.
It would be dry by the time I was ready to abandon
the boat. Then I let a little of it drip into the water in
the bottom, and smeared some on the seat. That took
care of it, except the bailing can. Very carefully I put
a set of smeared and bloody, completely
unrecognizable fingerprints inside it, just where the
fingers would normally be as a man grasped it to dip
water out of the boat.
I was ready to go. Wrapping the cut finger in my
handkerchief so it wouldn’t bleed any into his boat, I
switched to Shevlin’s, tied the rental boat on behind
with the anchor rope, and was under way down the
lake. Now it starts again, I thought. This makes
three times, and if I had to do it once more my hair
would be gray. Only now, if I meet somebody, it’s the
end of everything. But the miles ran back behind me,
turn after turn, one empty and deserted reach after
another while I sweated it out, and I saw no one at
River Girl — 158
all. At four-forty-five I was down to the sandy point
where the slough turned off, the one I had marked in
my memory this morning. I wheeled and turned into
it and in a moment I was out of sight of the lake, cut
off and hidden among the trees on either side.
I had to throttle the big motor down here, for the
channel was narrow and twisting, winding its erratic
way across the bottom. And two or three times in
every mile there would be big trees down in the
water. These had to be carefully worked around,
sometimes forcing me clear up against the opposite
bank. After I had gone about three miles I stopped,
pulled the rental boat alongside, and cut the anchor
rope up near where it was made fast to the bow.
Coiling it up so there would be no free end to float
around in the water, I tied it all up in one bunch and
dropped it into the slough. The anchor was a
concrete block that would weigh about fifteen
pounds, and I knew that when they found the
abandoned boat with it missing, the inference would
be inescapable. Shevlin had used the thing that was
handiest, and what was left of Jack Marshall was
lying on the bottom somewhere in all these
thousands of acres of lake and slough with it tied
fast to his body. I dropped the deputy’s badge and
the gun and handcuffs into the water along with the
anchor and sat for a moment watching the little
rings recede where they had disappeared. There, I
thought, goes the last trace of twenty-seven years of
Marshall.
I got under way again, pulling the rental boat
along with the short section of anchor rope still left
fast to the bow. After about another mile I found the
place I was looking for. A small stream came out into
the slough on the right, its entrance choked with a
rank growth of reeds. I stopped and pulled the rental
boat alongside and got into it, setting the anchor of
Shevlin’s boat in its stern so it wouldn’t get away.
The blood I had smeared on the oar and the boat
seat had dried solidly now, and I wet the bloody
handkerchief I had had about my finger and set
about washing it off. The way to do it, I knew, was to
River Girl — 159
wash it just as clean as a man would who was
anxious to leave no trace but at the same time was
working under tremendous pressure. There would
be no indication that it had been planted, but rather
that it had been thoroughly searched for and washed
off with just a slight smudge overlooked here and
there. The gory fingerprints inside the bailing can I
left just as they were, for they were completely
invisible as the can was lying now. Then I took the
small handcuff key out of my pocket and dropped it
so it bounced under one of the slats in the wooden
grating on the bottom of the boat, invisible unless
someone lifted the grating. I wiped the motor all
over with the handkerchief to remove fingerprints,
rolled the wet cloth into a ball, and threw it far out
among the reeds.
Taking one of the oars, I poled the boat back
among the reeds, then pulled Shevlin’s boat in after
it until they touched. Lifting the anchor back into his
boat, I climbed over into it myself and poled it back
out of the growth into the slough. I turned and
looked back. It was a good job. The boat was hidden,
but it could be found. It looked exactly like the kind
of job a man would do at night and in a hurry, not
knowing, because of the darkness, that just a little
white was visible through the shield of greenery. It’s
done, I thought. It’s all done except getting out of
here. In a few more hours I’ll be with her. The past
ends here, and from now on everything is ours.
The sun was almost down now and twilight was
thickening here in the heavy timber of the bottom. I
knew I had to hurry and get up to the head of the
slough before it was completely dark, for it would be
impossible to negotiate a small, twisting, logblockaded
waterway like this at night. Starting the
motor, I got under way, sure it couldn’t be more than
another mile or two out to the road.
The going became worse and worse, and in a few
minutes I had to cut the motor and take to the oars,
picking my way carefully around down timber and
logs. In another ten minutes I could see it was going
to be impossible to take the boat much farther and I
River Girl — 160
began looking around for a place to leave it. I wasn’t
long in finding it, a dead log projecting out into the
water where I could step out and get on dry ground
without leaving any tracks in the mud around the
water’s edge. I stepped out onto the log and gave the
boat a shove, taking no pains to hide it. It made no
difference how soon they found it.
There had been no rain for weeks, and above the
water’s edge the ground was hard and dry, with no
danger of leaving tracks. It was almost totally dark
now and it was slow walking, pushing through the
underbrush. Then, almost before I expected it, I ran
into the fence. The road was just beyond, and I was
out of the bottom. There were no cars in sight, so I
stepped out on the road, looking for the bridge. I
could see the pale gleam of concrete just below me,
and walked that way, squatting down just off the
road where I could watch for the headlights of cars
and get under the bridge to hide if necessary. I
struck a match and looked at my watch. It was
seven-forty.
At five of eight I saw the headlights down the road.
The car was coming slowly, and when the lights
began to break against the bridge I saw them drop
and lift, and drop and lift again. The car pulled to a
stop and I walked up the embankment and onto the
road.
She grinned, the gray eyes alight in the soft glow
of the instrument panel. “Jack, darling, I’m right on
time. Here, I want you to drive.” She slid over in the
seat.
“All right,” I said. I walked around and got in on
the other side.
She curled up in the corner of the seat with her
legs doubled back under her, and smiled at me. She
was wearing a short gabardine skirt and another of
those exotic-looking blouses, this one gathered up
some way over her left shoulder with long diagonal
folds running down across her breast. There was a
bunch of violets pinned to it. “This is wonderful, isn’t
it?”
River Girl — 161
“Yes,” I said. “Thanks a lot, Dinah.”
I drove up the road a short distance, found a place
to turn around, and headed back, gathering speed.
“What’s the news in town?” I asked, wondering if the
storm had broken yet.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Jack. I saw
Buford for a few minutes at noon, but I haven’t
heard anything since. I told him I was leaving at one
o’clock.”
I nodded. That made sense. She couldn’t very well
start down to Bayou City at seven o’clock at night. It
would look crazy.
“You haven’t had anything to eat, have you?” she
asked.
“No. But we’d better not stop anywhere within a
hundred miles. As Buford says, I’m too easy to see.”
“Yes.” She said quietly from the corner of the seat
“I’ve noticed that about you.”
I let it pass, pretending I hadn’t caught the
inflection of it. It worried me a little, though, and at
the same time I was conscious of feeling slightly
ridiculous and uncomfortable. And then I
remembered last night and the way she had looked
up at me as she was getting into the car. I didn’t
think I had ever been one of those chumps who was
convinced that every girl that came along was
making a pass at him, but now I was beginning to
feel that way. This made twice she had rolled the
ball squarely in front of me, and twice I had refused
to pick it up. She didn’t strike me as a girl who had
ever had to be that obvious, with her looks and
charm, and she must be convinced I was incredibly
stupid. That I didn’t mind, but I didn’t want her
jumping to the only other conclusion a woman is
ever able to see when the bait remains untouched.
Absolutely nobody was ever going to know about
Doris if I could help it. It would be too dangerous for
both of us now.
I shook it off. Maybe I was mistaken, I thought.
And it’s a small thing, anyway. I’m beginning to have
the worry habit; that’s the trouble. Here I am, in the
River Girl — 162
clear at last, on my way to Doris, with three
thousand dollars in my pocket and an entirely new
life ahead of us, and I insist on getting into a sweat
about this thrill-chasing girl. By the time we get to
Bayou City she’ll probably have decided I’m just
another Mortimer Snerd and be interested in
something else.
“This is a nice car,” I said, to change the subject
and to keep the silence from stretching out.
“Yes,” she replied absently, as if it didn’t interest
her much. “It rides nicely at a hundred and above.
Why don’t you let it out?”
“On this road?” I asked incredulously.
She grinned. “Why not? It’s heavy.”
“So’s a granite headstone, but I don’t want one,” I
said.
We came out onto the highway in a few minutes
and I turned east onto, it, headed toward Colston
and Bayou City. She lit two of those king-sized
cigarettes she smoked and handed one to me. Almost
unconsciously, the way a man always does when a
woman lights a cigarette for him, I looked at the end
of it before I put it in my mouth.
She rested her cheek against the back of the seat,
smiling. “You’re not afraid of a little lipstick, are
you?”
I grinned lamely. “No. I didn’t mean it that way. It
was just a habit.”
“And,” she asked softly, “whose lipstick have you
been avoiding?”
“Jesus, I don’t know,” I said, almost irritably. I
wished we could get those bedroom overtones out of
the conversation. “After all, I’ve been married for
over four years.”
“But you’re not any more,” she said. “Your wife’s
husband is dead. By the way, I hope you didn’t carry
any life insurance. And not because I have anything
against your widow.
River Girl — 163
“No,” I said. I knew what she meant, because I’d
already thought about it. “It lapsed a long time ago.
We needed a new car worse.”
“That’s good. For you, I mean. You can fool the
police sometimes, but nobody ever got rich trying to
make suckers out of those insurance investigators.”
Again she puzzled me. How did she know things
like that? And how did she get that way? Was she
convinced she was some sort of dilettante criminal,
breaking laws for excitement? Or had she just been
reading too many detective stories? I didn’t believe
either one was true. There was too much education
and native intelligence showing at times in between
some of the crazy things she said.
Then she jarred me again. She could keep you off
balance better than a professional fighter. “You don’t
like obvious girls, do you? I should have known.”
“Why?” I asked, playing dumb again. “What do you
mean?”
“You’re rather confusing to a girl. It’s because you
look like one thing and are something else. You look
like a football player or a professional fighter, but
somewhere along the assembly line they got mixed
up and gave you a mind that works. That’s what I
mean I should have known. No moronic muscle man
could ever have figured out all that mess the way
you did.”
I was beginning to feel like a chump again. “If all
this is a gag, Dinah, how about knocking it off?”
I glanced around at her. She took a long puff on
the cigarette and stared back at me without the
usual humor in her eyes. “It’s not a gag.”
“What is it, then?” I knew it was a stupid question,
and one I shouldn’t have asked, but I couldn’t think
of anything else.
“Well, since I’ve decided not to be obvious, I’ll be
shameless. Or outright predatory. It’s not a gag,
because I’m in dead earnest. You couldn’t give a girl
a little help, could you?”
River Girl — 164
Lord, I should have taken the freight, I thought.
This is a mess, and that’s not the half of it. It could
get to be dangerous. This girl knows too much to run
any risk of getting her angry.
“You’re kidding,” I said lamely.
“I’ve just told you I’m not kidding. And you must
think I have a queer sense of humor. Maybe I should
go into burlesque and undress myself before a
bigger audience.”
“All right,” I said. “You’re not kidding. And I’ll
admit you’re devastating, if that’s what you’re out to
prove. You’re good-looking and you’re smooth, and
I’d be eating out of your hand in a minute if it
weren’t that just at the moment I happen to be
looking in the other direction—back over my
shoulder.”
She relaxed a little. “That’s partly what I’m talking
about, darling. I want to go with you. Look. I have
most of my clothes in five bags in the back of the
car, and a little odd change I’ve managed to save
here and there, and this Lincoln with fancy leather
upholstery and a surprising power plant under the
hood, in case you’d care to investigate it. And I
might be a little surprising too, if you’d take the
trouble to try to become acquainted with me. I’m not
really as dumb as you think I am, to be going at you
this way. It’s just that I haven’t got time to follow
any traditional feminine tactics. Bayou City is too
near. And I’m not always too conventional, anyway. I
get bored with it—”
“Dinah, cut it out,” I said uncomfortably.
“I want to go with you.”
“In God’s name, why?”
“Well, to spring something entirely new, maybe it’s
biological. But that’s not all of it. Jack! Will you get
this car off the highway and stop the damned thing?
I can’t talk to you while you’re driving. It’s like
trying to talk to a machine. Get it off the road. Jack!
Please!”
River Girl — 165
I couldn’t argue with her and drive at the same
time. There was no telling what she might do, and I
was convinced by now that she was capable of
anything. I saw a dirt road up ahead, leading off into
the timber on the right, and slowed to swing into it.
Maybe I could talk or shake some sense into her.
River Girl — 166
Nineteen
I stopped the car and looked around at her in the
dim light of the instrument panel. She remained
curled up in the corner of the seat, staring moodily
at me with the long cigarette in her fingers like some
precocious and highly ornamental child.
“It’s all right. I’m not going to attack,” she said.
“And you could probably defend yourself. I weigh a
hundred and ten.”
“Now, look, Dinah—” I began.
“You can drop the fatherly attitude. You’re twentyseven,
and I’m twenty-four.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re
acting like some nitwit high-school girl, and it
doesn’t fit you.”
“I know. I know,” she said impatiently. “For
heaven’s sake, darling, I know the manual of basic
maneuver just as well as the next one. I could sprain
my ankle. And I just adore Hemingway. And I just
love to putter around in a kitchen. And I don’t think
for a minute that people really have to go to
expensive places to have a good time, do you, dear?
But, for the love of heaven, don’t you see there isn’t
time for that? Can’t we dispense with that bird-witha-
broken-wing routine? Aren’t we old enough, and
intelligent enough—”
River Girl — 167
“But Dinah.” I objected, “what the devil are you
after?” I might as well be dumb to the last. I couldn’t
think of anything else.
“Now who’s stupid?”
“All right,” I said. “But why? What for?”
“Does there have to be a reason? Is it like
geometry?”
“But for God’s sake,” I protested. “Of all the men
in the world, why some crooked ex-deputy sheriff on
the run from the cops?”
“Well, if you really think we have time for me to
draw a diagram, it’s because I happen to be crazy
about you. Or had you already managed to guess,
from some subtle little hint I’ve given you?” She
laughed, but there wasn’t much fun in it. “It’s just
because I want you more than I ever wanted
anybody or anything in my life. Right from the
moment you walked into that living room which the
cultured and sardonic Mr. Buford provides for me
and his gun collection. Before you opened your
mouth and started to talk, I thought you were just
some magnificent thug—which wasn’t too bad in
itself, for I do have all of a normal, wholesome girls
interest in thugs. And then I began to see a lot of
other things about you. Imagination. Daring. And
excitement. Always excitement. Don’t you
understand, Jack? To me you’re the world’s only
defense against dullness. You’re the personification
of excitement.”
“The personification of horse saliva,” I said
roughly. “Stop acting like a high-school girl. I told
you it didn’t fit you. It’s not your type.”
“I know it sounds idiotic when it’s put that badly,”
she cried out. “I can’t explain it to you, not in a hurry
like this. But, Jack, can’t you see we belong
together? Can’t I go with you?”
“No,” I said desperately, trying to think of
something. I couldn’t just brush her off. I didn’t
know how, in the first place, for I’d never had
enough girls chasing me in my life to get any
practice at it. And there was another and more
River Girl — 168
important reason. She knew too much, and if she got
furious there was no telling what she would do.
“Look, you’ve got everything—”
“Except you,” she interrupted.
“—everything a girl would want. And you’d like to
throw it all away and go chasing around over the
country with some man on the lam. Do you have any
idea at all what it’s like, hiding from the law?”
“Can’t you see it doesn’t matter? I don’t care what
it’s like.”
“You think it’d just be exciting. Well, let me tell
you. The thrill wears off fast.”
She threw the cigarette out the window. “Wait,
Jack,” she said softly. “You think I’m still some
idiotic adolescent, just because I don’t like boredom.
Well, I meant what I said about excitement, but
running from the police wasn’t the only excitement I
was referring to. I don’t appear to have much
success in trying to put what I feel into words, so
maybe I could show you.” She slid over a little in the
seat and looked up at me with the gray eyes very
large. “Jack. Look here at me. Just bend your head
down—a little…”
The next thing I was conscious of was a soft, wild
mouth, and the importunate, tightening arms about
my neck, and the knowledge that, even with
somebody else on my mind, I couldn’t take too much
of that. I got hold of myself and straightened up.
She slid back on the seat a little with her shoulders
slumped, not looking up. “All right,” she said. “You
don’t have to draw me a picture.”
“I’m sorry, Dinah,” I said. “Maybe we’d better go.”
“Yes. But you could have told me, before I made a
fool of myself. Is that where she is, in Bayou City?”
“Where who is?”
“Look. You’ve insulted me once. Don’t do it again.”
“There’s not—” I began.
“If you don’t mind, let’s go! I told you I was going
to take you to Bayou City, and I’m going to!” She
River Girl — 169
grew quieter then, and went on, “If you’ll slide over,
I’ll drive—”
If I’d had any sense I’d have stayed behind the
wheel, but I was too relieved at getting started again
to heed any warning signs. By the time we were out
on the highway, though, I knew what I was in for.
She was doing forty by the time she straightened
out, and then I heard rubber scream, in high gear,
and knew what she had meant by looking under the
hood. The highway ran straight here for six or eight
miles, and I sat back in the seat lighting a cigarette
and watching the speedometer climb. I thought she
would begin to flatten it off at ninety, but she didn’t.
At a hundred and five I quit looking.
It was a good road that would have been
reasonably safe for eighty, in broad daylight, and
there was very little traffic, but it was the cows I had
the most trouble with They have a bad habit of
finding holes in fences and wandering out onto the
roads at night, and I wondered if anybody would be
able to separate enough of us from the hamburger to
make burial worth while in case we found one
tonight.
I thought that after the first blaze of anger burned
itself out she might take it a little easier, but I was
wrong. She apparently knew the road, for she cut it
down before we came up to the turns and then
gunned it again for traction as we started into them.
Of course, it wasn’t all as fast as that first
straightaway, but she managed to stay pretty close
to thirty miles per hour above what would be
considered an absolute limit for night driving.
Seeing, in a little while, that it was going to be like
this all the way to Bayou City, I began to worry
about patrol cars. We’d run across one sooner or
later, and I thought hopelessly about my idea of
getting clear out of the country without being seen
by anyone who might remember me. Of course, a
speed cop would never remember us, I thought
bitterly—just a big overgrown gorilla and a hundredpound
dream of a flame-headed doll doing ninety-
River Girl — 170
five at night in a souped-up Lincoln. He’d never give
us another thought.
She slowed down going through Colston. I had to
give her credit. She didn’t want to kill any
defenseless bystanders. When we hit the city limit on
the other side, the speedometer began winding up
again.
“All right, Dinah,” I said. “I’m impressed, and I
know you can drive. So how about knocking it down
a little before we pick up a cop?”
“They can’t catch me with one of those Fords
unless it’s souped up. And it won’t stay on the
ground if it is.” She was right. We picked up a patrol
car just after we hit the first of the seventy-five miles
of four-lane pavement. He never had a chance. Why
they didn’t set a road block for us, I’ll never know.
Maybe they’d chased her before and had just
decided the best plan was to leave her alone and let
her kill herself without any help. I had thought we’d
be in Bayou City around two in the morning. At a
quarter of twelve we were rolling into the downtown
section. Traffic was beginning to slacken off and
people were going home from the late movies.
“Is there any particular place you want out?” she
asked.
“No,” I said. “Anywhere will do. I wish you
wouldn’t go off angry, Dinah. I appreciate this, and I
think you’re a nice guy.”
“You’ve already told me what you think, if you’ll
recall.”
She pulled up at the curb. I got out, and then
leaned back in the open window, holding out my
hand. “Don’t go away like that, Dinah.”
At first I thought she was going to ignore me. Then
her face relaxed and she reached out and took it, her
hand very soft and warm and almost lost in mine.
“Good luck, Jack,” she said quietly. She started to
say something else, but choked on it; the face turned
away, her hand jerked back, and I got out of the
window just as the tires shrieked. I stood on the curb
watching her disappear down the street. It’s not too
River Girl — 171
good, I thought. But what could she do? She was
smart enough to know that after hauling me down
here she was implicated in the thing herself, and
that if she had any regard for her own safety she’d
have to keep her mouth shut. There was one serious
flaw in this, ‘however, and I knew it. She wasn’t
exactly the overcautious type.
I shook the worry off impatiently. I had other
things to think about than that wild-haired girl.
Luggage, for one, I thought. Of course, I could check
into the hotel without any, but the room clerk would
be more likely to remember me that way. From now
on I had to be careful always to do nothing in the
slightest degree odd or out of the ordinary. I couldn’t
do anything that would make me stick in people’s
memories.
In the next block a chain drugstore was still open.
I went in and bought a cheap overnight bag and
some shaving gear and a toothbrush. Across the
street at a newsstand I picked up two heavy
magazines and an out-of-town Sunday paper. As I
went back out into the street I snapped the bag open
and slipped them inside. So far, so good, I thought,
but I still don’t know what room she’s in. She’d be in
bed now, and obviously I couldn’t ask the room
clerk.
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