Hit List - Lawrence Block [95]
But that hotel had been a Ramada, hadn’t it? Keller was positive of it, he remembered the client talking about the virtues of the Ramada chain. So it couldn’t be the same hotel, and yet the layout was somehow familiar to Keller.
There was nothing familiar about the room they gave him, but he hadn’t been in any of the Ramada’s sleeping rooms, just the lounge and the lobby. He took a quick shower, then called downstairs and ordered dinner from room service, then sat in front of the television set until the guy showed up with his food. Keller signed the bill, and added a couple of dollars in cash for the waiter, who seemed surprised. Keller figured he didn’t get many tips from sequestered jurors.
“I was wondering,” he said. “Was this place always a Days Inn?”
“If you go back far enough,” the fellow said, “it was a swamp.”
“How about if you go back two years?”
“It was a Ramada.” He flashed a grin. “But that was before my time, so that’s only hearsay evidence.”
Keller, eating his dinner, wondered how they could do that, take a hotel out of one chain and add it to another. It struck him as awfully arbitrary.
He was trying to decide whether he wanted another cup of coffee when there was a knock on his door. He checked the peephole, then opened the door. Gloria darted inside and closed the door behind her, reaching to lock it.
“It felt funny,” she said, “eating alone. And instead of Vietnamese food I had a hamburger and fries and a Coke. If you want me to get the hell out, just say so.”
“Why would I want that?”
“We’re not supposed to spend time together, remember? Because we might discuss the case.”
Her face was flushed, and she’d freshened her makeup. And had she done something different with her hair?
“You look different,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, I had a quick shower. So I thought I’d try my hair like this.”
“It’s very becoming.”
“Thank you.”
“I had a shower myself.”
“Well, after spending a whole day in court—“
“A person needs a shower.”
“Definitely,” she said. She looked at him. “Well, what do you want to do? Do you want to discuss the case?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. And that’s good, because they told us not to. This is crazy, isn’t it? I don’t know what I thought I was doing, coming here.”
“Don’t you?”
“I mean this is so not me. After my shower I was staring at myself in the mirror. Like, you slut, what do you think you’re doing? I was standing there naked, if you can imagine.”
“I can imagine.”
“I was thinking about this when I was in the shower. Were you? Did you have any idea?”
“I had an idea.”
“Were you thinking about me in the shower?”
“Yes.”
“When you lathered up—“
“Yes.”
“We both took showers,” she said. “Isn’t that great? We’re both clean.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s get dirty,” she said.
“God,” she said. “All the fantasies I had, and here we are, and it’s better than the fantasies. Last night, when I packed my little suitcase? I was planning this.”
“Really?”
“Oh, absolutely. When we were first sitting around the table I thought, well, we are not reaching a verdict by five o’clock. If I’m the only holdout and everybody thinks I’m an idiot and stubborn as a mule, I don’t care. We’re getting sequestered.”
“I have to admit I was trying to drag it out myself.”
“I thought you were. Your face is very hard to read, but I had a feeling we were both on the same page.” She rolled onto her side, laid a hand on his chest. “You know what else I thought? I thought, if we do reach a verdict, if there’s no way to stall without looking too ridiculous, then we’ll walk out together