Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [29]
“Whatever you say,” Parker replied with a nod. Ford got to his feet. “I saw a discount store down the road….”
The two men who got out of the pickup in the hotel parking lot an hour later didn’t look much like the Hawaiian shirt-wearing tourists who had been there earlier in the day. Now they wore boots, jeans, shirts with silver snaps instead of buttons, and Stetson hats. The pickup was a plain F-150 with nothing to distinguish it. They had stolen it from the outer reaches of the parking lot at the discount store, the location indicating that it probably belonged to one of the employees there and might not be missed for a while. They had altered the numbers on the license plate with electrical tape, anyway. That wouldn’t stand up to close observation … but most people didn’t pay much attention to anything except their own lives.
The hotel had a small parking lot in front for people who were coming and going, but guests were supposed to park in the attached garage. The first floor of the garage was valet parking. Ford walked in there while Parker stepped into the lobby to talk to the concierge.
In a perfect Texas drawl, Ford asked the Hispanic parking attendant, “I’m lookin’ for a friend of mine, little fella about ’yay tall.” He held out a hand to indicate a man in the range of five feet, four inches. “Kinda long blond hair, little mustache. Y’all happen to have seen him?”
The attendant shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t think so. Have we been parking his car? I wouldn’t have seen him if we haven’t.”
“Well, he usually uses valet parkin’ when it’s available, so I thought there was a chance.”
“Are you sure he’s registered here?”
Ford rubbed his jaw and grimaced. “I thought this was the place he said, but could be I’m wrong about that.”
The attendant pointed to a side door leading into the hotel. “Why don’t you go inside and ask at the desk? I’m sure they can help you.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that.” Ford nodded and headed for the door. He paused and looked back. “Say, I heard there was some sort of big trouble here earlier today.”
The attendant rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I never saw so many cops and ambulances in all my life. Somebody fell from a sixth-floor balcony and splattered himself all over the concrete next to the pool.”
Ford winced. “Man. That’s a bad way to go.”
“Yeah, well, this guy was dead when he hit, they say. He’d been shot.”
“That’s terrible. I didn’t know things like that happened in a place like this.”
“They never have before now.” The attendant shook his head again. “I’m thinkin’ about quitting.
But I need the job, so I probably won’t.”
“I hear you, brother,” Ford said. “I don’t like my job, either, but everybody’s got to do something, right?"
He grinned, waved, and went on into the hotel, through the side door into a corridor that led past several meeting rooms to the lobby.
Parker was coming down that same corridor toward Ford, evidently looking for him. Parker wasn’t moving fast, but Ford saw the glitter of excitement in his eyes.
“You got something?” Ford asked in a low voice as they met.
“The concierge thought she remembered a guy matching the target’s description getting into a cab earlier this afternoon, right around the same time all the trouble happened upstairs.”
“That must’ve been him,” Ford breathed. “The concierge didn’t remember the number of the cab, did she?”
“No,” Parker said, and Ford wasn’t particularly disappointed. That would have been too much luck to hope for. “But there are only two cab companies in town.”
“Then that’s our next stop,” Ford said.
And now that they had the scent, he wasn’t even thinking anymore about how they weren’t exactly following orders.
CHAPTER 14
It took a while and several bribes, but eventually Ford and Parker had the address where a cab driver named Mamoud Hajabanian had dropped off a fare he’d picked up at the hotel at approximately the right time that afternoon. Mamoud