The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [53]
Annie asked if it were possible to speak with whoever had cleaned Room 115. The intrigued clerk told her to call back in fifteen minutes. She did so and learned then from a Guatemalan maid, whose story the desk clerk translated, that just this morning the maid had seen two men in the parking lot with the person who’d cut off his trouser legs. He’d walked back to his room with these two men, talking nonstop in an agitated way. An hour afterwards, the maid had found bloody towels in the 115 bathroom, where the fan ventilator cover from the ceiling had been removed and was lying on the tile floor of the shower.
***
Clark telephoned St. Louis hospitals to see if a Jack Peregrine had been admitted to any of them; he hadn’t.
“He hates hospitals,” Sam said. “He wouldn’t go on his own. What do you mean bloody towels? Like hemorrhaging?”
Annie shook her head. “No no. One of those guys probably knocked him down. Well, I’ve got a lead now.”
“Have some coffee first,” said Clark.
Sam sighed more loudly than ever. “I’m having a martini. This is all ‘putting me way behind in my drinking.’”
Clark absentmindedly identified the quote. “Thin Man. You don’t drink.”
“That was yesterday.”
Outside on the roof it sounded as if a gutter was ripping loose. Malpy wriggled under the couch to hide. Sam and Clark hurried to the porch to check the damage.
Annie was running upstairs to repack when the phone in the hall rang again. She picked it up. No one answered. “Hello…Who is this please? Hello, Peregrine-Goode residence…”
Malpy began barking, feeling Annie tense.
“…Hi there. That you, darlin’?” The voice was her father’s. No chance of error. She lowered the receiver but slowly brought it back to her ear.
“…Annie?”
“Yes?”
“Annie? It’s Dad. Meet me in St. Louis?” He laughed weakly. “How often you get to say that in life?”
Annie sat down. “Where are you? Are you in a hospital? Were you hemorrhaging?”
He laughed again, as always, easily. “You going to hang up if I wasn’t?”
Why, she asked, exasperated, wasn’t he in the hospital if he were dying? Why was there blood in his motel bathroom? Why had he gone to the Royal Coach motel pretending to be Clark Goode?
Her questions appeared to please him. “I knew you’d figure out Royal Coach. I tried to be careful, in case somebody grabbed Raffy when he was mailing you the key. They got to me anyhow. Bad luck.”
“Who got to you? And you should go to a hospital; you sound awful.”
“If you could just fly the King to St. Louis tonight…I’d fly it back to you in Emerald, I promise.”
While the unexpected had not been unusual from her father, this request amazed her. “Can you even fly a plane? And if you can, damn it, why don’t you just rent one!”
He seemed to have trouble breathing and it took several starts for him to get through a sentence. “There’s something in the King I need. I can’t really talk now. I’ll explain when you get here. Did Sam find my jacket?”
Annie squeezed her hand tightly around the phone. “Yes and I ripped open the lining. I’m sure you’ve replaced all the fake cards by now, so what do you want? The gun, the cash? Some password? Is that a password you wrote in the lining of that old pink cap—”
“You kept that cap. Great. Bring it. I’m leaving you a million dollars, darlin’. Just in case, the key I sent’s an extra; the panel’s in the King’s hold—”
“Shut up! I don’t want to hear this bullshit, okay? It’s just, it’s just bullshit!” She said that it enraged her that he was so sure she would drop everything, two decades after he’d dropped her, and fly to St. Louis to give him her airplane!
He coughed. “But aren’t you coming?”
“Yes, I’m coming! That’s not the point. You can’t assume I’d come!”
“Sure I can. Because you love me. It’s even