The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [9]
He checked the nightstand beside the bed. There was one of those little hotel notepads beside the phone book and the Bible. He turned his back to the audience and stuck it in his pocket.
“I’ll never make it,” he said.
“Under bed?” the older maid suggested.
He humored her and got down on all fours and looked under the bed. There wasn’t even any dust, not to mention a bachelor sock, or a note telling him where they had gone.
“Maybe I threw it away,” he said as he got up. “Stupid.”
The maids nodded enthusiastically in agreement.
The trashcan was full, as if they’d straightened up before leaving. Polite, thoughtful people. Three empty cans of Diet Pepsi sat on some pieces of cardboard, the kind you get with your laundered shirts. A pocket map of San Francisco and a bunch of ticket stubs at the bottom.
“Jesus, how could I be so stupid?” Neal said as he bent over and reached into the trashcan. He showed his audience his butt as he slipped his airline ticket out of his pocket and into the can. Then he put the map and the ticket stubs under the ticket envelope, straightened up and showed them the ticket, then stuffed the whole mess into his lapel pocket.
“Thank you so much,” he said.
“Hurry, hurry,” said the older one.
Hurry, hurry, indeed, thought Neal.
Security picked him up in the lobby.
Security in this case was represented by a young Chinese guy who was both larger and more muscular than Neal would have preferred. His chest looked uncomfortably stuffed into his gray uniform blazer, and he had big, thick arms. He had clearly spent some quality time on the old bench-presses. Neal, who didn’t have to worry about leaving space in his jacket for his muscles, knew the guy would have no trouble pinning him up against a wall and keeping him there. The guy’s white shirt was rumpled around a waist that was beginning to go to fat, and he had a two-way radio hooked to his belt. There was probably a nightstick stuck into the belt somewhere, Neal thought, probably at the small of his back. Except nothing about this guy was small. And he seemed to want to talk.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said. There was no trace of a Chinese accent. “May I ask what you were doing in Room ten-sixteen?”
The younger maid hadn’t wasted any time calling down. So much for her five bucks, Neal thought.
“I left my—”
“Save it. That wasn’t your room.”
Neal nodded at the other guests in the lobby. “Can we do this outside?”
“Sure.”
He opened the door for Neal and let him get a good feel for his bulk. Neal knew that his next move would be to get in front of him and maneuver him to the wall. Which would be the end of the game, so it just wouldn’t do to let Benchpress here make that next move.
Neal looked off to his left as soon as he cleared the doorway, held up his hand, and yelled, “Taxi!”
The front cab in line started to edge forward on the curb as a bellhop hustled over to open the cab door.
“No, no, no,” Benchpress said, waving his arms as he quick-shuffled between Neal and the cab.
This was okay with Neal, who didn’t want to take a cab anyway. He wanted to take a nice long walk up a long, steep hill to see just how badly Benchpress wanted to carry all those big muscles and that belly up a pitch to talk. With Benchpress off to his left, Neal had his whole right side open to move, and he knew where a right turn would take him: through North Beach and then up Telegraph Hill, which was plenty long and steep enough for what he had in mind. He took a hard right and headed out.
Benchpress wasted two seconds standing by the cab wondering how embarrassed he should be, and then another second trying to decide if the chase was going to be worth it.
He decided it was.
Neal wasn’t happy to look over his shoulder and see Benchpress coming after him, but he wasn’t too worried either. The guy wasn’t going to cause a scene—not near his hotel, anyway—and he wasn’t going to call the city police over this kind of crap. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t hurt to make sure this thing became real personal, so Neal wasted a second of his own to turn on his