At the rear window of his room, Wilder checked how high it was above the ground sloping past from uphill to his right.
“Quite a drop!” he murmured. “No time to be breaking an ankle.”
From the base of the motel’s rear wall, the ground sloped down a few feet to a narrow gully. At the bottom of the hill to the left, trees and the roofs of houses were visible. Uphill in the other direction, he could just make out the dry cleaning place and the edge of its parking area, where a few cars were parked. No one was in sight up there. Yet.
That was a plus. Maybe they hadn’t had time to line up the local goon squad to pen him in. They would, though. They had plenty of time till it got dark. He was locked in here until sundown.
Dragging the desk chair over to the front window, he sat and again peered carefully out at the man smoking inside the black Buick.
“Attaboy!” he murmured, grinning. “Enjoy your smoke, guy. Live it up now, while you can. It’s later than you think.”
Getting up, he fiddled with the TV set, trying for more news. The news he’d gotten had been one of those five minute spots. There were no others on; it was still afternoon.
He paced, thinking about the situation.
The other one would be getting rid of the broad’s car, he decided. She was probably stuffed in the trunk. He would be the one making the phone calls, getting another hit team to knock me off.
He laughed.
They won’t show much of a profit on this contract!
He sat in the chair again and peered out. The Buick was still parked out there.
The sun was closer to the opposite ridgeline. Okay, that was a plus.
They were damn fools, he thought, bumping that guy in broad daylight. That’s exactly when someone always comes along and sees the entire operation.
He chuckled, thinking: “That chick and me sure fucked up their timetable.”
He squinted outside again. The man was still sitting there in the Buick.
“You and your buddy should’ve been long gone by now, Ace!” he muttered.
Leaving the chair, he unbuttoned his shirt. Even with air conditioning, it was warm in the room.
They were sweating plenty, though. They didn’t have that much time left to get this wrapped up.
He checked the time. After four. Should be dark soon. He knew he couldn’t split this dump before dark. If he did, they would know they weren’t dealing with just another citizen trying to forget something he saw and wished he hadn’t.
Returning to the rear window, he peered out. Getting dimmer, but still not dark enough.
He shaved, showered, and put on the gray suit. At the front window, he again checked through the blinds. The Buick was no longer parked out there.
Okay! So the local help were in place and ready to go.
Siren sounds approached. He watched as an EMS vehicle went by headed downhill, toward town, preceded and followed by motorcycle police with a State Highway Patrol car bringing up the rear.
The TV sound switched from a quiz show to a news announcer:
“. . . latest reports indicate the accident victim’s body was only partially burned when his car caught fire. Luckily, emergency equipment reached the scene in time to prevent further . . .”
The screen showed the scene beside the road in the encroaching dusk. The car wreck still smoldered in the streambed.
When the quiz show returned, Wilder again checked outside and saw the sun setting behind the ridgeline across the valley to the west.
Pretty soon, now. A few more minutes.
After making the necessary phone calls to the local troops, Brownsuit got out of the murdered woman’s car. He parked it on a rundown side street in the old part of town, on the west side of the river. Over there it was mostly abandoned factory buildings and ramshackle wooden houses.
In the advancing dusk, Brownsuit didn’t notice two teenagers lounging on a sidewalk-level front porch across the street. They idly watched him walk up the street toward the nearby corner. Partway there, he tossed something into a narrow front yard.
The teenagers heard a jingling sound. They exchanged a glance. One started to get up. The other reached out to restrain him. Shaking his head, he held up one finger and pointed toward Brownsuit, who was up near the corner by then.
Both of the teens were grinning.
Brownsuit turned the corner and disappeared into the dimming evening light.
Both teens leapt silently off the porch and ran across the street past the car. They vaulted the picket fence into the yard where Brownsuit had thrown the keys. After a second or two of hunting, one kid held up the keys and jingled them triumphantly.
They jabbered away to one another as they unlocked the car’s doors and jumped inside.
The one at the wheel started the car and gunned the engine. They took off with a screech of spinning tires. As they passed under a lamp post, a street light went on. A six inch corner of the murdered woman’s silk scarf fluttered out from under the lower right corner of the trunk lid.
“Whoopee!” one of the kids hollered.
After whipping around the corner, they raced two blocks to the bridge. Turning onto it, they drove across to Main Street on the other side of the little river.
The downtown buildings looked pretty impressive, with electric or neon signs on their roofs: PENN STATE HOTEL, CONNEMAUGH VALLEY POWER AND LIGHT COMPANY, GUARANTOR’S INSURANCE AND TRUST COMPANY.
Brownsuit had already crossed the bridge. At the far side, he turned to the right and started walking up the climbing ridge road toward the Nanty Glo Motel’s lighted sign, halfway up. Beyond it at the top, he could see the white light of the diner’s sign.
When the two teens went blasting past in the car they’d discovered, Brownsuit was irritated by the sudden noise, but he didn’t look back, so he couldn’t recognize the noisemaker as the car he’d just ditched.
The two teens drove the car straight ahead onto Main Street.
Inside unit 17 at the motel, Wilder slipped the money belt around his middle, under his shirt. Putting on the gray suit coat, he made sure in the mirror that the money belt didn’t bulge enough to show.
After making one final check of the highway, he watched as the sun’s last sliver slid out of sight across the valley. In a moment, it was dark enough out there for his purposes.
At the rear window, he removed the outside screen and carefully brought it inside, leaning it against the wall beside the window. Sticking his head out, he peered both ways, uphill to his right and downhill to his left. He saw no one in either direction.
Climbing quickly through the window with the carry-on bag, he dropped to the down-sloping ground and slipped, sliding down almost into the ditch separating the back of the motel’s foundation from the base of the steep-climbing ridge behind it.
When he recovered his balance, Wilder crouched there, holding onto the carry-on bag, listening to see if his exit out the back from the motel had been noticed. All he could hear was the distant roar of a tractor-trailer out on the highway.
He checked uphill toward the distant diner sign. No movement on the diner’s parking area. Nothing downhill from it, either, in the dry cleaner’s place.
Wilder started downhill, staying in the dry ditch until he reached a wooded stretch near the bottom of the hill. He glided through the trees, his free arm sweeping tree branches aside as he moved.
Finally, he emerged from the trees at the first of the neatly-painted white picket fences with the yard beyond it and a one-family house. Other single units were beyond it, most with lights shining in their windows.
Lowering the carry-on bag on the other side of the fence, he went over the fence carefully to make no noise, picked up the bag and started across the yard, skirting it at the edge of the house.
Through a window, Wilder saw a family eating supper.
On the street, he tried the door of a car parked at the curb. It was locked. He tried the next one. Also locked. The third car’
s door opened. When he pulled it open, the inside ceiling light went on, so Wilder quickly shut the door. The light went off.
Placing the carry-on bag on the ground, with both hands free now, he opened the car door carefully, reached in and got a fingertip on the doorjamb light switch button before it could turn on the inside ceiling light for more than a second. Swinging the door open, he reached up and felt for a switch around the ceiling light. It had one, so he turned it off and let go of the doorjamb button. The ceiling light stayed off.
Tossing the bag into the back, he sprawled across the front seat and went to work on the wires underneath the dashboard, near the steering post, and used a pocket flashlight so he could see what he was doing.
When the motor started, he kept it down and let it turn over softly for a few seconds. Then he twisted around, got behind the steering wheel, closed the door quietly and gently gave the motor gas, warming it up. When he was ready, leaving the headlights off, he eased the car away from the curb in front of where its owner lived, turned at the nearest corner, and headed away from the highway for a block before turning on the headlights.
On the car radio, he found a news program.
“. . . body has been identified as that of Vincent Miller, a key witness in the upcoming trial of mob boss . . .”
At Main Street, he stopped for a traffic light. From a corner bar, he could hear the faint sound of a song’s lyric: “. . . ah wrote yew a leddurr . . .”
When the light changed, he crossed Main Street and drove through residential streets, which eventually curved above the flat part of town up onto high ground.
The radio news reader’s voice was droning on: “Judd Phillips, County Attorney, has voiced the suspicion held by both himself and Jonestown’s Police Chief Walker that Miller’s death was made to look like an accident. Pending further investigation by the County Medical Examiner . . .”
Grinning, Wilder murmurred, “You’re getting there, guys. Slow but sure.”
He changed the radio station to one with music, but it wasn’t the kind he liked, so he switched the radio off entirely.
It was not as dark up high as it was down in the valley. Wilder drove through the maze of curving streets until he came to an overlook from which he could see, far below, a stretch of the highway and a glimpse of the Nanty Glo Motel’s neon sign. Swinging the car around, he parked beside the railing so he could look out and down without having to get out of the car. He left the motor running.
Halfway up the ridge road was the motel. Almost at the top was the dark dry cleaning place and, just beyond that, the still open stainless steel diner.
Reaching into the back, he hauled the carry-on over the seatback and took out the night-vision binoculars. Through them, he studied the scene below in the increasing darkness.
No cars were parked outside the motel now, but farther up a car turned off the highway into the diner’s parking area. A man got out and strolled over to the edge of the parking area and peered downhill toward the motel for a moment. He turned and walked to the rear corner of the property and examined the gully that ran from behind the diner’s parking lot and the motel.
After a few moments, the man returned to his car, where he leaned in for a moment to talk to whomever was at the wheel. Going around, he got in beside the driver. The car drove back to the rear corner of the parking area, where it stopped at the edge of the drop-off above the top end of the gully.
Satisfied, Wilder stopped watching. They were positioned where they could keep most of the motel in sight without leaving their car, including the gully passing behind it.
“Okay,” he thought. “There’s one.”
Through the night glasses, he studied the other parts of the diner’s parking area.
“Now where’s the rest of the wrecking crew?”
For awhile, traffic just moved both ways up and down the highway. One car turned into the diner’s parking area. Wilder followed that car as it stopped. A couple got out and entered the diner.
Losing interest, he swung the glasses away, stopping on another car that was already parked in the diner’s parking lot on the downhill edge, above where the ground dropped off toward the dry cleaning place and the motel below that.
After studying that car for a few seconds, he wondered: “Helper number two, maybe?”
When nothing happened with that car, he swung the glasses away and followed other cars that pulled into the parking area. But their occupants just got out and went inside. Other people emerged, got into their cars and drove off, but whenever Wilder returned the field glasses to the car parked at the edge of the lot, no one had entered or left it.
Shrugging, he muttered: “Could be.”
More movement down there caused him to raise the glasses again as another car entered the diner parking lot. It parked near the one at the downhill edge. Two men got out and strolled over to the first car.
Wilder nodded.
“There we go!”
One of the two men immediately got into the first car. The bigger one leaned down to talk to the driver. He turned and looked down toward the motel.
Wilder recognized him. It was Graysuit, the bigger of the two from the Miller killing, south of town.
Turning away, Graysuit went past the front of the diner and around its southern end out of sight. Wilder lowered the glasses, but continued to watch. Then the black Buick drove into sight from beyond the diner.
Keeping the glasses on the Buick, Wilder watched it drive out of the parking lot to the side of the busy highway, where it stopped to wait for an opening in the passing traffic.
Putting the glasses down, Wilder swung his borrowed car out of the overlook and drove down to the flat part of town. He used Main Street to get to the highway, and he stopped there and peered uphill to his left. He could see the Buick still trying to enter the stream of traffic at the top.
Impatiently, Wilder growled, “Come on, big guy. What’s the problem?”
Finally the Buick edged into a break in the downhill traffic, but made a left turn in the other direction, heading southward out of town.
Wilder grinned ruefully and made a quick left turn, irritating one or two drivers trying to make their turns out of the downhill traffic stream onto the bridge.
Graysuit had fooled him. Wilder had thought they were coming downhill, where they’d head toward the interstate up north.
He began trying to work his way past the uphill traffic ahead of him, trying to find the Buick.
Switching on the radio, a news reader’s voice came on immediately: “. . . from the State Attorney General’s office, on the possibility that the death of Vincent Miller may have a bearing on . . .”
Wilder lost the rest of it, weaving in and out of the traffic ahead of him. Opening the window on his left, he leaned his head out a little, trying to catch a glimpse of the Buick.
A quarter mile after reaching the rise at the top of the ridge road, he finally spotted the Buick a few cars ahead. Cutting past one more car, he made sure it was the Buick he wanted, and then he relaxed a bit and settled back in his seat.
Now that he was close to his prey, the tag job was a snap.
Ahead, the Buick swerved into a turning lane that allowed access to the airport entrance. Wilder pulled to the right side of the road, out of the stream of traffic, and stopped on the shoulder. Cars and trucks went crashing loudly past, but he kept his attention on the Buick until it made the left turn into the airport entrance. He watched the Buick go straight toward the distant terminal building.
The radio announcer’s voice got his attention again: “Mr. Kells is bringing his Special Investigative Team from the capitol to assist local law enforcement agencies in determining if there is a connection between Vincent Miller’s death and the upcoming trial of Mr. Gianucci . . .”
Wilder watched the Buick turn left and go around to the parking area beside the terminal. Its lights came to a stop a couple of parked car rows away from the left side of the building,
then the head and taillights went off.
“Okay!” Wilder breathed.
He started edging into the traffic again. It was thinning somewhat. When he had worked his way through it and entered the airport gateway, he drove straight ahead almost to the front entrance of the terminal, where a few taxicabs waited in line, off to the right of the double entrance doorways.
Short of the doorway area, Wilder turned to his left and parked the stolen vehicle.
Checking the police band on the radio one last time, he caught the middle of a dispatch going out: “Car Twelve proceed to Fletcher Avenue and Duplessis Boulevard. Two men are headed west in a stolen vehicle . . .”
Turning the radio off, Wilder got out with the carry-on bag and walked slowly over to the left side of the building. He searched among the parked cars for the Buick in the northern section of the parking area. When he found it, no one was in it. He tried the car doors. They were all locked.
Strolling over, he went in through the terminal building’s side door.
Inside, he shoved the carry-on bag into a locker. Then he looked over the interior of the terminal.
At a newsstand, he studied various newspaper headlines. One caught his attention.
The evening headline read: KEY WITNESS VICTIM OF FREAK HIGHWAY ACCIDENT.
He glanced around the terminal, but couldn’t spot either of the men he was looking for. He went on reading the story.
It seemed Vincent Miller’s testimony had been vital to the state’s pending case against the mob guy. The body was slightly burnt. Just a highway accident, County Attorney Phillips maintained. On the other hand, State Attorney Kells was convinced Miller had been slain, and a gangland hit was more than likely.
After taking another quick look around, Wilder went on reading. A special task force under Kells was flying down from the state capitol.
Tucking the newspaper under his arm, Wilder cruised the terminal. He examined the people inside a cafeteria through the windows facing into the terminal. The killers from the Buick weren’t there.
Next to the cafeteria he looked into a dimly lit cocktail lounge and saw the big one in the gray suit nursing a martini at a small table. A few tables away, the brown suited one had a highball. Both men ignored each other. They also ignored the sprinkling of customers at the other tables.