Page 37 of Nocturnes & Nightmares

“Well, before you get drug-happy, you need to get your car out of this lot.” I reach into the glovebox and pull out my wallet, counting out ten hundred dollar bills that I hand off to her. “Here’s a thousand. I’ll transfer the additional two thousand. Can you receive cash payments to your phone?”

“Like, Apple pay? I think so.”

I pull up her phone number and transfer the funds in a matter of a couple clicks. “Done. Now do whatever you need to do to get your son.”

“Voss … I can’t …. This isn’t right.”

I don’t bother to tell her that my time is more valuable to me than the few extra bucks I’ve offered. That I’d much prefer to part with the cash, than sit and watch her ponder all the ways she can stubbornly refuse what I owe her anyway. I get a sense that Nola is the type who’d bleed out for someone and reject the tourniquet that’d save her from hemorrhaging to death. “Are you all set, then?”

Still teary-eyed, she swipes at her cheek again and nods. “Thank you for this.”

There’s a strange sensation humming through me when I stare back at her half-cocked smile and shiny eyes. A zap of something foreign and gratifying at the same time. The way one might look upon a small bird that has just eaten from the palm of his hand.

The very thought has my fingers curling into tight fists, just as they would with a bird so trusting.

With a nod, I throw the car in drive and attempt to get on with my day.

Goodwill of men.

Bullshit.

* * *

The Royal Roadway motel has to be the seediest joint in Chicago, located at the intersection of Jackson Boulevard and Highway 50. The kind of place that takes cash and rents by the hour. Scanning my surroundings, I stride up to the room number that’s written on the inside flap of the matches and check the door. Peering through the narrow gap in the curtains shows an empty room inside, bed made as if it hasn’t been slept in, at all. A Do Not Disturb sign dangles from the doorknob, which I attempt to turn.

Locked.

The maid cart, two rooms down, draws me to where an older woman, maybe sixty, gathers up sheets from the room’s unmade bed.

“Excuse me,” I say, interrupting her cleaning.

She swings around, frowning. “Can I help you?”

“I left something in my room. Locked myself out. Just wondering if you could let me back in?”

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to get a key from the office.”

Tugging the fifty from my pocket, I flash it in front of her. “It’ll take only a minute.”

Lips tightened, she huffs and hobbles toward me, swiping the proffered money on the way, and leads me back toward the other door. Two seconds later, I have full access to the room and don’t waste any time in my search. Under the bed. In the nightstand. The maid stands in the doorway the whole time, watching me. It’s not until I reach the bathroom that I find what I’m looking for. Set out on the counter is a cheap men’s watch. I lift it from the sink, examining it for any sign that it might be the ignition switch for an explosive, or something. On the back, etched in its gold plating: To the moon and back is all that’s written.

I don’t have time to disassemble the thing here, to make sure there’s no tracking device inside, so I stuff it in my pocket and offer a smile as I pass the maid. “Thank you,” I tell her on the way out.

“No problem.”

Once inside my car, I remove a small pocket knife from the glovebox and pop the back cover that holds the dedication. The likelihood of something being small enough to attach inside is slim, but I don’t take any chances. Nothing but gears. After replacing the back, I stuff it into the console beside me and fire up the vehicle. I don’t leave, though. Instead, I park a few lots over, alongside the curb, where the door to the motel remains in view, and I wait.

Ten, twenty, thirty minutes pass with no disturbance.

When a thought strikes me, I exit the vehicle, pulling a pack of smokes from my pocket as I do so, and I pretend to drop my lighter, elated when it falls beneath the car. I steal a moment to make a quick sweep of the undercarriage and find a small black device attached there.

A tracker.

Bastard must’ve watched me enter the room and planted it then. No doubt, he’s watching me now, so I leave it in place, retrieving my lighter, instead, and keeping on with my ruse by taking a few quick puffs of my cigarette.

“Good one, asshole. But not good enough.”

If it were me, I’d have taken a shot already, but I know that’s not how he works. Carl doesn’t want fast and easy. He wants me to play his game until the end, drawing each moment out with the same agony with which he torments his victims. Having been one once, I know this about him. Unfortunately for him, I’ve come to enjoy games just as much.