them in some indefinable yet deeply disturbing way.
Anyway, to avoid drawing attention to himself, he preferred the
amusement park as primary quarters. The authorities looking for him
would be less likely to find him there than anywhere else. Most
important, the park offered solitude, graveyard stillness, and regions
of perfect darkness to which he could escape during daylight hours when
his sensitive eyes could not tolerate the insistent brightness of the
sun.
Motels were tolerable only between dusk and dawn.
That pleasantly warm Thursday night, when he came out of the Blue Skies
Motel office with his room key, he noticed a familiar Pontiac parked in
shadows at the back of the lot, beyond the end unit, not nose-in to the
motel but facing the office. The car had been there on Sunday, the last
time Vassago had used the Blue Skies. A man was slumped behind the
wheel, as if sleeping or just passing time while he waited for someone
to meet him.
He had been there Sunday night, features veiled by the night and the
haze of reflected light on his windshield.
Vassago drove the Camaro to unit six, about in the middle of the long
arm of the L-shaped structure, parked in front, and let himself into his
room. He carried only a change of clothes-all black like the clothes he
was wearing.
Inside the room, he did not turn on the light. He never did.
For a while he stood with his back against the door, thinking about the
Pontiac and the man behind the steering wheel. He might have been just
a drug dealer working out of his car. The number of dealers crawling
the neighborhood was even greater than the number of cockroaches
swarming inside the walls of that decaying motel. But where were his
customers with their quick nervous eyes and greasy wads of money?
Vassago dropped his clothes on the bed, put his sunglasses in his jacket
pocket, and went into the small bathroom. It smelled of hastily sloshed
disinfectant that could not mask a melange of vile biological odors.
A rectangle of pale light marked a window above the back wall of the
shower. Sliding open the glass door, which made a scraping noise as it
moved along the corroded track, he stepped into the stall. If the
window had been hxed, or if it had been divided vertically into two
panes, he would have been foiled. But it swung outward from the top on
rusted hinges. He gripped the sill above his head, pulled himself
through the window, and wriggled out into the service alley behind the
motel.
He paused to put on his sunglasses again. A nearby sodium-vapor
streetlamp cast a urine-yellow glare that scratched like windblown sand
at his eyes. The glasses mellowed it to a muddy amber and clarified his
vision.
He went right, all the way to the end of the block, turned right on the
side street, then right again at the next corner, circling the motel.
He slipped around the end of the short wing of the L-shaped building and
moved along the covered walkway in front of the last units until he was
behind the Pontiac.
At the moment that end of the motel was quiet. No one was coming or
going from any of the rooms.
The man behind the wheel was sitting with one arm out of the open car
window. If he had glanced at the side mirror, he might have seen
Vassago coming up on him, but his attention was focused on room six in
the other wing of the L.
Vassago jerked open the door, and the guy actually started to fall out
because he’d been leaning against it. Vassago hit him hard in the face,
using his elbow like a battering ram, which was better than a list,
except he didn’t hit him squarely enough. The guy was rocked but not
finished, so he pushed up and out of the Pontiac, trying to grapple with
Vassago.
He was overweight and slow. A knee driven hard into his crotch slowed
him even more. The guy went into a prayer posture, gagging, and Vassago
stepped back far enough to kick him. The stranger fell over onto his