hair style.
Instead, it was a man Doyle’s age. He was clean-shaven, his hair neatly
trimmed. He had a square, honest, American face, perfect for
recruitment posters. He could have made a fortune doing television
commercials for Pepsi, Gillette, Schick, and full-page ads for Camel
cigarettes in all the magazines.
“I noticed a no-vacancy sign outside,” Doyle said. “I wondered if you’d
held our room. We’re an hour later than the reservations called for,
but-”
“Is it Doyle?” the man asked, revealing perfect white teeth.
“Yes. ” i “Sure, I held it.” He produced a flimsy form from the
desk.
“Hey, good news! I know you must have been worried about getting
stuck-”
“Wasn’t worried at all, Mr. Doyle. If you hadn’t reserved it, I’d have
had to rent it to coons.
Doyle was weary from a long day on the road, and he could not decide
what the clerk meant. “Coons?”
“Naggers,” the clerk said. “Three times they came in. If I didn’t have
your reservation, I’d have had to let one of them take 22 for the night.
And I hate that. I’d rather let a room stand empty all night then rent
to one of them.”
Doyle felt as if he were giving his approval to the man’s bigotry when
he signed the registration paper. He wondered, briefly, why he, dressed
and groomed as he was, made any better impression than the blacks who
had stopped before him.
When the handsome young man gave Doyle the room key, he said, “What kind
of gas mileage you get on that T-Bird?”
Alex had known his share of bigots, and he was expecting this one, like
the others, to continue with his practiced invective. He was surprised,
then, by the change of subject.
“Mileage? I don’t know. I never checked.”
“I’m saving for a car like that. Gas hogs, but I love them. Car like
that tells you about a man. You see a man in a T-Bird, you know he’s
making it.”
Alex looked at the room key in his hand. “Twenty-two,’ Where’s that?”
“To the right clear at the end. Nice room, Mr. Doyle.”
Alex went out to the car. He knew why the clerk accepted him.
The Thunderbird was, for that man, a symbol which eclipsed reality. A
car like that transformed a counterculture freak into a mere eccentric,
so far as the clerk was concerned. That attitude depressed Alex. He
had not expected that here in the heartlands a man was defined by his
possessions.
George Leland spent Tuesday night in a cheaper place three miles west of
the Plains Motel. Though it was a tiny single room, he was not always
alone. Courtney was often there. Sometimes he saw her standing in a
corner, her back to the wall. Other times she sat on the foot of the
bed or in the poorly padded plank chair by the bathroom door. He got
angry with her more than once and told her to go away. She would vanish
as quietly as she appeared. But then he would miss her and long for
her-and she would return, making the cheaper place seem far more
luxurious and grand than the Plains Motel.
He Slept fitfully.
Two he)hours before dawn, unable to sleep at all any more, he got up and
showered and dressed. He sat on the bed, several maps opened on the
covers, and studied the route that would be followed Wednesday.
He traced and retraced it with his blunt fingers.
Leland knew that somewhere in those six hundred miles he would have to
take care of Doyle and the boy. He no longer needed to conceal this
truth from himself. Courtney had helped him face up to it. He must
kill them, just as he had killed that highway patrolman who tried to
stand between him and Courtney. It was much too dangerous to put this
thing off any longer. By tomorrow night they would be well over halfway
to San Francisco. If Doyle decided to change their route for the last
long leg of the journey, Leland might lose them for good.
Tomorrow, then. Somewhere between Lawrence, Kansas, and Denver.
Leland would finally be striking back at Them, at everyone who had put