The Eyes of Darkness

thunderous as drumbeats in the quiet night air. At last he reached the car. She had the door open. He leaped in and pulled the door shut. "Go, go!"
    She tramped the accelerator into the floorboards, and the car responded with a shudder, then a surge of power.
    When they had gone two blocks, he said, "Turn right at the next corner." After two more turns and another three blocks, he said, "Pull it to the curb. I want to find the bug they planted on us."
    "But they can't follow us now," she said.
    "They've still got a receiver. They can watch our progress on that, even if they can't get their hands on us till another chase car catches up. I don't even want them to know what direction we went."
    She stopped the car, and he got out. He felt along the inner faces of the fenders, around the tire wells, where a transponder could have been stuck in place quickly and easily. Nothing. The front bumper was clean too. Finally he located the electronics package: The size of a pack of cigarettes, it was fixed magnetically to the underside of the rear bumper. He wrenched it loose, stomped it repeatedly underfoot, and pitched it away.
    In the car again, with the doors locked and the engine running and the heater operating full-blast, they sat in stunned silence, basking in the warm air, but shivering nonetheless.
    Eventually Tina said, "My God, they move fast!"
    "We're still one step ahead of them," Elliot said shakily.
    "Half a step."
    "That's probably more like it," he admitted.
    "Bellicosti was supposed to give us the information we need to interest a topnotch reporter in the case."
    "Not now."
    "So how do we get that information?"
    "Somehow," he said vaguely.
    "How do we build our case?"
    "We'll think of something."
    "Who do we turn to next?"
    "It isn't hopeless, Tina."
    "I didn't say it was. But where do we go from here?"
    "We can't work it out tonight," he said wearily. "Not in our condition. We're both wiped out, operating on sheer desperation. That's dangerous. The best decision we can make is to make no decisions at all. We've got to hole up and get some rest. In the morning we'll have clearer heads, and the answers will all seem obvious."
    "You think you can actually sleep?"
    "Hell, yes. It's been a hard day's night."
    "Where will we be safe?"
    "We'll try the purloined letter trick," Elliot said. "Instead of sneaking around to some out-of-the-way motel, we'll march right into one of the best hotels in town."
    "Harrah's?"
    "Exactly. They won't expect us to be that bold. They'll tx searching for us everywhere else."
    "It's risky."
    "Can you think of anything better?"
    "No."
    "Everything is risky."
    "All right. Let's do it."
    She drove into the heart of town. They abandoned the Chevrolet in a public parking lot, four blocks from Harrah's.
    "I wish we didn't have to give up the car," Tina said as he took their only suitcase out of the trunk.
    "They'll be looking for it."
    They walked to Harrah's Hotel along windy, neon-splashed streets. Even at 1:45 in the morning, as they passed the entrances to casinos, loud music and laughter and the ringing of slot machines gushed forth, not a merry sound at that hour, a regurgitant noise.
    Although Reno didn't jump all night with quite the same energy as Las Vegas, and although many tourists had gone to bed, the casino at Harrah's was still relatively busy. A young sailor apparently had a run going at one of the craps tables, and a crowd of excited gamblers urged him to roll an eight and make his point.
    On this holiday weekend the hotel was officially booked to capacity; however, Elliot knew accommodations were always available. At the request of its casino manager, every hotel held a handful of rooms off the market, just in case a few regular customers—high rollers, of course—showed up by surprise, with no advance notice, but with fat bankrolls and no place to stay. In addition, some reservations were canceled at the last minute, and there were always a few no-shows. A neatly folded pair of twenty-dollar bills, placed without ostentation into the hand of a front-desk clerk, was almost certain to result in the timely discovery of a forgotten vacancy.
    When Elliot was informed that a room was available, after all, for two nights, he signed the registration card as "Hank Thomas," a slight twist on the name of one of his favorite movie stars; he entered a phony Seattle address too. The clerk requested ID or a major credit card, and Elliot told a sad story of being victimized by a