The Hardest Thing

questions.”
    “They must think I’m dumb.”
    Jody shrugged. “I was never a very good actor. I’m sorry.”
    “And why are you telling me the truth now?” If this is the truth, I thought.
    “Because…you know. Us.”
    “Right.” I could feel the heat from his body. The motel room was twenty paces away and in it, a bed. My cock stiffened. Down, boy. Talk first, fuck later. “So the real reason Marshall wanted you out of town was to avoid any awkward questions about Trey Peters?”
    “Yeah.”
    “And you went along like a good little boy?”
    “No. I thought he was trying to get rid of me, because he was tired of me. So I told him that if I did this for him, he’d have to do something for me.”
    “And what was that?”
    “Leave his wife.”
    I whistled. “You drive a hard bargain.”
    “You can laugh, Dan, but Marshall’s all I’ve got. If I lose him, I’m back on the streets.”
    “Okay. I’m sorry. What did he say?”
    “He promised that as soon as things were back to normal he was going to tell his wife about us, and we were going to live together. He’s got a place down in
Connecticut, right on the coast. He showed me pictures.” Jody sighed. “It looked so nice.”
    “Who was Marshall frightened of? The police? Were they the ones who were asking questions?”
    “He didn’t say. Just that people might want to talk to me, and if they knew that I’d been intimate with Mr. Peters they might jump to conclusions.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “The right conclusions. Don’t you realize that you’re an accessory to murder?”
    Jody frowned; the word “accessory” meant something different to him. I was about to explain, when a car door slammed a few feet away from us; Jody jumped like a rabbit.
    It was nothing, just an old couple turning up at the motel for the evening, hauling their ugly floral luggage out of their trunk. We laughed at ourselves for being so damn nervous.
    “Come on, kid,” I said. “We’ll talk about this in the morning. And in the meantime, let’s see what kind of trouble we can get up to in Lincoln, New Hampshire.”
    The old couple checked into the room next door. I hoped for their sake they were hard of hearing, because there was going to be a lot of thumping and yelling before any of us got any sleep.
    Before the fun began, I called Ferrari. After the missed call in the afternoon I’d been entertaining all sorts of crazy suspicions—Ferrari was playing his own game, using us as pawns in some attempt to work a number on Marshall—and I half expected the line to be dead now. But no—he picked up on the second ring, as cool and calm as ever.
    “Ferrari, it’s Stagg.”

    “Good. Where are you?”
    “Lincoln, New Hampshire. The Starlight Motel.”
    “Fine, fine.” He paused for a moment, took a breath as if he was about to ask a question, then thought better of it.
    “Where were you when I called earlier, Ferrari?”
    “On the subway.”
    I didn’t question it; hey, people in New York City do use the subway. “Everything okay at your end?”
    “Yeah. How’s Stirling?” Was there the slightest undue emphasis on the name—as if he was testing me?
    “Stirling’s behaving himself.”
    “Good.” Another pause. “Stay where you are and await further instructions.”
    “What about my money?”
    “That will be delivered to you.”
    “It better be.”
    “I’ll call you.” He seemed in a hurry and terminated the call. Asshole, I thought, slinging the phone down on the bedside table, and then Jody came out of the bathroom wearing just white sports socks and trainers, and I kind of got distracted.
    Dick, ass, this way up, that way up, shower, bed, sleep. Repeat with variations as required. It was better than ever because I cared about him, because he had told me the truth, and that’s all I’m going to say on that score.

    I woke up suddenly. What woke me? Nothing moving, just the rise and fall of Jody’s chest. It was dark in the room, but not so dark that I couldn’t scan—from the
bathroom to the forecourt, nothing out of place, nothing unexpected. Relax, Stagg, you’ve got the jitters. It’s that business with Ferrari, the unanswered call, everything that Jody told you—go back to sleep, tomorrow is another day. Before closing my eyes I picked up my phone to check the time. The screen lit up: 4:15.
    Then I heard it—the faintest click-click, could have been an insect, could have been something in my own ear, but it wasn’t.