She wasn't a guy but a young blonde woman with a French accent and teeth that were absolutely perfect. She smiled at him. "Yessir?"
"Uh ..." He looked around him. Bizarre. It looked like a warehouse with a low ceiling. Stone and metal furniture everywhere. And a lot of the furniture was wrapped up in white cloth.
"Uh, I was wondering, you have a room?"
"Certainly, sir. How long will you be staying?"
"Uh, how much would that be? For a single?"
A computer was consulted. "Four hundred forty."
For a week"? Are these people fucking insane?
The question now was how to get out of here without the blonde with the ruler-straight teeth thinking he was a complete asshole.
"I mean by the night."
A moment's pause. "Actually, that is the daily rate, sir."
"Sure. I was joking." Nestor grinned, saw no way to salvage the situation and simply walked out.
Only one block away he found the Royalton Arms, which he knew was okay because there were a couple o
f dirty-looking tourists standing out in front, looking at a Michelin guide to New York City. The desk clerk here didn't even have straight teeth, let alone white ones, and he was behind a Plexiglas bulletproof divider. Nestor checked into a $39.95 room and took the elevator up to the seventh floor. The room was okay. He felt good as soon as he walked inside. It didn't overlook any oceans or expressways or anything else except an air shaft but that didn't bother Nestor. He lowered the window blinds then lay down on the bed and listened to the argument his stomach was having with the hot dogs.
He clicked on the TV and watched some Miami Vice rerun for a while, flipped through the channels once then shut off the set. It was irritating not to have a remote control. He stripped down to his boxer shorts and sleeveless T-shirt, brushed his teeth powerfully and got into bed.
He closed his eyes.
Snap. The pictures began.
Nestor often had trouble sleeping. He'd thought, a long time ago, it was something physical. Well, hoped more than thought. But he knew now that wasn't the case at all.
The reason for his insomnia was the pictures.
The minute his head hit the pillow (unless there was someone next to him, distracting him or at least promising distraction), the minute he was prepared to sleep, the pictures began. He supposed he could call them memories because they really were nothing more than scenes from his past. But memories were different. Memories were like the impressions he had of his family or his childhood. His first car. His first fuck. Maybe they were accurate. Probably not.
But the pictures ... Man. Every detail perfect.
A Philippine revolutionary he picked off at three hundred yards using an M16 with metal sights, the man just dropping like a sack ...
A black South African who thought he was safely across the border in Botswana ...
A coat hanger binding the hands of a Salvadorian, Nestor thinking, Why bother to tie him up? He'll have a bullet in his head in sixty seconds anyway....
Hundreds of others.
They were in black and white, they were in color, they were mute, they were in Dolby stereo sound.
The pictures ...
They didn't haunt him, of course. He didn't have any emotional response. He wasn't tormented by guilt, he wasn't moved to lust. They just wouldn't go away. The pictures came into his head and they wouldn't let him sleep.
Tonight Nestor--energized by the city and troubled by its fast food--lay in a too-soft bed and fielded the pictures. Pushed one away. Then he did the same with the one that took its place. Then the next. For an hour, then two. He wanted Celine next to him. He thought about her but the pictures pushed her away. He thought about what he was in town to do. That kept the pictures away for a while. But they came back.
Finally--it was close to three A.M.--he began to think about the French girl, the one with the straight teeth. With the thought of her, and a little bit of effort on his part (elbow grease was the way he thought of it), Jack Nestor finally began to relax.
IT WAS ENOUGH OF A DATE TO KEEP BRADFORD SIMPSON happy and not enough of one to worry Rune.