[Note to the Reader] If you’re just now tuning in, you’re late—but not hopeless. This is the second chapter tying up the mysteries of The Blonde in Room #3 and A Stranger This Way Comes. If you skipped Chapter One, go read “Receipt of Sins” before the trail gets any colder or more twisted.
The 1964 Chrysler New Yorker Town & Country wagon eased into the lot behind the Grounds for Divorce just after sunrise, its Persian White paint catching a faint halo from the diner’s neon sign as it blinked its last tired flickers. The car was long and low, the kind of Detroit land barge that had outlived its original sins and now carried newer ones with quieter wheels. The chrome trim caught the morning light like it was trying to deflect scrutiny.
Brother Bob stepped out, tugging his clerical collar like it had shrunk overnight. He stood for a moment, looking at the diner’s glass door as if it might open on its own. It didn’t.
Inside, Lucinda was already wiping down the counter with a rag that had seen better spills. Delgado sipped from a chipped mug and kept his eyes low. The diner wasn’t full, but it was full enough to feel like a jury box.
Bob entered, the bell on the door giving its one-note opinion. He nodded at Lucinda. “Mornin’.”
She poured him coffee without asking. “Thought you might show.”
“I never miss a resurrection,” Bob replied, sliding into a booth.
She leaned in, voice low and firm. “Someone keyed the Riviera last night. Slashed La Dama Verde’s tires too. You know anything about that?”
Bob stirred his coffee like it needed penance. “Don’t own a knife. Haven’t keyed anything since seminary.”
Delgado snorted. “But you do own a ledger. Or used to.”
Bob glanced up. “I assume you found it?”
Lucinda crossed her arms. “We found a lot of things. Velvet Elvis. Burned check. Photo of Lenora with Santo. And a page labeled ‘ASH = DOUBLE CLEANING.’”
Bob sighed. “You think you want answers. What you want is comfort. And that’s never been in short supply at the Scuttlebutt.”
Delgado muttered, “Neither’s hypocrisy.”
Bob ignored him. “That car out there—” he nodded toward the Chrysler, “—holds six people with no problems. Unfortunately, I don’t know six people with no problems.”
Lucinda blinked. “Cute. You want pie with that sermon?”
Later that evening, long after the lunch crowd cleared out and the heat retreated like a guilty conscience, Delgado and Rusty stood behind the Scuttlebutt under the broken bulb by the dumpster.
“You sure he said behind the velvet Elvis?” Rusty asked, squinting through the back window.
Delgado nodded. “Third VIP room. Left wall. Between the stripper pole and the redemption booth.”
“Redemption booth?”
Delgado shrugged. “It’s a room with a Gideon Bible and a panic button.”
They jimmied the back door with a Slim Jim and a prayer. Inside, the Scuttlebutt was a cathedral of poor choices and cheaper decor. The velvet Elvis painting hung crooked, like it had given up being ironic.
Behind it, they found the safe. The door was ajar.
Inside: a black-and-gold ledger with entries scribbled in blocky shorthand. Expenses, names, dates—coded but legible. One entry had a number that made Delgado pause.
“Wait,” he said. “I’ve seen this before.”
At the Naughty Pine, Leon sat on his bed with a notepad in one hand and a half-empty Diet Pepsi in the other. The number Delgado found matched the corner of the motel stationery Lenora had used. He’d dismissed it at the time. But now…
He reached under the bed, pulled out the cardboard box he told himself he’d throw away every week. Inside: scraps, receipts, fragments of the past he hadn’t decided to forget.
There it was. The stationery. Top corner: 6-2-8-7.
The same number from the ledger.
“Room #3 wasn’t just a stopover,” he whispered. “It was a handoff.”
Just before midnight, Lucinda closed up the diner and found a postcard waiting for her in the mailbox. No return address. Odessa postmark. Letters clipped from magazines and glued like a ransom note.
HE DIDN’T LEAVE ALONE.
She turned the card over. It was a picture of a church marquee. The sign read: WEDNESDAY NIGHT—FREE HOT DOGS, TRUTH OPTIONAL.
Brother Bob pulled out of the lot in the New Yorker wagon just after midnight. The air was still. Even the cicadas had called it.
Lucinda watched from the shadows, arms crossed. Delgado beside her.
“You think he knows?” Delgado asked.
Lucinda’s lips barely moved. “He always knows. The question is whether he believes it.”
Behind them, the Riviera sat parked in the alley. Engine off. Lights off.
But Leon was behind the wheel.
And the passenger seat was lit by the dome light.
The ledger sat open across the tan vinyl, pages ruffling in the breeze from the cracked window.
He wasn’t driving anywhere. Not yet.
But the next stop wasn’t going to be the diner.
And it sure as hell wasn’t church.
4 responses to “THREE NIGHTS AT THE END OF THE ROAD, PART 2: Unholy Alliances”
I once knew of an incestuous family of snakes that was less tangled…
Send me the details. Sounds like there’s a story there.
There are very few things that I can state with absolute certainty, but one is this: Shining a UV light on that velvet Elvis painting would show more stains than there are stars in the sky.
Yikes.
I thought it was Frontier Ford that was “Home of the Straight Shootin’ Deal.”