Read Online Man of Wax by Robert Swartwood - Free Book Online Page B

a couple long seconds before picking up the phone. Then I waited another couple long seconds before answering it.  
    “What’s wrong, Ben?” Simon asked. “Don’t you want to talk to me?”  
    I said nothing. I’d already smoked two packs of cigarettes. The inside of my mouth felt raw, and I wished I’d bought some gum the last time I stopped for gas.  
    “The Grand Sierra Resort,” Simon said, his voice now low and serious. “Tell the front desk you’re Romeo Chase. They’ll have a room waiting for you.”  
    I didn’t bother answering him. Just like at the end of our last conversation, it was me who disconnected the call. But instead of throwing the phone down at the floor, this time I tossed it over on the passenger seat. Traffic continued surging around me, cars passing me, me passing cars. I’d become sick of driving hours ago but figured I could do it for a little longer. I didn’t know what was going on but I still had the hope Jen and Casey were both alive. It was what kept me going. It was what kept me from ignoring that urge in the back of my mind to take the gun from the glove compartment and end this once and for all.

 
     
     
    16

    To say I was overwhelmed by everything that’d happened in the last twelve hours would have been an understatement, but the moment the Grand Sierra Resort came into view I was completely beset. This was just too much, I kept telling myself, and after I’d parked I stared up at the gigantic white building that rose higher and higher into the night. I couldn’t seem to will myself to blink. From waking in the crummy cramped room of the Paradise Motel, to now this—it just seemed wrong, and it made me think of Jen. She would have felt completely at home in a place like this, having stayed in these types of hotels ever since she was young. She’d stayed in the Plaza Hotel at least two dozen times, she once told me when we visited New York in December, and when I told her I’d never once stepped foot inside the place, she laughed and told the cabdriver to take us to Fifth Avenue.  
    I cut the Dodge’s ignition, the car immediately going silent except for the soft ticking coming from beneath the hood. I tried to picture Jen’s face every time she laughed. I tried to picture her smile when she led me up the steps to the Plaza Hotel, where the doorman opened the door, and we entered the lobby. She said, “Well, now you can’t say never,” and reached up on her tiptoes, kissed me on the lips. That had been Jen, wanting me to experience everything I possibly could. She always said she envied me, the simple life I’d led, though I never truly believed her.  
    How long I sat in the Dodge, surrounded by the sea of vehicles much flashier than the one I’d driven almost four hundred miles, I couldn’t say. There were luxury cars made by those foreign companies like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Lexus, as well as what I always thought of as Common People Cars, those made by Ford and Toyota and Honda. And of course there were RVs. All were vacant, their owners inside playing poker or blackjack or keno or the slots, or else maybe taking in a show. I myself had never once been inside a casino, my upbringing in a poor family one that taught me to always save money, to never waste it.  
    The passenger seat was a mess of trash, all of which I ignored except for a pack of cigarettes and the phone. Those I stuck in my pockets, right there along with the wallet that wasn’t mine. I opened the door but hesitated, thinking about the gun in the glove compartment. I didn’t want to leave it there, thinking it might fall in the wrong hands if someone tried breaking into the car. Then I laughed, realizing out of all the cars surrounding me, this rusted and beat-up Dodge would be the last thing somebody would want to steal.  
    I headed inside, where I was immediately bombarded with noise and brightness. I kept my head down, wanting nobody to see me. I felt completely out of place in