The Third Circle
Chapter 16
Claire and John were naked on the top of a stack of large cartons, twenty feet above the concrete floor of a muggy warehouse. They could hear equipment of some kind being operated below and behind them. They turned and crept to the edge of the stack and peered over. A man on a forklift was hoisting a flat of cartons like the ones on which they sat. The cartons were stamped "Combat Boots: Army Issue."
They could see out a huge portal to a dock and the river beyond. Several workmen were standing on the dock next to a barge. On a radio somewhere, an orchestra played. There were iron grate catwalks a few feet above them, and a windowed mezzanine along one wall. Through the windows they could see offices with people working, any one of whom could glance up and easily see them. Keeping as low as they could, they ventured to the opposite edge of the cartons. There was about a twelve foot drop to another forklift parked directly below them. Working quickly and quietly, they dislodged and lifted cartons out of the stack to fashion a three-tiered stairway. From the lowest step of their stair, John was able to stretch down with his bare foot and reach the tire of the forklift. He twisted himself around, found a finger hold in the next row of boxes, and stepped to the ground. Claire followed him, and he helped her to the cement floor. They heard a door open on the mezzanine above them, and pressed themselves flat against the boxes and listened to footsteps. They heard another door open and close overhead.
"Hey, boss," John whispered to Claire in a twangy voice. "There's a naked couple out there in the boots again."
"Shut up!" she whispered. "This isn't funny!"
They could hear the other forklift still working on the other side of the stack. Empty flats were stacked along the wall nearest them, and next to the flats were two closed doors. "Wait here a minute," John whispered. "I'll check those doors."
He circled the forklift and crept to the wall. He was now exposed to the warehouse door and to the men outside on the dock. The first door was unlocked. It was a tiny room with a toilet. He opened the next door and the room inside was dark. He stepped quickly into the room and closed the door behind him. He felt for a light switch. There wasn't one. He ventured gingerly into the room, feeling in the air ahead of him for a cord, then flinched when he felt one brush his nose. He pulled it, and a light went on.
He was standing in a utility room. There were wash basins, cleaning equipment, safety helmets and leather aprons hanging on pegs, and, along the far wall, lockers. He walked to them quickly. He checked the ones that weren't locked and found a grungy pair of overalls and a tattered and badly soiled work shirt. He quickly put on the clothes and searched for more, but all he could find was another leather apron.
There was another door leading from the utility room. He tried it. It was a storage closet, a place for Claire to hide while he went back to the hotel for clothes.
He hurried back through the utility room and carefully opened the door. He checked that no one was looking in his direction. He motioned for Claire to join him. Once inside the utility room, she searched the room thoroughly for clothes herself before agreeing to wait in the storage closet for him to return.
John left her in the closet and returned to the warehouse. There were more cartons stacked against the wall under the mezzanine. He opened one of the boxes, found a boot box with his size on it, and took the boots out and pulled them on.
The man on the forklift was hoisting the stack of boots upon which Claire and John had been sitting. As the machine turned with its load toward the dock, John turned with it, staying close to the stack and out of view of the driver. He followed along beside the load out to the dock, then turned, holding his breath, and walked casually, hands in the overall pockets, down a ramp toward the corner of the warehouse. He didn't know if he had been seen or not. He glanced back briefly before he rounded the corner. It appeared that the attention of the men on the dock was being directed at the disarray of boxes at the top of the stack on the forklift. John paused for a moment, watching. One of the men brought a ladder from inside the warehouse and started climbing up the stack.
John walked in the stiff boots along the side of the building toward the street. He couldn't see the hotel in either direction, but he remembered the address and gauged which direction it was from the numbers on the industrial buildings next to the warehouse.
It was a fifteen block walk. He didn't know what time it was, but he guessed late afternoon. It was very hot, and the dirty shirt and overalls were soaked by the time he reached the hotel. The boots hurt his feet.
He walked as casually as he could through the elegant lobby to the desk, responding to snobbish stares with a smile and a nod. "John Lodge," He said to the clerk in the most businesslike tone he could muster. "We've ... had a bit of an incident, I'm afraid. We've lost our room keys."
"So sorry, sir," said the clerk. "Oh, there's a package. Just a moment." He walked through a door in the back and returned with a large paper bag. "Are you acquainted with a Mr. Banister?"
"Uh, yes, I am," said John.
"Some things were delivered here that someone had apparently found. Some clothing, your wife's purse, it seems, and a wallet belonging to one Mr. Banister. It had your room receipt inside for some odd reason, and your wife's purse had a hotel room key, so the party delivered it here, unable to ascertain a local address for Mr. Banister."
"Well, what good fortune. Thank you very kindly."
"No trouble at all, sir. Uh, it was inquired as to whether there might be a ... reward, sir."
John glanced in his wallet and Claire's. No money had been taken.
"Of course," he said.
The clerk handed him an envelope. "The party may be contacted. Is there anything else the hotel can do, sir?"
"No," John said, taking the envelope and dropping it in the sack. "We're most grateful. Thank you."
He hurried upstairs and dumped the sack out on the bed. His regular watch was there, and he grabbed it. It was just five o'clock. He worried that the warehouse would be closing. He quickly changed clothes, and then got one of Claire's short sleeved tops and a pair of shorts. He folded them and put them in her purse, along with a pair of her sandals, grabbed his wallet, and hurried back downstairs and caught a cab in front of the hotel.
At the warehouse, John gave the cabby five dollars and asked him to wait. The warehouse was indeed closed. He walked around back, and the loading door was closed and locked. He panicked. There was a standard door beside the loading door, and he tried it, but it was locked too. He rapped gently, and heard Claire's voice.
"John?"
"Yes!" he called through the door. "It's me."
She opened it, and he walked into the dark warehouse and hugged her.
"The door was locked. I panicked."
"It's a deadbolt," she said, pointing at the door.
"Guess what?" he said, holding her purse behind his back. "Some good Samaritan returned all of our things to the hotel." He handed her the purse.
"Fantastic!" she said.
He took her in his arms and kissed her.
While she dressed, John found the carton of boots from which he had taken a pair and dropped a ten dollar bill inside. He didn't believe the clothing he took belonged to anyone in particular, nor was worth very much.
Claire was dressed and ready to go. She pushed the lock button in the knob of the door, and they slipped back out and around the warehouse to the street.
"I'm famished," she said, as they got in the cab.
"Me, too. Hey, Driver. Anyplace we can get good beaver steaks?"
"Not funny!" She slapped his leg.
"Beaver steaks?" asked the driver.
"Just kidding," said John. "Take us to the nicest restaurant that will let us in dressed like this."
He dropped them at a river front restaurant near their hotel.
"A dip in the Twelfth Century sure stimulates the appetite," John said as they ate prime rib and baked potatoes.
"Yeah, it does. I'm glad that mosquito bites don't transport."
"I know! They just disappeared."
"I
think we both should start wearing our time watches all the time,"
she
said.
"I think you're right."
"My back aches. I think I'm getting my period."
"I know."
"How do you know?"
"'Cause you've been getting sort of testy."
"I'm sorry. I wonder if Tampax has been invented yet."
"I don't know. We can see."
"Tampax and Advil. I don't want to have my period without Tampax and Advil."
"We'll check it out. Maybe there's an after-hours drug store around. We'll find out after dinner."
They finished their dinner with fresh peach cobbler and the best coffee they had had since they left home. The hostess called a cab for them, and they spent twenty minutes finding a drug store that was open. John waited while Claire went in. She came out with a paper bag.
"Tampax, yes, Advil, no," she said when she got in."
"Did you get some aspirin?"
"You know I can't take aspirin."
"We'll figure something out," said John. "Why don't we just move for a few days?"
"Move where?"
"We can stay right here. 1975 or so. Was there Advil by 1975?"
"I think so. That's a good idea. But ... if I go there and I have my period, and come back here, maybe I'll have to have it twice!"
"Hm. I don't think so. I think our internal bodies are operating independently of where we are."
"Hmm. I guess that makes sense. Do you mind taking a side trip?"
"Of course not, Sweetheart."
She smiled and hugged his arm. "I love you," she said. "But let's go in October or April. I need a break from this August heat."
"Good idea. We'll do it first thing in the morning."
When they got back to their hotel room, Claire went through the things John had thrown on the bed. "What's this?" she asked, picking up the envelope that John had dropped in the sack. It was addressed, and had a three cent stamp on it.
"The person who returned our things asked if there was a reward, and left that at the desk."
"Did you read this?"
"No. What?"
She handed it to him, and he read aloud the address on the empty envelope: "'Helena Wheaton, General Delivery, St. Louis, Missouri.' What is this? A joke?"
"What a trip. She returned our stuff!"
"What's that about?"
"Plus wants a reward!" Claire exclaimed. "Slim chance!"
"I think we should do it."
"What?"
"Sure. A peace offering. Send a couple hundred bucks."
"Hm. Well, if we do, I'm going to write him or her a note to go with it."
"And say what?"
She sat down at the desk in the room and found a piece of hotel stationery. "'Dear fellow traveler,'" she said, writing. "'We have no idea what you want. We aren't here to hurt anyone or cause any trouble. Please leave us alone.' How's that?"
"Or, how about this: 'Thanks for the return of our things. If we can be of further help, let us know?'"
"Hm."
"I don't know. It's just a thought. Coming from a place of strength, letting him know we have some power in the relationship."
"Do we?"
"I have no idea."
"I don't want to get him pissed off."
"I don't either."
"Well, you write it. I'm going to bed."
"I love you."
"I
love you, too, Sweetheart." She came over and kissed him. "I'm
sorry I'm
so cranky."
"I'm sorry you're having such a hard time. I don't want you ever to be in pain. We'll get out of here first thing in the morning."
They put off sending the reward and note. The next morning, they got a plastic bag from the hotel, rented a car, bought a shovel at a hardware store, and drove several miles out of town away from the river on highway 44, beyond where they hoped there would be any development during the next 30 years. They brought some 1946 city maps with them, John's new birth certificate, $3,000 in cash, their wedding rings, and the clothes they were wearing. They buried the plastic bag with their clothes and the things they had brought, along with the car keys, and transported in an open field behind a large cottonwood tree several hundred feet from the road where they left the car parked.
"You drive," John smiled.
Claire set her watch and took his hand and pressed the red lever.
The familiar darkness came, and in it, Claire had a vision of the smiling face of Helena Wheaton.
The darkness passed, and they found themselves in what was now a pasture on Tuesday, the first of April, 1975.
"My God!" Claire shrieked. "It's cold!"
"Brrr," John agreed, rushing to uncover their plastic bag. It was an easier chore than it had been in Texas, because the soil was damp from Spring rains. The cottonwood tree was still there, and they dressed quickly behind it, and then hitched a ride on the busy interstate back to St. Louis with two hippies named Louisa and Ray in a beautifully flowered 1965 Volkswagen bus. It was Louisa's and Ray's theory that now that Nixon had been forced to resign, the next phase of the cultural revolution was to be a shift from the streets and campuses to industrial America, and they were on their way to Chicago to attend a tactical seminar. They thought Claire and John's clothes were incredibly cool, and wanted to know where they had gotten them. Claire told them they had gotten them in a far out clothing store in Amarillo. Ray said they had driven through Amarillo the day before, but had steered clear because it seemed like a really heavy scene. They wanted to know if Claire and John knew where they could score some good grass in St. Louis. John said they didn't know, that they were more interested in scoring some Advil. Louisa thought that was pretty weird.
They dropped Claire and John on River Street, and John gave them ten dollars for gas, for which they were both most appreciative. They went off to find some marijuana.
The Missouri Grand Hotel was still standing, but had had a face lift, and John checked in under their new name of Banister while Claire went to the gift shop in the hotel to buy Tampax and Advil and a few contemporary casual clothes. It felt good to John to have a real identity, even though it was an identity that, under scrutiny, would be challenged, since, according to his long expired driver's license, he would be over sixty years old. He was questioned a bit contemptuously by the desk clerk about not having any luggage, and John said that the airline had sent it to Denver by mistake, and that it would be delivered the next day. This story proved a good one, because the Denver Airport was closed the next day by a severe winter storm. He asked if their old room was available, and it was. The price of the suite had gone from twenty-five to seventy-eight dollars a night, and the clerk asked for payment in advance since they didn't have a credit card. John paid for four nights.
The room had been a bit garishly redecorated since 1946. "I just want to collapse here," Claire said. "Listen to the radio, watch TV, sleep, get room service, and read magazines. Maybe take some walks along the river and feed some squirrels in a park somewhere."
John slipped out the first day and found a theatrical costume shop and bought a white mustache, some wire-rimmed glasses, and a cane. The woman in the shop helped him put powder on his hair and eyebrows. He bought an old man's suit and tie in a thrift store, and hobbled in to surprise Claire. He stood stooped at the door of their hotel room, and spoke in a raspy voice, "Honey? Something's gone wrong with my time watch."
Claire squealed, and then broke down in gales of laughter. "My God, where did you get that? You look great!"
They bought a 1971 Pontiac on a used car lot and John used the costume to get his driver's license renewed. Leaving the gray in his hair, he explored a fifty mile radius around St. Louis, making notes on the old maps they had brought about industrial and commercial development. He spent several hours in the public library reviewing old newspapers and Barons. He also went to the University library and researched ibuprofen in the medical abstracts.
Together, they took in a few movies: Airport 75, Towering Inferno, The French Connection, and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. On the day they arrived, the seventy-two-year old Richard Daley had won an unprecedented sixth term as Mayor of Chicago. He captured 77% of the vote, a landslide victory. The following day, Wednesday, the same driving storm that closed Denver reached Chicago, and by Thursday, the elderly Mayor's city was at a windy standstill, buried under two feet of snow. There were 26 deaths reported. The same day, Bobby Fischer lost the world chess championship title by default to Anatoly Xarpov, refusing to play Xarpov by the rules of the International Chess Federation. There was also that day a recall of 1600 Girl Scout toothbrushes because they broke off in the mouth.
The day after that, President Gerald Ford dispatched a giant C-5 Transport to Saigon to pick up 2,000 Vietnamese orphans who had been adopted by Americans. America had at last withdrawn from the little Asian peninsula, and the South Vietnamese Army was, in the words of Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, "in a catastrophic retreat, a defeat of historic and tragic proportions." Vice President Nelson Rockefeller said it was too late to stem the Communist advance in South Vietnam. "Everybody," he said, "is just thrashing around over there in a tragic situation."
Getting the orphaned children out before the Communists crushed the entire country had captured the media's attention. American compassion overflowed. Even the First Lady, Betty Ford, in a speech at Palm Springs where her husband was golfing, said that she herself wanted to adopt some Vietnamese orphans. She and the President had planned to meet the C-5 Transport when it arrived on Friday in California.
But the Transport crashed on the way, killing 178.
Claire, following the story on the news, wept. "I don't remember any of this," she kept saying. John didn't remember it either. The mid-70s had been dark times for both of them.
They spent the morning of their last day in 1975 memorizing the information John had gotten, and then checked out of the hotel. They found a Veteran's Service Center. A particularly lonely and sad looking man with one arm was sitting on a low wall around the entrance. They gave him the Pontiac and all their cash but twenty dollars, and took a taxi to the cottonwood tree on the interstate. They transported back to the day they had left in 1946.
The rental car was still parked on the roadside where they had left it. "That car now has two lives," Claire commented as they dug up their package of clothes, cash, keys, rings, and maps. They dressed, and drove back to St. Louis. Along the way, Claire wrote down on the maps all of the information she had memorized in 1975.
Before returning to their comfortable old Georgian suite at the Grand, they drove to Rodgers and Downs Ltd. There was an elegant restaurant on the top floor, and they ate lunch. Then John bought the most expensive suit he could find, a regal, three-piece, light gray, Bolano Italian silk that cost $130.00. He asked to meet the tailor, and gave him a hundred dollar bill, and asked that the suit be ready early in the morning. He also picked out a couple of white dress shirts and conservative ties, and socks, and then bought a pair of their best twenty-dollar black Banister oxfords, which he asked to be shined. Claire bought a tailored silk suit, also light gray, a sumptuous but simple white blouse, a miniature pearl necklace and matching earrings, some nylons, and a pair of gray, mid-heal, Amalfi kid pumps and a matching Gucci bag. John paid for the items, and asked that they all be delivered to their hotel first thing in the morning when the suit was ready.
In the next block they found a stationery store. Claire was eager to get started on her journal. She bought a creamy white tablet of the most expensive paper they had, a fountain pen, and a few boxes of Quink, an ink that advertised on the box that it was "non-fading, non-molding, anti-corroding, and anti-deposit forming."
Across the street was a photographic supply store, and Claire wanted to go look at cameras. She wound up buying two. One was a Swiss-made Sinas, a box camera. It had a bellows extension, a ground glass focusing screen, a very fast Compur shutter, and interchangeable holders for glass photographic plates. She picked out an optical viewfinder, an Ernostar lens, a light meter, and a tripod. She also bought a much smaller Kine Exacta, and lots of film for both cameras.
She had all of the equipment except the Kine delivered to the hotel, and had John drop her off on River Street, several blocks from the hotel. She walked all the way back and shot three rolls, which she posted for processing right away, using the Amarillo address.
Meanwhile, John left the car at the hotel, caught a cab, and asked the driver if he could help him find someone who booked bets. The driver took him to a barber shop across the river in East St. Louis, and waited while John bet a total of twenty thousand dollars on another prize fight, a daily double horse race, and a baseball game, the outcomes of which he had just learned in the library in 1975.
He got back to the hotel just behind Claire. They showered, changed clothes, and went down to the dining room for dinner. They went to bed early and made love until past midnight.
They slept in the next morning, awakened at ten o'clock by the bellhop delivering their new clothes. Claire ordered continental breakfasts in the room, and they showered, ate, dressed, and then drove to the office of Neilson Pharmaceutical Laboratories.
John had found the firm in his corporate research in the library. It was located only a few blocks from the army boot warehouse where they had returned from 1317. It was a small company, incorporated by Frederick Neilson in 1932. Frederick's father, Edward had been a small town druggist in St. Louis. As a boy, Frederick had worked in the drug store beside his father. He had studied pharmacology for a short time at Washington University in St. Louis, but had shifted his studies to business in 1926, specializing in pharmaceutical research and development, and had some success in the stock market. His financial losses in the crash of 1929 had been severe. The father, a man of considerable inventiveness, had meanwhile patented a process for separating insulin from the endocrine tissue of the pancreas into crystalline form, and had begun to manufacture it in small quantities in the back of the drug store.
Frederick, destitute in 1929, had joined his father's enterprise, frequenting the General Hospital in search of pancreases. It was in fact from pancreatitis that the father had died in 1932, and Frederick had gone on to expand the drug company's production. In 1934, he incorporated and rented the small warehouse and office on River Street, converting the warehouse to a small laboratory. But he had failed to secure any federal contracts during the war, and his production had been static for several years.
Now John and Claire walked into a cluttered reception area. There was a rueful, graying woman behind a desk working at a ledger. "May I help you?" she asked, appearing alarmed that anyone would come through the door, especially anyone dressed as they were.
"Claire and John Banister to see Frederick Neilson," John said.
"Did you have an appointment?" She spoke in a small, rather frightened voice.
"I'm, sorry, no," Claire said. "We're only in town briefly. We want to make some substantial investments in your firm. Is he in?"
"Uh, yes, I believe so. Just a moment. Please, have a seat." She got up and took stacks of folders from two ancient wicker chairs against the wall so they could sit, and then disappeared through a door in the back of the room.
They didn't bother to sit down. "We may have wasted money buying these clothes to impress these folks," John said.
"Oh, it feels nice to get dressed up anyway. This is fun."
The receptionist returned after only a few seconds. "This way," she said, straightening her hair. Claire and John followed her through the door and into a room with a cement floor. It smelled like formaldehyde. Hoagy Carmichael sang "Ole Buttermilk Sky" on a radio on a shelf behind a baldheaded man in a white frock, who was working intently at a lab table laden with beakers and strange shaped jars. He ignored them. The woman led Claire and John to an adjacent office, and Frederick Neilson met them at the door. He was exceedingly obese, with a red face and thin hair the color of flax. He wore heavy rimmed glasses, a rumpled white shirt, a stained burgundy tie loosened at the neck, and trousers that were too tight.
"This is Mr. Neilson," the woman said with a tone of apology.
Frederick Neilson looked at John suspiciously. "Yes?" he said.
"Claire and John Banister," John said, extending his hand and smiling warmly. "Got a minute?"
Frederick shook John's hand and nodded at Claire. From behind his mussed facade came a smile that was quite charming. "Come in," he said, putting a pipe in his mouth and stepping aside and waving them past him into the office.
The office was musty and close, and smelled of stale pipe smoke, mixed with the pungent odor of the lab outside. Bookshelves lined the walls, floor to ceiling, and were jammed with manuscripts, journals, and text books, all with a dusty aura that made Claire suspect that nothing in those shelves had been taken out or looked at in a long time. A huge oak desk sat in the corner, groaning under stacks of more journals and loose papers and manila folders. Behind that, against a window that had been painted over, was an old roll top desk that looked comparatively orderly. John took that desk to be the financial division of the corporation. Next to the desk were two black metal file cabinets. Upon one was a fan, moving stale air around the room. There was another fan in the ceiling, turning lazily.
There were three more of the same ancient and well-worn round wicker chairs that were in the reception room. Must have been a close-out sale, Claire thought to herself. One had papers piled on it. The other two were available, and Frederick pulled them in front of his desk for Claire and John. They sat, and Frederick went behind the big desk and collapsed into a leather swivel chair. "So, what can I do for you, Mr. Banister," Frederick asked, ignoring Claire, putting the pipe in his mouth, and leaning back in the chair and locking his hands behind his head, revealing great drifts of underarm perspiration in the wrinkled shirt.
"We represent a corporation in Amarillo, Texas," Claire said, "that is prepared to invest one hundred thousand dollars in Neilson Pharmaceuticals. I'm aware that you only have about six thousand over the counter shares of stock on the market at around four dollars a share."
Frederick leaned forward, startled. He took the pipe out of his mouth and set it in an ash tray, and folded his hands politely on the desk in front of him. He smiled his charming smile but his eyes were blank. John could almost see the wheels spinning behind them, hear the alarms going off, smell the cautious greed. John figured he was meditating about how the proposal would result in Claire and John getting controlling interest in the corporation.
"Our attorneys can work out the details, of course," said John, "and we're very interested in protecting your interest. But, Mr. Neilson, I have to tell you something in strict confidence." He leaned forward.
"Yes?" Frederick's eyes widened slightly, and he leaned forward too.
"These drugs you're making? For psychiatric medicine?"
"Yes?"
John shook his head sternly. "The future lies in another direction."
Frederick blanched a bit. Psychiatric medicine was about his only market. It had turned out that by 1930, the anti-diabetes hormone his father had been producing was gaining some popularity in treating schizophrenia. It had been discovered accidentally that insulin produced severe hypoglycemic shock and convulsions, followed by coma, followed, in schizophrenics, by a change in mental states that was reported in the literature as "gratifying." After his father's death, Frederick's had also begun producing metrazol, another convulsion-inducing drug popular in the treatment of schizophrenia, and other stimulants such as picrotoxin and Benzedrine.
"We want to get away from this, because there's no future in it," John smiled.
A forlorn look swept over Frederick.
Claire asked, "are you aware that lots of people don't or can't take aspirin?"
"Uh, no, I wasn't," Frederick said.
"It causes gastric problems," said John. "There are a lot of people it doesn't even work for."
"Uh huh."
"We have a formula," John continued, "for a revolutionary aspirin substitute. For hundreds of thousands of people, it will be even more effective than aspirin in relieving pain."
"People want relief from pain, Mr. Neilson," Claire said. Frederick flinched.
"This drug is going to be available over the counter," John said, "and is going to sell millions of units. It will make a fortune. Put Neilson Pharmaceuticals on the map. I'll give you the formula, all of the specs. The money we are prepared to invest will cover all of the cost of research and development, and we should be able to have it approved by the new Federal Security Agency in a couple of years at most. We'll even subcontract all of the marketing for you. We'll arrange the contract so that if it isn't a success, you lose nothing. Interested?"
Frederick blinked rapidly several times, rocking gently in his chair in a way that made it look like he was nodding his head, and, after a few seconds of staring at Claire, he was nodding. "Well, we're interested in having a look," he said. "Run it by the Board."
"Fine," said John, standing up and reaching across the desk to shake hands. The "Board," John figured, was probably him and the chemist out front.
"One condition," Claire said.
"What's that?" Frederick asked, rising and taking John's hand. He wrinkled his brow and forced himself to look at Claire with something approaching businesslike respect.
"Clean up the shop a bit. Give your secretary a raise. Get some new chairs."
Frederick nodded and smiled a confused little smile.
"Our attorney will be in touch," John said.
They left, smiling at the receptionist on the way out, and walked back to the hotel giggling.
They changed to more casual clothes and had room service lunch on the verandah. Then, from their room, they called the Hotel Charlotte in Amarillo for messages. Danny had made an appointment for September 6, the following Friday afternoon, with a lawyer. He also said that a survey crew was coming on Monday morning from Oklahoma City to look around the farm and make a bid.
They took a long nap, and then went to an early movie, A Stolen Life, in which Bette Davis takes the place of her twin sister to win the sister's husband. The second feature was Along Came Jones, in which Gary Cooper is mistaken for Dan Duryea, a famous outlaw.
The next morning they collected their gambling winnings. The bets had yielded a hundred and fifty thousand, giving them a total of over a half a million dollars, two hundred thousand of which was still in the hotel safe at the Hotel Charlotte in Texas.
"Should we open a bank account?" asked Claire. "The briefcase is getting pretty full."
"Not here. It's too close to the Jonathan Luce Banister family. We can open one in Amarillo."
"That'll be our business hub anyway, for awhile."
They decided to return the rental car, and bought a brand new white Oldsmobile from Great River Oldsmobile and Ford Motor Company. It advertised "fluid drive," and had automatic transmission and an air conditioner. They registered it at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and while they were there, they remembered that they hadn't responded to Mrs. Wheaton. Back at the hotel, they put two hundred dollars in the envelope that had been left with their things. John wrote "Everything's cool" on a sheet of hotel stationery, stuffed it in with the cash, and sealed the envelope. They posted it at the desk, checked out, and headed southwest on Route 44 toward Oklahoma City.