“Oh.”

“Or a civil disturbance, anyway. And filter’s not the word for it. It comes through unfiltered, loud and clear.”

“Have you, uh, spoken to them about it?”

“I thought I’d speak to you.”

“Oh.”

“And you could speak to them.”

The clerk swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Two forty-seven,” he said, and thumbed a box of file cards, and nodded, and swallowed again. “I thought so. They have a car.”

“This is a motel,” Keller said. “Who comes here on foot?”

“What I mean, I took one look at them and thought they were bikers. Like Hell’s Angels? But they came in a car.”

He was silent, and Keller could tell how much he wanted to ask a roomful of outlaw bikers to keep it down. “Look,” he said, “nobody has to talk to them. Just put me in another room.”

“Didn’t I say, when you first walked in? We’re full up. The No Vacancy sign’s been lit for hours.”

“Oh, right.”

“So I don’t know what to tell you. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Well, unless you wanted to call in a complaint to the police. Those guys might pay a little more attention to the cops than to you or me.”

Just what he wanted. Officer, could you tell the Hell’s Angels upstairs to pipe down? I’ve got urgent business in your town and I need my rest. My name? Well, it’s different from the one I’m registered under. The nature of my business? Well, I’d rather not say. And the gun on the bedside table is unregistered, and that’s why I didn’t leave it in the car, and don’t ask me whose car it is, but the registration’s in the glove compartment.

“That’s a little abrupt,” he said. “Think how you’d feel if somebody called the cops on you without any warning.”

“Oh.”

“And if they figured out who called them-“

“I could call the Clarion,” the clerk offered. “At the next interchange? But my guess is they’re full up by now.”