But this time I got lucky. I only did Suburban Male duty for a little over two weeks before I was on the road, following Monahan to Fuck Knew Where.

Not that this wasn’t also tricky-a lot of the driving was on godforsaken flat heartland interstate that made tailing a guy no more obvious than walking into a restaurant with no shoes and no shirt and no pants, either. Luckily turn-offs and rest stops were rare, and I could lay back ten or even twenty miles, and still stay with him.

So this afternoon, Monahan had led me to Haydee’s Port, and I had trailed him to the Wheelhouse Motel, which was just outside the cruddy little town, on a curve before you got to the Paddlewheel.

There was nothing cruddy about the Wheelhouse Motel, though, which boasted outdoor pool and satellite TV and a 24-hour truck-stop type restaurant, although there were no gas pumps. I didn’t know it yet, but this was the Paddlewheel’s official lodgings. The only other motel in town was the Eezer Inn, a dump used for sleeping it off or getting it on, or combinations thereof.

The motel office and the attached restaurant faced the highway and the rooms were along either side of the long, wide structure, with an additional wing down at the end making a right angle beyond the pool. Monahan pulled in on the right and drove down to the last unit of the wing.

I pulled the Sunbird into a spot for restaurant patrons and went in. The place had a three-sided counter and booths along the windows; riverboat prints rode the rough-wood walls, and a big brown metal jukebox squatted near the entryway, with “Proud Mary” playing (the Creedence version).

A booth was waiting from which I could see the unit (Number 36) where Monahan’s green Buick Regal was pulled into the adjacent space. The Buick was a car he’d bought in Des Moines, by the way, leaving his own Oldsmobile Cutlass in long-term parking at the airport, though he hadn’t been flying anywhere.