50. 50-50

By the time we turned off the I-66 toll road we’d passed through Arkansas, Tennessee and most of Virginia. It was already my turn at the wheel again only 19 hours later. Sam Sara said she’d keep going all the same, thanks. I hadn’t slept. Apart from anything else, if you never slept with anyone, how did you know if you talked in your sleep? I had chased ideas around the inside of my own head for around twenty hours, but still hadn’t come up with anything to

a) get rid of my two playmates

or

b) explain why I was going to kidnap FLOTUS, if I couldn’t.

The best I could do was toss a mental coin. I figured the odds’d be 50-50. When b) came up. I told myself 'best of three'.

Ms Cansino stirred in the back. I hadn’t seen her get a compact out or her lipstick. I saw Sam Sara look in the rear view mirror and roll her eyes.

‘Well now, Sugar, what’s going down in Washing Town?’ the redhead purred.

Sam let out a hiss at that, and I felt like an outnumbered mouse. I half turned in the seat and asked Margarita to find out FLOTUS’s programme for the day. She pulled a cell-phone from her pocket, her fingers did the swipe, slide and shimmy on the screen for no more than a minute. Then she laughed.

‘She’s opening an orphanage in Georgetown at around ten tomorrow morning. She looks more the type to be closing them down and building apartment blocks.’

‘Got an address?’ Sam wanted to know.

‘St Margaret – hey! How about that? Of Cortona Home for Waifs and Strays. It’s on R Street near the Oak Hill Cemetery and the Rock Creek Park.’

We’d be close enough to DC in another hour.

‘Let’s spend the night in Falls Church, head over to the Best Western, Sam.’

Sam grunted, Margaret let out a long ‘Yessssssssssss’ in the back seat.

Sam parked the limo in the lot at the side of the Best Western. Inside the motel, the muzak was murdering Paul Simon. None of his fifty ways would have helped me out of my jam. Ms Peroxide 1999 was still behind the desk. I asked for a room. The woman looked me up and down and then from Sam to Margarita .

‘It’s always the ones you don’t expect. Funny business is extra.’

This time the dame behind the counter did smile, because the extra was 500 dollars. She handed over just one key, ‘That’s all you’ll need, right?’

Sam slammed the flat of her hand on the desk, ‘do we look like working girls?’ The reception clerk jumped near as high as the counter top.

Ms Cansino said, ‘we can, though. Here, Sugarpuss, take this. Be a good boy and fetch the bags from the trunk.’

She handed me a key fob. I wondered if she’d had it all the time.