He could hardly wait for the whore to come home.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Martin

  He’d known by the sixth overhead that it wasn’t going to work, and from that moment on it had been a hell of long, long silences, fumbling explanations, bored faces. Not only had he not convinced them, he’d unconvinced himself. Martin sat in the empty room with the lights blazing, picking up one over-head, dropping it, picking up another. They were spread out like playing cards. A losing hand.

  Nobody had even bothered to take his handouts. They littered the table like the sad aftermath of a parade. He scraped four or five together, but they slipped out of his hands and spilled over the edge to the floor.

  He put his head in his hands and rocked back and forth, back and forth. His chair squeaked in faint protest. Had he been right? Had he ever been right?

  Watch me, Daddy. Watch me.

  He sat straight up with a sharp gasp and saw Adrian Carling standing in the doorway. She walked in and picked up one of his handouts, flipped pages.

  “How did it go?”

  A laugh choked him.

  “What did you tell them?” he asked. His voice sounded ragged, like his fingernails. “About me?”

  She studied the handout as if she’d never seen it before. After a moment she looked up absently.

  “I told them about Suzanne. About Sally.” She raised a finger to her temple and made a small telling circle. “They drew their own conclusions about your competency.”

  The shocking thing was that he wasn’t even surprised, not really. He couldn’t remember what she’d felt like, last night; couldn’t remember anything about it except a haunting feeling of loss. She’d arranged that. Not even tornadoes happened by accident around her.

  “Aren’t you going to call me a bitch?” she asked. He shook his head. “Why not? I am, you know.”

  He bent and scooped up his overheads from the floor and began painstakingly ordering them. He was missing number six, the point at which everything had gone so fatally wrong. Maybe it had burned up in the heat of his disappointment.

  She handed it to him. He took it and ordered the corners of the stack, slipped the plastic pages into a white folder.

  “Martin,” she said. He was tempted to look up and conquered it by staring at a whorl of wood on the table. “I warned you.”

  He nodded. His reflection, faint as a ghost, nodded back.

  “I had to do it. You were too close to right, and just too far wrong. I have new information.” She shuffled papers and slid a photograph across the table to him. In it, a swarthy-looking man smiled genially. He was wearing a white sweater and white shorts, carrying a tennis racquet. “His name is Fathi el Haddiz. We think he’s here in the United States to make a deal for something involving your dichlorhyradine.”

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Martin asked quietly. Carling’s hand formed into a fist and slammed down on top of el Haddiz’s picture.

  “How stupid do you imagine I am? I’d love to, if we knew where the hell he was. We don’t have a lot of time, and we need to focus. I needed to derail your little train, because I’ve got an express coming down the tracks, and I need you on board.”

  “Why me?”

  She bent over. He sensed her warmth like a storm circling overhead. He met her teal green eyes, but couldn’t hold the stare. His gaze fell to the table.

  Watch me, Daddy! Watch me!

  “Because you were at least half-right, and you tried. Martin, I have reason to think you’re motivated to solve this problem. Am I wrong?”

  “Go to hell,” he mumbled. He opened his briefcase and stuffed in folders; one bent, pooched open, and spilled papers out in his lap. He gathered up crushed handfuls and threw them in. “You and your bugs and your damn politics, you go to hell. You go right to hell.”

  After a hesitation, her fingers picked up the photograph and he felt the weight of her shadow go away. He eased in a shaky breath.

  From the doorway, Carling said, “I need you, Marty. I need people I can trust, and right now those people are few and far between. You call my office and let me know when you’re ready.”

  She’d left a business card by his elbow. It had A. L. CARLING in raised black letters, and a phone number. Washington exchange.

  He crumpled it up and threw it on the floor.

  When he looked up, she was gone. He crossed his arms on the table and laid his head down, like a third-grader at quiet time.

  Now, when he didn’t want to remember, he felt her skin on the palms of his hands, tasted her lips.

  After a long time, he bent and picked up her business card, smoothed it out, and put it in his jacket pocket.

  As she’d known he would, of course.

  She picked up the phone herself. He plugged his left ear with a finger and pressed his right closer to the receiver.

  “Carling?” he shouted.

  “Marty.” He lost part of her reply in the blare of a loudspeaker. “—airport?”

  “I’m at the airport,” he agreed. “My flight’s in fifteen minutes.”

  The line fluttered like a sheet in the wind. Silence went on so long, he thought they’d been disconnected.

  “You’re going back to Dallas.”

  “I think I have to.” He twisted around to look at the flashing yellow message on the flight board.

  “Then why are you wasting my time?” Offended. It was an act, he was certain.

  “Because I wanted to tell you something,” he replied. “Are you listening?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a bitch. I’m going home to get the data, all my files, everything. I’ll be back tomorrow with it.”

  She said, “I’ll meet you at the airport. Marty?”

  “Yeah?”

  The loudspeaker blared again, calling him to board. He thought she said, “Be careful.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ming

  Ming closed her eyes and let the braided leather of the whip glide through her fingers; smooth, flexible, warm as human flesh. She’d known a man in Singapore who’d had a whip made out of his favorite women. She often wondered what had happened to him.

  “You want to know about Velvet,” she said aloud. Her fingers found the cutting tip of the lash. “Why?”

  When she opened her eyes, the client was staring at her with a strange expression. He had come to her door with no references, no history—but a convincing sum of money. Mundane tastes, so far. A little domination, mostly threat, but a little pain. He liked to keep his clothes on, a decision of which she approved. Naked men were so often disappointing.

  “I heard she was good,” he said hoarsely.

  “From whom?” Ming touched the whip to her lips. His smile looked forced.

  “A business friend. He said she sucked like a Hoover.”

  “How attractive.” When he opened his mouth to reply, she snapped the whip in the air in front of him with practiced exacting grace. “I didn’t ask you a question, little man.”

  “No ma’am,” he said. He was sweating freely now, though the room was actually quite cool. Ming crossed one black-booted leg over the other and shook her hair back from her face in a black wave. It whispered like ghosts near her ears.

  “Paolo,” she called. The door slid open, and Paolo’s large shadow loomed. “I can’t quite decide about our friend here. What do you think?”

  “Maybe you should whip him,” Paolo suggested. His voice reminded her of glass grinding underfoot. “I’ll chain him, if you want.”

  “No, not quite yet. Perhaps later.” She stared at the client’s eyes, watching the fear. She inclined her head to allow Paolo to leave. The door grated shut. “More than you expected, Ed? A little more … serious than you imagined?”

  “I like it,” he said raggedly. She shrugged.

  “I don’t care, as you know, whether you like it or not, as long as you pay.” She snaked the whip out over the wood floor, watching it writhe like a live thing. “Would you like to fuck me, Ed?”

  “I thought maybe you’d bring me the other one.”

  “Velvet?” Ming’s smile felt tight on her lips. “Some other time, perhaps. Once I’ve broken you in properly.”

  He doesn’t want to be here. The thought came to her suddenly, like a whisper, and she stiffened. Something’s wrong.

  But Paolo was in the next room; surely this little rabbit-chinned businessman couldn’t be a danger, not to her. No strength in those eyes, only a blind panic.

  Panic can hill.

  To still the doubts, Ming quick-snapped the whip, three, four times, each snap closer to the client’s chest. He pressed back into his wooden chair, actually balancing it on two legs in his haste to get away.

  When she stopped, the chair thumped back down and he gulped in a deep breath.

  “I think I’ve made a mistake,” he said, and stood up. Ming flicked her wrist, and the whip made a lazy sinuous circle on the floor at his feet.

  “Do you want to fuck me, Ed?”

  His Adam’s apple disappeared beneath the pressed white collar, bobbed up again convulsively like a drowning victim clawing for the surface. His face was white, flushed with red around the ears.

  “Yes,” he said.

  He was lying. Ming stood up and carefully coiled the whip. She left it in the seat of her chair and walked over to where he stood.

  He didn’t move as she unzipped the crisply pressed trousers, teased his cock out, and persuaded it to stiffen in her hand.

  “You know,” she said, as she brushed her thumb over the velvety head, “I taught Velvet everything she knows. Is this what you want? My lips around you?”

  She watched him nod convulsively and smiled.

  “Ah, Ed, Ed.” Her fingernails dug in just slightly, enough to make him flinch and wither. “We don’t always get what we want, do we?”

  She stood up and walked away, seated herself in her chair with the whip on her lap like a favored pet. Ed Julian stood miserably where she’d left him, cock shrunken back into his underpants like a frightened animal.

  “See me next week,” she told him.

  When she heard the elevator rumble its way down, she walked to the doorway and looked at Paolo, who was reading a magazine by the light of a single small lamp. She’d long ago instructed him that the magazines had to be pornographic, at least on the outside. He put this one aside and revealed that Leather Love covered the latest copy of Entertainment Weekly.

  “They’re going to make a ‘Gilligan’s Island’ reunion movie,” he reported. She stared at him.

  “He’s asking about Velvet,” she said. “I want to know why. Find out.”

  Paolo licked his lips. She read the hesitation,

  “Don’t make me ask you again,” she said. He nodded and looked dejected. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “I like her,” he said. His dark eyes glittered from under thick eyebrows. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

  It was as if he’d spoken to her in a Cantonese, the sounds familiar, but the meaning lost. She blinked.

  “What does that matter?” she asked, honestly puzzled.

  Chapter Twenty

  Robby

  As always, she’d slipped out of Jim’s bed before the sun rose, like a vampire returning to her coffin. There was something about waking up with a man that seemed so final. The one time she’d violated that rule he’d woken surly and they’d fought over something stupid; now it was agreed that she went quietly, no goodbyes.

  He mumbled in his sleep and turned over to put his hand in the hollow where she’d lain. He hadn’t said anything about the fiasco at the mall except, bad luck, kid— but she was still smarting from it, angry at herself and the world, aware that luck had run out. The security guards would be looking for her. The police would have her description. Avenues of escape were narrowing.

  Jim didn’t seem worried, but he had lived on the edge for so long that he’d gotten addicted to the view. She was still a tourist, and liked it that way.

  As she rode the deserted bus to her building, she thought about alternatives. Leaving town seemed logical—after all, any good-sized city could support a decent pickpocket—but she’d built up so much here. A change in hairstyle? Clothing? Jim was the chameleon, changing to meet the world; she had a set unchanging camouflage, and that was the way she preferred it.

  The bus driver, in no particular hurry at this hour, idled at the curb until she opened the building’s front door, a bit of kindness that made her wave thanks. He didn’t seem to see it as he rumbled away, an island of yellow glow in the thick night.

  No lurkers in the dim foyer tonight—no muggers, rapists, serial killers. Television to the contrary, she had never seen one except for the kid who’d bowled her over in the mall. She watched the elevator panel over her head count down floors and thought longingly of a hot shower, a cool bed that she could stretch out in, covers she could wrap tight in.

  Something moved in the shadows. Robby flinched and backed away as feet scraped, and a body lurched upright.

  Velvet, puffy with sleep, technicolor with bruises. She held a thick lumpy suitcase that spilled balloons of garish cloth out of the broken zipper.

  “They were in my house,” she said, and burst into weary tears.

  “Who was it?” Robby asked, and held out a plate of cookies—store-bought again, to her regret. Velvet ate three in quick succession.

  “Paolo, maybe—he’s Ming’s bodyguard. Maybe she’s pissed at me, Jesus, I don’t know.”

  “Maybe it was a robbery.”

  “No,” Velvet said, and picked up another cookie. She nervously nibbled bits from the edge. “Okay, maybe, they took some stuff, but it was, like, personal, you know? They tore my pictures off the wall, piled all my clothes in the floor, pissed all over the bathroom. Kicked in the TV set. They didn’t have to do that, they could have pawned it.”

  Robby nodded slowly and settled back in the cool embrace of her mint green chair. She’d loaded a CD into the stereo, and the cool soothing music of Enya—as Irish as she could stand, lately—floated like mist around the room. Behind Velvet’s bowed head, the Ringling Brothers clown laughed.

  “What did they take?”

  “Huh?”

  “Velvet, what did they take? Drugs?”

  Velvet straightened indignantly and brushed her hair back from her face.

  “I’m not a junkie,” she snapped.

  Robby tipped her head back and sighed toward the ceiling. “Did they take any drugs?”

  A pause, and Velvet said resentfully, “No. I don’t use.”

  “Then what did they take?”

  Velvet stood up and walked nervously around the room, clicking her ragged fingernails on the back of a chair, the wall, a small black table. At the window, she stared out at the sullen orange of sunrise.

  “Money,” she said. “There. Happy?”

  “How much?”

  “Couple thousand. Enough to get me out of town, keep me alive until things settled down.” She blinked back tears again and wiped at her swollen face. “Bastards. I worked for that money.”

  Robby reached for the cookies. Oatmeal, sugar, vanilla; she inhaled the warm perfume and crunched a bite to ease the cramp in her stomach.

  “We all work for our money,” she said. Velvet snuffled wetly.

  “Yeah, well, some of us work a little harder, if you know what I mean. Hell, all you do is steal.”

  “Stealing is worse than prostitution?” Robby asked. She reached for a half-full glass of milk on the table and took a thick cold mouthful. Velvet covered her face with her hands and leaned her forehead against the window. “You really know how to make friends, Velvet.”

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “You gonna throw me out?”

  Robby stood up and carried the cookies and empty milk glass back into the kitchen. From there, with warm water running soothingly over her hands, she said, “You know where the guest bedroom is. Sheets are in the closet. If you want anything else, look for it.”

  She felt rather than heard Velvet behind her. She looked over her shoulder and saw her slumped against the wall, tears glittering in her tired wounded eyes.

  Velvet reached out and touched Robby’s shoulder, a quick brush of fingertips. The tears spilled over.

  Robby turned back to the dishes, scrubbing furiously. When she looked again, the room was empty except for the morning light.

  “Two fingers,” she instructed, and moved Velvet’s hand slightly. “Relax. Relax. There.”

  Velvet jerked the wallet triumphantly out of her pocket, whooped, and tossed it in the air. Robby caught it deftly and slipped it back in her jacket.

  “That was terrible. Remember what I told you. Two fingers, move with your mark, let his momentum take the wallet. If you jerk it like that, he’ll know the second you have it. Try again.”

  Velvet, face tight with concentration, slipped two fingers into the pocket and snagged the wallet. When she had it halfway out, Robby took a step forward, and Velvet lost her grip. The wallet flopped on the carpet, spilling credit cards.

  “Shit!” Velvet kicked the wallet into a skid across the hardwood floor, sent credit cards skittering. “You moved! No fair!”

  “That should make an impressive defense in court.” Robby bent and scooped up a Gold American Express, a Visa, a Discover. None of them had her names. She retrieved the wallet and slotted them back in place. “Do you want to stop now?”

  “No. I just want to do it right, just once.”

  “In a day?” Robby shrugged and handed her the wallet. “Here. Put it somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  Velvet grinned and stuffed it in the inside pocket of the blazer she wore—Robby’s, of course, a muted green that was the brightest of her wardrobe. Robby considered for a second, examining the fit of the coat, and reached out to straighten the lapels. She pursed her lips, cocked her head, smiled, and walked away.

  “Hey! Aren’t you even gonna try?”