Then I sat on the pot for five minutes so nobody who’d been in the bathroom still lingered, stepped out of the stall, through the diner, and back onto Washington. The SoBe party crowd milled about, just starting to cook. Teenagers wanting to be older, boomers wanting to be younger, loads of twenty-somethings wanting to be seen. Glitz, glamour, and grunge, hip-hoppers in baggy shorts with legacy hoops jerseys and hooded sweatshirts, supermodel-wannabes in short, slinky dresses, random retros in Goth, buffed-up boys in muscle shirts, bikers and beachboys and babes. I blended right in.
Rap, industrial, and hip-hop boomed from a parade of tricked-out cars circling through the Deco District, bass throbbing from over-powered woofers. Lines formed outside the most popular clubs. I ambled amid the throng up and across to Collins Avenue, the platforms making me a six-foot-one guy, not five-nine, with a marked limp from the pebble in my shoe. Poker players not only observe body language as part of the art of reading tells, but notice what their opponents observe, and then try to use that knowledge to deceive them. Real winners make this observation a habit of their lives. I’d discovered over years of watching what people see that you always notice, at least subconsciously, how people walk. The limp disguised me as much as the shades and the platform shoes.
Two blocks up Collins stood the former Hotel Roosevelt, a streamlined, thirty-five-story Art Deco masterpiece, restored beyond its former glory, renamed the Delano and now owned by an over-the-hill rock diva struggling to stay cool. Right that moment I found myself in my own struggle to stay cool. My palms were sweating in the latex gloves, a sharp ache throbbed in my shoulders. I took a deep breath. Focus, I told myself. Think, don’t react. Adjust as each card comes off the deck. I breathed deeply, put myself in game mode, all focus, focus, focus. Just keep on reading the situation and make the right play. One card after another, one hand then the next, one step after another, then the next, until I found myself walking past the valets and doormen into the Delano’s ornate lobby. I checked the Casio — still running good.
Bodies ebbed and flowed through the lobby from the adjoining coffee shop and nightclub. Dmitri stood at the concierge’s desk. As I made my way through the bustle to the elevators at the back, the concierge handed him a slip of paper and made some motions with his hands as if giving directions. Dmitri tipped the concierge and headed out the grand entrance I had just come through.
I rode the elevator alone to the fourth floor. Dmitri had scouted two cameras on every floor, each pointing toward the center, showing half the hallway to the elevator. If he’d done his job, the camera at the east end would be tilted upward, leaving a blind spot so that the doors to the last four rooms or so were out of view.
I turned west and stopped at the end of the hall, in clear camera view, and tried a random door with the Holiday Inn key card Dmitri had given me at the Road. It wouldn’t open the door, of course, but I wanted the cameras to see. Then I tried another door. I slapped my forehead as if I’d screwed up and walked to the east end, and now out of camera view went through the fire-escape door and took the stairs down to the third floor.
The camera here should be tilted too, but ever so slightly, so just the last room was unwatched. I opened the fire-escape door a crack and peeked down the hall. A lone couple entangled in an embrace stood waiting for the elevator. I checked the room numbers on both sides of the fire escape door. On my left, 327, just as Dmitri had said. I pushed on the door and it gave way. The small piece of matchbook that Dmitri had stuck in the latch so it wouldn’t catch fell to the floor. I shut the door quietly behind me, picked up the bit of matchbook, put it in my pocket, and slipped into the room.
Rebel didn’t look up as the door latch clicked. She sat on the edge of the canopied, king-size bed wearing only her panties — pink bikini bottoms — sucking on a cigarette, clinking ice cubes in a cocktail glass. A half-empty bottle of Jack stood on the nightstand. The bedcovers had been tossed on the floor. She caressed the bed. “Never in my life have I slept on sheets this soft, Two-ways,” she said. “But at five hundred a night, you should get nice sheets.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just nodded.
She stood and faced me. Near-naked she was as perfect as I’d imagined.
Rebel handed me a buck knife. “Dima said you should cut the panties off with this, then before you go, hold it against my throat hard enough to make a mark. And leave the knife when you’re done. It leads someplace a million miles from any of us.”
I took the knife from her, opened it, slipped the blade between the skin of her hip and the panties, and cut. They fell to the floor. Her pubes were shaved. Above her pussy, DIMA was tattooed in script, inside a heart. “You look nice.”
“I don’t look ‘nice.’ I’m fucking hot. So fucking hot that you lose all control and just fucking take me. So hot you can’t think straight.” She grabbed my crotch. “Jesus Christ. Here I am, the hottest woman you’ll ever fuck as long as you live, standing buck-naked for you to take, and you don’t even have a hard-on.”
I’d wanted to bed Rebel since the first time I saw her. Here she stood naked in all her glory for me to have. I couldn’t remember a less erotic moment with a beautiful girl in my life.
“Two-ways, let’s do this. We’re on a schedule.”
I took the leashes, Astroglide, duct tape, and condoms from the backpack and set them on the bed.
“You’re going to wear a condom? Rapists don’t wear fucking condoms.”
“It’s the twenty-first century, Reb. Rapists worry about STDs as much as the next guy. And smart rapists don’t leave a load of DNA inside you for some crime-lab geek to analyze. If I’m going to be a rapist, I’m going to be as smart a rapist as I can be.”
“Dima won’t like it.”
“Screw Dima.”
“No — screw me. Right fucking now! Get naked already.”
I stripped clumsily, sure I looked foolish in the bandanna, platforms, and latex gloves.
“Jesus Christ, Bobby, you’re still not hard.” She grabbed my dick and squeezed. “Doesn’t this thing work?” She pushed me onto the bed, deftly manipulated my dick until it finally stood at attention, then tore open a condom and slipped it on. She crawled on the bed and threw her arms and legs wide, spread-eagled.
I looped a dog leash around each of her wrists and ankles, then tied them to the feet of the bed, snapped the d-ring at the end of each into place.
She strained at the leashes. “Left arm’s not tight enough,” she said.
I adjusted the leash securing her left arm, then crawled atop her — and realized I had gone soft.
She laughed. “Do you have this problem often?”
“N-n-never.”
“Jesus Christ, untie me.” I did as she said.
“You should have taken some Vitamin V.” She pressed against me, kissed my neck while holding my dick, wrapped her legs around me, massaged my thigh with her pussy. My dick grew, this time with conviction. She went down on me, playing with my balls while she moved her mouth up and down my shaft, until I was about to come. She climbed up my body, whispered in my ear, “Hold that thought for five minutes.”
I tied her again to the bed, opened another condom, pulled it on, climbed back atop her, and tried to slip myself into her. She was completely dry. I rolled off her and, rubbing my dick against her leg to keep my hard-on, began to massage her clit.
“That won’t work,” she said. “Use the Astroglide.”
I squirted the lube on her pussy, massaged her insides with my fingers, filling her with wetness. I climbed on top again — but again I had gone soft.
“Listen, Two-ways, you don’t have to come, but you do have to get it inside me. I know from experience the police rape kit will show whether or not you penetrated.”
I untied her and she repeated her oral magic, bringing me once more to the edge of orgasm. This time I didn’t tie her but let the animal in me take over — I threw her back on the bed and mounted her quickly, shoving and humping and grunting until I exploded. I rolled off her onto the bed and began to laugh, a little nervously — at myself.
“We’re behind schedule,” she said matter-of-factly. “Get me tied down.”
I tied her to the bed for the third time, pulled the leashes tight as I could.
“Now hit me in the face. Hard.”
I hesitated. “I’ve never hit a girl and I’m not going to start now.”
“Goddamnit, Two-ways. The more I’m hurt, the more we can win. Hit me.”
I shook my head no. “Sorry, Reb. I won’t. Can’t.”
“Dima’s going to be pissed.”
“Screw Dima.”
“You said that already. Don’t ever say it to him. He’s not one to be fucked with.”
I dressed in my Wal-Mart outfit, shoved the used condoms and wrappers into the pockets of the jeans, and put the Astroglide in the backpack. I picked up the knife.
“At least hold the knife against my throat,” Rebel said. “Cut me some.”
I did as she said, leaning over her with the blade held tight against her throat, but away from her jugular.
“Harder,” she said.
“Shit, Rebel, how the hell do I know how much is hard enough?”
“Just do it, Bobby. Harder!”
I pressed down harder, afraid that I might hurt her. I managed to break the skin without doing any more damage. A rivulet of blood trickled down her neck.
“Good,” she said. “Now hit me, goddamnit, Bobby. Leave bruises.”
“No, Reb.”
“Don’t be such a fucking wimp. There’s big fucking money at stake here.”
I cut a length of duct tape off the roll with the knife and slapped it across her mouth, perhaps the most satisfactory moment of the night so far. I stepped back and looked at her spread wide on the bed, helpless, her beauty almost perfect, her pussy glistening with the Astroglide. To see her was to want her.
Wanting is good. Even better than having.
I looked at the Casio. My bout of erectile dysfunction had put us behind schedule, even with the extra time Dmitri had built in for margin of error. He’d be coming up the elevator to discover his raped girlfriend any minute. I shoved the duct tape in the backpack, threw the knife on the bed. Fibers from generic Wal-Mart clothes, no prints or hairs, size-eleven footprints impressed on the lush carpet. I looked around the room to make sure I hadn’t left anything incriminating behind. I’d done what I could to minimize risk.
I slipped into the hall and ran down the stairwell to the first floor, moseyed out into the lobby. The Delano’s nightclub in full swing, even more people milled about the lobby than earlier. I saw Dmitri at the elevator. Then he saw me. He checked his watch, scowled. If looks could kill, I’d have been dead on the floor. The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and he stepped on. We’d cut it mighty close.
I walked briskly back to the 11th, changed back into my own clothes and sneaks, shoved the platforms and Wal-Mart clothes into the backpack, then again waited a few minutes before stepping out of the stall, through the diner, and onto the street. Less than ten minutes after leaving Rebel, I was driving west on 17th Street, feeling empty but relieved, glad that it was over. I drove across the MacArthur past the parade of cruise ships waiting at dock to sail off for temporary island fantasies, and got on I-95 north. I exited at State Road 84 twenty minutes later, turned down a small street, then into an alley between two warehouses.
I poured some gas into the Wal-Mart wastebin and dumped in everything I’d used and worn — only the knife, a piece of duct tape across Rebel’s mouth, and the four leashes that tied her to the bed remained. In life, as in poker, you can’t control all the variables, but you do what you can. I poured in some more gas, struck a safety match against the box, and flicked it in, then dropped in the rest of the box. Flame wooshed upward. I watched it burn and visualized Rebel spread-eagle on the canopied bed. My dick hardened at the vision. I had to laugh at myself; oh well, what can you do?
The blaze left a goo of plastic slag. After the fire died, I shoved the mess into the green garbage bag, tied it off tight, and drove to a complex I’d once lived in on Marina Mile, where they had Saturday-morning trash pickup. I threw the bag into a dumpster; in a few hours it would be lost in the daily refuse of a million people, with only the vultures circling overhead and the never-ending parade of garbage trucks for company. I set the cones and barricade at a construction site, then took I-95 to the Kennedy Causeway, home across the bay into the pink dawn.