“What?”
“You’re so tense. I guess I kept you in the chair too long. We’d better take a break before we go on with this.”
“I’m okay,” he said.
She began to knead his shoulders and the cord of muscle on each side of his neck. “You just sit back and relax for a minute, and let me take care of you. Close your eyes.” She worked on his shoulders and upper back. It felt soothing, the small hands moving tirelessly on him.
He felt awkward. After a short time, he said, “Thanks,” to end it. “That’s fine.”
She said, “We have to wait for an hour or so while your color sets.” She pointed to a high, narrow table across the room that he had not noticed. It had a thick mat on it. “Why don’t you get up on the massage table? I’ll give you the full treatment. Take off your shirt.”
He went to the table, took off his shirt, and sat on the edge. She removed her lab coat and laid it across a desk. She was wearing a halter top and a pair of blue jeans. He began to wish . . . he didn’t allow himself to form a specific image. She walked to the table and immediately began to unbuckle his belt, her eyes on his to gauge his reaction. “I said I’d give you the full treatment.”
Two hours later, when Tracy returned, she knocked on the door to the outer office. Mae went and turned the knob to unlock it, then went back to the sink. Tracy stepped inside and said to Mae, “Did you two make good use of your time?” Mae stopped putting away bottles and cleaning the sink long enough to nod slightly. She began putting things back into her traveling bag.
Tracy looked at Varney. “Why, sugar! Look at you! I thought it was my boy Nicky for a minute. Come out here with me!” She had her arm around his shoulder, and she pulled him quickly through the doorway to her office. Varney had only a second to look back at Mae and try to smile, but she was looking in the other direction, as though he had already gone.
Tracy closed the door on her and kept him moving toward her desk. “You look great, like a different man, and a good-looking man, too. That’s the tricky part. Most disguises make you look uglier, not better. That Mae really is an artist, isn’t she?”
He nodded. It seemed that she had said everything that was necessary.
“Did you like her?”
He supposed that he had to say it. “Yes. Like you said, she’s really good at hairstyling.”
“No,” she said, and pinched the back of his arm. “Did you like her?”
Varney hesitated, but the look on Tracy’s face was almost a leer, the half-averted eyes bright and knowing, the coy smile making the cheeks wrinkle like the skins of overripe tomatoes.
“Yes,” he said. “I liked her a lot.”
“Good,” said Tracy. “Good. Then you can keep her for a while. It’ll make it easier for her to get the rest of your changes done—take you shopping and so on. Whoever this person is that’s after you, he isn’t looking for a couple.”
“You mean, she’ll stay with me?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“Is she a hooker?”
Tracy stopped and put her hands on her hips, her head tilted. “How could you say such a thing? Of course not!” She pulled him, leaning close to him. “Don’t think that way. It would hurt her feelings. A girl can’t get by on cutting a little hair and doing makeup consultations. Once in a while she does little favors for close friends, and maybe they’ll give her a few extra dollars, that’s all. Nothing that’s not perfectly tasteful and refined. I could tell she liked you and would be willing to make you one of those close friends.”
“How could you tell that?”
“Women have ways of communicating without cupping our hands around our mouths and shouting like hog callers, you know. You don’t have to engage in any embarrassing discussion about this. If you’d like, she’ll just go home with you now. You’ll pay me, not her.”
His curiosity easily overwhelmed his revulsion at Tracy.
“What’s her fee?”
“Give me five hundred for each day that you keep her, and I pass it on. And don’t worry about extras. No big tip or something later. I have to be careful with Mae. If she had that much all at once, she’d go right out and buy enough cocaine to kill herself. You’d be trying to do her a favor, and in about three days, they’d be pulling a sheet over her head in the emergency room. So as a favor and a mercy, I just dole money out to her. It stretches the money for her, so she always has plenty to get by, even when she’s not working at all. And she never has enough to hurt herself.”
Varney thought for a moment. “All right.”
“Good,” said Tracy. She hesitated, to show there was something else on her mind.
“Something else?”
She looked at the closed door across the room in mock concern, then leaned closer to him. He could feel her breath on his cheek. “She’s . . . a little short right now. She didn’t say it, but I called her only about an hour before you were supposed to be here, and she wasn’t doing anything. Rushed right over, just to get some hairstyling work. And the . . . extras, they weren’t my idea, I can assure you. She saw you and asked me if it was okay if she went a little further in being nice to you. So I think we should try to give her a little advance, don’t you?” When Varney stared at her without answering, she prompted, “It’ll put her in a much better mood, I promise.”
Varney was aware that he was being fleeced, but he remembered the sight of Mae after the clothes were gone. In spite of himself, he wondered what a better mood would be like.
“How much?”
Tracy shrugged apologetically. “Let’s see. I already paid for the makeover she just did. That was eight hundred, but I’ll just make that my present to you. Let’s give her a week’s worth on account. Thirty-five hundred. I’ll give her some in advance, and show her I’ve got the rest in hand for her.”
Varney took the roll of bills he had brought out of his pocket and counted thirty-five of them. He was being robbed, but he decided for the moment not to care. Tracy took the money, disappeared into the other room for a couple of minutes, then came back in and shut the door, and waved good-bye to him.
When Varney stepped out into the hallway, he found Mae standing near the other door, leaning against the wall with the strap of her travel bag over her shoulder. When he came to within a few feet of her, she wordlessly pushed off, turned, and began to walk with him. When they were out of sight in the stairwell, she put her hand lightly on his arm. It was a comfortable gesture, just as though she were his girlfriend, and they were walking home together from a day at the office.
23
Prescott had stayed in Louisville watching Rowland’s Fine Jewelry for another week before he saw the delivery. Two couriers drove up to the rear of the store in a rented car and parked. The younger one then pressed a bell to let someone inside know they were there. A tall, thin man in a tailored suit and starched white shirt with French cuffs opened the door. He looked up and down the alley, then at all the roofs and windows of buildings he could see, then looked in each direction again while the two men went to the trunk of their car.
Prescott was in the window of his hotel three blocks away, watching through a spotting scope that he had mounted above the curtains. He did not consider himself an expert in the jewelry business, but he was confident that few customers entered a store through a fire exit, and even fewer needed to open their trunks. This was some kind of delivery. He was not sure whether it was legitimate or not, but he watched for signs. The younger man stopped, looked around, then stood still and erect while the older man leaned into the trunk, reaching for a briefcase. The younger man’s left hand hung at his side in a position that had to be practiced. When he turned the other way, his right arm hung straight and his left bent. He was keeping a hand close to the floor of the trunk. Prescott switched to sixty power and focused on the open trunk. There were two identical silvery titanium cases about the size of a suitcase, but below them, just under the rim of the trunk, was a towel laid over something. Prescott refocused. A hand came into his field of vision and adjusted the towel. Prescott caught a dull gleam of Parkerized steel. There was a momentary glimpse of a muzzle with a flash suppressor, and the distinctive high front sight. He thought he saw the end of a rounded triangle over-and-under foregrip, but his mind might have added what it knew was there. The two men had an M-16 in the trunk, set where the second man could pluck it out and start firing: if something ugly happened, they could make it much uglier.