“It’s nothing to write home about,” she admitted, tossing her little clutch purse on a chair. “But it’s better digs than most clubs provide the visiting talent. You want anything?”
When I didn’t answer immediately, she said, “There’s weed and we could do a few lines. Bourbon in my suitcase — Coke machine downstairs.”
“No, I’m fine.”
She came over and had me unzip her mini-dress in back. “I have to shower, honey. You’ll thank me later. Long night!”
“Sure.”
She took her blonde hair off — I hadn’t spotted it as a wig, an expensive job apparently — and exposed a much shorter blonde cut. The fake hair she tossed on a dresser. Then she shut herself in the bathroom and soon the shower was going.
I took the opportunity to go through her things. No gun in her purse. Nothing in the suitcase indicated she was in my field of endeavor, either — no weapons, no binoculars, no electronic bugs. Some 8x10’s of her in a glittery two-piece stripper outfit, for her to sign, I supposed. Some letters from a sister. A little datebook showing her schedule for the next six months. Bookings of a week, two weeks, a few for a month.
Nothing suspicious.
She emerged naked, toweling off her hair. Somehow it was more erotic than when she’d danced on stage that way. I knew this girl, this young woman, was tasked with keeping me busy so that something bad could happen to a man I was hired to protect. That did not stop me from getting diamond hard in about ten seconds.
Her blonde pubic patch, trimmed back some, was natural, something you don’t see every day, with or without a coal miner’s helmet. Her high handfuls were perfect, tips hard. Waist, something you could put two hands around. She was toweling off her short blonde hair, and she wore no make-up at all now.
She smiled at me. “What’s your pleasure, honey?”
My tongue was as thick as my dick. I said, “I, uh...”
“You want me to put some make-up on? Red lipstick, maybe, like in the old movies? But with the kind of action you won’t see on The Late Show? No?”
She bent over the foot of the bed, resting herself on a green nubby spread, and offered her backside up for whatever I might have in mind.
“Anywhere you wanna put it’s fine, baby. I don’t mind. And I’m all clean for you.”
“No,” I said. “Thanks, but...”
She flipped around and sat on the edge of the bed with her legs spread and her tuft glistening. “Then what is your pleasure?”
I was still fully clothed, including my black windbreaker. I slipped a hand in my pocket and brought out the pair of handcuffs. They glistened, too.
Her eyes got so big, the pupils seemed small. Her smile was a devilish thing, even without red movie-star lipstick.
“Kinky,” she said. “I wouldn’t have taken you for the bondage type.”
“I won’t hurt you,” I promised.
She shook her head; droplets flew off the short hair. “Don’t spoil it. Play the game. Keep it real. Punish me. Spank me first, if you want.”
“No,” I said. “I just want you helpless.”
She was into it, her anticipation genuine. This was not perfunctory sex for a john or an employer or even a boyfriend whose needs needed tending before she could get a decent night’s sleep. No, I had blundered into one of her favorite bedroom pastimes.
I handcuffed her right hand to a headboard post. Then I revealed the second pair of cuffs and she grinned at me with feral delight. I cuffed her left ankle to the metal frame of the bed.
“Find something else to tie me up the rest of the way,” she said, breathing hard.
“Okay,” I said.
I took one of pillowcases off and tore it into strips, and tied her other hand to a headboard bedpost and her other ankle to the frame. Her legs were spread very wide indeed.
“Let me see that thing,” she said, eyeing the bulge near my zipper.
“Okay,” I said, and got the nine millimeter out of my back waistband.
Her lewd smile dissolved into something unsure of itself, and then was gone entirely.
“You aren’t going to...” she started. “Don’t you put that in me!”
“Please,” I said, offended, as I sat on the edge at the bottom of the bed, between her wide-spread legs. “What kind of creep do you take me for?”
She was thinking about that when I started asking her questions.
Ten
The rain came as a surprise, hard and intense. The convertible’s cloth top took it well, maybe better than a hardtop’s metal roof, the sound not unlike being under an umbrella or in a tent.
But the downpour slowed us down, neither of us familiar with Memphis nor its surrounding environs. I was driving and Boyd navigating, a small flashlight letting him refer both to Vernon Climer’s typewritten instructions and a Memphis area map (“Turn right on Lamar Avenue!”). Traffic, at least, was light in the early A.M. hours, but visibility was shit (“Take a right onto the ramp — 240!”).
What should have taken half an hour or so grew to more than forty-five minutes, as we went from I-40 to US-51, and then to county roads with names like Fite, Island and Ramsey. We were bordering Meeman-Shelby Forest Park, its swampy bottomland edging the Mississippi River, its bluffs thick with oak, ash and beech. By sunlit day, those trees would be blazing with color, like the ones on my lake back home. But right now they were just dark shapes in the wet night.
I had, of course, filled Boyd in on what I’d learned from Brandi.
I’d barely started my paraphrase of my conversation with the stripper when Boyd frowned and said, “What makes you believe that treacherous little bitch?”
“She was too scared to lie.”
“Oh, please.”
“No, really. She thought I was going to stick my nine millimeter up her twat and light up her insides.”
After that, Boyd made no further comment on the subject, just taking in what I had to say. And I did believe her.
Are you and Bruno here to kill Max Climer?
What? Are you crazy?
That’s beside the point. Tell me the truth and I’ll give you a pass.
Do I look like a killer?
You look like somebody the Indians staked out for the killer ants to get.
You’re a terrible, awful, fucking fucker!
Again, not an issue. If it’s not to kill the man, what then?
What is supposed to happen tonight?
Well, it’s not killing somebody!
What then?
Bruno and his friend Eddie, you know, that bartender?
Go on.
They’re just going to, you know, take him.
Take him.
Grab him. Take him off somewhere.
Kidnap him, you mean.
If you wanna put it that way.
For ransom?
Well, for money.
How much?
Five-hundred thou. I mean, we work downstairs for peanuts and Max is just upstairs one fuckin’ floor making millions off of pussy photos! Is that fair? Why shouldn’t people like us get a little taste?
Five hundred grand is a gulp, not a taste. What exactly is the plan, Brandi?
“They have somebody on the inside,” I told Boyd. “One of the new guys, the biker-crowd bodyguards. His name is Larry.”
“Are the others Moe and Curly?”
The windshield wipers were working hard. “She didn’t know the details, but somehow Larry is supposed to have things ready for Bruno and Eddie. Ready so they can grab Max and go, nice and quick.”