“I’m only inviting you in,” I said, opening the door wider, “because you’ll go nicely with the room.”
She brushed by, noting the nine millimeter in my right hand and said, “Is that any way to welcome an old friend? Maybe I should’ve worn the Marilyn wig.”
“I’m going to take a wild stab and say Carr sent you.”
She shook her head, pixie strands bouncing. “No. Jack called and said you were here. Sort of warned me. I took it upon myself to play Miss Welcome Wagon. So... welcome.”
She went over and set the ice bucket and two bottles on the low-slung modern coffee table in front of the red vinyl couch. She went into the bathroom and fetched two water glasses. Then she sat, curling her legs up under her, running an arm along the couch’s upper cushion; her red lacquered nails went well with the room, too.
“You pour,” she instructed me.
I sat next to her and set the nine mil on the coffee table beside the ice bucket and built us a couple of drinks. She was wearing Arpège by Lanvin again. I was surprised that she looked so good, and maybe it showed.
“I don’t turn tricks anymore,” she said defensively. “I’m not in that business these days.”
“Sure you are, Sandy. You’re a madam.”
She sipped her drink, shivered. “Isn’t that an awful word? Makes me sound old and fat. Do I look old and fat?”
“No, but you are a madam, aren’t you? Working out of the Coral Court?”
“I work out of a little house of Jack’s across Watson Road. Three girls live with me over there, and the rest are in town for me to simply phone. I’m not a madam, goddamnit. I make... referrals. Arrangements. Appointments. It’s an escort service.”
I swallowed Seagram’s and Seven-up. “I don’t care either way.”
She set her glass down, harder than necessary. “Well, I do. And anyway, this madam shit is only for the time being. I have plans.”
“You always were an ambitious girl.”
“‘Always’! We knew each other one night, Heller!”
“But it was memorable.”
She sighed and put her hand on my leg. “Not as memorable as it could have been...”
I stiffened and not the way she hoped for. “What do you want from me, Sandy?”
She reared back. “What do I want from you? You’re the one who wants to talk to me.”
“I do?”
She moved closer. Very close. Her arm came down around my shoulder and the red-lipsticked mouth drew close to my right ear. She seemed to be putting the make on, but I was wrong: she whispered, “Not safe to talk.”
Then she moved back. “Let’s not bicker. Hey, Heller, what would you say to a moonlight stroll, for old time’s sake?”
I took a swig of my drink. Said, “Why not?”
I slipped my gun in my waistband. We went out the front and she hooked her arm in mine. The humidity wasn’t bad for the Midwest and the warm night was mixing with the breeze like the ginger ale and whiskey in my belly. The three-quarter moon was filtering down through the many pin pines. Sap was in the air. And maybe his name was Heller.
“Listen,” she said, and her voice had a different timbre, “of course Carr sent me. That room is wired for sound recording.”
“I’m shocked.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. He might be watching — right now.”
“Oh?”
“Would kissing me make you sick?”
“Let’s try it and see.”
We stood there in a clinch and kissed and it wasn’t bad at all. She was a smoker and I could taste it, but the fullness and warmth of those sticky lips made it a nicely nasty experience. A perfect chaser for the Seagram’s and Seven.
We walked into the pin pines, back into the taller ones that had been there even before Carr got into gardening. I stood with my spine to one of the thicker trunks and she faced me, her lipstick smeared. Was she frightened?
“You want to know,” she said, “if the Greenlease money was ever hidden here. I don’t know the answer to that. It might have been, briefly. But I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“The inner walls at the Coral Court are thin. You’ve seen the layout — the rooms are adjacent to the individual garages. No need for heavy walls. The brick exterior is so heavy those inner walls don’t need much. These wild stories about the place being stuffed with ransom dough are just that — stories, wild, and stupid. Certain rooms are wired for sound, yeah, but the walls are just too thin for storing jack shit.”
I frowned at her. “You think Carr helped launder the loot? He freely admitted he does business with Costello and Wortman. Said he was their accountant in the old days.”
She shook her head. “But that was the old days. When he opened up, the Coral Court was meant to be a mob getaway, a place for Outfit guys to vacation or lie low. But then the motel took off with a straight clientele — cheating spouses and honeymooning couples and families with kiddies. Outfit guys were pissed after that — Wortman even took a shot at Carr, and Jack had to make peace. Does them favors when need be.”
“Like moving the Greenlease money?”
She sighed, looked back toward the motel. “We need to get in there and do what Carr expects us to.”
“Which is what?”
Her response seemed a non-sequitur. “Around when you knew me, I’d had my fill of men. I lived with another woman till about six months ago. I’m a switch-hitter, okay? But you need to know I haven’t been with a man for three, maybe four years.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because we have to go in there and do what Carr expects us to! Don’t worry — you’re not going to catch anything. And I haven’t had a visit from my friend in two years.”
“What friend?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, Christ, Heller. Really.”
She took me by the arm and dragged me back to the room. She stood in the middle of all that red and demonstrated she didn’t have anything on under the striped top and capri pants. Her breasts were full, the nipples in their setting large and erect. She twirled, just to smirkingly show off the dimpled firm globes in back. In front she had an appendix scar and her bush was a black tangled dare against startling white flesh.
I was just taking it all in — she stripped with amazing speed and grace — and then she stood with her fists on her hips like a super woman, feet planted wide. Taking a look at my tented trousers, she said, “Well, I can see you’re interested.”
She came over and got on her knees and zipped me down and got me out. The black pixie-haired dynamo looked up at me with scary beautiful light-blue eyes.
“I wasn’t popular as a whore,” she said.
“Oh?”
She had me in her hands. “See, I wouldn’t do this for any man for any money. Only men I really liked. Or loved or thought I did.”
“Oh.”
Then she took me slowly into her mouth and worked me with expert care, particularly for a woman who had sworn off men years ago, and after a while she walked me by the engorged member over to the bed, like taking a child by the hand.
She put me on my back and climbed on; getting in was tough but worth the effort. At first it was like a fist had hold of me and then it got smooth and slippery and when, after a long, delirious, undulating fuck, I came, it felt goddamn good, and maybe to her, too. Anyway, she shivered and moaned and almost wailed. Maybe for the wired walls.