"Yeah," Eileen said.
" 'Cause mine is straight from a bottle," Sheryl said, and laughed.
She still had a little-girl's laugh. Twenty-two years old, hooked on heroin, in the life since she was seventeen. Thought Ham Coleman with his towel was "kind of cute."
"What I'm really hoping for hellip; well, this is just adream , I know," she said, and rolled her eyes, "but I keep asking Ham about it all the time, who knows, it might really come true one day. I keep asking him to set us up like real call girls, you know, hundred-buck tricks, maybe two hundred, never mind dropping us here in the Zone where we're like commonwhores , you know what I mean? I mean, you and me, we're just common whores, ain't we? When you get right down to it?"
"Uh-huh. And what does he say?"
"Oh, he says we ain't got the class yet to be racehorses. I tell him class, shit. A blowjob's a blowjob. He says we still got a lot to learn, all six of us. He says maybe in time he'll set up a class operation like what I got in mind. So I tell himwhen? When we're all scaley-legged hookers, thirty, forty years old? Excuse me, I guess maybe you're in your thirties, I didn't mean no offense, Linda."
"Don't worry about it," Eileen said.
"Well, we all have our dreams, don't we?" Sheryl said, and sighed. "My dream when I first came to this city was I'd become an actress, you know? I was in a lot of plays in high school, in Baltimore, I figured I could make it big as an actress here. Well, that was just a dream. Like being a hundred-dollar call girl is probably just a dream, too. Still, you got to have dreams, am I right? Otherwise hellip;"
"You girls gonna sit here talking to each other all night?"
The man standing by the table had padded up so quietly that he startled both of them. Blond guy, Eileen figured him at five-eleven, around a hundred and seventy pounds, just like Shanahan Wearing dark glasses, she couldn't see the color of his eyes. The blond hair could be a wig. Moved a bit like Shanahan, too, maybe hewas Shanahan. If so, he'd just won the bet. One thing he wasn't was the killer. Not unless he'd lost three, four inches, thirty pounds, a pair of eyeglasses, and a tattoo near his right thumb.
He pulled out a chair.
"Martin Reilly," he said, and sat. "What's a nice Irish lad doing in a joint like this, right?"
Voice heavier than Shanahan's. Calm's Point accent. Turtle Bay section, most likely. Lots of Irish families still there.
"Hi, Morton," Sheryl said.
"Martin," he corrected at once.
"Ooops, sorry," Sheryl said. "I'm Sheryl, I know just how you feel. When people call me Shirley, it really burns my ass."
"You know what really burns my ass?" Reilly said.
"Sure. People calling you Morton."
"No," Reilly said. "A little fire about this high."
He held out his hand, palm down, to indicate a fire only high enough to burn a man's ass.
"That one has hair on it," Eileen said, looking bored.
"Like the palm of my hand," Reilly said, and grinned. "All those months at sea, ladies, a man marries his hand."
Still grinning. Rows of even white glistening teeth, the better to eat you with, my dear. If Shanahan had capped teeth like that, he'd be starring on Hill Street Blues.
>
"You just get in?" Sheryl asked.
"Docked tonight."
"From where?"
Lebanon."
"Ain't there no girls there in Lebanon?" Sheryl said, and rolled her eyes.
"Not like you two," he said.
"Oooo, my," she said, and leaned over the table so he could look into the front of her blouse. "So what are you looking for?" she asked, getting straight to the point. "A handjob's fifteen," she said, quoting high, "a blowjob's twenty-five, and Miss Puss is forty."
"How about your friend here? What's your name, honey?" he asked, and put his hand on Eileen's thigh.
"Linda," she said.
She let his hand stay on her thigh.
"That means beautiful in Spanish."
"So they tell me."
"How much for both of you? Do I get a better price for both of?
"You're getting a bargain as it is," Sheryl said.
"Tell you what," Reilly said, and slipped his hand up under Eileen's skirt. "I'll give you hellip;"
"Mister," Eileen said, and caught his hand at the wrist. "You ain't given usnothing yet, so don't grope the goods, okay?"
"I'm sampling it."
"You get what you see, you don't need samples. This ain't a grocery store honors coupons."
Reilly laughed. He folded his hands on the table top.
"Okay, let's talk numbers," he said.