Not spotting Virginia, Rogers settled into the nearest booth. A handful of patrons were scattered around the place, at what seemed to be an off time; and what few customers were here appeared to be in groups of at least two.
A waiter came over, took her order for coffee, went away. She didn’t even look up, her concentration going to her cell as she retrieved Virginia’s number. She punched it in but it went to voice mail.
Had Virginia been in real trouble? Was Rogers too late? Too late for what?
The muted sounds of “It’s Raining Men” — Virginia’s ringtone? — came from somewhere, the timing making it clear this was Rogers’s call. Had someone grabbed Virginia, and she left her phone behind, on a nearby booth maybe?
The ringtone continued as her waiter returned to her table, poured her coffee, then said over his shoulder to a middle-aged henna-haired female cashier, “Pinky, I’m going on break.”
Then Rogers’s waiter sat across from her in the booth. The sample of “It’s Raining Men” started up again, third time through.
“Part of the persona,” he said with a shy shrug. “My ringtone, I mean.”
She hit END on her phone and the song stopped playing.
Kevin Lockwood had short dark hair and tortoise-shell-framed glasses behind which Virginia’s fawn eyes gazed at her. He was impossibly handsome in that GQ model manner, making even his waiter’s white shirt and black bow tie look fashionable.
Still, she found herself asking the one-word question: “Virginia?”
The young man smiled. “Yes, Agent Rogers,” he said quietly, “there is a Virginia... but best call me Kevin in here. Virginia has the waitress job, but sometimes Kevin takes a shift for her.”
For a few moments, she just studied him, getting used to this new person. “Is it just an act? Virginia, I mean?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “It’s more than that. The best way I can explain is, I’m at my most comfortable when I’m her.”
“Why is, uh, Kevin taking her shift today?”
“Because Virginia is afraid.” The fawn eyes narrowed. “And I don’t think the person following me knows what Kevin looks like.”
“You’ve been followed? You’re sure of that?”
He nodded. “Was being followed, anyway. I shook him, I think.”
“Him.”
“A dangerous-looking blond man.”
Their SIM card blond again.
Rogers asked, “This was when?”
“Just last night, or really today, because it was past midnight. I saw him sitting at the bar in back, when I was on stage — at Les Girls? He had a nice build, and kind of a Beach Boy grown-up look. Cardigan, chinos, shades of tan. And he was still there, when I came from the dressing room to go home.”
“Still as Virginia?”
“Still as Virginia.”
“Did you get a good look at him?”
“As I left, I did — I passed right by the bar. He was watching me, but of course a lot of guys at Les Girls do that, on and off the stage. Really, it was the way he was watching me.”
“What way was that?”
“Stealing looks. Pretending not to.”
“Isn’t that common, too?”
“It wasn’t in the way most guys do, where you get that... checking-you-out kind of look. Something else. Can’t explain much more than that. Not sexual.”
Rogers nodded. “You got a good look, you said.”
Kevin nodded back. “Light-blue eyes to go with the blond hair — you know the expression, ‘ice-blue eyes’?”
“Those kind of eyes.”
“Those kind of eyes,” Kevin said, “but not in a good way. And the Beach Boy features, that kind of chiseled California thing, closer up they looked hard. Rough complexion.”
Rogers got the SIM card picture up on her phone. “Could this be him?”
“Not could — that’s him. That is him. Who is he?”
“We don’t have a name yet, Kevin, but he’s wanted.”
“Not by me! I got Ronnie, one of the bartenders, to drive me, I was so shaken up.”
“And he followed you home?”
“Somebody was following us, I thought. I kept looking back. Ronnie said I was being paranoid, but just when I got dropped off outside my place, that blond creep drove by.”
“Do you know what he was driving?”
“A Nissan. An Altima? And, no, I didn’t get a license plate. I was in a hurry to get inside behind a locked door.”
“So, what then? How did you lose him if you just locked yourself in?”
Kevin leaned forward in a sharing secrets way. “After Virginia went inside, I did the big cleanup. Makeup off, wig, clothes, showered, shaved again... then I came back out of the building as Kevin. I haven’t seen him since.”
Rogers sipped her coffee, thinking. Then she said, “Kevin, I’d like to get you into a safe house for the next few days.”
“Is that like... protective custody?”
“Yes. You may be a material witness in this case. The blond who followed you is someone who doesn’t just look dangerous. And what we’re investigating isn’t merely one crime, but a series of ongoing crimes.”
“Like Karma’s murder.”
She nodded. “That reminds me — would you mind sitting down with a forensic artist, to come up with a likeness of Karma’s older gentleman friend?”
“I could do that. Anything for Karma.” He smiled and it was a dazzler. “Anything for you, Agent Rogers.”
Was he flirting with her? And was she liking it? She didn’t even know for sure what this guy was — gay, straight, bi — and then Reeder kidding her on the same subject flashed into her mind and she shifted gears back to business, where she belonged.
“Shouldn’t be tough,” Kevin said, “getting a decent likeness.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. He was pretty distinctive looking.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, he had this scar. Not very long, maybe an inch and a half or so — right here?” Kevin indicated his right cheekbone.
She did a quick Internet search on her phone and brought up a photo of Adam Benjamin’s majordomo, Frank Elmore, whose scar she’d noticed at Constitution Hall.
“A scar like this one?” she asked, holding up her phone screen.
Kevin’s eyebrows rose. “You are good. That’s him.”
“Karma’s generous john?”
“No question. Swear to it in court.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What do you remember Karma saying about him?”
“Just that he had plenty of money, but was somebody we could never talk about.”
“So... money and power.”
Kevin shrugged. “That’s typical in this town. Anybody tricking, like Karma, knows to be discreet, or...”
“Or it might get you killed?”
Kevin paled. “I never thought of it like that. Just that this was a sugar daddy, probably up the political food chain, with a wife and kids, and... you know, the old story.”
Rogers’s mind went from zero to bullet train in milliseconds. Did Adam Benjamin have a traitor on his staff? A man with the kind of background that made hiring a mercenary for a professional killing a no-brainer?
Or was this just a well-off guy having a sketchy hookup with a transvestite hooker, a misjudged affair that led to having the hooker killed? In this cruel town, that scenario made sense.
But not when Karma was just one in this unending line of double-tap professional killings.