"You can't hurt anyone when you're tied up," Cordy teased her.
"Okay, that's enough, boys and girls," Serena said. "No mas, Cordy, you hear me?"
"Friday night?" Cordy continued, smiling at Lavender.
Lavender shrugged, but it was an acquiescence. "Okay, slick. You got it. Pick me up here at eight o'clock. We'll have six hours until my next shift."
Serena sighed. "That's great. Real romantic. Meanwhile, we've got a dead girl, and we're trying to find out who she is."
"Girls come and go around here," Lavender said.
"I know. This one came and went. Five-foot-seven, black hair dyed blonde, somewhere between seventeen and twenty-five, or that's what we're guessing. She's probably been missing at least two or three days."
"Could be anybody," Lavender said.
Cordy reached out and brushed his index finger below Lavender's left nipple. "She had a heart tattoo right about here."
Damn, the guy was good. Sometimes Serena felt like a robot, watching all the sex in this town and feeling no emotion about any of it.
She knew what the other cops called her. Barb. Not for Barbara-it was short for Barbed Wire. The girl with the high fence and the NO TRESPASSING sign. That was her own fault. Even when she liked a man, she usually found a way to leave him bleeding on the other side, instead of letting him in. Sometimes she envied Cordy that he could make it look so easy.
"A heart?" Lavender said slowly.
Serena saw it in Lavender's eyes. For the first time that day, she felt her pulse quicken.
"You knew her?" Serena asked.
Lavender bit her lower lip. "Maybe. There was a girl at the last club where I worked, had a tattoo like that, matched that description."
"What was her name?"
"Christi. Christi Katt. I mean, I figure it was a fake name, okay? Like I'm not really Lavender, and if I ever tell you my real name, I know you too well."
"What was the club?" Cordy asked.
"The Thrill Palace. On the Boulder Strip."
Serena knew it. "You know where this girl lived?"
"She had a dump of an apartment over near the airport. Oh, shit, what was the place called again? Vagabond, I think. Yeah, the Vagabond Apartments. Fits, huh? Most of the rentals there are weekly, I bet. Maybe daily."
"You remember much about her?"
"Not a lot. She wasn't a talker. Came in, did her thing. Most of the girls, we pal around, but she didn't do that."
"When did you last see her?" Serena asked.
"When I left the club," Lavender said. "About a month ago."
Cordy reluctantly slid the photo out of his coat pocket. "Could this be her?"
Lavender glanced at the photo and immediately shut her eyes, looking away. She opened them again and took another quick look. "Shit That really sucks. No one deserves to look like that, I mean no one."
"Could that be her?"
Lavender squinted. "Could be. I don't know. Who can tell from that? Christi was really pretty, not like that thing. Hell, she was almost as sexy as I am. If that's her-well, shit"
She shook her head and handed the photo back upside down.
"Thanks, Lavender," Serena told her. "You've been a big help."
Cordy winked. "Gracias. See you Friday."
"Hey, you've already seen me, slick," Lavender said. "Friday I get to see you."
36
They got off I-15 at Tropicana Avenue and waited impatiently at the light at Las Vegas Boulevard. On their right was the fake Arthurian castle of the Excalibur Hotel and, on then-left, the fake Manhattan skyline of New York-New York. Fountains sprayed from miniature fire boats surrounding a fake Statue of Liberty.
Some of the spray blew out in the street, and Serena felt dampness on her cheek. The cool water felt good. She glanced at the hordes of tourists milling outside in the stale early evening air, taking a break from losing their money inside. They looked hot, wiping their brows and tugging at their shirt collars. Even with the sun hidden behind the mountains, it was still ninety degrees.
The light changed. They headed past the MGM Grand and turned left at Koval Lane. Serena turned right again, and almost immediately, they exited the glitzy world of the Strip and found themselves in a seedy neighborhood, populated with two-bedroom houses with bars on the windows. The Vegas melting pot lived here, blacks, Mexicans, Indians, and immigrants from a dozen other countries who held down low-paying jobs in the service sectors of the casinos. It wasn't a high-crime area, not compared to the Naked City near the Stratosphere, where most of the city's murders took place. Old women still walked alone on the streets, pushing carts with groceries back to their homes. Children played in the yards, poking scorpions with sticks.
Half a mile down, they found the Vagabond Apartments, a two-level building with cracked white stucco, laid out like a motel. The ground-floor apartments opened onto the parking lot, and one flight up, the second-story units opened onto a narrow corridor with a rusty railing. All of the windows had thick curtains pulled shut, and the peeling navy doors had deadbolt locks.
For a moment, staring at the building, Serena was a teenager again, back in the apartment in Phoenix. She felt a chill break through the stifling heat. Images popped like flashbulbs. Her mother's dead eyes, watching her. The tattoo of a lizard on the man's chest, wiggling its pink tongue at her. Afterward, brown water dripping from the shower head.
Serena took a labored breath and pushed the past away.
"I don't know," she said. "I pictured this girl for a higher-class kind of joint. You'd think she could have afforded better than this, working at the Thrill Palace." Unless she was an alcoholic, Serena thought Or an addict.
"Maybe she was hiding out," Cordy said.
Serena shrugged. "Let's find the manager."
The nearest apartment on the ground floor had an open door that led into a small foyer filled with mailboxes. They passed a short, balding man of about fifty, wearing shorts and no shirt, flipping through his mail as he strolled out of the office. He didn't look up. Serena noticed him thumbing through a copy of Penthouse in the stack. They entered the apartment office, which was compact, with the mailboxes on one wall and vending machines for soda and snacks on the other.
At the rear of the office was a counter with a buzzer on it, and behind the counter was a closed door decorated with a nudie calendar. Several sections of the morning newspaper lay on the counter, one section open to the want ads, another to the comics. A paper plate with a few doughnut crumbs sat on top of the paper, gathering flies. Cordy pushed the call button, and they heard the muffled buzzer sounding behind the wall. No one came to greet them. Cordy pushed the button again, holding it down, until they heard footsteps inside.
The door flew open. A kid of about twenty, with earrings in both ears, long mousy hair, and sideburns, stared at them. He was tall and thin, with a narrow pimply face and protruding chin. Like the tenant they had passed, he was wearing shorts and no shirt.
"Yeah?"
He didn't sound happy to be interrupted. Serena could hear noises inside the apartment and figured the kid wasn't alone.
"We want an apartment, muchacho," Cordy said. "How about you show us the hot tub and the tennis courts?"
"What the fuck?" the kid said.
Serena smiled. "Are you the manager?"
"Yeah, so what?"
"We're cops. Does a woman named Christi Katt live here?"
"Yeah, so what?" he repeated.
"So you're going to lose the attitude and give us her key. Okay?"
Cordy grinned. "You can show us the pool later."
The kid shook his head. "Fucking cops, you guys are really something. Yeah, okay, apartment 204. She's been here about a year. Hot number, you get me? She's a lot nicer than the other trash we get around here."