I smiled. “What’s the second thing?”
“I want to watch him die.”
I smiled again. “Of course you do.”
She asked, “Am I bad?”
I shrugged. “Hey, he’s got to die sometime, right? Now don’t over-think this. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”
CHAPTER 21
One quick glance and I forgot all about Joe DeMeo.
It was Saturday, a couple hours after my meeting with DeMeo at the cemetery. I was staying in a luxury beach hotel in Santa Monica when she knocked on the door.
Jenine.
The first thing she noticed was the envelope fat with cash on the edge of the coffee table. She picked it up and her eyes widened as she riffled through the stack of hundreds. She glanced at me to see if I was serious.
I nodded.
She’d been advertising on Aspiring Actresses, the internet escort site, and had purchased enough space to display three sultry photographs and a bio listing her vital statistics and limited acting experience.
In the e-mails we exchanged, she admitted being desperate for cash, and I had agreed to share some of mine in return for what might happen when we eventually met.
When she’d called from the lobby, I gave my room number and wondered-having been previously burned in similar encounters-if the girl who showed would bear any resemblance to the photos I’d seen.
I needn’t have worried. If anything, she looked better than advertised-and that was saying a lot. Dressed casually in jeans and a halter top and sporting iridescent ear buds tethered to a surprisingly bulky MP3 player, she looked every bit the college student for whom a distinguished professor might willingly sacrifice his career.
Jenine removed the ear buds and placed the MP3 player on the coffee table before tucking the envelope securely into her handbag. She performed the obligatory small talk in a detached but efficient manner until I let her know it was time to move things along.
Standing before me in the parlor of one of Southern California’s most exclusive boutique hotel rooms, biting her lower lip, she suddenly seemed quite small and vulnerable.
Before she arrived, I had propped open the French doors leading to the balcony. A slight breeze manipulated the sheer curtains into random patterns that caught her eye, causing her to look beyond the small wrought iron seating area. From her vantage point, the Santa Monica Pier was visible, and she smiled wistfully at it or something else that attracted her attention.
On the beach below us, a guy played riffs on a saxophone.
Someone’s stunning twenty-year-old daughter began lifting her halter top for my pleasure, and I thought about what I would do to a guy like me if this had been my daughter, Kimberly. After removing her top, she covered her breasts with her arms and paused.
I asked if there was a problem.
Just that she’d never done anything like this before, she said, and she was only doing it this once in order to make ends meet until her big break came along. I gave her the nod of understanding she expected, and she unbuttoned her jeans, slid them to the floor, and stepped out of them.
Promptly dismissing any misgivings I may have had regarding her age, I appraised her pert body and caught myself saying that what she was doing was no big deal; lots of famous actresses started out this way.
“It shows how committed you are to your craft,” I said, shamelessly.
That wistful smile played about her lips again, and she wriggled out of her panties. “What do you like?” she asked, and something in the tone of her voice suggested she had in fact done this sort of thing many times before.
Demonstrating considerable expertise and a surprising degree of enthusiasm, Jenine did her best to earn the contents of the envelope, and afterward, I told her to lie on her stomach so I could get a better look at the small tattoo on her lower back.
When I aimed my camera phone, she said, “I don’t do photos.”
“Just the tattoo,” I said.
She nodded but said she’d want to check the view screen to make sure I hadn’t included any part of her ass in the shot. “I intend to be a famous actress some day,” she said, “and I don’t want any nude photos turning up.”
I told her I didn’t see any birthmarks on her body and asked if she had any I might have missed. She gave me a strange look and told me about the dime-sized rosy patch on the right side of her head, just above her ear, which would have been impossible to see without parting her hair at that precise spot.
After I snapped a close up of that area, she began collecting her clothes. I noticed her purse on the desk and brought it to her.
“Are we finished here?” she wanted to know.
“We are.”
While she dressed, I moved to the balcony to signal the saxophone player, the monstrous man with severely deformed facial features named Augustus Quinn. I watched my giant pack up his instrument and walk away, knowing he was making his way around the hotel to the waiting sedan. Quinn and Coop would follow Jenine for a couple of hours, find out where she lived, who her friends were. Then they’d come back and pick me up and we’d drive to the airfield for the return flight to Virginia. The only negative was the time difference. By the time we got back, I’d be too tired to test the ADS weapon.
Reentering the parlor, I found Jenine standing in the center of the room, fully dressed, attempting to make eye contact. There’s an art to saying good-bye in these situations, a sort of silent protocol. You don’t kiss, but a hug is nice. There’s the verbal dance you both do when neither of you want her to linger but neither wants to be rude, either.
You don’t want to be too abrupt, so you tell her it was great and you’d love to see her the next time you’re in town. She reiterates she doesn’t really do this sort of thing, but for you she’ll make an exception.
My cell phone performed a dance of its own, vibrating on the desktop. “I need to get that,” I said.
She flashed a shy smile. “Okay… thanks?” It was almost a question. I gave her a slight frown to imply I wished she didn’t have to go. She shrugged and offered a cute little pout to express the same sentiment. Then she blew me a kiss, let herself out, and closed the door behind her.
When she did that, something clicked inside my head. I thought about Kathleen Gray and felt a wave of sadness wash over me.
CHAPTER 22
The cell phone call that caused Jenine to leave had been prearranged. It was Quinn calling to let me know he was in position. I donned my jeans, pocketed the camera phone, poured myself a double whisky from the wet bar. I sat on the edge of the bed with my drink and propped my free hand on the sheets we’d rumpled moments earlier.
The scent of Jenine’s youth hung in the air, and I inhaled it fully, savoring her essence. Maybe Kathleen needed four hundred and ninety calories to de-stress, but not me.
I felt a vibration in my pocket, slid the phone open, put it to my ear.
“It’s me,” said Callie.
“You need to get a butterfly tattoo on your ass,” I said.
She paused for a beat. “Donovan, if this is how you normally start conversations, I think I may have isolated your problem with women. No wonder you can’t find a nice girl to marry.”
If Callie Carpenter had been born three inches taller, she wouldn’t have to kill people for a living. With her spectacular looks, she’d be a one-name supermodel by now. I drained my glass and placed it on the end table. I stood and walked back through the parlor to the balcony and chose the chair that angled toward the Santa Monica Pier.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Reach over the naked whore and flip on your TV.”
I sighed. “How little you think of me. Truth is, I’m here all alone on a hotel balcony, enjoying the unseasonably warm February temperature. Which channel?”