“Lenuta?” I said. “Lenuta, it’s me, Angel.”
“Angel?” she whispered. “I feel dizzy.”
“Hang on, Lenuta,” I told her. “We’re gonna get you out of here, okay?”
“I can’t...” she said.
Then she died. One second she was there and the next she just... wasn’t. I felt cold and sick, unable to let go of her lukewarm hand.
“Lenuta,” I said again, uselessly. “Lenuta.”
I thought of the first time I’d met her, how sweet and raw she’d looked back then, before she’d gotten bleached, implanted, liposucked, French-manicured and Brazilian waxed into this generic, tan, platinum blonde lying here like a broken doll on the cheap beige carpet of a Vegas motel. I remembered helping her pick out the name Zandora Dior and giving her some backdoor hygiene tips for her big debut in Fresh-N-Tight 7. I remembered how nervous she was before her first scene with the freakishly endowed Monster Marcus Long and how she ended up dating him and eventually breaking his heart. I remembered coughing up her name when Jesse slugged me in the belly. I let go of her hand and got to my feet, feeling hollow and cold.
“Angel?” It was Malloy in the doorway. He was winded and bleeding from a split in his lip that mirrored mine almost exactly. “We need to get the hell out of here.”
“Where’s the other guy?” I asked.
“Fucker got away,” Malloy said. “We better do the same.”
“What about—”
I turned back to the redneck, whose face was turning purple. He wasn’t finished dying yet. It seemed unfair, somehow, that he should outlive Zandora, even by a few minutes.
“Now, Angel,” Malloy said.
I did what Malloy said, but not without one last glance back over my shoulder at the crumpled body that used to be a girl I knew.
10.
“Zandora’s dead,” Malloy said, the little Kia screeching out of the Silver Spur parking lot before I could even pull my door closed.
“Yeah,” I said.
Malloy hung a sharp left that threw me against the passenger side door. I put on my seat belt with shaking hands.
“You okay?” he asked without looking at me.
I looked out the window at the tawdry, sun-bleached pawnshops and wedding chapels and tattoo parlors that we passed. “I’m fine.”
Malloy made a soft wordless noise and I realized that I wasn’t sure how to feel about him. I had never really been sure, but that cold, dead look I had seen in his eyes as he beat that thug stuck with me. Got under my skin. If I had seen hot rage or blood lust or something like that, I would have understood. After all, I knew what that felt like. If I could have beaten Jesse Black to death with my bare hands, I would have done it with a smile. But Malloy’s strange, chilly blankness was profoundly disturbing. It reminded me that I didn’t really know him. Malloy was all I had left of my old life, and I didn’t really know him at all.
“Gloves,” Malloy said, holding out one hand.
I peeled the latex gloves off my sweaty fingers and handed them over. Malloy crumpled them up and peeled off his own gloves, turning the last one inside out so my two and his left were neatly wrapped up inside the right. He pulled into a Burger King lot and parked far in the back, beside the dumpster and away from all the other cars.
“Want anything?” he asked, gesturing toward the restaurant.
I shook my head, queasy at the thought of eating after everything that had happened. My body still jangled with a kind of shaky, nauseous adrenaline hangover.
“Stay here,” Malloy said, taking off his jacket, unbuckling his shoulder holster and depositing the tangled rig in my lap. The gun was heavy. “I don’t want anybody to see you right now.”
I nodded and held onto the gun. It didn’t make me feel any safer.
I watched Malloy unbutton his blood-stained shirt and strip swiftly out of it, revealing thick, muscular arms and a white wife-beater undershirt that stretched taut over his hard, heavy gut. I had never met a man who actually wore an undershirt under a dress shirt. He had a Saint Michael medallion around his neck, a silver oval with a stamped image of a sword-wielding angel standing on a dragon. Malloy hadn’t really struck me as the religious type, but then again, being half Irish and half Mexican, he kind of had the Catholic thing coming at him hard from both sides. Being Italian myself, I could sympathize, even though all that was left of my Catholic upbringing was a fondness for short plaid skirts. I wondered how he explained working with godless harlots like me and my girls to kindly father so-and-so at confession. Never mind that whole beating-a-guy-to-death-with-his-bare-hands business.
“I’m gonna go get cleaned up,” Malloy said. “Give me your sweatshirt.”
He got out of the car and tossed his shirt and jacket, my sweatshirt, and the balled-up gloves into the dumpster. He put the original rental plates back on the car, then crossed the lot and went into the Burger King.
While I waited, I watched a trio of fat women herding a batch of squabbling children out of a minivan and into the restaurant. It seemed strange and surreal to me, the way the rest of the world just kept on going in the background of this madness.
Malloy returned all pink and clean. He reached into the back seat and grabbed a loud Hawaiian shirt out of one of the bags from Target. The shirt featured a bright, busy pattern of rainbow-colored parrots and tropical drinks. He pulled off the price tag and slipped the shirt on.
“Here,” he said, handing me another bag from Target. “I want you to change while I’m driving.”
“Why?” I asked, looking into the bag. It contained a matronly beige jersey tank dress, a lightweight pink cardigan and flat pink shoes. To top it off, there was a horrible pink cloth sun hat.
“In case anyone saw us at the Silver Spur,” he said, pulling a red baseball cap down snug over his silver buzzcut. The hat said FBI—Female Booty Inspector. “How do I look?”
“Like a tourist,” I said. It was almost impossible to believe this was the same man whose murderous, blank eyes had made me feel so cold.
“Perfect,” he replied, getting back into the car and pulling out into the light midday traffic.
“Turn right here,” I told him. “At this light.”
“We have a pretty good window to hit Eye Candy before the Vegas PD,” Malloy said, making the turn. “Zandora had the do-not-disturb sign up on the door so if nobody reports the racket we made, they might not find the bodies until she’s supposed to check out.”
I changed into the ugly clothes while Malloy drove, slipping the dress over my tank top and slithering out of my jeans beneath. I had plenty of practice changing in moving cars. Back when I was a teenager, I would routinely leave the house in some nice pastel good-girl disguise. Then as soon as I was out of Mama’s sight, I would tease up my hair and wiggle into zebra-striped spandex, all in the back seat of a friend’s car on the way to check out some cute guy’s band at the Thirsty Whale.
While I got myself dressed up to match Malloy’s tourist duds, we headed over to Eye Candy.
That place was in a class by itself, rivaling the biggest casinos for over-the-top excess. Like Disneyland with tits. It had opened after I was out of the game, so I’d never had the chance to dance there. My girls either loved it or hated it. The competition between the Eye Candy dancers was brutal and unrelenting, but for girls who were tough, ambitious and could take the heat, the money was ridiculous. Me, I probably wouldn’t have lasted one song in a shark tank like that.