I kissed her, wondering what I was doing. It was a pretty good kiss, considering the circumstances. Then she stepped back abruptly and said, "Oh, shoot."
"Was it that bad?"
"No. It was sweet. It was the sweetest kiss I've had since I was twelve. But I forgot my damn cash caddy."
"Your what?"
"My cash caddy. The thing I put my tips into after I finish dancing. I was in such a hurry to get you to myself that I left it at the club."
"So?" I said. "It'll keep."
"Sure it will. It'll keep about as long as a hundred-dollar bill dropped in front of a Church of Scientology. That's my money, and I've got to go get it."
"But the club's closed, isn't it?"
"I've got a key. I can get it. Listen. Go home. Call me tomorrow, if you feel like it."
"For heaven's sake," I said, "I've got a car."
"For heaven's sake?" She smiled. "How dear. I'm not sure I ever heard anybody say that out loud before. You really want to take me?"
"Sure. Alice is warm. Even if she weren't, I'd carry you down to the club on my back. It's not that far."
"Obibah," she said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Obibah. It's Korean for piggyback. Let's go, hero."
"Okay," I said. "But obibah to the car." I turned my back to her and bent down, waiting.
"You really are crazy, you know? Here goes." She saddled up, her legs straddling my middle and her warm arms around my neck. "Giddyup," she said.
"I'll go at my own pace, thanks." She hardly seemed to weigh anything at all. "You forget that I'm aged."
"You're drunk, too," she said, "but I want to see a good brisk trot here. Mush, senior citizen." She dug her heels meaningfully into my back. I carried her across the courtyard toward Alice, who stood gleaming at the curb.
"Hey?" she said into my ear. "I've always liked older men."
I deposited her on the sidewalk next to Alice. The traffic noise was louder here. She opened the door and got in, and I went around and joined her.
I flipped the ignition halfway and released the brake. We coasted down the hill in silence until I turned the key the rest of the way and popped the clutch to bring Alice into consciousness. She sputtered and then caught, and I swung left onto some nameless little street, heading south and downhill toward Santa Monica Boulevard. Several minutes passed in silence. Nana leaned against me and exhaled warmly on my arm. I made the last turn and cut the engine. "I'll come in with you," I said. The club was dark. Even the fleshy light of the neon in front had been shut off. The area looked like a slum that had gone out of business.
"Fine, hero. Come on in."
She yanked the car door open and got out, and I followed. The parking lot was empty, a black asphalt wasteland faintly striped by parking lines and littered with crumpled paper bags wrapped tightly around empty bottles. The late night lights of Hollywood glared and winked across the sky. I caught up with her and took her hand. She turned to me.
"One more kiss," she said. "I promise not to get possessive."
"That's what they all say." We kissed, and she chose a key and thrust it into the lock on the door.
"Dirty money, here I come," she said. She pulled the door open, and we faced the hallway I had come through earlier with Toby. It was completely dark, but as my eyes adjusted I could see a narrow horizontal strip of light low down at the other end. Nana fumbled for a second and then flipped a switch that brought a naked electric bulb above us to attention, flooding the hallway into a sparkling dark red. My sixth sense kicked in like a flood of cold air.
"Turn it off," I said.
"What?"
"Just turn it off. Now." I reached past her and pushed the switch down. Light gleamed below the door at the other end. "Why is that light on?" I said. Hairs bristled along my spine.
"How do I know?" She paused, then spoke more thoughtfully. "It shouldn't be. Tiny always turns everything off when he closes up. This is not a boy who wastes electricity."
"Well," I said, "it's on now."
"It sure is. So what?"
"So stay here. I want to go in first."
I groped my way down the corridor and found the handle of the door. It turned easily in my hand, and I pulled it open.
The club was dark except for the pink lights above the smallest stage, the one that hadn't been used while I was there earlier in the evening. Something was spread out on it.
"Stand right where you are," I said over my shoulder. "Don't come in unless I call you. Just stay the hell out of here."
"What is it? What's wrong?"
"Keep your hand on the doorknob," I said. "Be ready to leave if I tell you to."
I went into the club. The velvet nudes gazed imperturbably down from the walls. The thing on the stage was Amber.
She lay flat on her back, stark naked, staring sightlessly up into the lights. Her eyes couldn't have been any deader if they'd been marbles.
"Simeon?" Nana called.
"Quiet," I said. "Be quiet and stay there."
Amber's face was battered and swollen, both lips split wide open. The blood hadn't caked yet, except where it was matted into her dry, broken-looking hair. She had bled from a wound hidden by the hair. Her arms were outflung. Normally my attention would have been drawn to the angry-looking tracks on the insides of her elbows, but now I could only look at her hands. Her hands were horrible.
The fingers splayed back grotesquely, angling every which way in a gesture that was both humanly imploring and humanly impossible. Every one of her fingers had been broken. They had been broken at all three joints.
A noise behind me told me that Nana had come into the room. I couldn't be bothered to turn around.
There was something totally wrong about Amber. Something about her posture. First I registered that her hands hadn't been tied, and then I realized that her feet had been. I slipped my hand under her body to check the temperature-the lights would have kept her front warm. She wasn't much colder than I was. Trying to keep my eyes from her hands, I checked her wrists for rope burns, imprints, anything. There weren't any. Then I turned my attention to her bound ankles.
They were wrapped in several turns of rope. The rope was thin and cottony. I took it between my fingers, feeling the unshaved roughness of Amber's shins beneath my knuckles.
The rope was clothesline.
"Dead nudes," I said.
6
I backed away, a thin, reedy singing shrilling cricketlike in my ears, a fine violin string being drawn back and forth through my brain. My heart was battering madly against my ribs. The dead woman on the stage gazed up blankly at the pink lights, her wide-open eyes as empty as those of a dog listening to music. Behind me, Nana shuffled nervously from foot to foot. The sound of her shoes seemed to scrape their way straight through my skin.
"Dead what?" she said. "Don't scare me." She moved closer. "Ducks in hell," she said. Her swallow carried all the way across the garish, empty room. "It isn't … she isn't…"
"Yeah, she is," I said. "Just hold it. Don't move, not a foot. Don't touch anything. Stay where you are. Goddamn it, Nana, where's the phone in this shithole?"
"Behind the bar. Over toward the left, under the bottles. Oh, Lordy," she said. "Oh, Simeon, I think I'm going to puke."
"Puke outside. Don't do it here. And don't touch anything. Not anything, got it?"
I found the phone on a shelf underneath the cash register. A dirty slip of paper pasted crookedly beneath the buttons said is this call necessary? I guessed it was. I grabbed a handful of paper napkins and used them to pick up the receiver. I was swearing at myself.
"What's Toby's number? At home."
"You mean you're not going to call the cops first?" Her voice was shaky, but she seemed to be getting herself under control. At any rate, she'd stopped sounding like she was going to hit the floor at any moment.