"Not yet."
He would have known if I were lying. He nodded and said, "I'm going to check a couple of belly dance places tonight. Native music...the real stuff they say. Want to tag along?"
"Not tonight. I got a date."
"Better than a belly dancer?"
I looked at him with a slow grin. "Much."
Pat felt in his pocket, extracted a two-by-two photo and tossed it on the table. "Here's a passport telephoto of your boy Duval. You might want to know what he looks like."
I said thanks and Pat walked off. I looked at the picture, studying the ineptitude of some photographer. The telephoto process and subsequent reproduction had modified the features, taking out the sharpness of the original photo, but Duval was still distinguishable. He was a tanned face with nothing spectacular about him until you saw the eyes and the innate savagery that lay behind them.
Chapter 10
The curb in front of the hotel on Park Avenue was lined with limousines. Photographers roamed the sidewalks, picking their way through the curious, trying for a spot to snap the greats of the international set for their society pages.
Most of the cars were chauffeur-driven, and pulled away after discharging their passengers, but another group bearing DPL plates parked wherever they wanted to, insolently occupying the space in the no-parking zones. Two mounted cops on horseback disgustedly ignored them and concentrated on keeping traffic moving the best they could.
I got out of my cab and went into the lobby past one of the photographers who looked at me uncertainly a second before he spotted someone he was sure of. I stood in line, checked my hat and coat, then drifted off looking for Dulcie. From any side except the front, most of the males were indistinguishable in their identical tuxedos, but the women stood out in the plumage and I wondered what the hell ever happened to the order of things. In nature, the males wore the gaudy colors and the females were the drab ones.
You could tell the pecking order of this barnyard by the preferential treatment accorded the greater luminaries. They were fawned upon, deferred to and waited on incessantly, always surrounded by their retinue. The babble of sound was punctuated by foreign tongues and the shrill laughter of the women, stuffy animals who strutted for the benefit of anyone who would look.
This is society, I thought. Brother.
Some of them had already formed their little coalitions and were drifting toward the elevators, deep in conversation, the women trailing behind them, their attitudes artificial, their posturing inane. There were some who had the earmarks of complacency and I figured them for either the genuine articles, born to build and control empires, or those who just didn't give a damn.
A couple of times I caught sight of myself in one of the mirrors and I looked uncomfortably out of place. Twice, men I cased as security personnel went by and we nodded imperceptibly. I was being taken for one of their own and their eyes didn't miss the way the jacket was tailored to conceal a gun or the mark of the professional any more than my own did.
At seven-thirty Dulcie arrived with several others, made her rounds of formal cheek-kissing and handshaking, but all the while searched the faces around her for me. I waved, let her get done with it all, check her wrap, then walked over trying not to grin like an idiotic schoolkid.
Dulcie wasn't the peacock type at all. Her gown was a black sheath that fitted as though there was nothing beneath it at all. Her hair was up in a mass of soft waves with lights bouncing off the silver accents like an electrical display. There was a diamond necklace at her throat and a thin diamond bracelet watch on her wrist.
But she was the most striking thing there.
I said, "Hello, beautiful."
Her fingers grabbed my hand and she tilted her head back and laughed softly. "That's not a proper society salutation, big man."
"It was the only thing I could think of."
"You did fine," she said and squeezed my fingers. "I like." She ran her eyes up and down me and said with approval, "You make quite a figure in that tux."
"Only for you, baby. I'm not a clothes horse."
"That's what I thought. I was afraid you might not come."
"Wouldn't miss it for the world. I could use exposure to some of the nicer things in life."
Dulcie threw me a tilted glance. "Don't expect too much. Some of these people come from strange corners of the world. It's still rough out there." She hooked her arm under mine. "Shall we go up to the Flamingo Room?"
"That's what we came for," I said. We started in the direction of the elevators, mingling with the others. While we waited I asked her, "Any thing new on Gates?"
"No. One of the other boys took over his appointments. He's left quite a gap in things. Mike...what do you think happened to him?"
"If I knew I'd be making him spill his guts out. He's got himself in some kind of bind and is riding it out."
"I went to the trouble of calling the agencies who give him assignments. He isn't out on any of theirs. What he had to do was either for us or for himself in his own studio. One of his friends had a key to his apartment and inventoried his equipment. He didn't take anything with him at all."
"He won't get far."
Dulcie shook her head, her face thoughtful. "I don't know. Matt Prince, who does our developing and Teddy were pretty close. He said Teddy kept a lot of money in his office desk. It isn't there now."
"How much?"
"Over a thousand dollars. He was always buying new cameras or lenses. Matt said Teddy never worried about leaving it around. He had plenty of money anyway."
"He could go a long way on a grand."
The elevator came before she could answer me and we stepped back in the car. Going up Dulcie introduced me to a few of the others there who looked at me strangely, not sure who I could be, but certain I must have some importance since I was with her.
The Flamingo Room was a burst of color and noise when we walked into it, a montage of patterns made up of people in motion, under the flags of all the nations that dangled from the ceiling, waving in idle motion under the pressure of some unseen breeze. An orchestra was at the rear, varying its selections to suit every national taste, and tables were arranged around the sides piled with delicacies from countless countries. Champagne corks popped constantly and the clink of hundreds of glasses punctuated the hum of voices.
"What ever happened to the poverty program?" I asked her.
She poked me and said, "Hush!" with a stifled laugh.
Dulcie had an incredible memory for names, even the tongue twisters. She mingled easily, the right words always ready, her capacity for pleasing others absolutely incredible. More than one man looked at me enviously for being her escort, trying to catalogue me in their minds.
When I had to, I could play the game too. It didn't come as easily and began to wear thin after the first hour. I hadn't come to hobnob and Dulcie sensed my irritation and suggested a cocktail at the bar.
We had just started toward it when Dulcie said casually, "There's Belar Ris," and swerved toward one corner of the room where three men were grouped, talking.
One dog can always tell another dog. They can see them, smell them or hear them, but they never mistake them for anything but another dog. They can be of any size, shape or color, but a dog is a dog to a dog.
Belar Ris stood with his back angled to the wall. To an indifferent observer he was simply in idle conversation, but it wasn't like that at all. This was an instinctive gesture of survival, being in constant readiness for an attack. His head didn't turn and his eyes didn't seem to move, but I knew he saw us. I could feel the hackles on the back of my neck stiffening and knew he felt the same way.