Even Bobby, slow though he might be, soon realized what she was doing. How could he not question where the extra money was coming from when he’d been in the business long enough to know how much the girls made in tips – and what they had to do to earn them? At first, when she’d explained it to him, Layla thought he was cool with it. Until the next night when she was out in the alley between sets, her back hard up against the rough stucco wall with some guy from out of town huffing sweat and beer into her unremarkable face.
One minute she was standing with her eyes tight shut, wondering how much longer the guy was going to last, and the next he was yanked away and she heard that dreadful crack of skulls.
Bobby hadn’t meant to kill him, she was sure of that. He just didn’t know his own strength, was all. Then it was his turn to panic and tremble, but Layla stayed ice cool. They wrapped the body in plastic and put it into the trunk of a borrowed car before driving it down to the Everglades. Bobby carried it out to a pool where the ‘gators gathered, and left it there for them to hide. Layla even went back a week later, just to check, but there was nothing left to find.
They stripped the guy before they dumped him, and struck lucky. He had a decent watch and a bulging wallet. It was a month before Layla had to put out against the stucco in the alley again.
How were they supposed to know he was connected to Venable? That the watch Bobby had pawned would lead Venable’s bone-breakers straight to them?
A month after the killing, Venable’s boys picked Bobby and Layla up from the bar and drove them out to some place by the docks. Bobby swore that Layla wasn’t in on it, that they should leave her alone, let her go. Swore blind that it was so. And eventually, they blinded him, just to make sure.
Layla thought she’d never get the sound of Bobby’s screaming out of her head as they’d tortured him into a confession of sorts. But even when they’d snapped his spine, left him broken and bleeding on that filthy concrete floor, Bobby had not said a word against Layla. And she, to her eternal shame, had been too terrified to confess her part in it all, as though that would make mockery of everything he’d gone through.
So, they’d left her. She was a waitress, a dancer, a hooker. A no-account nobody. Not worth the effort of a beating. Not worth the cost of a bullet.
Helpless as a baby, damaged beyond repair, Bobby went into some institution just north of Tampa and Layla took the bus up to see him every week for the first couple of months. But, gradually, getting on that bus got harder to do. It broke her heart to see him like that, to force the cheerful note into her voice.
Eventually, the bus left the terminal one morning and Layla wasn’t on it.
She’d cried for days. When she’d gotten word that Bobby had snuck a knife out of the dining hall, waited until it was quiet then slit his wrists under the blankets and quietly bled out into his mattress during the night, there had been no more tears left to fall.
Layla’s heart hardened to a shell. She’d let Bobby down while he was alive, but she could seek justice for him after he was dead. She heard things. That was one of the beauties of being invisible. People talked while she served them drinks, like she wasn’t there. Once Layla had longed to be noticeable, to be accepted. Now she made it her business simply to listen.
Of course, she knew she couldn’t go after Venable alone, so Layla had found another bruiser with no qualms about burying the bodies. And, once he’d had a taste of that spectacular body, he was hers.
Thad was younger than Bobby, sharper, neater, and when it came to killing he had the strike and the morals of a rattlesnake. Layla knew he’d do anything for her, right up until the time she tried to move on, and then he was likely to do anything to her instead.
Well, after tonight, she wouldn’t care.
She slipped out of the ballroom but instead of turning into the kitchen, this time she took the extra few strides to the French windows at the end of the corridor, furtively opened them a crack, then closed them again carefully so they didn’t latch.
By the time Layla returned to the ballroom, the canapés were not all she was holding. She’d detoured via the little cloakroom the girls had been given to change and store their bags. What she’d collected from hers she was holding flat in her right hand, hidden by the tray. A Beretta nine millimeter, hot most likely. As long as it worked, Layla didn’t care.
A few moments later someone stopped by her elbow and leaned close to examine the contents of the tray.
“Well hello, Cindy.” A man’s voice, a smile curving the sound of it. “And just what you got there, little lady?”
Thad, looking pretty nifty in the tux she’d made him rent. He bent over her tray while she explained the contents, making a big play over choosing between the caviar or the beef. And underneath, his other hand touched hers, and she slipped the Beretta into it.
“Well, thank you, sugar,” he said, taking a canapé with a flourish and slipping the gun inside his jacket with his other hand, like a magician. When the hand came out again, it was holding a snowy handkerchief, which he used to wipe his fingers and dab his mouth.
Layla had made him practise the move until it seemed so natural. Shame this was a one-time show. He would have made such a partner, someone she might just have been able to live her dreams with. If only he hadn’t had that cruel streak. If only he’d touched her heart the way Bobby had.
Poor crippled, blinded Bobby. Poor dead Bobby…
Ah well. Too late for regrets. Too late for much of anything, now.
Layla caught Thad’s eye as she made another round and he nodded, almost imperceptibly. She nodded back, the slightest inclination of her head, and turned away. As she did so she bumped deliberately into the arm of a man who’d been recounting some fishing tale and spread his hands broadly to lie about the size of his catch. He caught Layla’s tray and sent it flipping upwards. Layla caught it with the fast reflexes that came from years of waiting crowded tables amid careless diners. She managed to stop the contents crashing to the floor, but most of it ended up down the front of her blouse instead.
“Oh, I am so sorry, sir,” she said immediately, clutching the tray to her chest to prevent further spillage.
“No problem,” the man said, annoyed at having his story interrupted and oblivious to the fact it had been entirely his fault. He checked his own clothing. “No harm done.”
Layla managed to raise a smile and hurried out. Steve caught her halfway.
“What happened, honey?” he demanded. “Not like you to be so clumsy.”
Layla shrugged as best she could, still trying not to shed debris.
“Sorry, boss,” she said. “I’ve got a spare blouse in my bag. I’ll go change.”
“Okay, sweetheart, but make it snappy.” He let her move away a few strides, then called after her, “And if that’s caviar you’re wearing, it’ll come out of your pay, y’hear?”
Layla threw him a chastised glance over her shoulder that didn’t go deep enough to change her eyes, and hurried back to the little cloakroom.
She scraped the gunge off the front of her chest into the nearest trash, took off the blouse and threw that away, too, then rummaged through her bag for a clean one. This one was calculatedly lower cut and more revealing, but she didn’t think Steve would object too hard, even if he caught her wearing it.
She pulled out another skirt, too, even though there was nothing wrong with her old one. This was shorter than the last, showing several inches of long smooth thigh below the hem and, without undue vanity, she knew it would drag male eyes downwards, even as her newly exposed cleavage would drag them up again. With any luck, they’d go cross-eyed trying to look both places at once.
She swapped her false name badge over and took the cheap Makarov nine millimeter and a roll of duct tape out of her bag. She lifted one remarkable leg up onto the wooden bench and ran the duct tape around the top of her thigh, twice, to hold the nine in position, just out of sight. The pistol grip pointed downwards and she knew from hours in front of the mirror that she could yank the gun loose in a second.