Was it possible the door was unlocked? I went to try it, but before I reached it, it opened. A young man came in, carrying a tray of food. He didn’t seem to be armed.
“Hello. Dinner time.” He set the tray on the bed and then went into the bathroom, and returned with a small folding table. He uncovered the tray and there were two of everything. Bowls of chili, bottles of beer, utensils.
“I take it you’ll be my companion for dinner?”
“Your companion for everything. I’m supposed to keep an eye on you.”
“I thought this place was escape-proof.”
He attacked his chili like a starved man. “It is. I’m supposed to prevent you from committing suicide, that’s all.”
“Suicide? God, what a crazy world.”
“Well, you have to admit it would screw things up.” He pinched open his beer, and then mine. “My name’s Kelly, Kelly Chantenay. You’re Mary? Or Marianne.”
“Neither. O’Hara.”
He nodded pleasantly and kept eating. I tried the chili and it was bland but palatable. “What do you do when you’re not preventing people from committing suicide?”
“I’m a bodyguard. Kelly Girl.”
“You were just rented for the occasion, then?”
“Most of us were. Except for that talkative cob who was down here with you, he’s Mr. Wallace’s regular body-guard. He’s a real joke, Two-Gun Pete. Americans.”
“Landreth Wallace isn’t a Nevadan?”
“No, he’s from Washington. The city.”
That was interesting. “He works for the government?”
“At the office they said he was a ‘financier,’ that’s all I know. Sounds like a Lobby to me. They’re all a bunch of crooks.”
I tried not to laugh with my mouth full. “Was your name Kelly before you went to work for Kelly Girls? Or did you change it to accommodate them?”
“I get a lot of kidding about that. I should have known when I signed up with them that everyone would call me Kelly Boy. I’m going to change my name to George.”
“They’ll still call you Kelly Boy.”
He laughed. “Well, it’s worth it. They’re the straightest outfit in town. And anyone who pays me two thousand dollars a day for sitting with a beautiful woman has my unswerving loyalty.”
Well, he was a gallant liar. “That’s a lot of money.”
“Union scale. But I kick back two hundred to the clerk who picked me, and another four hundred to the union, for each day. It’s still better than the States. I’d be paying more than half my income in taxes.”
We ate for a while. “Are you actually trained in preventing people from killing themselves?”
He shrugged. “A bodyguard has to know all kinds of things.”
“I could inhale a mouthful of chili.” Sure. “Choke myself.”
He pulled a knife out of his pocket, evidently sharp. “Tracheotomy.”
“Drown myself in the shower.”
“I’ll be sitting on the pot, watching. If you want to bathe with an audience, that is. You can go without; I won’t complain.”
“Speaking of going…”
“I’m afraid so. I have to be with you every minute.”
“That’s right. I could braid a rope out of toilet paper and hang myself.” Actually, he would probably be more embarrassed than I would. Violet told me that they have separate toilets for men and women here.
“You could flush yourself down the drain and escape,” he said, deadpan.
“What happens when you have to sleep? Crawl in with me?”
“I won’t sleep. Not for five or six days, with pills. If it goes longer than that, I can knock you out for twelve hours, painlessly. And I wouldn’t crawl in with you. The carpet’s soft.”
“The last man who knocked me out raped me. More than once, I think.”
“That’s terrible.” I told him about Winchell. “He’ll never get another job, I can guarantee that. You want him killed?”
“What, would you do it?”
“I’m no scab. But anybody in the Assassin’s Guild would do it for pocket change. They have a reputation to protect. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get to him in the hospital, just on principle.”
It seemed likely. All of my rapists the in hospitals.
He went on. “They shouldn’t let associates into their guild. It really waters it down. Americans are such animals, anyhow.”
“I know some nice ones.” Was I hearing this? From a Nevadan?
“For women your age, the second leading cause of death is murder after rape or sexual battery. They’re animals”
“Women never get raped or murdered in Nevada.” He said something in reply, but I didn’t hear it. The tranquilizer I’d taken on the floater was wearing off as fast as it had taken effect. Rising sense of helpless terror. I snatched up my bag and emptied it on the bed, grabbed the bottle of Klonexine.
My hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t get it open. I held it out to him. “Please. Open this goddamn thing for me.”
He studied the label for a maddening few seconds. “Open it!” I felt like grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. He figured out the top, pinched and turned, and handed it back to me. I shook out three capsules and washed them down with the dregs of my beer. Then I curled up on the bed and trembled and sobbed.
Then my head was on his lap and he was stroking my hair gently, trying to say reassuring things. I reached around and held him tightly, awkwardly, his belt buckle pleasantly cold against my forehead, and in a minute the triple dose hit me like a velvet club.
I woke up, groggy, to the sound of the cube: a news announcer had just said my own name. Kelly Boy was watching the program intently and hadn’t realized I’d awakened.
It was a good thing I’d overdosed on Klonexine. I was flattened out and didn’t come apart when I heard the details of Wallace’s terms.
They had twenty-four hours to come up with fifty million dollars. If they didn’t pay, one of my ears would be sent to the New New York Corporation at the Cape. Another twenty-four hours, the other ear. Then they would start on the fingers.
Kelly heard me sigh. “They didn’t tell you about that?”
“I guess it didn’t seem important.”
“Don’t worry. It won’t hurt” He fingered a penstick clipped to his pocket, evidently the thing he could use to knock me out “Just don’t look in a mirror until you can have it built back. I had the end of my nose shot off last year. It wasn’t so bad.”
“Fingers, though?”
“That would be pretty expensive,” he admitted. “Nothing like fifty million, though.”
I wondered who else was making that calculation. “How close are we to twenty-four hours?”
He checked his watch. “Another thirteen. You want a pill?”
“No. Is there anything around here to read? I really do hate the cube.”
He searched drawers but all he could come up with was a deck of cards. He taught me how to play gin rummy, and I had some talent at it. One thing Klonexine is good for is concentration. Nothing mattered but the cards. When breakfast came, nothing mattered but the scrambled eggs. Since there was nothing I could do about the situation, I kept myself thoroughly flattened out I deliberately did not keep track of time.
I was dozing when lunch came. The man who brought it looked vaguely familiar, from the back. He turned around and it was Jeff.
“New guy?” Kelly said.
“Right” Jeff set the tray on the table, reached inside his shirt and pulled out a laser.
“Don’t shoot him!” I said quickly.
Kelly raised his hands. “I’m not armed.”
“Is that true?” Jeff said. He didn’t look at me. He was frozen in a half crouch, holding the laser with both hands, aimed at the center of Kelly’s chest.