walked out through the kitchen, concentrating her attention on the simple act of walking steadily. She said good night to the kitchen staff with a nervous smile; she came around the back of the hotel and swept the parking lot with a quick, frightened glance. No one was in sight. She hurried to her car and got in, and had to sit there motionless before she summoned the strength to start the car. Her nerves twanged with taut-drawn vibration; a red pulse thudded in her eyes. She shot out of the parking lot and drove fast through the back streets, taking a dark route home, knowing enough to choose the deserted streets so that she could see if she was being followed.
No one tailed her. She began to feel more calm; driving the last ten blocks, she was deciding exactly what things to pack and what things to leave behind. She pulled into the driveway of the little stucco house, switched off the headlights, and got out of the car, and for a moment stood by the spiked yucca plant in the dusty front yard to look both ways along the street. All the parked cars in sight were familiar. It was three in the morning; there were no pedestrians abroad. Presently she went up the gravel walkway, unlocked the front door, and went into the dark house. She flicked the living-room wall switch; the light came on, she turned into the room, and saw the tall young man with the hard arrogant face sitting in the armchair, smiling coolly.
She stood perfectly still. Her heart crashed alarmingly. She felt faint with dread, tightened her muscles against it, gave him a stare as cool and hard as his own, not wanting to give anything away.
He seemed in no hurry to speak. Finally, broken by the silence, she breathed, “How did you get here?” and realized immediately it was a stupid thing to say.
“Rocco dropped me off,” he replied in a reasonable, resonant voice. “Which is why you didn’t see a strange car outside. Take it easy, Rocco’s not here.”
“How did you find this place?”
“I own a piece of the hotel. It was no trick to find out where you lived.”
She took a deep breath. “All right. What do you want?”
“Easy-gentle down. Why don’t you have a drink?”
“I don’t want a drink. What do you want of me?”
“You’re lovely,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard the question. “You’ll have to study voice modulation, of course- that hill-country twang won’t do. You’ll need to learn how to walk and turn like a model, how to smile and pose. How to do things in bed. Or do you already know that much?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I bought you from Rocco,” he said. “You belong to me now.”
She stared at him, full of bewildered dread. She had to put a hand against the wall to steady herself.
He crossed his legs and selected a cigarette from a silver case. “I’ll explain it very clearly, just once,” he said, “so that you’ll never need to ask questions. Pay attention.”
She watched him with terrified fascination. “I hope you start making sense,” she said, fighting back the impulse to scream.
He said, “You’re going by the name of Carol McCloud now. It’s not the name you started out with. You were Minnie Jackson until you got married, and that made you Minnie Bragg. Floyd Bragg was into the loan sharks in Miami-Rocco claims he carried Floyd longer than his mother did. You and Floyd ran out on Floyd’s debts, which is always a mistake, particularly when you’re dealing with people like the crowd Rocco works for. You dropped out of sight for a while, but then Floyd killed a man in New Mexico. The police found his fingerprints all over the tire iron. The alarm went out, and Rocco’s people came in on it. It wasn’t too hard to trace you two from there-it was mainly a question whether the police or Rocco and his friends would find you first. I won’t bother with the rest of it-I’ve only gone over this much of it to convince you I do have all the facts, I’m not just bluffing.”
“Go ahead,” she said in a thin voice. “You’ve got the floor.”
He said, “You were in that gas station with Floyd when he killed the owner. How much do you know about criminal law? If you’re involved in a crime like robbery, and somebody gets killed in the process, all parties to the lesser crime are equally guilty of felony murder, no matter who did the actual killing. Do I make it clear to you? There’s still a warrant out on Minnie Bragg for first-degree murder, they still have the mandatory death penalty for felony murder in New Mexico, and there’s no statute of limitations on a charge of murder. You’ll never get off the hook, Minnie-your head’s on that chopping block for the rest of your life. That’s why Rocco isn’t here-you can’t threaten him, not without admitting who you are and going back to Albuquerque to stand trial for murder.”
She whispered, “I wasn’t even there.”
“Where?”
“When he killed the man. I wasn’t there.”
“Legally it doesn’t matter. Get that through your head-you shared in the proceeds of the robbery. That’s all it takes to prove you’re guilty of felony murder. They don’t even have to prove whether you were there or not.”
“How do I know you’re not lying?”
“Call a lawyer. Go down to the library in the morning and look it up. Ask somebody you trust. Do I look stupid enough to lie to you about something you could verify that easily?”
His eyes were locked on hers; she felt her face flaming. She looked away. “What do you want of me? Who are you?”
“My name is Mason Villiers.”
The greater part of communication between people, she had learned, was nonverbal. It was in gestures and expressions, postures and physical movements; in the tone of a voice, even in the pace and depth of a person’s breathing, the pinched-artery throb of a crossed leg, the way he moved his hands through his hair-things seen and absorbed, even if not recognized consciously for the signals they were.
What made it impossible to detect Mason Villiers’ emotions was not his choice of words, the carelessly insulting diction, or the sometimes brutal impersonality of his sentences, but rather the control he exercised over all his physical responses. He let no clues escape. Rarely was he caught off guard; rarely were his reactions not studied and deliberate. Even his rages were not genuine: they were calculated for their effects. Sometimes he appeared to inflict outrageous insults on people just to see what the response might be.
Trying to understand him was like trying to hit him-something she did just once. Her fist cracked against the taut muscles and stopped cold, penetrating no farther, doing no damage, achieving nothing except to make him laugh at her.
He bedded her often, sometimes with drive and fury, but no one could have called it making love; sex was like food to him-something to nourish physical needs, not emotional ones-and if it gave him pleasure he made no indication of it. She was never sure how he really felt about her, if in fact he had feelings about her at all. She was useful to him, that was all: useful with men from whom he needed favors, men to whom he owed favors, men he wanted to control with infrared photographs. He told her once that the world was filled with women of glamour and beauty but she had something unique: “You make them think of Marlene Dietrich,” he said. “Call it mystery.” There were stag parties in expensive hotels. There were weekends for which johns paid fortunes. Three thousand dollars for a six-day cruise. Villiers never bought her gifts that were not part of the role he created for her, and he never paid her except in clothes, books, coiffures, training in voice and body movement-none of it given personally. He made her pay her own way from the start; he made it clear he was not going to keep her.
She became wholly professional about it. For her it wasn’t hard, she didn’t have to learn that most toads were not Prince Charmings in camouflage, they were just toads. She studied Villiers and by emulating him taught herself to close her mind to all feelings when she went through the ritual stag body grinds, pulling her dress slowly over her head until her breasts popped out, servicing panting drunks with no more feelings about it than she would have devoted to the act of feeding pigs at a trough. She invented an elaborate litany of self-justification (It pays well; everybody sells himself for something; what harm in taking a sucker if that’s what he wants? Might as well get paid for what you’d give away anyway.) but she soon discovered that all these rationalizations were part of the standard lexicon of every prostitute. Every whore had an excuse. After she learned that, she stopped trying to defend herself. No apologies necessary, thank you very much. Perhaps there was something wrong with her. Her conscience didn’t trouble her; she wanted only to be safe-she just didn’t want to be caught and sent back to Albuquerque. Whatever it took to ensure that, she would do. She became neat, calm, careful. She prepared for the worst; it was possible some freak accident could happen someday, someone would find her out, New Mexico would extradite her. Not likely, perhaps, but possible. With that in mind, she had made plans accordingly. Over the years she had set aside a growing emergency hoard, though it hadn’t been easy. Her high prices had to include the expenses of a considerable overhead-the grease sheet: bell captain, house dick, elevator boys, the cop on the beat, the precinct captain, two assistant district attorneys; and the weekly medical checkup, clothes, high rent. But she
