Pain Management

sprayed the interior with a little pocket flash, then pulled her head out and slammed the door.

I glanced toward the passenger window. Blank. Caught something moving up on my left side. I was about to stomp on out of there when I recognized her.

“I’m going to walk around the front of your car,” she said in my left ear. “So you can get a real good look at me in your headlights, okay?”

“Why?”

“So you’ll know what you’re passing up with all this talking stuff,” she said.

She dropped into the Caddy’s front bucket seat butt-first, taking her time about it. The orange hot pants were worthy of the name, but the “For Sale” tattoo I knew was underneath them doused any flame before it could flicker. She spun around to face me, crossing her fishnet-wrapped legs.

“Take the first right,” she said.

I flicked the lever into gear and pulled off, slow, my eyes on the dark street.

“Two more blocks, then watch for a red house on the left.”

“Yours?”

“Sure!” She laughed. “Just the driveway. And that’s a rental, understand?”

“Yep. Pretty slick. The cops can sweep the street, but off-road is off-limits. You pay by the night, or by the trick?”

“Why do you ask?”

“If it’s by the trick, whoever owns the house has to stay up and keep count.”

“You sound like you know the game.”

“Not me,” I assured her. “Is that it, coming up?”

“Yes. Just . . . what are you doing?”

“I feel more comfortable backing in, all right?”

“The customer’s always right.”

I reversed the Caddy and backed a little way into the driveway, just past the sidewalk. Then I killed the engine. The power door locks would work even without it running.

“Like I said,” I told her, “I just want to talk.”

“Whatever gets you there, honey.”

“It’s not like that. I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for someone. A girl. She might be—”

“I know,” she interrupted.

“How do you—?”

“We already talked about it, Mr. Hazard,” she said, pulling the midnight wig off her head and shaking out a short, tight mass of auburn curls.

“Well, if it isn’t the fake Peaches herself.”

“Surprised?”

“Yeah,” I lied. Age switches aren’t that big a deal for some women. Gem did it all the time, for her work. It’s easier for Asians-facing-Caucasians, but they aren’t the only ones who can pull it off. “You went to a lot of trouble for nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“The deal’s the same as I told you when you were playing teenager. Or are you playing grownup now?”

“I’m thirty-one,” she said, as if that was some kind of credential. “And I’ve got my own deal.”

“Which is?”

“What do you know about wires?” That one came out of left field, but it didn’t surprise me as much as her undoing the snaps on her blouse.

“Enough to know you need them in that bra,” I told her.

“Very funny,” she said. She shrugged out of the blouse and popped the clasp on the front of the black bra. Her heavy breasts gleamed creamy in the darkness. She slipped her arms out of the bra in a smooth fluid motion, and tossed it across the console into my lap. Then she raised her arms above her head. “See any place I could carry a recorder?” she asked me.

“Not from the waist up.”

“Help yourself,” she said, undoing the top of the hot pants.

“No thanks,” I told her.

“You’ll take my word for it?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to say anything the police couldn’t hear. You already know I’m not a trick. And I already knew you weren’t selling it.”

“And you knew that exactly how?”

“You’d be the first hooker I ever saw who didn’t carry something to put money in.”

“Maybe I put it in my—”

“No. You don’t. Besides that, it’s three in the morning. You’d have been out here for hours, but you smell like you just stepped out of a bubble bath.”

She was silent for a long minute. “I know some things about you, too,” she said, finally.

“Do you?”

“Yes. You do things for money.”

“That’s why they call it work.”

“I don’t mean just . . . this. Looking for the girl. Things.”

“What ‘things’ are you talking about?”

“Does it really matter? If the money’s right . . .”

“Sure, it matters. I would never do anything illegal.”

“Yeah, you’re just a model citizen, huh?” she whispered. “Want to give me back my bra?”

I handed it over, my thumb telling me I had been right about the underwire.

“Can I have one of your cigarettes now?”

I gave her one. She leaned over the console so I could light it for her. Her perfume reminded me of raw sugarcane.

“Thanks.”

I keyed the ignition enough to activate the electronics, zipped her window down.

She leaned back and enjoyed her smoke. Didn’t say a word all through it. “That was good,” she said, snapping the butt out her window into the darkness. “I haven’t had a Kool since the last time I was locked up.”

Sure. Nice of her to spell it all out for me. And in such big letters.

“Want me to take you back to where they’re waiting for you?” I asked her.

“Where would that be?”

“The Subaru.”

“Okay, then; who would that be?”

“I’m not following you.”

“No. I’ve been following you. For quite a while. In the Subaru. It’s mine. There’s no one in it now.”

I pulled alongside the sleek black car. She opened her door, turned to face me.

“This one’s on the house,” she said. “The girl’s not strolling. I can help you find her if she’s anywhere in Portland. You don’t believe me, ask around.”

“I already did that. And you didn’t come up aces . . . Peaches.”

She poked a finger into one of the thick bands at the top of her fishnets, took something out, and handed it to me. A poker chip, it felt like. “Ask again,” she said.

She got out, slammed the Caddy’s door closed with a well-padded hip, and climbed into the Subaru in one smooth motion.

I would have wondered about her leaving her car unlocked in that neighborhood, if I hadn’t seen the shadows shift in the front seat when we’d pulled up.

I’d imagined all kinds of exotic things for the little disk I’d been carrying around in my shirt pocket for a couple of hours. Embedded microchips, the female half of a set, maybe some mystical symbols to a