almost normal.
'Paul, this is Abby,' she said when the call was answered.
'You still at Babylon?' Paul Travis asked.
'No, we've moved on. We've been bouncing from club to club all night.
She's starting to open up finally.'
'Talking about the client?'
'Yeah. She's angry, and she could mean business.
She keeps touching her purse in a way that makes me think she's got more than mascara inside.'
'If she's carrying, you better watch yourself.'
Abby smiled.
'I always do. Look, I have to get back to her. I'll update you at the next opportunity. Right now we're at a place on the Strip called Lizard Maiden.'
'Lizard Maiden?'
'They call it the Liz. Its just west of Bar One-'
'I know where it is. Its where he is.'
For a moment Abby couldn't process what Travis had said.
'What?'
'The client. He's there. At Lizard Maiden. He showed up a half hour ago. He's in the V.I.P Room, god damn it.'
'Bodyguards with him?'
'Two.'
'Get them on the phone and tell them we're Code Red. If there's a way to get him out of the club without being seen, have them do it. But don't let them move him into the main room, or Sheila may spot him. Got it?'
'I got it.'
'I'll stay close to her. Even if she sees the client, she won't try anything.'
'Make sure of it, Abby. Make damn sure.'
The call ended. Abby stuffed the phone back into her purse, next to the snub-nosed Smith.38 she carried when on the job.
Naturally Corbal was here. He had to be here, and not in some other club in another part of town.
'Of all the gin joints in all the world,' she muttered, leaving the alcove.
Still, it was no big problem. A complication, sure, but as long as she kept Sheila within arm's reach, nothing would happen. Sheila Rogers was twenty-two, anorexic ally thin, and highly intoxicated-no match for Abby in any kind of fight. If Sheila made a move for the gun in her purse, Abby could drop her simply by closing off the blood flow in the carotid arteries of the neck. She had done that sort of thing before, in similar circumstances.
She skirted the dance floor and approached the bar, and that was when she began to be afraid.
Sheila wasn't there. The stool she had been using was unoccupied.
This was bad.
Abby stood at the bar and signaled to the bartender.
He bared his teeth in a predatory smile when he saw her.
'Hey, sweet thing.'
She ignored this.
'Where's the woman I was sitting with?'
'Sheila?' His smile became a smirk.
'I think she went to visit a friend.'
Abby's heart sped up.
'What friend?'
He leaned close.
'Listen, forget about her. She's a loser anyway. You don't need to hang with her. I just wanted to get rid of her, so maybe you and me could get to know each other.'
'So you told her Devin Corbal is here?'
'How'd you know-'
'Never mind. Where's the V.I.P Room?'
'Sorry, you can't go in there. Celebs only. You know, I get off in a couple hours-' Abby reached out and grabbed his right wrist, applying painful pressure to the scaphoid bone below the ball of his thumb.
'Where is it?' she hissed.
The bartender paled.
'Around back,' he said through gritted teeth.
'That way.' He jerked his head to the left.
She released his wrist. He rubbed it, gasping.
'Jesus, lady, what the fuck's up with you?'
Abby barely heard him. She was already pushing through the crowded dance floor, praying she was not too late.
Sheila's pulse was roaring in her ears, and her eyes didn't seem to want to blink anymore, and there was a hot, crawling queasiness in her gut.
She knew what she had to do. She had rehearsed it, fantasized it, but in her fantasies she had never been shaking with fear, and her stomach hadn't bubbled like this, and the music hadn't been so loud, the dancing crowd so close and hot.
She had the gun. She was ready. She had to be ready.
He would be in the V.I.P Room. It was where he always went when he was here. He had taken her to that room one night. She remembered it well-a small ‹oom in the rear of the Liz, curtained off. A room without windows. A room that would offer no place for him to run or hide.
As she left the dance floor, she reached into her purse and withdrew a Llama.45, fully loaded, the safety off.
The V.I.P Room was just ahead, unmarked, screened off by a curtained doorway.
She would enter that room and shoot Devin Corbal right in his lying heart. Teach him a lesson for treating her like some whore. Show him she hadn't been kidding around when she warned him he'd be sorry.
Briefly she wished she had time for a hit of coke. She carried an insulin needle in her purse and a small bag of the white powder. She could duck into the rest room, mix the coke with water, draw it into the syringe, and then inject herself in the crook of her arm… But she knew that if she took the time to do that, she would lose her nerve.
She had to kill Devin now, before she thought about it too much. It was now or never.
'Now or never,' she muttered to herself, boosting her courage.
Go for it.
Sheila took a breath, then pushed through the curtains into the V.I.P Room, the gun leading her.
The room was empty.
Unfinished drinks were scattered around the tables.
Snack foods, still warm, lay on platters. Two chairs had been kicked back from the tables at awkward angles, as if whoever had been in here had departed in haste.
'They cleared him out,' Sheila whispered, piecing it together.
'He was in here and… they cleared him out.'
But he hadn't gone out via the dance floor to the front entrance. She would have seen him.
The back way, then.
She left the V.I.P Room and looked down the hall. At its far end was a dim, flickering exit sign.
Of course.
She ran down the hall, the din of dance music diminishing behind her, and pushed open a metal door.
She found herself at the top of a short flight of wooden steps descending into an alley. Her gaze took in the high brick walls, the sloping shoulders of the Hollywood Hills rising to the north, the haze of neon glare and smog that hid the stars, and, ten yards away, moving fast-Devin Corbal.
In the light from a billboard overhead she saw Devin clearly. He was tall and lean, dressed in an open
