“I understand. I made a mistake. I just want my daughter back.”
The phone went dead.
“You’re pathetic,” Cheryl said. “Like some kid stopped by a highway patrolman. Totally submissive.”
“You know all about that, don’t you? Submission.”
She shrugged. “So he smacks me around sometimes. You never smacked your wife?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
Will saw no point in arguing. “Those bruises weren’t caused by a couple of smacks. I see signs of systematic abuse.”
“You don’t argue with your wife?”
“We argue. We don’t hit each other. What did you and Joe argue about last? Was it about going through with this kidnapping?”
“Hell no. We’ve done this lots of times.”
“Maybe you’re tired of it.” He let that simmer for a few moments. “I can see how you would be. Realizing how much pain you’re putting people through. Especially the kids.”
She looked away. “Talk all you want. You know what I was doing before Joe found me?”
“What?”
“I was a bar girl in a truck stop. A full-service bar girl.”
“You mean like-”
“Yeah, like that.”
“How did you end up there?”
“You sound like some frat-boy john. ‘Oh, Cheryl, you’re so sweet, how’d ever you end up doing this?’ Well, I ain’t blaming nobody. My stepfather, maybe, but he’s dead now. My mother had it worse than I did.”
“Being a whore is a lot more respectable than what you’re doing now.”
“You ever been a whore?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know. Every time I see a hooker in a movie, I want to throw something at the screen. When I saw Pretty Woman, I wanted to puke. You know the part in that movie when Richard Gere’s friend tries to make Julia Roberts do him? The guy from Seinfeld? It’s like the only uncomfortable part of that whole movie.”
“I remember.”
“That’s what being in the life is like all the time. Except no movie star busts in to save you from his friend. He probably bought you for his friend.” Her eyes burned into Will’s with disturbing intensity. “Think about sitting somewhere all day, all night, available to any scummy, shit-breath, disease-ridden son of a bitch who walks in the door with the price of admission. That’s being a hooker.”
“You didn’t have any choice about clients?”
“Clients?” She barked a little laugh. “I wasn’t a lawyer, okay? It’s johns. And, no, I didn’t have any choice. ’Cause if I said no, I didn’t get the good thing.”
“The good thing. Cocaine?”
“My pimp used to say we were just trading crack for crack.”
“Joe got you out of that life?”
“That’s right. He got me clean. It was the hardest thing either of us ever did. So, if you think you’re gonna talk me into betraying him, or bribe me into it, think again. If he smacks me around now and then, you think I care?”
“Yes, I do. Because you know that’s not love. You don’t owe Joe a life of servitude because he got you off crack. You deserve to be as happy as anybody else.”
She shook her head like someone listening to a salesman. “My stepfather always said everybody gets what they deserve.”
“He sounds like an asshole.”
A bitter laugh. “You got that right. You ever go to a hooker?”
“No.”
“What guy admits it, right? I believe you, though. You’re one of those one-in-a-million guys who were meant to be husbands, aren’t you?”
“And fathers.”
She winced.
“You never had a child of your own?” Will asked.
“I’m not talking about that.”
“Why not?”
“Let’s just say I’ve been pregnant enough times that I can’t have kids.”
What did that mean? Multiple abortions? One bad one? “Are you sure? I was an obstetrician before I was an anesthesiologist. There are lots of new therapies for-”
“Don’t ask me any more about it,” Cheryl said in a desolate voice.
“All right.”
He turned and walked over to the picture window. There wasn’t much moon over the gulf. It was hard to see where the dark water ended and the sky began. Far below him, the lighted blue swimming pool undulated at the center of the plaza, with the paler Jacuzzi beside it. To his right lay the marina, with its stylized lighthouse and million-dollar cabin cruisers. A few bright stars shone high in the sky, but the glare from the casino sign drowned the rest. Changing focus, he saw Cheryl reflected in the glass, sitting on the bed with the gun in her lap, looking as lost as anyone he’d ever seen. He spoke without turning.
“I don’t want to beat a dead horse here. And I don’t want to pry. But I would really like to know how you ended up in prostitution. I mean, you just don’t look like one. You look too fresh. You’re beautiful, for God’s sake. How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
“How old is Joe?”
“Fifty.”
Twenty-four years’ difference. “Where are you from?”
Cheryl sighed. “Do we have to play Twenty Questions?”
“What else is there to do?”
“I could use a drink.”
Will walked over to the phone.
“What are you doing?” she asked, laying a hand on the gun.
“Ordering you a drink. What do you like?”
She looked suspicious. “I guess it won’t hurt anything. I like rum and Coke.”
He called room service and ordered a bottle of Bacardi, a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, and a pot of tea for himself.
“You English or something?” asked Cheryl.
“I just like tea.” What he wanted was caffeine, enough to get him through whatever was going to be required of him in the next twelve hours. He needed a pain pill, too, for his joints, but he wasn’t going to take anything that might dull his mind. He needed his edge tonight.
“So, where are you from?” he asked again.
“Nowhere. Everywhere.”
“What does that mean?”
“My dad was in the army. We moved a lot when I was a little girl.”
“My wife grew up the same way. Moving from base to base.”
She gave him a skeptical look. “I doubt much was the same about it. She was probably the colonel’s daughter or something.”
“No. Her father was a master sergeant.”
“Yeah? My father was a captain. Or so I’m told. He screwed up some way, so they never let him go to Vietnam. He took it out on my mom for one too many years, and she finally left him. We went back to her hometown, little nothing of a place in Marion County. Then she hooked up with my stepfather.” Cheryl’s eyes
