button again when the door swung inward. His first reaction to the vision before him was that he might have awakened a ghost.
The woman half hidden by the door wore dull platinum blonde hair that accented her apparently bloodless skin. The exposed arm was rail thin, and he could see her ribs through her silk dressing gown. Her makeup was smudged, as if it had been applied yesterday or maybe the day before but never washed off. Somewhere underneath the lipstick and mascara lay a pert nose, high cheekbones and full, pouting lips. If not for the bags under her eyes and her haggard expression she might have been beautiful. As it was, this pale specter gave him a chill. Judging from her bulging eyes and trembling lower lip, he scared her even more.
“Ms. LaPage?” Hannibal asked. The woman nodded. “My name is Hannibal Jones. May I come in for a moment?” Her light brown eyes looked around him as if she hoped someone was standing behind him. “I just want to speak with you for a moment.” She tried a tentative smile and Hannibal returned it.
“What’s this about?” she asked, with an accent Hannibal didn’t recognize.
“It’s about a man you know. Rod Mantooth.”
On hearing the name, Marquita stiffened and a series of emotions moved across her face too quickly for Hannibal to identify them individually. Surprise was certainly among them, and fear and something like resignation. Then she forced a bigger smile and tilted her head in a welcoming bow.
“Of course. Please come in, Mr. Jones.”
Marquita led him through a broad living room into a plush sitting room. White carpets appeared to cover the floors of the house everywhere Hannibal could see. The furniture was a soft cowhide and hand-rubbed maple. But dusting had been left too long undone, and the carpet had not been vacuumed in a while. The air conditioner labored more noisily than it should, as if it had not been serviced in months.
Marquita never spoke another word as she waved Hannibal onto a sofa in the sitting room and busied herself at the bar across the room. The sofa smelled of spilled bourbon, probably the same stuff Marquita was filling two tumblers with.
“You needn’t pour for me, ma’am,” Hannibal said. Marquita gave him a quizzical look, pushed the second glass aside, and tipped her head back to swallow half the contents of the first. Then she walked very slowly to stand in front of Hannibal, bowed low and smiled as seductively as she could. She was not quite steady on her feet, but she tried hard to sway her hips anyway.
“So, Hannibal eh? That’s rather an unusual name,” she said in what sounded almost like a French lilt to him, or like the Haitians he knew. “So what would you like, Hannibal? Maybe a little dance first? I dance well, they tell me. Or do you have a favorite game? Or perhaps you’d just like to go right to it?” Her arm rose with surprising grace toward the stairs.
Hannibal rose to his feet, his palms faced toward his hostess. “Look, I don’t think you understand.”
Marquita took two steps backward, her eyes darting from side to side, confusion or nervousness making her lick her lips. “Wait. What did I do? You can’t… I mean you have to at least tell me what I did wrong.”
Hannibal’s mouth became very dry and his stomach lurched. Marquita’s behavior was bringing back an ugly recent memory. “Oh my God. Did he do it to you too? Look, just sit down a minute.”
His voice must have been more menacing than he had intended, because Marquita dropped to her knees in apparent terror. Her back was straight, her legs spread wide, and he could see she wore nothing under her nightgown. Her head was raised, but her eyes would not look high enough to see his face. This must be a practiced pose, he thought. But he had to be sure.
“You know the rules, don’t you? Even after number three.”
Instantly she replied, “I trust my master. Above all else, my only desire is to please my master. I am always in complete submission to my master.”
He waved a hand, and Marquita stopped talking. She sat there on the floor, her feet on either side of her hips, looking almost straight ahead, as if waiting for instructions. As gently as he could, Hannibal grasped her upper arms and very slowly lifted her to her feet. Here skin was cold and clammy.
“Ms. LaPage. I know what you must think, but I’m not here as a friend of Rod Mantooth’s.”
Marquita’s eyes spent a few seconds trying to focus before she asked, “Master didn’t send you?”
“No, ma’am. I just wanted to ask you a few questions about him.”
“Then, you’re not like the others? He didn’t send you?”
“Others?” Hannibal asked. “Other men have come to see you?”
“Oh no.” Marquita’s face twisted into a strained expression that looked to Hannibal more ghastly than the faces he had seen on men who suffered violent deaths. “Oh my God no. You’re not one of them? And I just…” She was babbling, her face bright red with what he guessed must be shame. At least he knew that was what he would be feeling.
“Relax,” Hannibal said. “I’m not here to hurt you. You’re safe now.”
“Safe?’ Marquita said in a far away voice. “Look what I’ve become. How did I ever come to this? How can I be safe now, after what I’ve become?”
Hannibal thought she was about to break away from him, just before she passed out in his arms.
7
Standing and watching. Hannibal hated it. He hated the feeling of frustration and helplessness. He hated not being able to take action. Standing and watching was a role for someone else. But at that moment, it was all he could do.
Dr. Quincy Roberts stepped away from Marquita’s bed, watching her chest rise and fall with deep, slow breaths. He eased out of the room past Hannibal who stood in the doorway and softly closed the door after Roberts passed.
“Thank you again for coming,” Hannibal said, following Roberts to the living room.
“I’m not sure why I did.” Roberts was old enough to be Hannibal’s father, but even through his thick glasses one could still see a youthful gleam in his eye. In fact, his thick gray beard would have given him a Santa Clause look if his cheeks weren’t so pale. He wore a golf shirt and casual slacks with Docksiders. Hannibal wondered if he had called the man from his boat or the golf course.
“You came because you knew I was desperate,” Hannibal said, lowering himself to the sofa, “and because you knew you were needed.”
Roberts fished a pipe out of one pocket and a lighter out of another. “And perhaps because you saved one of my patients from being wrongly convicted of murder not long ago. I gave her a mild sedative to help her rest for a while. But that woman needs an internist as much as a psychiatrist. She’s in bad shape.”
Hannibal threw up his hands. “She was hysterical, man. When she passed out I figured the cause was more emotional than physical. Believe me, she’s been assaulted mentally and emotionally. But that’s not what you meant by her being in bad shape, was it? What kind of physical problems are we talking about?”
Roberts got his pipe lit and sucked on it hard a couple of times before speaking. “Well, for one thing she’s a little dehydrated. I suspect that’s from using alcohol in place of water. And I think she’s malnourished too.”
“There are lots of women that thin around here, doc.” Hannibal relaxed for the first time in an hour. It could have been the cherry scent of Roberts’ tobacco or Roberts’ own calming manner, but whatever the cause, his shoulders lowered and his breathing deepened. “And those problems sound pretty easy to fix. You just check her into a hospital for a day or two…”
“I can’t do that,” Roberts said. “And what did you mean, assaulted mentally? It looked to me like she was alone here.”
“She was when I arrived,” Hannibal said. “But she’s terrified of something, or someone.”
“A typical client of yours, if I remember.”
Hannibal sighed aloud. “She’s not my client, but I think she’s been abused by the same man who practically enslaved a client of mine. I’m looking for this guy, and she might be my best lead when she wakes up. She’s hysterical, and you said she’s in rough shape physically. That part’s probably all self-induced, right? So why can’t you admit her someplace safe?”
Roberts chuckled, pushing puffs of smoke out between his teeth. “She’s not my patient, my friend. She’s an
