The Consummata

pencils, and one of those inspection team expressions was a guy to stay away from. In a hospital, just add a white lab-type coat, and watch everybody you pass get suddenly too busy to talk, finding only enough time to smile politely and scurry away on unknown business.

Watch out for the man with clipboard, people! What you don’t tell him, he can’t write down....

So there was no trouble getting to the right floor and the right room at Miami General. The police guard on the door was a sleepy-eyed kid of maybe twenty-three sitting on a folding chair. His head was down and he might have been napping when I approached and cleared my throat. His eyes popped open and his chin jutted upward.

In my most officious tone, I asked, “Has any unauthorized party tried to get in to see Miss Prosser?”

“N-no, sir,” he said, and began to get up.

I motioned for him to stay put. “Has she had any visitors this morning?”

“Just Sgt. Patterson of Homicide and Lt. Davis from Burglary. You’re, uh, with the hospital, sir?”

I glared at him. “You’re just getting around to asking me that?”

And I shook my head disgustedly and went into Tango’s room, shutting the door on the young cop’s sputtered apology.

Her eyes were closed. Possibly she was asleep, but in any case, breathing regularly, hooked up on an I.V., the shapely slenderness of her tall frame obvious under the sheet. Even battered and swollen and bandaged, her face held the striking exotic beauty that had allowed her to get out of her drunken father’s house—of course, she’d only traded it for a brothel, but still an improvement. Her bed was cranked up some-what, and her arms weren’t under the covers, her dark tan a stark contrast with the hospital gown and sheets.

As I approached the bed, her eyes half opened. “Doctor...?”

“No,” I said. “My name’s Morgan.”

Her eyes opened all the way, not quite startled, big dark brown pools. This was a lovely woman, all right, even after that bastard Halaquez had got through with her.

“You’re Bunny’s friend,” she said.

“Yes.” I gestured to the white lab coat, and tossed the clipboard onto her bedside table next to the water and Kleenex box. “This is just a get-up to avoid too many questions, coming to see you. How you doing, kid?”

She smiled. “I have a little button I can press when I want more morphine.”

Her mouth, even without lipstick, provided a wide, attractive frame for perfect teeth that must have come from God, because her old man surely hadn’t paid many dental bills.

“You been pushing the happy button much?”

Her laugh was just a little punch of air. “Now and then. I’m doing all right. Nothing was broken. But that Jaimie... he, uh...really knows how to hurt a girl’s feelings, huh?”

I leaned in. Spoke softly. “You prefer Tango or Theresa?”

“I feel more like Theresa right now.”

“Okay, Theresa. Did they tell you that Halaquez got away, but that his helper didn’t? That the helper got killed in a struggle there in your motel room?”

She nodded.

“Don’t spread it around,” I said, and risked a smile, “but I’m the guy who cluttered your room up with that trash. I wish I’d gotten there sooner. And your friend Jaimie slipped through my damn fingers, I’m not proud to say.”

“Jaimie was...was never my friend. I knew him from the Mandor, a little. I heard about him from other girls. I don’t go that route.”

“What route?”

“The bondage route. That’s Jaimie’s thing, you know. He wants to be hurt. Then later...he wants to hurt you. That’s what I hear, anyway, from my co-workers. He, uh...really does seem to know his way around torture.”

“Then why did you have his picture? It was in one of your purses in your room at the club.”

“Dickie gave that to me.”

“Dickie. Dick Best?”

She nodded. “He gave me that picture and said that if anything ever happened to him, give it to the police. I took it and said I would, but never did, or...haven’t yet. When I heard Dickie was dead, I was sorry...I cried. But I didn’t want to get involved any more than I already was.”

“But you recognized the picture.”

“Yes, only I didn’t tell Dickie. He might have misunderstood if he thought I knew Jaimie. Might’ve thought I’d been one of Jaimie’s girls at the Mandor, even though I wasn’t. You see, Dickie...he was different. He was...special.”

“How so, Theresa?”

“He was an older man, you know...he only wanted to protect me. Wanted me to go off with him and...and we would start over somewhere. Dickie was a very smart man. He was an inventor....”

“I know. Theresa, I have to ask this. You don’t really like men, do you? I have an idea you like women better.”

Her smile was a tiny white thing in the beautiful battered face. “I don’t like sex at all, Mr. Morgan.”

“Just ‘Morgan.’ Then why would you go into the sex-formoney trade?”

“Because it’s just that. A trade. I am a good-looking woman, or anyway I am when I’m not covered in bruises and burns. My looks, Morgan...they’re really all I’ve got. I’m not stupid, but I’m not smart.” The exotic face took on a sudden hard cast. “I’m a good-looking piece of ass, and so that’s the commodity I sell.”

“Is that how Dickie Best looked at you? As a good-looking piece of ass?”

Her smile disappeared. Her eyes moistened. “No. He said I was his...his poor little lost lamb.”

“Your relationship wasn’t sexual?”

“Not...not mostly sexual. Dickie, he...oh, he liked sex. We had sex sometimes. Mostly I just...I just used my hand. That seemed enough. He was more a friend to me. Someone I admired. Someone who was kind. Someone who loved me, but didn’t force me to do anything I didn’t want to.”

The decent father she never had, if you factored out the hand jobs.

“We were going to go off together,” she said. “Dickie said he already had a...his words were, ‘Decent amount of money.’ But he could get more. He said he thought he could...I don’t know exactly what this means, Morgan, but this is what he said...he said, ‘I think I can shake half a million out of them. Then we can go to Mexico and live like royalty.’ He said it was cheap to live in Mexico.”

“Do you have any idea who it was he planned to shake that money out of?”

“It must have been Jaimie Halaquez. Otherwise, why would Dickie leave me that picture? And why would Jaimie come to my motel room and...and do what he did?”

“What did Jaimie want from you?”

“He wanted to know everything that Dickie had said. I told him. I didn’t tell him about the photo because I thought that might get me killed. But I told him everything else. Only...that wasn’t enough. Jaimie was convinced that I had something, something valuable, something that Dickie had given me. But I didn’t. I don’t.”

“What was that valuable thing?”

“I don’t know!”

“When he worked you over, Theresa, didn’t Halaquez say what he was looking for?”

“No! Just...’Where is it?’ Over and over again...where is it! ”

The door opened and I turned, wondering if I’d been made, hoping that if it was cops, Crowley calling off the dogs included alerting the local canines that I was off the federal wanted list.

But it wasn’t a dog at all—it was a Bunny.

Funny to see her in a black-and-gray business suit, looking more like an officer at a bank than a whorehouse madam. Even all that blonde hair was pinned back in a dignified way, though there was no hiding the purple streaks.

“Morgan,” Bunny said, and rushed to my side. “How’s my girl doing?”