Off the top of his head Dane could think of about twenty movies with the same plot. He started going through actresses, trying to remember which ones were blonde. He named a couple.
Screwing up his lips, Pepe tried to puzzle it out. “No, the one who got married to that director. He took a fall about four, five months ago, turned out he was a drug kingpin, selling mostly heroin and ecstasy. Laundered the money through his company. Something called Six-Guns Productions.”
“You remember all of that but not her name?”
“I got some kinda block.” It was a matter of ego now. Pepe refused to look down on the sheet. His lips moved while he tried out different titles. “Above… above… wait
It took him a minute but Dane finally remembered.
“Yeah, that's her! Anyway, you're due there before nine-thirty so get rolling. She's over on East 61st.” Finally, Pepe grabbed the paperwork and fumbled it over. Jesus, she must've really worked the pole. It made Dane want to stop in at a movie rental place, see if any of them were open this early.
“Any other instructions?”
“Try not to be smirky with her, eh? And brush your hair, you're an ambassador for the company here.”
Pepe grabbed Dane by the elbow, led him into the bathroom so he could watch him actually comb his hair, like he was prepping Dane for a blind date. Fran just stood there, smug and venomous, so sure that something bad was about to come down on Dane, and liking it.
These two were both starting to give him the creeps.
Dane grabbed the keys, headed for the garage, found his limo, and slid in behind the wheel. The engine growled with some real muscle.
The morning rush was on, so Dane stayed off the main highways and slipped through Queens to hook over to the 59th Street Bridge. Taxis kept blaring, mufflers off half the cars on the road, everything so loud it set his back teeth shaking. There was roadwork going on, of course, and one lane of the bottom level was closed off, but he managed to make pretty good time. He drew up to the address and spotted her in front of the building.
Glory Bishop.
She stood with the doorman, looking bored and a touch stifled, or maybe just burdened by renown. The doorman blew his whistle and motioned Dane to the curb, like he wouldn't have parked there anyway.
Designer sunglasses on but they weren't very dark. She had the slightly alarmed look of a beautiful woman who'd recently slipped out of her prime and was doing everything she could to get it back. She couldn't have been more than twenty-five, but there it was anyway. Something like fear in her eyes, but-no, he decided after a second, not really. More like an oppressed wariness and hip distaste.
The doorman danced around to the driver's window and knocked on the glass. Dane opened it and the guy leaned down with his full weight on the door. “Hey, listen up, buddy. You take good care of our Miss Bishop here. You drive careful and you don't stop off to run any of your own errands. She don't like smoke, so you don't smoke in the limo while she's in back. She likes old music, you know? From the seventies, so you put that on for her and nothing else. No news stations, she's got enough problems without having to listen to that. And don't blast the heat. You got that?”
“Get the fuck away from me,” Dane told him, and put up the window.
She got in back of the limo without a word, not even a nod of acknowledgment. Her titties were indeed serious. He tried to imagine her working the pole but couldn't do it. The doorman glared, his hands open and out like a cat getting ready to claw something. Dane gunned it, letting the tires squeal for a second, the way his father used to do in his cruiser.
Sometimes passengers liked to talk, sometimes they slept. Glory Bishop stared straight ahead through those shades that didn't really conceal her eyes. He could feel her disquiet starting to affect him.
Most of what he'd learned in the army and in the can about staying cool under pressure didn't seem to be working for him on the outside.
He couldn't get the image of Pepe's slow, scary smile out of his mind. Every time Dane caught a glimpse of his combed hair in the rearview it bothered him.
Down on the sheet Fran had written an address in Montauk. A one-way drop-off. Glory Bishop remained silent for over an hour, until they were on Sunrise Highway and heading past an endless array of strip malls. By then, his head was so loud with Angelina, Phil Guerra, and JoJo Tormino's dying confession of love that when Glory Bishop spoke, he nearly rocked in his seat.
“Are you a cop?” she asked.
He left it out there for a few seconds, then said, “That's your icebreaker?”
“You want to answer?”
The question didn't really surprise him. Pepe said her husband had taken a big drug fall a few months ago. The feds had probably been all over her. But why'd she wait so long to ask? “No.”
“No, you don't want to answer, or no, you're not a cop.”
“No, I'm not a cop.”
“A federal agent?”
“Wouldn't that qualify as a cop?” They were at the last light before the Brookhaven barrens, miles of tress still black and gnarled from a wildfire a few years back. Traffic was scarce out here this early in the morning, especially heading east off-season. “I mean, if you're asking because you think you're under surveillance?”
“I don't know, maybe.” Not taking it too seriously. Like she had nothing else to talk about, so why not this. “Anyway, are you either?”
“No.”
“How did you know I'd be thinking that?” She sat up a little straighter. “That perhaps I was under surveillance and asking for that reason?”
“My boss mentioned your situation. He's a fan.”
“What you're saying is he likes my tits.”
So it was going to be like that.
“He did mention your rack,” Dane told her. “In passing.”
Her chin firmed up and she waited a while before saying anything more. “I don't know if I'm paranoid or not paranoid enough. I've got to ask that of everybody I meet for the first time, that I have any contact with. If they're cops. What a way to start every conversation. The police have been tailing me for months.”
“I thought they already put your husband away.”
It made her half close her eyes, the ridges of her eyebrows coming down. “They think I was in it with him, like I'm one of those Colombian drug czar's wives that take over the empire when their husbands get shot.”
“But you're not?”
“No, I was stupid, I thought he was a good director. He was moving up to more lavish mansions even though, I found out later, his last three movies lost money. We were only married eight months when he was arrested. The lawyers start showing me this paperwork, all his tax shelters, his write-offs, the production company receipts. On paper he was in debt up to his eyes, but he's buying me four-carat chandelier necklaces and sable coats.”
“You can't be too mad at him then.”
“I was stupid.”
Dane didn't know why, but he believed her. She probably wasn't quite as unaware as she made out, but diamonds and cash had a way of fouling your vision. He said, “How long's it been?”
“Since they got him? Almost five months. They weren't satisfied just bringing him down and about twenty of his associates, from Beverly Hills to Bolivia. They think he was connected over here on the East Coast and they want to shake up the New York movie industry the way they did LA. They don't realize there's hardly any connection at all, it's two totally different worlds. Now they've got my apartment bugged.” She was getting more
