distance service and colorful underwear. 'Wrong thing to say. Now I'm intrigued.'
'And I'm waiting for someone.'
'Lucky guy. What's he got that I haven't?'
'I don't know,' I said with a half smile. 'I haven't seen him in his underwear yet.'
He spread his hands and grinned. 'I have no secrets.'
'You have no shame.'
'No. But I always get the girl.'
I shook my head. 'Not this time, Ace.'
'Is this character giving you a hard time, Elle?'
I looked up to find Don Jade standing beside me with a martini in hand.
'No, I'm afraid I'm giving him a hard time,' I said.
'Or something,' Mr. Baseball said, bobbing his eyebrows. 'You're not waiting for this guy, are you?'
'As a matter of fact, yes.'
'Even after you've seen me in my underwear?'
'I like surprises. What can I say?'
'Say you'll ditch him later,' he said, rising. 'I'll be at the end of the bar.'
I watched him walk away, surprised at myself for enjoying the flirtation.
'Don't look so impressed,' Jade said, taking the empty seat. 'He's all hat and no cattle, as they say in Texas.'
'And how would you know that?'
He gave me a steady look that belied the drink in his hand. He was sober as a judge. 'You'd be surprised at the things I know, Elle.'
I sipped my tonic, wondering if he knew about me; wondering if Van Zandt had told him, or Trey, or if he had been left out of that loop on purpose.
'No, I don't think I would,' I said. 'I'm sure there isn't much that gets past you.'
'Not much.'
'Is that why you were with the detectives so long yesterday?' I asked. 'Because you had so much to tell them?'
'No, I'm afraid Jill's murder is a subject I don't know anything about at all. Do you?'
'Me? Not a thing. Should we ask someone else? Van Zandt is coming later. Shall we ask him? I have a feeling he could tell us some stories to make our hair stand on end.'
'It's not difficult to get someone to tell you a story, Elle,' Jade said.
'No. The hard part is getting them to tell the truth.'
'And that's what you're looking for? The truth?'
'You know what they say: the truth shall set you free.'
He sipped his martini and looked away at nothing. 'That all depends on who you are, doesn't it?'
T he girl was waiting under the back-door light. Her hair stood out around her head like a lion's mane. She wore black tights that clung to her long legs, and a denim jacket, and her mouth was painted dark. She was smoking a cigarette.
At least Van Zandt thought it was Avadon's girl. They never looked the same, these girls, away from the stables.
Van Zandt opened the car door and got out, wondering if he should simply lure her away from the building, shove her in the car, and go. But the threat of a possible witness coming out the back door of the bar was too big a risk. Even as he thought of it, the door opened and a large man stepped out under the light. He took a position there, feet apart, hands clasped in front of him. The girl glanced up at him, smiled bewitchingly, and said something in Russian.
Halfway between the car and the building, a sense of apprehension crawled over Van Zandt's skin. His step slowed. The big Russian had something in his hand. A gun perhaps.
Behind him, car doors opened and shoe soles scuffed the cracked concrete.
He'd made a terrible mistake, he thought. The girl was near enough that he could see she was looking at him and smiling wickedly. He turned to try to go back to the car. Three men stood in front of him, two built like plow horses standing on either side of a smaller man in a fine dark suit.
'Are you thinking you should not have come, Mr. Van Zandt?' the small man said.
Van Zandt looked down his nose. 'Do I know you?'
'No,' he said as his associates moved to take hold of Van Zandt, one on each arm. 'But perhaps you know my name. Kulak. Alexi Kulak.
D o you believe in karma, Elle?' Jade asked.
'God, no.'
Jade was still nursing his martini. I was on my second tonic and lime. A couple of cheap dates. We'd been sitting there fifteen minutes with no sign of Van Zandt.
'Why would I want to believe in that?' I asked.
'What goes around comes around.'
'For everyone? For me? No, thank you.'
'And what have you ever done that you'd have to pay for?'
'I killed a man once,' I confessed calmly, just to see the look on his face. It was probably the first time in a decade he'd been surprised. 'I'd rather not have that come back around on me.'
'You killed a man?' he asked, trying not to look astonished. 'Did he have it coming?'
'No. It was an accident-if you believe in accidents. How about you? Are you waiting for your past deeds to ambush you? Or are you hoping someone else will have their markers called in?'
He finished the martini as Susannah Atwood came in the room. 'Here's what I believe in, Elle,' he said. 'I believe in me, I believe in now, I believe in careful planning.'
I wanted to ask him if it had been in his plan for someone to murder Jill Morone and kidnap Erin Seabright. I wanted to ask him if it had been in his plan for Paris Montgomery to have an affair with Trey Hughes, but I had already lost his attention.
'My dinner companion has arrived,' he said, rising. He looked at me and smiled with a cross between amusement and bemusement. 'Thanks for the conversation, Elle. You're a fascinating person.'
'Good luck with your karma,' I said.
'And you with yours.'
As I watched him walk across the room, I wondered what had prompted his sudden philosophical turn. If he was an innocent man, was he thinking this sudden turn of twisted bad luck was payback for the things he'd gotten away with in his past? Or was he thinking what I was thinking? That there was no such thing as bad luck, that there are no accidents, no coincidences. If he was thinking someone was hanging a noose around his neck, who did he like for a candidate?
From the corner of my eye I could see the baseball player homing in on the seat Jade had vacated. I got up and left the room, my patience for flirtation worn thin. I wanted Van Zandt to show up for no other reason than to rub Dugan's and Armedgian's noses in my obvious usefulness.
I believed he would show. I believed he wouldn't be able to resist the opportunity to sit in a public place, relaxed and pleased with himself, conversing with someone who believed he was a murderer and couldn't do anything about it. The sense of power that would give him would be too intoxicating to pass up.
I wondered what his business of the evening entailed, if it had anything to do with the kidnapping. I wondered if he was the man in black Landry had described viciously beating Erin Seabright with a riding whip. Sick bastard. It wasn't hard to imagine him getting off on that kind of thing. Control was his game.
As I stood outside the front doors of The Players, I pictured him in prison, suffering the ultimate lack of control, every minute of his life dictated to him.
Karma. Maybe I wanted to believe in it after all.
T he beating wasn't the worst of it. The worst thing was knowing that when the beating was over, so too
