'What parties?' She lit another cigarette, beating me to the lighter. 'Skip it. I got two hands, same as you.'
'The private parties, bachelor parties, whatever they are. Wherever Saffron and Amber went tonight.'
'There aren't any parties tonight,' she said. 'They're scheduled days in advance, and it's my turn.'
My stomach tightened. 'Oh, Jesus,' I said. 'Oh, Jesus Christ. Hold on a minute, will you?'
I got up, feeling more of the vodka than I had anticipated, and lurched toward the hallway. I opened the door, careened down the hall, and threw the bolts between me and the parking lot. Toby's Maserati was gone.
I stood there like one of Faulkner's idiots, like Big John outside the dressing room, staring slackly at the empty space until I heard someone behind me. Nana put a hand on my arm.
'The son of a bitch,' she said. 'He's taken both of them.'
Toby had engineered his climax.
5
'I owe y'all a ride home,' Nana said, plunking herself down next to me again. Half an hour had passed, she'd danced another three-song set, on my stage this time, and the club was still three-quarters empty. I was more bored by the sight of female flesh than I ever thought would have been possible. I don't think I could have gotten interested if one of the girls had unzipped her skin and stepped out of it.
I felt like a counterfeit twenty. I'd been given the job of watchdogging Toby Vane, and I'd flunked out twice on the first day. I tried to blame the vodka and failed. Stillman's check sagged heavy in my pocket. It was probably the weight of all those zeros.
'What time is it, anyway?' I said. 'You can't just walk out of here, can you?'
'I don't know why not,' she said in her incongruous drawl. 'If it were any slower, the place would start to decay. Anyway, Tiny better be nice to me. He knows Toby's my customer, and he set him up with Saffron and Amber.' She tossed her head and ran a hand through the long tangles of her hair. 'Besides,' she said, 'I'd like to see where you live. Never seen a detective's house before.'
'You won't tonight, either. All I need is a ride back to my car, over at Universal.'
'Well, that's just fine,' she said. 'I've never seen Universal, too.'
'I hope you enjoy parking lots.'
'I am a connoisseur of parking lots. I grew up next to a parking lot. My lifelong ambition is to have a small house by the side of a parking lot and be a friend to cars.'
'You could plant Volkswagens in the garden.'
'Chromeflowers and hubcap bouquets. Exhaust pipe trees.'
'Maybe a bubbling stream of gasoline meandering through it all, with a few front seats placed strategically here and there for contemplation.'
'I prefer backseats,' she said. 'Don't you?'
'Nana,' I said, 'or Cinnamon, or whatever I'm supposed to call you. .'
She gave her lower lip an experimental tug. 'Nana's okay.'
'Is it your real name?'
'I've got more names than I've got fingers. Nana's the name they gave me at the last place I danced. Hell, it's better than Cinnamon. Somebody calls me Cinnamon, I feel like an apple pie. And loosen up, okay? Nothing going to happen tonight. Between Saffron and Amber, if anyone gets beat up, it'll be Toby. Wouldn't that be nice?'
'Terrific,' I said. 'I'm not supposed to let that happen, either.'
'Oh, foop. He's got the weekend to get over it. That boy has the constitution of a Mack truck. Just set here a while and I'll go rub some fat on Tiny, and then we'll hit the road. By the time you get home you can call Toby and tell him what a dickhead he is. He'll be home, I promise. He's too cheap to take those two anywhere else.'
'Cheap?' I said. 'Gosh, he took you to McGinty's.'
'And that's the nicest place he ever took me. I'll bet you ten bucks that if you had dinner with him before you came here, you ate at McDonald's.'
'Drive-through,' I said. 'Do you want your ten now?'
'Keep it. We didn't shake on it. You want to know the truth? I don't think Toby's got a nickel. He makes the earth, and he spends the solar system.'
'But not on women.'
'Oh, no. On Toby. You've seen his house.'
'And so have you.'
She looked me straight in the eye. 'You already know that, and it's got nothing to do with you, so you don't have to say it. So far, I'm just somebody owes you a favor, right?'
I felt myself smile at her. 'Right,' I said.
'Then shut up and let me pay it back.' She smiled back at me. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say 'shut up.' '
'No problem,' I said.
'What I meant to say is stop acting like a drip.'
'That's better.'
'Well, you're not a drip, you're a nice guy, and Toby foxed you the first time out. Toby didn't fox people, he couldn't live, okay? Next time, he won't stand a chance.'
'Fine,' I said. 'You go talk to Tiny.'
Tiny was doing his Mount Everest imitation, looming whitely over the bar, his snow-capped peak rising in creased, pale-wrapped wrinkles of fat above his enormous waist, a lard avalanche waiting to happen. I wondered if his clothes were sewn from parachutes. Nana, whose entire outfit could have been cut from a single handkerchief with enough fabric left over to diaper a baby, went up to him languidly and put a slender hand on his arm. He glowered down at her and then, when he saw who she was, broke out into a paternal smile.
I knocked off the rest of the vodka. I'd no sooner put the glass down than Pepper plunked a full one in front of me. 'Compliments of the house,' she said, 'again.' She tossed a sympathetic glance at the girl on the stage and said, 'She can work her ass off, for all anyone cares. This has to be the deadest Friday night in history. Jesus, you'd think it was Tuesday.'
'Tuesday's usually bad?'
'It's so bad I don't work Tuesdays. You haven't been in here before.'
'No.' I handed her a five. 'That's for you.'
'I didn't think you had.' She dropped the five on her tray. 'You don't look like most of these sad sacks, sitting around sucking up their orange juice whenever they can yank their tongues out of the straw. You like Nana, huh?'
'How come all these free drinks? I gather that's not the usual policy.'
'And then some. Don't worry, there's a tab being kept somewhere. Toby told Tiny to keep you happy.'
'Happy?' I asked. 'In here?'
'Some folks manage. I guess it's all in what you expect out of life.'
Nana looked away from Tiny and toward us. She pursed her lips and then stuck out her tongue at Pepper.
'I think I just got a cue,' Pepper said. 'See you around, kid. Nana doesn't work on Thursdays. I do. It's like, you know, she's not here on Thursdays, but I am.'
'Oh, no.' I said. 'I have my DAR meetings on Thursdays.'
'DAR?'
'Daughters of the American Revolution. I'm one of the few male members.'
'Yeah, well, the male member is what it's all about,' she said. 'Thanks for the five.'
Over at the bar, Tiny reached down and benevolently patted Nana on her bare backside, and she headed toward us with a determined expression on her face. 'Got to take care of all these customers,' Pepper said
