“The only thing I heard was that she worked at The Lynx,” Tom said. “But I got that from one of the maids, so who knows.”
“What happened?” Dieter asked.
“Apparently the guest left her in his room and went out to party for a few hours. When he came back, she was dead. Couldn’t get much more. Anthony’s trying to keep a lid on it.” Anthony Staley was the owner and manager of the hotel.
“That won’t last long,” Carter said.
“Thanks for the tip,” I told Tom, meaning it.
There really wasn’t anything else to say, so Dieter and I headed back into the restaurant. We were barely through the door when Dieter stopped in his tracks.
“Aw, fuck,” he said.
I followed his gaze. Near the entrance several of the waitresses were gathered around another girl who looked like she’d just arrived. They all looked serious, and a couple were even beginning to cry. Out on the street, another girl ran by, headed for Jolly Jack’s. No one ever ran here. Not unless they had a really good reason.
The news was out, and within an hour, all of Fields would know. I don’t know how the girls did it, but they always had a way of finding out things they were better off not knowing. It was like a wildfire. We even had a name for it: The Bamboo Network.
That afternoon, it was in full swing.
While the network was great at spreading news quickly, it was lousy at reporting anything accurately. I heard all sorts of rumors and wild stories. At The Lounge that night, it was everything I could do to keep the girls calm. It got so bad I had the bartenders pass out two rounds of undiluted tequila shots just to take the edge off everyone.
One girl told me she heard that the dead girl had been murdered. “He hack her up,
Another said she heard it was two girls fighting over a guy. I also heard drug overdose, suicide, jealous Filipino boyfriend, slip in the shower and heart attack. One girl even said it was from too much boom-boom.
The same informal survey revealed it had happened in room 66, 68, 72, 45, 59, 17 and 23. The only thing that was common was that a girl was dead and it happened at the Las Palmas Hotel.
“I’ll never go there again,” Bell, one of my dancers, told me. “If a guy want to bar fine me and he staying at Las Palmas, I say no way.”
She wasn’t the only one to express this same thought. A few hours later, though, after several drinks, she said that maybe the Las Palmas was okay, but she’d never go to the room the girl died in. “Ghost,
This wasn’t the first time a bar girl had died in one of the hotels, and God knew it wouldn’t be the last. But every time the girls reacted as if it had never happened before, with panic, fear, vows to never set foot in such- and-such hotel again, vows to quit working the bars all together. Then a week later, maybe two, it was like nothing had happened. And within a month no one could even remember which hotel it had occurred in, let alone the room number.
For one night anyway, money had taken second place to something bigger, and none of the girls put much effort into getting bar fined. That was okay by me.
Near midnight, I noticed Isabel sitting alone in a booth near the back. I had Cathy make me two glasses of rum and Coke, then carried them across to where Isabel sat. I stood in front of the booth for several seconds before she looked up and noticed me.
“You okay?” I asked.
She smiled, but there wasn’t a lot behind it. I held up one of the glasses, and shook it a little so the ice jingled against the sides, then sat down beside her.
“For you,” I said as I handed the glass to her. “Cheers.” We clinked glasses, and took sips. Well, I took a sip. I don’t think Isabel did more than brush the rim with her lips.
“Back home, I don’t think I could ever afford a drink like this,” she said as she set the full glass on the small table in front of us.
“You miss home?” I asked. I guess I was trying to get her to replace one kind of grief with another. So much for my reputation as the psychiatrist of Fields Avenue.
“Sure,” she said. “Of course.”
“Tell me about it. Your home, I mean.”
She scoffed. “Too boring.”
“I want to know.”
She stared at me for several seconds, trying to determine if I was being serious. “Okay,” she finally said. “My parents have a little snack shop. It’s along a pretty busy highway. Some days we do okay, some days not.”
“What about your house?”
She laughed and gave me a look like I was not as smart as she thought I was. “We lived in the two rooms behind the shop.”
“Just you and your parents?”
Another laugh. “And my four brothers and two sisters and grandmother.”
“It sounds kind of crowded.”
“It is.”
“Did Mariella live near you?”
“No,” she said. “Her family moved closer to Manila when I was still a baby, I think.”
“You don’t know?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t meet her until I came here.”
“You’re kidding me.”
She shook her head, and we fell into silence. After several moments, Isabel said, “Do they know who she was yet?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The girl who died today. Do they know who she was?”
I unconsciously ran my hand across the stubble on my chin. “I haven’t heard anything yet. Do you think it might be someone you know?”
“No.” She looked around the room. “These are the only girls I know, and everyone’s here tonight.” She paused, then added, “Well, there’s Mariella. But I’m sure it’s not her.”
Mariella had moved on from The Lounge months earlier, but I didn’t think it was her, either.
“Do you think he killed her? The man she was with?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“How can she go home with someone who would kill her?”
“We don’t know he killed her. It could have been almost anything.”
“I know, but if he did?”
“Okay. If he did, maybe he doesn’t look like a killer.”
“I think I could tell.” She wasn’t really telling me so much as making a statement.
“Really?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. “In his eyes.”
“What if he loved her? A crime of passion.”
“If someone really loved me, they would never kill me.”
I was about to tell her there were many other ways to die from love that had nothing to do with breathing, but that wasn’t what she was really looking for. Once more our conversation ebbed, and we contented ourselves with sipping our drinks.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked once my glass was empty. There were other girls who needed attention, and I had already spent more time with Isabel than I should have. Of course, I always spent more time with Isabel than I should. I guess like with a favorite child, sometimes you couldn’t help yourself.
“I can’t help thinking how that girl has a family like mine somewhere,” she said. “And this week, instead of getting money from her, they’ll get her body.”
