Page 51 of Long Way Down

He made ago onmotion, and she did.

To her knowledge, she was the first of the working girls here to deal with him. He’d shown up one night, late, just before close, hunkered down at the bar with a bulky coat despite the warm spring weather outside, hat pulled so low it was hard to get a good glimpse of his face. “I could tell he was white,” she said, “and he had big hands. Little bit of a beard trying to come in.” She touched her own chin in demonstration, sitting now with legs crossed casually, leaning forward, half-empty flute held loosely in her other hand. “I was gonna come up short on rent, so I wandered over to him. He gave me a bad feeling, but he had cash – let me see inside his wallet when he paid for drinks – so I thought ‘what the hell,’ and brought him up.”

“What do you mean by ‘bad feeling’?”

“Well, he wasn’t anything likeyou,” she said with a snort. “All pretty and smiling and looking like a snack.” For a moment, her gaze shifted. “You sure you don’t want a little something? You slip me a little something off-book and I’ll–”

“I’m sure.”

“Ugh, fine.” She rolled her eyes. “He wanted extras, I can tell you that. Everybody pays at the bar up front, but if you’ve got cash, we’ll all go the extra mile, you know? Like a tip.”

“Yeah. What extras did he want?”

“He’d paid for a blow job and once in the front. I came up here first, like I did with you, and got myself ready. When he knocked, he didn’t come all the way in. He said I had to turn the lights off. I didn’t like that.” She fidgeted, remembering, and sipped her drink. “Some guys are shy, yeah, but I like to be able to see what’s going on. Make sure they wrap it up and don’t try anything funny.”

“Understandable.”

“He said I had to turn the lights off or he’d go downstairs and tell Celia I’d tried to rob him. So I turned the lights off – there was still light coming in the window.” She nodded toward it, and he could see windows across the alley; rooms were so rarely dark in the city, flush as it was with ambient light. “He sat down on the end of the bed, where I am, and I got on my knees. It was all pretty standard. His cock was average, and he didn’t smell or anything. Put his hands in my hair but didn’t pull it. He made me stop before he came, and told me to get on the bed.”

She fidgeted again. “Things got…weird, after that.”

Once he was above her, she said, he took off his coat and wanted to put it over her face. She resisted. “It was bad enough without the lights, but I could still see a little. I could see part of his face. One of his eyes. The way he wasstaringat me…” She shuddered and drained the last of her champagne.

“What’d he look like?”

“Like a big white guy with a five o’clock shadow. Wore a beanie, so no idea what his hair looked like.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t pick him out of a crowd, if that’s what you’re thinking. Wouldn’t know him if he walked up to me on the street. But if he was staring at me like that again, I’d recognize him. Definitely.”

He got agitated when she refused to put the coat over her face, she said. But then he got out his wallet, and she could smell the money was fresh, crisp new bills straight from the ATM. He folded them up fat and stuffed them down her bra, and then she let him put the coat over her.

He was rough with her, but she was used to rough. “He was running his mouth, but a lot of them do. Lots of ‘oh yeah,’ and ‘fuck,’ and ‘take it, bitch.’ That kinda shit.”

He nodded.

“But this guy was saying the same thing over and over, and getting louder the whole time. He was shouting it at the end. ‘This one’s for you, Davey,’ over and over, the whole damn time. It was fuckingweird.”

“I bet.”

“Yeah, and then he got more money out and wanted in the back door.”

All told, she was with him for forty minutes. “There’s a clock over there in the closet,” she said, nodding toward a door by the window. “I check it before and after every client. He lasted longer than most,” she said with a humorless laugh. “It wasn’t rape,” she said, and was firm about it.

“Did you tell any of the other girls about it?”

“Oh, yeah. We talk about everybody. But I couldn’t give them a good description, you know? So Laila didn’t know it was him ‘til they were in the middle of things and he started callin’ out to whoever the fuck Davey is.” A beat, and she sobered. “He did get rough with her. Warned Celia, said none of us wanted to deal with him anymore. But Laila didn’t get a good look at him, either.

“But then he came in a third time, and Karlie knew what to look for. The hat and the jacket. She went upstairs with him, made him put the money over on the windowsill, and when he tried to choke her out, she stuck him with her little knife. Keeps it right here.” She plunged a finger down her cleavage. “We’re not supposed to have weapons. If word gets out that a guy gets shot or cut here, no one will come around anymore. But Karlie keeps her knife, and it saved her life that night, I truly believe.”

“Nobody’s seen him since?”

“Nah.”

“How bad did she cut him? Would he have needed to get stitches?”

She shrugged. “She said she stuck him in the middle somewhere.” She gestured across her waist. “On his left side – she’s right-handed.”

Pongo nodded and made a mental note. He doubted his ability to charm ER doctors in a bid for info, but Dixie’s best friend was a trauma surgeon; maybe she could come at it from that angle.

“What do you guys want with him?” Cordelia said, recapturing his attention – and surprising him a little, too. Her head was cocked and her gaze narrowed, assessing. “He owe the club money or something?”