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As for the ladies who worked the streets, however nervous they were, they weren’t ready to trust a badge.
“Tomorrow’s Wednesday,” Judd said helpfully.
“I know what the hell tomorrow is. Do you do anything but eat?”
Judd unwrapped another muffin. “I got low blood sugar. If we’re going to go back and look at the crime scene again, I need energy.”
“What you need is—” Alex broke off as he glanced past Judd’s profile and into the glaring lights of an all-night diner. He knew only one person with hair that shade of red. He began to swear, slowly, steadily, as he searched for a parking place.
“You really write for TV?” Rosalie asked.
Bess finished emptying a third container of nondairy product into her coffee. “That’s right.”
“I didn’t think you were a sister.” Interested as much in Bess as in the fifty dollars she’d been paid, Rosalie blew out smoke rings. “And you want to know what it’s like to turn tricks.”
“I want to know whatever you’re comfortable telling me.” Bess shoved her untouched coffee aside and leaned forward. “I’m not sitting in judgment or asking for confidences, Rosalie. I’d like your story, if you want to tell it. Or we can stick with generalities.”
“You figure you can find out what’s going on on the streets by putting on spandex and a wig, like you did the other night?”
“I found out a lot,” Bess said with a smile. “I found out it’s tough to stand in heels on concrete for hours at a time. That a woman has to lose her sense of self in order to do business. That you don’t look at the faces. The faces don’t matter—the money does. And what you do isn’t a matter of intimacy, not even a matter of sex—for you—but a matter of control.” She scooted her coffee back and took a sip. “Am I close?”
For a moment, Rosalie said nothing. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”
“Thanks. I’m always surprising people that way. Especially men.”
“Yeah.” For the first time, Rosalie smiled. Beneath the hard-edged cosmetics and the lines life had etched in her face, she was a striking woman, not yet thirty. “I’ll tell you this, girlfriend, the men who pay me see a body. They don’t see a mind. But I got a mind, and I got a plan. I’ve been on the streets five years. I ain’t going to be on them five more.”
“What are you going to do? What do you want to do?”
“When I get enough saved up, I’m going South. Going to get me a trailer in Florida, and a straight job. Maybe selling clothes. I look real fine in good clothes.” She crushed out her cigarette and lit another. “Lots of us have plans, but don’t make it. I will. I’m clean,” she said, and lifted her arms, turning them over. It took Bess a minute to realize Rosalie was saying she wasn’t a user. “One more year, I’m gone. Less than that, if I hook onto a regular john with money. Angie did.”
“Angie?” Bess flipped through her mental file. “Angie Horowitz? Isn’t that the woman who was murdered?”
“Yeah.” Rosalie moistened her lips before sucking in smoke. “She wasn’t careful. I’m always careful.”
“How can you be careful?”
“You keep yourself ready,” Rosalie told her. “Angie, she liked to drink. She’d talk a john into buying a bottle. That’s not being careful. And this guy, the rich one? He—”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Both Rosalie and Bess looked up. Standing beside the scarred table was a tall man with thin shoulders. There was a cheroot clamped between his teeth, and a diamond winked on his finger. His face was moon-pale, with furious blue eyes. His hair was nearly as white, and slicked back, ending in a short ponytail.
“I’m having me a cup of coffee and a smoke, Bobby,” Rosalie told him. But beneath the defiance, Bess recognized the trickle of fear.
“You get back on the street where you belong.”
“Excuse me.” Bess offered her best smile. “Bobby, is it?”
He cast his icy blue eyes on her. “You looking for work, sweetheart? I’ll tell you right now, I don’t tolerate any loafing.”
“Thank you, but no, I’m not looking. Rosalie was just helping me with a small problem.”
“She doesn’t solve anyone’s problems but mine.” He jerked his head toward the street. “Move it.”
Bess slid out of the booth but held her ground. “This is a public place, and we’re having a conversation.”
“You don’t talk to anybody I don’t tell you to talk to.” Bobby gave Rosalie a hard shove toward the door.
Bess didn’t think, simply reacted. If she detested anything, it was a bully. “Now just a damn minute.” She grabbed his sleeve. He rounded on her. Other patrons put on their blinders when he pushed her into the table. Bess came up, fists clenched, just as Alex slammed through the door.
“One move, Bobby,” he said tightly. “Just one move toward her.”
Bobby brushed at his sleeve and shrugged. “I just came in for a cup of coffee. Isn’t that right, Rosalie?”
“Yeah.” Rosalie closed her hand over the business card Bess had slipped her. “We were just having some coffee.”
But Alex’s eyes were all for Bess. She didn’t look pale and frightened. Her eyes were snapping, and her cheeks were flushed with fury. “Tell me you want to press charges.”
“I’m sorry.” With an effort, Bess relaxed her hands. “We were just having a conversation. Nice talking to you, Rosalie.”
“Sure.” She swaggered out, blowing smoke in Alex’s face for effect.
“Take off.”
Bobby moved his shoulders again, smirked. “The coffee’s lousy here, anyway.” He flicked a glance at Bess. “Next time, sweetheart.”
Alex waited ten humming seconds after the door swung shut. Without a word, he stalked over to Bess and grabbed her by the arm and hustled her out the door.
“Look, if this is a knight-in-shining-armor routine, I appreciate it, but I don’t need rescuing.”
“You need a straitjacket.”
With murder in his heart, he dragged her half a block.
“In the car,” he snapped, opening the back door of the patrol car.
“A cab would be—”
He swore, put a hand on her head and shoved her into the back seat.
Resigned, Bess settled back. “Hi, Judd,” she said as he took his place in the passenger seat in front. “How’s Holly?”
“Great, thanks.” He slanted a look toward his partner. “Ah, she really had a good time at your place.”
“I’m glad. We’ll have to do it again.” Alex whipped out into traffic with enough force to have her slamming back against the seat. Without missing a beat, Bess crossed her legs. “Am I allowed to ask where we’re going, or is this another bust?”
“I should be taking you to Bellevue, where you belong,” Alex responded. “But I’m taking you home.”
“Well, thanks for the lift.”
His eyes flashed to hers in the rearview mirror. Her face was still flushed, and her irises were a sharp enough jade to slice to the bone, but she looked more miffed than upset. Miffed, he thought with a snort. Stupid word. It fit her perfectly.
“You’re an idiot, McNee. And, like most idiots, you’re dangerous.”
“Oh, really?” She scooted up in the seat so that she could lean between him and Judd. “Just how do you figure that, smart guy?”
“Not only do you go back down to an area you have no business even knowing about—”
“Give me a break.”
“But,” he continued, “you sit there drinking coffee with a hooker, then pick a fight with her pimp. The kind of guy who’d as soon give a woman a black eye as wish her good-morning.”
Bess poked a finger at his shoulder. “I didn’t pick a fight with anyone, and if I had, it would be my business.”
“That’s why you’re an idiot.”
“Hey, Alex, ease off.”
“Keep out of this,” Alex and Bess snarled in unison.
“I’m not even here,” Judd mumbled, scooting down in his seat.
“It so happens I was conducting an interview.” Bess folded her arms on the seat so that she wouldn’t give in to the nasty urge to twist Alex’s ear. “In a public place,” she added. “And you had no right to come bursting in and ruining everything before I’d finished.”
“If I hadn’t come bursting in, babe, you’d have had your nose broken again.”
She scowled, wrinkling her undeniably crooked nose. “I can defend my nose, and anything else, just fine.”
“Yeah, anyone can see you’re a regular amazon. Ow!” He slapped at her hand and swore the air blue when she gave in and twisted his ear. “The minute I get you out of this car, I’m going to—”
“Uh, Alex?”
“I told you to keep out of it.”
“I’m out,” Judd assured him. “But you might want to take a look at the liquor store coming up at nine o’clock.”
Still steaming, Alex did, then let out a heavy sigh. “Perfect. This makes it perfect. Call it in.”
Bess watched, wide-eyed, as Judd radioed in an armed robbery in progress, gave their location and requested backup. Before she could shut her gaping mouth, Alex was swinging to the curb.
“You,” he said, stabbing a finger in her face. “Stay in the car, or I swear I’ll wring your neck.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Bess assured him after she managed to swallow the large ball of fear lodged in her throat. But before the words were out, he and Judd were out of the car and drawing their weapons.
He’d already forgotten her, she realized as she stared at his profile. Before he and Judd had crossed the street, he’d put on his cop’s mind and his cop’s face. She’d seen hundreds of actors try to emulate that particular look. Some came close, she realized, but this was the real thing. It wasn’t grim or fierce, but flat, almost blank.
Except for the eyes, she thought with a quick shudder. She’d had only one glimpse of his eyes, but it had been enough.
Life and death had been in them, and a potential for violence she would never have guessed at.
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