He was glad he remembered the location of Rose’s place of employment because if he hadn’t had his eyes peeled once he reached the general vicinity he could have easily rode right by the establishment and been none the wiser.
It had been given a fresh coat of paint and had two large statues added outside of the nude female form. Also, a sign had been added:
COLD DRINKS, WARM TOUCH
The optimistic part of him was half-expecting to see Rose open the door to greet him. The pessimistic part expected to see a frown and hear some half-hearted lie such as, Rose? Don’t recall anyone by that name workin’ here, by a shifty bartender refusing to look him in the eye.
He had about $100,000 in hidden compartments in his coat, and the rest was in a secret compartment inside his horse’s saddle, which was secured to the animal by steel cables hidden within the leather that would thwart all but the most prepared thief.
He walked inside, and to his surprise the bartender seemed to recognize him immediately. It was no doubt due to overhearing through the grapevine that his cigar-smoking client was the brother of his fearsome boss.
“Cigar for you, sir?”
No, I want something taller and sweeter, he almost said, but instead approached the bar coyly.
In the softest voice he could muster while still being heard over the noise of the crowd he said, “Is Rose here?”
“Ha! You like that girl, now don’t ya?! Ha!” he said with a good-natured tone that removed any offense from the remarks.
“Yes, sir,” Tats said, seeing no reason to be either sly or hostile towards the old-timer. “But I’ve got money; it’s all professional.”
“Well, maybe I can interest you in Sarah or Heather over there,” he said with a crafty glance towards two gorgeous women seated about a dozen feet away. They caught the glance, and Tats knew if he wasn’t careful he’d have an easier time getting rid of sticky molasses than them.
He pulled a hundred-falon bill out of his left sleeve quicker than a veteran card cheat and pushed it forward.
“They look mighty fine, sir, but I am a man of a singular aim tonight,” Tats said firmly.
“Well,” said the old-timer raising his eyebrows, “she’s here, but she’s with somebody.”
A quick stab of jealousy in Tats’ heart was quickly repulsed by his intellect reminding him of her profession and of the lack of any relationship between them, and the two entities settled for a reluctant, and temporary, truce.
“Maybe he’d decide he’s got better things to do tonight if given the proper incentive,” Tats said, pushing a thousand-falon bill towards the bartender, who did not even see him pluck it from his sleeve.
“Weeeellll, it ain’t exactly protocol,” the rascal said with feigned reluctance.
“Are you forgetting who I’m related to?” Tats said with a menace in his voice and three more thousand-falon bills in his hand.
He looked hard into the bartender’s eyes and saw a gulp.
“Easy there, Mr. Havensford—I think what you’ve got in your hand could persuade him.”
Tats pushed the money over.
“Just one moment, sir.”
The bartender headed upstairs like a courier with an important package to deliver, and another bartender seemingly materialized out of nowhere.
“What will it be, mister?” he asked jovially.
“One of your finest cigars,” Tats said matter-of-factly, pushing forward a hundred-falon bill. “Keep the change.”
The bartender’s eyes grew several sizes before he said, “You betcha!” and hustled off towards a glass cabinet with a gold-plated lock.
He extracted a fine specimen and brought it over to Tats and had struck a match by the time Tats put it into his mouth.
Tats took a long draw, glad to have something to distract himself with while he awaited the results of the previous bartender’s bargaining powers.
Before he had begun to even fully savor the cigar, he saw the man practically hopping down the stairs as he came briskly towards Tats.
“Room 15, sir,” he said with a gleam in his eye.
Tats set the cigar on an ashtray and began walking upstairs.
On the way, he passed a rascally looking fellow in a hurry whose faced seemed to say, I better get out of here before they ask for that money back!
Tats was on no lazy stroll himself. He ascended the stairs as quickly as he could without becoming a spectacle, but he only counted two blinks before his legs gulped down the stairs and brought him to the second floor.
He began quickly walking down the hallway, minding the numbers as he went.
When he saw Room 15, he knocked.
“Who is it?” came the slightly nervous voice.
It was Rose.
Putting manners to the side, Tats opened up.
Rose was frantically putting makeup and perfume on.
“You know you don’t need that to look beautiful!” Tats said.
Rose turned, her saucer-like eyes revealing she didn’t expect him to be mysterious client who had just paid the equivalent of a week’s wages just to push her client out of the way.
Tats’ body was tingling with so much electricity he feared he just might zap her to death the second his fingertips touched her body.
Her saucer-like eyes quickly resumed the feisty look he had fallen for so quickly the first time he had seen her, and she said in a business-like fashion, “That money you paid all went to the client, at least the part Baldy didn’t pilfer.”
“That’s okay,” Tats said calmly. “How much will this get me?” he inquired in a business-like manner of his own, handing her $30,000.
Her eyes grew to dinner plates for a split second before she got her feistiness back, but this time it was of a much more playful nature.
“Whatever you want,” she said, looking at him with a challenge in her eye like a deadly female tiger daring its male suitor to test the waters and see if he is reading her signals properly or is on the verge of a stinging slash across the face.
The two launched themselves at each other with a passion Tats quickly assured himself could not have come from the money alone, although it wouldn’t have made a particularly large difference at the time.
Their clothes were off in the time it takes most people to kick off a shoe, and after that what ensued could be compared to a two-hour rodeo with little exaggeration.
When it was all done, Tats said, “How much do you normally make per week?”
Rose blushed, contemplating not whether to lie but by how much. He had already paid her about six times what she earned in a week.
“Why?”
“I might be in town for a few weeks.”
“It’s not wise to talk about what you can’t afford,” she said, trying to sound coy, but terrified he might lose interest.
“How about $100,000—half upfront, half at the end?”
Rose’s heart was beating really fast now. She had never met a client with a scintilla of his cash who was inclined to spend more than an hour or two’s worth on her.
“Don’t make fun of me,” she said, perhaps with only ten percent guile.
She heard some shuffling of papers but dared not turn and look.
“Does this look like a joke?” Tats asked.
She was looking at fifty crisp one-thousand falon bills.
She knew she better say yes before this fool regained his senses.
Casually, as if she had felt fifty such bills in her hand more times than she cared to remember, she said, “You have to provide the place, and I don’t room cheap.”
“You pick it,” Tats said, matter-of factly.
“I’ll have to hand a third of it over to the bartender,” she said, with a tone that said, I don’t suppose you care about that.
“I’ll take care of the bartender. What I gave you is yours and yours alone.”
Out of excuses, her fear now was only that she was going to fall for this man.
Chapt
er 34
That same evening, Tats and Rose shed the confines of the bar—he preferred that term over “whorehouse that serves alcohol”—and set off for the finest hotel in Sodorf City. It was a new building and still had significant additions underway.
Tats asked for the finest room and almost paid for all three weeks upfront, but his gut instinct insisted that, even for a man with money to burn, it might be best to start with a week and see if after that he and Rose still felt their special connection—or, more aptly put, whether he did—or if harsh words, misinterpreted tone, or just plain boredom would bring a crushing reality down upon them that she was nothing but a whore and he was nothing but a john.
“One week, ma’am,” Tats said, glad Rose was at least seemingly out of hearing distance admiring a fine painting on the wall.
Tats handed over $10,000 falons and was given a key in exchange.
A smiling bellhop appeared, asking to carry their luggage, and Tats reluctantly handed him his saddle, which still contained about $900,000. Tats watched him warily as he led him and Rose to their room, ready to pounce on him and pulverize him with his fists if he tried to act like a horse and run off with the saddle.
“Economy’s doing mighty well thanks to that gold mine!” the bellhop said good-naturedly.
Tats smiled politely but said nothing.
Rose felt she was living a kind of fairy tale. She felt she had the upper hand. Regardless of what happened with this man, she had already earned—well, already received—payments nearly equal to a third of her annual salary, and she knew enough about male physiology to know satisfying one client over a period of three weeks was a walk in the park compared to her usual five clients a night.
But far more importantly, no client had ever offered to take her to some place nice like this, so for a moment she decided there was nothing wrong with imagining she was a respectable lady there with her wealthy husband with whom she was madly in love.
Why not indulge your imagination a little if this is the closest taste you’ll ever get of “the good life”?
She had certainly outdone her mother, who had worn her fingers to the bone working as a housemaid for decades, always telling Rose when she was younger, “It’s respectable,” as if suspecting what line of work her then cute little girl might be drawn into when she was a woman armed with beauty but little education, and hoping to somehow prevent nature from taking its course.
But what had made far more of an impression on Rose as a child were the tiny meals, the tiny room they stayed in in the back of the employers’ home, the fawning deference her mother always used when speaking with the husband and wife who owned the home (and even with their bratty children, even though she had changed their diapers), and her mother being thrown out onto the street when her knees, fingers, and elbows could no longer withstand the constant scrubbing and dusting.
By that time, Rose’s body was mature, and she soon became the breadwinner, putting her mother into the apartment that Rose paid for with her own money and, later, into the small house that Rose bought with her own money.
Her mother never asked any questions, much less remonstrated her. Perhaps, as she saw her daughter work thirty hours a week and provide a life far better than she had been able to working nearly a hundred hours a week, she decided that perhaps “respectable” is measured in currency units rather than whether you can get paid without taking off your clothes.
But, privately, she worried constantly for her daughter and hoped she would use her earnings to get out of the dirty business before she ended up pregnant with some creep’s child, infected with a venereal disease, or raped and killed by a maniac client.
Rose, whether because she was her mother’s daughter or because she had her eyes open wide enough to know these were real dangers, also shared these concerns . . . privately. The two had a mildly amiable relationship. They spoke each day and rarely argued. But Rose felt some sense of shame for her profession, and her mother felt a sense of guilt for having failed to show Rose there was a better way.
But tonight, none of that mattered, and for the next three weeks none of that mattered, because Rose had already decided that regardless of what happened during these three weeks she was not going to set foot back into Warm Touch, as it was usually called for short, since it seemed the clients were far more interested in that than the Cold Drinks.
Maybe this was a singular opportunity from heaven—an opportunity to slow down for a moment and reflect on whether she did not already have enough money to seek a different line of work. Perhaps she could start up a small business. Perhaps she could pay for a private tutor or even go to college. Perhaps—
They were at the door to their room and entering. It was time to get back to her role, and she felt a surge of happiness as she realized there were far worse men she could be spending this time with.
To her surprise, David—which she preferred over “Tats”—simply grabbed her hand, went to the bed, and lay down next to her. Before they knew it, both were sound asleep.
Chapter 35
Though Rose might never have guessed it, when they awoke the next day Tats felt a strong dose of the insecurity she felt, albeit of a different sort.
Would she deign to look in my direction if I didn’t drop cash as casually as a used newspaper? he wondered, but quickly strove to banish the insecurity from his mind.
A few days ago, you were in a dark prison cell. Today, you have a beautiful woman next to you. Tomorrow, maybe you’ll be dead. Don’t complicate your present good fortune.
But then he wondered whether perhaps Rose’s feelings were not the real reason for his current angst.
How is Mr. Brass?
He usually didn’t worry about Mr. Brass’s well-being, as doing so would have made him feel as foolish as a private worrying about his general—notwithstanding the fact Tats’ rank was more analogous to colonel—but no sooner had he asked himself about Mr. Brass than he realized he was concerned.
Mr. Brass was the reason he was lying next to a beautiful woman rather than being enveloped in bitter darkness in an unforgiving dungeon, with the prospect of being held like a caged animal for the remainder of his youth, if not the rest of his life. And surely, the police, if not the military, response was going to be swift and ferocious after what he and Mr. Brass had done to the police station.
But Mr. Brass, had told, rather than asked, him to spend a three-week vacation in Sodorf City, and thus, if Mr. Brass needed his help in Sivingdel, wasn’t that Mr. Brass’s own fault?
“Babe?” Tats said to Rose.
“Yes?” she said, having also been long awake and lying there in a state of nervous apprehension, now realizing that, while being with an exclusive client for three weeks might involve fewer sexual acts, it was in some ways more emotionally taxing.
“Mind if I go outside and stretch my legs for about an hour? I’ve got a lot on my mind. After that, maybe we can just relax for the afternoon but do something special in the evening.”
“You’re the customer,” she said in a friendly tone, rather relieved to have an hour to herself and hoping he might take even longer before returning. She was itching to shower, and if she wasn’t mistaken the bathroom came equipped with running water, a luxury she certainly didn’t have at home.
Tats got dressed and headed outside.
Chapter 36
Tats had mentioned to Mr. Brass during casual conversation the little adventure he had when he went looking for his sister and had told him that if he ever needed a place for a good smoke or a little female companionship he would be unlikely to leave disappointed if he visited the place Tats had.
Tats decided that if Mr. Brass had changed his mind about his three-week vacation, or if he simply decided he himself should partake, Tats’ best luck in finding him would probably be at Warm Touch, so he took off in that direction walking on foot.
Righty had sent konulans out looking for Tats last night the moment he concluded Mr.
Hoffmeyer had to be dealt with and fast. Knowing both Tats’ scent and appearance, the extra tidbit that he was a little likelier than not to be visiting a business establishment in the northeastern part of the city almost made it too easy.
They saw Tats leaving hand in hand with a gorgeous young lady and followed him to the hotel. They reported back to Righty, who decided he should let Tats enjoy this night, especially since it might be his last.
Early this morning, however, Righty had set off for Sodorf City and begun circling the skies above the hotel while Harold’s razor-sharp eyes were kept peeled waiting for Tats to emerge, and the konulans provided additional support.
Righty was beginning to think he would spend the whole day in vain circling the skies while Tats stayed in his little love nest, and he wasn’t about to go barging in—or was he?
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