But Gordon wouldn’t say another word. He walked out the door with me right behind him, calling his name. He jumped in his battered heap of a car and roared off down the road, his goodwill gesture forgotten in his rush to get away.
I turned and saw Pat and Raydean across the way, watching.
“You coming for coffee or have you got other fish to fry?” Pat called. The smell of fresh cinnamon rolls wafted out of Raydean’s trailer, curling across the narrow street and seducing me.
“You bet,” I answered. “Besides, I think I’m gonna need your help tonight. I’ve got a hot date.”
Raydean spit off the porch into a bush, triggering her hypersensitive intruder-alert sprinkler system to turn on along the edge of the sidewalk.
“Honey, if that’s your idea of a date, you got more problems than this here team can handle. That little feller couldn’t last a round with the likes of you!” Her eyes narrowed as she squinted off in the direction of Gordon’s departing car. “Maybe he’s one of them Flemish. Never can tell what guise they’ll take.”
Fluffy apparently agreed. She uttered a low growl and crossed the street to Raydean’s house, skirting the booby traps and making her way up onto the steps. Trouble was brewing all right, but it was way worse than a scrawny beatnik with a flower complex.
Nineteen
There was going to be a full moon. The barest outline of a white circle stood out in a corner of the sky, waiting to make its full appearance later. I slipped the T-tops off of the Camaro and prepared to do battle. The troops had been briefed. The plan was in place. They were to stay right behind me, but out of sight. They were to approach only if I was in obvious trouble, or if I gave the signal. If it worked, Barboni would be putty in my hands. If it failed, well, I didn’t want to think about that.
I looked over at Raydean’s place and noticed that her old Plymouth Fury was missing. She and Pat were in place, I hoped. Pat’s pickup truck was gone from her driveway, too. Good. I left a note on the door for Francis, telling him to make himself at home. He’d have a fit when he found the door unlocked, but it was that or leave a note with a key in it. No one bothered my trailer anyway, they were all afraid Raydean would come out and shoot them.
I slid into the driver’s seat, popped in a Stevie Ray Vaughan tape, and headed for the beach. I was looking good. My hair fell around my shoulders in soft blond waves. I wore a subdued, but nonetheless sexy, black sheath. My makeup was sophisticated tonight, not like the stage makeup I piled on to do my Queen of Passion routine. I looked elegant, like Audrey Hepburn meets Grace Kelly, the younger years. I held that thought and listened to Stevie Ray howl about being in love for a few moments. The outside package was one thing, but inside, I needed to feel like steel, like I didn’t give a shit whose back I climbed to get where I was going. Stevie Ray was the man to put me in that mood. I was invincible, just like him before the plane crash.
I roared down the Strip, no easy feat in the spring. Usually tourists and spring-breakers crowded the narrow road, but not this week. There was a temporary lull in the action. School was back in session, summer hadn’t brought its crowds from L.A. (Lower Alabama), and the snowbirds had all started heading back to Canada or Michigan. The concessions and gooney golf emporiums were all open, but few people played. Big plastic sharks and whale floats flapped on their trap lines outside the convenience stores. I was the cowboy at high noon, driving down Highway 98, my hand on the butt of my gun, all ready for the big showdown. Too bad I didn’t actually have a gun.
The Moongazer loomed ahead of me, a tall white hotel with a big fountain in front. The word had always been that Syndicate money was behind the huge palace. It wasn’t one of the chains. It charged a pretty steep price, even by Panama City standards, and it was always fresh and bright, despite rarely being full up with paying customers. And the word also added that the regular working girls on the Strip were not welcome. The Moongazer provided its own, beautiful, nonlocals who came in for a brief stint, usually during conventions or peak tourist season.
I pulled the Camaro up to the front door, Stevie Ray wailing at the top of his lungs, and counted the milliseconds until the valet attendant came to take her from me. The door opened, I stepped out, and a fresh-scrubbed, dark-haired young man slid in behind the wheel. In an instant, Stevie Ray fell silent.
“No taste in music, huh?” I said.
He smiled and pulled away from the curb. I was left holding a blue parking tag and watching my baby slide into the darkened concrete tomb of a garage. It was seven o’clock on the very dot, nothing left to do now but head for the lounge. Barboni would be waiting. Before I stepped into the revolving door, I looked over my shoulder, surveying the Strip for a sign of the team. Either they were very good, or they’d blown it already.
I went through the door and stepped out onto plush carpeting patterned with leaves and red swirls. Classy. The lounge was to the right, a ton of mahogany and brass, etched glass and darkness. I stepped through the door, waited for my eyes to adjust, and spotted him immediately. He was in a corner, facing the door, his back to the wall and a martini glass in his hand.
I let him take in the Lavotini package for a moment, then slowly began my walk to his table. I smiled and started to slip into the chair across from him, my back to the door as if, unlike him, I didn’t care about covering the exits or having an escape route. I’d scoped the bar on my way to the table. The back exit lay just to my right, a small door by the ladies’ room.
Barboni rose immediately, moving around to pull my chair out, leaning down and letting his lips brush the side of my face in the barest of kisses.
“You smell like a sun-ripened, summer peach,” he whispered, “warm and sensuous, like a woman stretched out naked in her bed on a hot August evening, waiting.”
Oh, bite me. Like I haven’t heard that line before. Actually I hadn’t, and for a moment I was once again tempted by his strong masculine presence, by the raw sexuality that seemed to surround him. Then I shook myself and remembered Salvatore Minuchin and Carmine Virillo. They were snakes, all of them, even Tony the Married Mobster. Barboni was one of their kind.
Alonzo, thinking he was on a roll, motioned to the waitress. She came instantly and smiled a smile that was all teeth. I figured Barboni tipped better here than at the Tiffany.
“May I order for you?” he asked. I hated to see him disappointed so early in the game, so I nodded. “A cosmopolitan,” he said.
The waitress looked at me and her smile faded. Her big tipper now had a no-vacancy sign flashing all over her prospects. Oh, well, easy come, easy go. Someday maybe she’d thank me.
The drink materialize in no time at all, along with another martini for Barboni. I barely had time to check out the rest of the room, hoping maybe one of my team members was sitting in a quiet corner, watching. They were nowhere in sight.
“So, when are we due for dinner?” I asked.
Barboni smiled. “Nine,” he answered. “I thought we’d sit here for a little while and then ride out there.”
I ran a finger up his arm, feeling the muscle ripple underneath his suit coat. This was no insurance salesman. We sat there for maybe ten minutes, at first saying nothing, and then making small talk. Eventually I figured it was time to gather a little information. I needed to try and contact Pat and let her know the plan as soon as possible.
“So we’re going to the Red Bar for dinner?” My hand caught the edge of the glass and almost sent it reeling.
Barboni cut right to the chase. “Sierra, I sense some apprehension on your part. You’re looking over your shoulder. Your hands are trembling. You seem, I don’t know, frightened, maybe?”
A million thoughts and sensations seemed to hit me at once. The vodka in my drink settled into my belly, I felt scared and intimidated but somehow also reassured and stimulated. What in the hell was going on with me? I looked at my drink and back at him.
“What’s in this thing?” I asked. “It packs a hell of a punch.”
&
nbsp; Barboni shook his head. “It’s not the alcohol, Sierra. Now what’s going on with you?”
His eyes were dark pools of concern. I was starting to doubt myself just a little bit. All right, so I still didn’t think he sold insurance, but maybe he wasn’t such a terrible guy.
“All right, you’ve got me,” I said, “but it has nothing to do with you. I am concerned and I am frightened, but it’s my mother I’m thinking of.” God, Sierra, you do spin a line of crap when you have to.
Barboni frowned, like maybe he had a mother, like maybe he remembered back in the old days when being Catholic counted for something and guilt was a virtue not a sin.
“Sierra, is something wrong with your mother?” His voice was thick with Old Country concern. It was the New Yorker creeping back into him.
I mentally crossed myself, said a Hail Mary, and proceeded to tell a huge, whopping lie.
“Well, she had surgery today.” I raised my hands, palms extended, at his alarmed expression. “It was minor, you know, kind of exploratory. She didn’t even tell me until last night, and even then she didn’t want me to come up. She said it was routine, but I’m not so sure. I tried to call before I left home, but no one answered in her room.”
Barboni eased ever so slightly. This was fixable. He could handle this problem and maybe still score. I could see it in the back of his eyes.
“I would just feel so much better if I could call before we leave, you know, check on her. After all, since Pa died, it’s only me.” I crossed myself twice more and added a rosary for good measure. “I’ll just be a minute.”
“But of course, my dear,” he murmured. “Take your time.”
And so I did. I took my time and the hotel’s elevator right up to the fourteenth floor. I walked straight down the hallway to the door to room 1415 and tapped ever so softly, my heart thudding against my rib cage.
“Be there,” I whispered.
The door swung open slowly and Raydean stood there grinning, her hair in pink foam rollers.
“Took yer time, lady,” she said.
I looked back at the corridor, just to be sure, then stepped inside Alonzo Barboni’s room.
“I know,” Raydean sighed, looking around the immaculate room, “there ain’t nothing to be said for it. I couldn’t find a thing, and believe you me, I looked. That housekeeper what let me in said she hadn’t seen my ‘son’ anywhere.” Raydean chuckled then her eyes narrowed. “I swept the room for bugs, but them Flemish must run this place. There ain’t so much as a gnat in here.”
I walked around the room peering into corners, gingerly lifting the edge of the bedspread and letting it drop again. There was no sign that Alonzo Barboni had ever spent so much as one moment in the room.
Raydean let me look until I was satisfied. “I did find this,” she said, producing a small gray business card: GRANTHAM INSURANCE, ALONZO BARBONI VICE PRESIDENT. “So, I guess he’s been here, all right. Unless, of course, and why I didn’t think of this I’ll never know, it’s an alien plant.”
“Raydean, you watch too much TV,” I said. “Let’s go. He thinks I’m making a phone call.”
Raydean reached for her huge purse. It whimpered.
“You didn’t,” I said.
Raydean looked down at the tips of her shoes and smiled softly. “I had to,” she said softly. “She was just a ’beggin’.”
I opened the hallway door, checked the corridor, and motioned for Raydean to follow.
“Raydean, if anything happens to Fluffy…”
Raydean snorted. “This dog’s got more sense on a bad day than you do on a good. She’s my lookout. Besides, if it comes down to a battle, the little booger’s got teeth like rusty needles. I want her in the foxhole beside me, don’t you?”
“Raydean, where’s Pat?”
“On lookout. Don’t you worry, we’ve got you covered.”
I was standing by the elevator watching the light hop from floor to floor. “Our reservations are at nine,” I said softly. “I’ll go down first. You wait and take the next one.”
Raydean nodded. The elevator doors opened and Alonzo Barboni stood staring out at me.
For a moment neither of us said a word, then Raydean’s purse started to growl, diverting our attention.
“God, I’m hungry!” she cried, and hopped into the elevator.
“You coming, dearie?” she asked.
I stepped into the car and shook my head. “I don’t know what happened. I thought I pushed Lobby but I must’ve hit the wrong button.” Alonzo said nothing. “That drink really went to my head.”
Raydean was humming to herself and ignoring the both of us. Her purse, however, was very angry and growled throughout the short trip to the first floor.
“Have a nice day!” Raydean said, and stepped out into the lobby. She seemed to melt into the potted plants, disappearing in seconds.
I was not so lucky with Barboni. He smelled a rat.
“Did you call your mother?” he asked softly, his voice dangerously calm.
“Sure did,” I said. “Turns out she had hemorrhoids. Go figure.”
“I wondered,” he said, heading for the front door of the hotel. “You were gone for quite a while. Which phone did you use?”
The trap, but I was ready. “Well, that was part of the problem,” I said. “I didn’t want to use the one out in the lobby, you know. I figured with Mom’s condition being what it is, we’d need privacy. Took me forever to find a private phone.”
“Which was where?” he asked. We’d stepped into the warm evening air and Barboni was signaling the valet. His arm gripped my elbow like a vise.
“Um, well, actually, I tried to find the health club. They said it was on the fourth floor, but it must’ve been somewhere else. You know, I thought about using the locker room phone, but I never did find it.”
Barboni’s attention was diverted for a second as a silver Porsche Boxster drew up to the curb. The valet stepped out and left the car running, ran over to the passenger side and opened the door for me.
“Damn,” I said, looking over at Alonzo. “I didn’t know Hertz rented these things. That must be costing your company a pretty penny in expense money.”
The boys in white shut the doors and we were closed in again, pulling out of the brick driveway and onto the street.
“There is no health club in this hotel, Sierra,” Barboni said. “What were you doing in my room?”
He couldn’t have known; he was guessing. A part of me knew this, and yet I suddenly felt as if I were back in Sister Mary Margaret’s office explaining that it hadn’t been me down at Giardello’s Drugstore, sipping a vanilla soda during school hours. It had been my evil twin, Monica.
“Now you look here, Barboni,” I said. “I don’t know what type of floozy ditzbag you’re used to running over, but you don’t get to talk to me like that. In fact,” I said, as Barboni hit the edge of town and ran the speedometer up to eighty-five, “you can just turn this thing around and drop me back at the hotel. Our evening is over.”
Barboni laughed and punched the accelerator. He had no intention of going back. I turned and looked behind us, knowing what I’d find. The road stretched like a long, black snake out the rear window. Pat’s pickup would be no match for a Porsche.
The moon rose over the Gulf. Now and then I caught glimpses of the waves crashing onto the beach with phosphorescent white trails that followed them back out to sea. I was afraid for the first time in a long while. What had I been thinking? What sort of plan was it that involved two elderly women and a dog as backup?
I tried to relax. They knew where we were heading, but what if he’d lied? I tried thinking of escape plans and alternatives, but when you’re moving down the highway at ninety-plus miles an hour, escape becomes a life-threatening option.
I knew we’d pass through Seaside, a tiny, ready-made neo-Victorian village. He’d have to slow down there, but it wouldn’t be enough for me to roll out to safety. No, I was trapped. I watched him for
a moment. He was intent on driving, one hand on the clutch and one on the wheel.
“All right,” I yelled over the engine’s roar, “look at it from my point of view.”
He glanced at me and snickered. “What’s your point of view? You’re a stripper trying to rip me off. Fair enough. You wanna act like a whore, I’ll treat you like one.”
Shit. Which was worse, him guessing the truth, or him thinking I was common dirt looking to rob him?
I laughed. “That’s what you think?”
The car slowed a tiny bit. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s what I think.” But there was a tendril of doubt in his voice.
“So, what are you, just stupid or flattering yourself?”
Now we were only doing twenty miles over the speed limit. Barboni was spending as much time looking at me as he was the road.
“Man, you have brass ones. You break into my hotel room and then you have the nerve to deny it?”
I laughed again, like I was delighted with our little game. “Barboni, you spend too much time up north selling insurance. The smog must be getting to you. Of course I broke into your room, and actually, I didn’t technically ‘break’ in. The maid opened the door.”
“So you admit it?”
We crested the edge of Seaside and blew right on through to the other side in less than a minute. The place needed a speed trap. Barboni hit the accelerator again as soon as we left the last gingerbread cottage behind and pushed on for Grayton Beach.
I favored him with a withering glance. “Of course I was in your room. What else could I do? Do you think a dancer goes out with just any customer? Do you think, in fact, that I have ever gone out with a customer?” Barboni was listening. “No. I have never, ever, crossed the line, until I met you.” Oh God, this was crap, but it was working.
“Did you really think I would leave a public place with a man I hadn’t checked out? No. I went up and looked through your room. I don’t need your jewelry or your money. I need information. I need to know you’re not maritally affiliated. I need to know you’re really a businessman and not a dope dealer or a serial killer. So I went up to your room to check you out. You’ve got some explaining to do, big guy.”
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