“It’s appreciated. Maybe you noticed when she wasn’t in her section.”
As the fifty disappeared, Chumbley pursed lips dyed somewhere between red and purple.
“I guess maybe, now that you put it that way, I didn’t see her later on, like after midnight or one. You said something, Monique.”
“Yeah, I did, right. I said how Pissy-Ass must’ve caught a live one. I didn’t see her leave, didn’t see the hookup, but I saw how she wasn’t down there, and wasn’t for a while. Wasn’t, now that I’m thinking, when we called it a night.”
Varr added her own shrug. “Look, truth? We won’t miss her, but none of us like hearing one of us got killed. We’re just out here making a living.”
“And someone may be targeting street levels. You’re making a living, but you’ve got to be alive to do it. Think twice before you agree to go with someone who’s willing to pay too much, who wants you to go somewhere other than your flop or when you get there wants you to wear a costume.”
“Costumes is extra.” Chumbley grinned with it. “But not for you, baby doll.”
“She’s yanking you,” Varr said. “We work the street, we stay on the street or the flop. She went off that way, she’s stupid. Pissy-ass and stupid.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Eve advised.
With Roarke, she walked down the block, gave the flop a quick study. “It didn’t happen there. Dead LCs are bad for business. Plus, he had the costume.”
She crossed the street to try Zola Messner.
“Pissy-Ass? I block her out. She tried taking my stroll once.” She smiled. “Didn’t try it again. Gives me this bullshit how she could make double what I do over here, and how she’ll be top level while I’m still scraping.”
She smiled again, fiercely. “Didn’t give me bullshit more than once.”
Diego Quint, obviously fresh off a roll, wandered over in his tight black muscle shirt and skin pants. He tossed back his luxurious hair. He didn’t eye-fuck Roarke so much as give him an I’ll-be-dreaming-of-you stare.
And said, breathlessly, “Hi.”
“Turn it off, sweets,” Messner told him. “He’s with the cop.”
“Oh.” A heavy sigh. “Heart shattered.”
“Pissy-Ass got herself strangled. Did you see her leave the stroll with anybody?”
He had liquid eyes that went sad as a kid with nothing under the Christmas tree. “Oh, that’s horrible. She was really kind of mean, but that’s horrible. Actually, I think it was about midnight, maybe a little later, I did—”
Messner held up a hand to stop him.
“You pulled off a couple of bills for Starlight and Monique. We’re all losing work time here. So?”
Roarke pulled off two more fifties.
“Thank you!” Quint looked at Messner, who nodded. “I did happen to see her walking down the block and across to the next.”
“Alone?”
“Oh, no. I noticed because she was walking with a man with a really nice caboose.”
“You kill me, Diego.” Monique laughed, gave him a friendly elbow jab. “‘Caboose.’ You kill me.”
“Can you describe anything other than his caboose?”
“Not really.” His forehead creased as he thought it over. “Ah, sorry, not really. I think… yeah. He was wearing a hat. He was a little taller than her. She had on four-inchers, so…” He closed his eyes, calculated. “Maybe he was like five-eight or -nine? Maybe. Not six feet anyway.
“I really go for the tall ones,” he added with another wistful glance at Roarke.
“Race? Skin color?”
