Harlan Coben - The Final Detail

He could barely breathe. “Jess, we should talk-”

“Don't,” she said again. “I don't want to talk, okay? Let me put it simply: If you change your mind, call me. You know the number. If not, have a nice life.”

Click.

Myron put down the phone. He took several deep breaths. He looked at the phone. So simple. He did indeed know the number. How easy it would be to dial it.

“Worthless.”

He looked up at Dr. Czerski. “Pardon?”

She held up the diskette. “You said there was graphic on it?”

Myron quickly explained what he had seen.

“It's not there now,” she said. “It must have deleted itself.”

“How?”

“You say the program ran automatically?”

“Yes.”

“It probably self-extracted, self-ran, and then self-deleted. Simple.”

“Aren't there special programs so you can undelete a file?”

“Yes. But this file did more than that. It reformatted the whole diskette. Probably the final command in the chain.”

“Meaning?”

“Whatever you saw is gone forever.”

“Is there anything else on the diskette?”

“No.”

“Nothing we can trace? No unique characteristics or anything?”

She shook her head. “Typical diskette. Sold in every software store in the country. Standard formatting.”

“How about fingerprints?”

“That's not my department.”

And, Myron knew, it would be a waste of time. If someone had gone to the trouble of destroying any computer evidence, chances were pretty good that all fingerprints had been wiped off too.

“I'm busy.” Dr. Czerski handed him back the diskette and left without so much as a back glance. Myron stared at it and shook his head.

What the hell was going on here?

The cell phone rang again. Myron picked it up.

“Mr. Bolitar?” It was Big Cyndi.

“Yes.”

“I am going through Mr. Clu Haid's phone records, as you requested.”

“And?”

“Are you coming back to the office, Mr. Bolitar?”

“I'm on the way there now.”

“There is something here you might find bizarre.”

When the elevator opened, Big Cyndi was waiting for him. She'd finally scrubbed her face clean. All the makeup was gone. Must have used a sand blaster. Or a jack-hammer.

She greeted him by saying, “Very bizarre, Mr. Bolitar.”

“What's that?”

“Per your instructions, I was checking through Clu Haid's phone records,” she said. Then she shook her head. “Very bizarre.”

“What's bizarre?”

She handed him a sheet of paper. “I highlighted the number in yellow.”

Myron looked at it while walking into this office. Big Cyndi followed, closing the door behind her. The number was in the 212 area code. That meant Manhattan. Other than that, it was totally unfamiliar. “What about it?”

“It's for a nightclub.”

“Which one?”

“Take A Guess.”

“Pardon?”

“That's the name of the place,” Big Cyndi said. “Take A Guess. It's two blocks down from Leather-N-Lust.” Leather-N-Lust was the S &M bar that employed Big Cyndi as a bouncer. Motto: Hurt The Ones You Love.

“You know this place?” he asked.

“A little.”

“What kind of club is it?”

“Cross-dressers and transvestites, mostly. But they have a varied crowd.”

Myron rubbed his temples. “When you say varied…”

“It's sort of an interesting concept really, Mr. Bolitar.”

“I'm sure.”

“When you go to Take A Guess, you never know for sure what you're getting. You know what I mean?”

Myron didn't have a clue. “Pardon my sexual naivete, but could you explain?”

Big Cyndi scrunched her face in thought. It was not a pretty sight. “In part, it's what you might expect: men dress like women, women dress like men. But then sometimes a woman is just a woman and a man is just a man. Follow?”

Myron nodded. “Not even a little.”

“That's why it's called Take A Guess. You never know for sure. For instance, you might see a beautiful woman who is unusually tall with a platinum wig. So you figure it's a he-she. But-and this is what makes Take A Guess special-maybe it's not.”

“Not what?”

“A he-she. A transvestite or transsexual. Maybe it is indeed a beautiful woman who put on extra-high heels and a wig to confuse you.”

“And the reason for this is?”

“That's the fun of the place. The doubt. There's a sign inside, TAKE A GUESS: IT'S ABOUT AMBIGUITY, NOT ANDROGYNY.”

“Catchy.”

“But that's the idea. It's a place of mystery. You bring someone home. You think it's a beautiful woman or a handsome man. But until the pants are all the way down, you're never sure. People come dressed to fool. You just never know until-well, you saw The Crying Game.”

Myron made a face. “And this is a desirable thing?”

“If you're into that, sure.”

“Into what?”

She smiled. “Exactly.”

Myron nibbed the temples again. “So the patrons don't have a problem with”-he searched for the right word, but there wasn't one-“so a gay guy, for example, doesn't get pissed off when he finds out he brought home a woman?”

“It's why you go. The thrill. The uncertainty. The mystery.”

“Sort of the sexual equivalent of a grab bag.”

“Right.”

“Except in this case, you can really be surprised by what you grab.”

Big Cyndi considered that. ' “If you really think about it, Mr. Bolitar, there can be only one of two things.”

He was no longer so sure.

“But I like your grab bag analogy,” Big Cyndi continued. “You know what you're bringing to the party, but you have no idea what you're going to take home. One time a guy left with what he thought was an overweight woman. It turned out that it was a guy with a midget hiding under the dress.”

“Please tell me you're joking.”

Big Cyndi just looked at him.

“So,” Myron continued, “you, uh, frequent this place?”

“I've been a couple of times. But not recently.”

“Why not?”

“Two reasons. First, they compete with Leather-N-Lust. It's a different crowd, but we still draw from similar markets.”

Myron nodded. “The pervert pool.”

“They're not hurting anybody.”

“At least nobody who doesn't want to be hurt.”

She pouted, not a great look on a three-hundred-pound wrestler, especially without her mortarlike makeup. “Es-peranza is right.”

“About?”

“You can be very closed-minded.”

“Yeah, I'm a regular Jerry Falwell. So what's the second reason?”

She hesitated. “I'm obviously for sexual freedom. I don't care what you're doing as long as it's consensual. And I've done some wild things myself, Mr. Bolitar.” She looked straight at him. “Very wild.”

Myron cringed, fearing she might share details.

“But Take A Guess started drawing the wrong kind of crowd,” she said.

“Gee, that's surprising,” Myron said. “You'd think a place like that would be a natural for vacationing families.”

She shook her head. “You are so repressed, Mr. Bolitar.”

“Because I like to know my partner's gender before getting naked?”

“Because of your attitude. People like you cause sexual hang-ups. Society becomes sexually repressed-so repressed, in fact, that they cross the line between sex and violence, between playacting and real danger. They reach a stage where they get off by hurting people who do not want to be hurt.”

“And Take A Guess attracts that kind of crowd?”

“More than most.”

Myron sat back and rubbed his face with both hands. He started hearing brain clicks. “This might explain a few things,” he said.