Sandra Brown - Play Dirty

But it went exactly as Foster Speakman had told him it would. No muss, no fuss. He made an inquiry at the information desk, then was escorted to an elevator that went into a subterranean part of the bank, where a polite, grandmotherly type asked him to sign a card. She compared it with the signature card that Foster Speakman had filed, as promised. Satisfied, the grandmother showed Griff into a cubicle.

His heart was knocking in a beat out of time with the Yanni filtering through the overhead speakers. Grandmother delivered the box, told him to take his time and to press the button on the wall when finished, then withdrew. The key Speakman had given him last night was in the pocket of his jeans. He fished it out and unlocked the box.

From the bank, Griff drove straight to NorthPark for a shopping spree. He liked his jeans old and “worked in,” but he bought two new pairs anyway-because he could. His boots were too comfortable to replace, but he had them shined. He found three designer shirts in Neiman’s that didn’t look too faggy. He changed in the dressing room and wore one of them out of the store.

None of the sports jackets in the Armani boutique were wide enough in the shoulders for him, but he found one that would work with some tailoring. He was told he could pick it up in a few days.

He bought a four-hundred-dollar pair of sunglasses. Odd that styles of sunglasses had changed more than anything in the past five years. He also bought a cell phone. It probably wouldn’t have taken as long to buy a house. By the time all the added features had been demonstrated to him, and the calling plan options explained, and his voice-mail retrieval set up for one-digit dialing, he was impatient to get out of there and actually use the damn thing to make a call.

Which was to Marcia. He dialed the first number listed on the card she had given him and got an anonymous, innocuous recording asking him to leave a message, which he did. Waiting on her to return his call, he drove around the area, taking in all the commerce, going past his old haunts and favorite restaurants. Some were still in business, others had given way to new.

When, after an hour, Marcia still hadn’t called, he dialed a number that belonged to one of her girls. Young, gorgeous, satisfaction guaranteed.

“Hello?”

She had a husky, sexy voice. He liked her already. “Hi. My name is Griff Burkett. I’m a client of Marcia’s. She recommended I call you.”

At first he thought she’d hiccuped, but then he realized she was crying. “Marcia-” She got choked up and couldn’t finish. Then she wailed, “Oh, God! It’s just so awful!”

“What’s so awful?”

“Marcia’s in the hospital.”

Presbyterian Hospital was surrounded by a network of roads under repair. By the time he wound his way through the construction zones and the detours they imposed, Griff was swearing as profusely as he was sweating.

He jogged across the seeming miles of parking lot and, after finally reaching the main entrance lobby, had to wait his turn at the information booth. He was raw with impatience by the time the attendant gave him Marcia’s room number.

Standing outside her door, leaning against the wall, was the neighbor Griff had seen last night getting off the elevator. When he noticed Griff striding down the corridor toward him, he jumped as if he’d been struck with a cattle prod and positioned himself in front of the hospital room door.

Frantically, he waved his hands in front of his face. “No, no. Go away. She won’t want you to see her like this.”

“Why is she here?” Griff hadn’t got anything out of the hysterical girl on the phone.

The man stopped his protestations and lowered his hands. His sharp, foxy face contorted into a mask of misery. His eyes were already red from crying. They began to leak fresh tears. “I can’t believe this happened to her. At first I thought it was you, although you didn’t look the type. The savagery of it was-”

“Savagery?”

The man started waving his hands in front of his face again, this time in embarrassment over his emotion. Frustrated, Griff moved him aside, ignored the No Visitors sign, and went into the room. The blinds were drawn against the glare of the afternoon sun, and all the lights were off. But he could see well enough, and what he saw caused him to halt midway between the door and the hospital bed.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“I told you it was savage.” The neighbor had followed him in. “I’m Dwight, by the way.”

“Griff. And I didn’t do this to her.”

“I realize that. Now.”

“What happened?”

“About an hour after I saw you in the lobby, my doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting a guest, and the concierge hadn’t announced anyone. I looked at the security monitor and saw Marcia, standing there in the foyer, only sort of…doubled over. She was…like this.”

She’d had the living daylights beat out of her. Griff couldn’t see all of her, of course, but there were bruises and swelling on every inch of exposed skin. If the rest of her looked like her face, she was lucky to be alive. Several cuts had been closed with butterfly clips. Blood had matted her hair to her head. Her face was so misshapen with swelling that if he hadn’t known who she was, he would never have recognized her.

“Her jaw was broken,” Dwight whispered. “They did surgery this morning to wire it together. Last night, no amount of morphine could dull the pain.”

Griff lowered his head and took several deep breaths. When he raised his head, he asked with deadly calm, “Who was her next client? After me. Someone was coming at midnight. She hustled me out so she could get ready for him. Do you know his name?” He turned to Dwight suddenly, and his expression caused the man to back away in fear. “Do you know his name?” he repeated angrily.

A moan from the bed drew their attention to Marcia. In two strides Griff was at her side. Being careful of the IV needle taped to her hand, he gently pressed it between his. “Hey there,” he said softly.

Both eyes were swollen shut, but she managed to pry one of them open. The lovely green iris was floating in a lake of bright red. Since she couldn’t move her jaw to speak, she merely made a whimpering sound in her throat.

“Shh.” He bent down and kissed her forehead, barely letting his lips touch for fear of hurting her. “Take advantage of the drugs. Rest.” He kissed her forehead again, then straightened up and turned to Dwight, who was standing at the foot of her bed, sniffling softly.

“Did you call the police?”

Dwight shook his head.

“Why the hell not?”

“She couldn’t talk because of her jaw, but she became hysterical when I mentioned calling the police. I guess…” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure there were no eavesdroppers about. “Because of her profession, she didn’t want the police involved.”

“But you called 911.”

“Immediately. Paramedics were there within minutes.”

“How did you explain her condition?”

“I have a circular staircase in my apartment. I told them she’d gone up to use the powder room and had fallen on her way down.”

“And they believed that?”

“Probably not. But they left it to the ER staff to summon a policeman. He didn’t believe the staircase story either and urged Marcia to identify her attacker by writing down his name. She refused.”

With limited strength, Marcia squeezed Griff’s hand. He leaned down over her again and gently lifted a strand of hair away from a patch of her scalp that had been shaved to allow for sutures. “Who was it, Marcia? Who were you seeing after me?”

Barely moving, she shook her head. She applied more pressure to his hand, and he realized she wanted him to lean in close enough to hear her speak. He bent low, placing his ear just above her lips.