Lisa Gardner - Say Goodbye

Sal and Kimberly let dinner come first. They heaped hot pasta and steaming soup on their starved informant, counting on comfort food to do their work for them. Any advantage helped.

“Do I get reimbursed for lost wages?” Delilah wanted to know, glancing at her watch halfway through the meal.

“No, but you can take home the doggie bag,” Kimberly assured her.

The hooker rolled her eyes. “What am I gonna do? Shove leftover chicken into my push-up bra while I work the rest of the night?”

“I bet some guys would pay extra for that,” Sal said seriously.

Delilah scowled at him. “You’re the creep who tried to talk to me the first time. I don’t like you.” She looked at Kimberly. “Make him go away.”

“Tried,” Kimberly said. “He’s got the personality of Velcro. Might as well get used to him.”

“Hey, I don’t have to get used to annoy-”

Kimberly interrupted the girl’s latest tirade by reaching over, grabbing the girl’s wrist, and slamming it down into her plate of fettuccini. “Shut up and listen. You wanted to deal information. Well, here we are. So stop wasting our fucking time and talk.”

Delilah regarded her more warily. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“My mother’s dead, thanks for asking.”

The girl’s gaze finally fell. Kimberly withdrew her hand. She watched steadily as Delilah picked up a napkin, dabbed at the splashed white sauce. Sal was doing his part by disappearing into the eggplant-colored booth. They might make it as a team yet.

“Why are you calling me, Delilah?”

The girl looked confused. “Call you? I haven’t called you. I haven’t even seen Spideyman since we last talked, and I don’t have anything new to report.”

“Who’d you tell about our meeting?”

“Tell? Are you fucking nuts? World I live in, snitches have a short life span. Not something to be bragging about.”

Kimberly appraised her, trying to decide if the girl was telling the truth. Delilah was wearing her dirty-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. It emphasized the dark blue tattoo of a spider creeping above her shoulders, legs clutching her neck, fangs reaching for the curve of her left ear.

“Did he suggest the tattoo, Delilah? Maybe pay you to do it? Couple of hundred dollars, a thousand? What does it cost to scar a girl’s neck?”

Delilah’s gaze skittered away, letting Kimberly know she was onto something.

“How long have you known him?”

“Couple of months,” Delilah mumbled, still not making eye contact.

“According to you, Ginny Jones disappeared three months ago, and you both knew Mr. Dinchara prior to that. Makes it longer than a couple of months in my book.”

“Okay, maybe more like six months. Or eight. I don’t know. Who’s counting?”

“So you knew him prior to becoming pregnant.”

The girl’s eyes widened. She went deathly still, gaze fixed on her leftover pasta, arms straight at her sides.

“Delilah?”

“Dinchara is not the father of my baby,” the girl expelled in a rush. “I had a boyfriend. Someone I loved, all right? Someone who I thought loved me. So just fuck off. Don’t make this about my baby.”

“Then what’s this about? You’ve known Dinchara for nearly a year. Why rat on him now?”

“I told you why. He did something to Ginny-”

“What about Bonita Breen? Or Mary Back or Etta Mae Reynolds? Any of those names ring a bell?” Sal spoke up now, drawing Delilah’s attention. He had moved over, wedging her into the corner, letting her feel how hemmed in she was, how few options she had left.

“What? Who?”

“Or Nicole Evans, Beth Hunnicutt, Cyndie Rodriguez? Roommates, associates, partners in crime?”

Delilah frowned at him, looking distracted, frazzled. “Cyndie’s gone. Has been for months. What’s this got to do with Cyndie?”

“Where’d she go?”

“I don’t know. Where does anyone go? Away from here.”

“You knew her well?”

“Only well enough to trip over her every other week. That girl liked to party, know what I mean?”

“Drugs?”

“Please, she’d snort anything from superglue to cocaine. Guess you could call her an equal opportunity loser.” Delilah’s righteousness had squared her shoulders again, brought the defiance back to her eyes.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Hell if I know. Cyndie was one of those girls who was just… around . You’d see her here or there. Not like we were pen pals or anything.”

“You know her roommates?”

Delilah frowned. “Wait a minute. Two girls, right? One a brunette, the other a really badly dyed blonde? Yeah, now that you mention it, I saw her with a couple of girls from time to time. Once, they were lifting her sorry ass off the floor, dragging her toward the door. Guess they might have been her roomies.”

“Seen them around lately?”

“Nah, not really.”

“That happen a lot? Girls appearing and disappearing?”

“Happens all the time. Girls think they’ll try on the life, make a quick buck or two. But then it sucks ’em in and burns ’ em out. Then they’re gone.”

“Where do they go?” Kimberly asked.

“Work the loop,” Delilah said with a shrug. “If you’re not making it here, you head east to Miami, or west to Texas. Everyone’s got a story of a friend who lives here or there, making a thousand bucks a night. So off the girls go, to do the same old thing in a different city, as if they’ll suddenly strike it rich. Kind of funny, if you think about it. All us working girls are actually optimists at heart.”

“Do any of them ever come back?” Sal wanted to know.

“Sometimes. I don’t know. Maybe a year or two later. Unless they get into drugs,” she said matter-of-factly. “Then they’re just plain fried.”

“Cyndie, Beth, Nicole. What about them?”

Another negligent shrug. “Haven’t seen ’em. Why do you care?”

“Why do you care about Ginny Jones?” Kimberly asked. “Why do you think she didn’t set off to find greener pastures like everyone else?”

“Because she wouldn’t go like that,” Delilah said immediately. “She wouldn’t leave without telling me.”

“You were that close?”

“Ginny was nice. No one appreciated that about her. They thought she was freaky. But she had plans, dreams, hopes. She was just…lost, you know.”

“Ever talk about her mom?”

Another shrug, but less certain this time. She’d gone back to staring at her pasta, and Kimberly could practically feel the girl picking through her brain, trying to find the least obvious lie.

“I think her mom died,” Delilah said softly.

“She tell you that?” Sal asked.

“She…implied it. Said she had no one. That she was all alone.”

“And you, Delilah,” Kimberly asked quietly, “what brought you here?”

The girl recoiled as if struck. Then her head was up, her eyes flashing hot. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Cops! Never around when you need ’em.”

“If you’d like to report a crime-”

“Fuck you!”

“Delilah-”

“No, I’m done. All right? You guys are no better than anyone else. Just a different pair of johns, ready to use and abuse to get what you want. Then you’ll kick me to the curb without even tossing me a ten-spot. Fuck it, all right. Just plain fuck it!”

Delilah darted her gaze between Kimberly and Sal, then, having made her choice, planted two hands on Sal’s chest and shoved him aside. Short of physically restraining her, there was nothing he could do to stop her.

She stormed over him, several diners pausing over their meals long enough to gawk at the flash of bare legs.

The restaurant manager hurried over, giving them nervous glances.