Carole douglas - Cat in an Indigo Mood

"I don' remember seein' you here before." She tried to sound coy, but her sloppy pronunciation only made the remark seem phony.

"You haven't." Max diluted her drink with water while she toyed with his clothes, jewelry, hair. She'd stay blown, but maybe she'd be a trace more understandable with an ounce less liquor in her.

"Oh, new. Like I am."

"Is that why you're drunk?"

"I am not!" She tried to pull away in mock indignity, but tripped and wobbled back down on the stool instead. She reached for the glass, chugalugged a quartet ounce of booze and three ounces of city water. She made a face.

"You don't like my looks?"

"Oh, you look jush fine. Everythin' looks just fine." She gazed blankly at the hectic scene.

"I'm supposed to be getting more money."

"Here." He pulled out some tens and jammed them into one hand.

She gazed at the phenomenon as if she didn't know what to do with the bills.

"I think you're out of pockets," he said.

She looked down at her naked body and the teeny-tiny thong bikini bottom. Her hands went to either side of her mouth, a Shirley Temple gesture if there ever was one. "Oh. I'll just have to remember to hold on, I guess." She studied her fist with the wad of bills in it.

Her fist clenched the money. but she didn't even look to check the denominations. She might have lost it all if she had loosened her grip to look. Poor baby.

Max sighed. "So how new are you here?"

"Three months. I think."

His interest quickened. "Does it ever get rough? l used to be a bouncer; maybe I could get a job here."

She frowned. "It always gets rough. Ruff!" She barked at him, giggled. Barked against his lips with her own slack ones. She pulled away. grabbed the glass, swallowed hard. "We don' need a bouncer. We got Raf."

"Pretty good, is he?"

"Pretty bad. He'd like to hit us as much as them." Her baby-doll eyes grew bleaker.

"He doesn't like women?"

She pushed close, pouring, as much for safety as for sex, but the sex was always there, like an obsequious gift. "l don' know. He doesn't like us women. Me. Nobody likes me."

"That's not true. I like you."

"But . . . you're paying to like me." She lapsed into silence, into the deep, dark well of depression beneath the surface oil-slick-of alcohol.

She was a big girl, maybe five-eight; slim and firm for now, despite everything. But Max couldn't lose the feeling that he was holding a very fragile, undernourished seven year old.

"No, I'm paying to get you out of here."

She reared away, eye-whites showing like a panicked horse's. "I'm not supposed to leave with the clientele." A bit of shocked sobriety leaked through. "I'm not that kind of a girl. We're strippers, not hookers."

"l know. l know the rules."

She relaxed against him. Just tell her it was all right, and you could do anything with her, because it had been all wrong for so long.

"But l think," Max said carefully, "that you really need to go home. You do have a crash pad?"

She nodded.

"Why don't you get your things, and I'll drive you there."

She sobered enough to pull back and look him over, some self-defensive reaction kicking in.

She frowned again. "I'm not supposed to leave with the customers."

"Leave by the rear. I'll meet you outside."

She clutched the black velour of his jogging jacket in both hands, never losing custody of the bills. "You like me, don't you?"

"l like you."

She pushed herself upright, standing under her own power. Glanced at the watered-down glass on the bar, looked at him, then wobbled away across the floor in her go-go boots.

"That'll be all?" The bartender was standing there, smirking.

"All except the tip." Max tossed a twenty to the water-dewed surface and walked away without a backward look.

Secrets was the usual featureless box on the outside, as if ashamed to have windows to what went on inside.

He found his current car, a vintage Mustang "borrowed" off a fly-by-night used-car lot, and idled it to the building's rear. The chances of the girl managing to hang onto the money, find and change into some street clothes, and remember to leave by the rear door were three to one.

The chances that she would prove a useful source of information at this point were zero.

But at this point, Max was no longer working. He was. . . being the kind of idiot the bartender took him for.

After twenty minutes, the single door in the building's bunker like rear cracked open, revealing a razor-slash of light.

Max checked the parking lot: a lot of dead metal with an insufficient number of overhead lights pouring clown on it.

He got out of the car, moved toward the building.

The lone woman who came out hesitated like a doe expecting the paralyzing onslaught of headlights any minute.

Max came closer to encourage her.

He wasn't surprised when a powerful forearm clamped around his neck. Sweat and breath mints assaulted his nostrils. The force of the grip bent him backward. His attacker was shorter.

So what was new?

Max relaxed into the controlled posture. You could always learn more when you were trapped than when you were on top.

"What the--? I don't have any money . . ."

A deep voice laughed. "I know. She's got it all. What an asshole! Now you can just get outa here. Customers don't run off with the hired help, got it?"

A knee in the kidneys made the point.

Max gave with the blow, had expected it. Raf Nadir, he presumed. Better than he had hoped for.

"I was just--"

"You're outa line, bud." Max heard the rage, felt the bullying sadism beneath the blaster.

"And you. Girlie. Give me the money. You know the rules. Who are you anyway, asshole?" The punishing grip tightened.

"I'm her brother."

"Oh, yeah. And what's her real name?"

"Shirley," Max said.

"Shir-ley?" Sheer incongruity made the attacker pause.

The girl, whatever her real name, came nearer, hypnotized, helpless. Her fist was still clenched around the hills Max had thrust into it nearly thirty minutes earlier. She slowly, shakily, held it out to the bouncer.

Greed will get 'em every time.

Max spun from Nadir's grip as he reached for the money. He dropped the guy with a double kick to the kneecaps. When Nadir tried to lumber up to an attack, Max returned the courtesy to his kidneys twofold.

Nadir was groaning on the ground, but surprise worked on a seasoned thug like him for only so long.

Max grabbed the girl's outstretched, clenched fist. "Come on! "

"But . . . he'll be mad."

"That's why you don't want to be here."

"But."

He pulled her toward the Mustang, opened the passenger door, shoved her in. The damn car was too cramped for a man of his height, but he jackknifed himself into the driver's seat, revved the engine, and roared off into the night.

In his rearview mirror, Nadir was starting to get up.

"Where do you live?" he asked her.

"With Ginger and Reno."

"They got a street address?"

She mumbled numbers and a street name, then sat hunched, the money fist clamped to her mouth. "Oh. Jesus. Sweet Jesus. Raf's a bad guy to cross. He's a bad guy even if you don't cross him."

Under the strobe-like effect of passing streetlights, she was looking at him, sober enough to be worried.

"We'll talk about that later."

"Later?"

"When you're home."

"Home. The girls are nice."

"But the guys are hell."

"No. Some of them are nice. Really. Just sad little guys. Normal. But then we're supposed to get them to buy drinks and table dances, and they're like lost puppies, they always want to come home with you. . . . You're not a lost puppy. Why am I letting you come home with me? I'll be in trouble--"

"Anybody going to be there in the next twelve hours?"