Page 50 of Devil's Marker

Zipper shook his head. “Not really. That’s peanuts compared to what they’re after.”

“You mean slavery.”

Zipper gave Win a long hard look. “What’s more valuable than diamonds or plutonium?” Win shrugged. “Here in central Texas we got a concentrated wealth of descendants of Scots, Irish, and Germans. Know what that means?” Win shook his head. “Blondes. All the world loves a natural blonde for the same reason diamonds and plutonium are valuable. They’re rare.”

Win couldn’t help but get an image of R.C. He was glad she’d had her fun and was back in Austin, a safe distance from what Zip was talking about.

“You look at a world globe,” he went on. “Only a couple of tiny places where you’ll find natural blondes. It’s not a dominant trait. Genetically. Day’s comin’, probably not too far in the future, when there won’t be any. Meantime? Think about it.

“Unscrupulous fuckers like Stars & Bars can tap into a commodity with no cost but risk to themselves. What if cocaine was walkin’ around at the mall and all you had to do was grab it without gettin’ caught? I’m damn glad my little girl has dark hair.”

“You’re sayin’ all the girls who’ve disappeared have been blondes?”

“We don’t have that kind of conclusive intel. Cops are bein’ real tight lipped. They don’t want a panic that would discourage people from bein’ out shoppin’.” Zipper shook his head. “Shoppin’! Number one driver of the economy until the rest of the money ends up in the offshore accounts of the billionaire fuckers who aren’t smart enough to figure out that if ordinary people don’t have money, ordinary people can’t spend money. You got a consumer economy? You need consumers. Simple as that.”

Once he started talking, Zipper was something of a surprise. He revealed that he was insightful and that he was paying attention to far more than just what he could see around him at any given moment.

CHAPTER Ten

Every day Win’s face looked less injured and more like himself.

In an effort to do research for his upcoming gig as a citizen looking to get laid, he used one of the laptops in the security room to look at what GQ thought was stylish club dress for the modern professional man. After looking through photos, he concluded that he’d rather set himself on fire than take style advice from GQ magazine.

He decided to do some old school research and stake out the club to see what people were wearing. He got Cue to give him use of one of the club cars and sat close enough to see what guys had on who weren’t making total asses out of themselves. After a couple of hours of observing the comings and goings, he’d settled on how to fit in with club goers.

Wednesday Cue tapped him on the shoulder. “Boss wants you to stop by his office.”

Win slid off the barstool where he’d been halfway through watching an MMA match. “Yep.”

He knocked on the jamb of the open door. Boss looked up and said, “One door down. I’ll meet you in security in a minute.”

Win nodded and stepped further down the hall to the security room. The door was open there as well. Catcher looked over and raised his chin in macho code acknowledgement.

“Boss said to meet him here. Said it would be a minute.”

“Yeah. I heard. You ready for Friday night?”

“Will be. Have an errand to run first, but mostly.”

“You’re startin’ to look human.”

“Thanks.”

Boss filled the room. “Have a seat right there,” he said. It seemed Boss was always telling Win where to sit. If he was going to be a real Marauder, he decided that would get old fast.

Since he wasn’t going to be a real Marauder, and was almost halfway done with the month-long gig, he could suck it up and act like he didn’t mind.

He sat down next to Cue, who pulled up a headshot of a guy who looked rough, not just around the edges, but from every conceivable angle.

“Cue’s gonna take you through shots of the S&B known to be in the area. You need to memorize these faces well enough so that, if you saw ‘em cleaned up for an upscale club experience in beautiful downtown Waco, you’d still recognize them for the bottom crawlers they are.”

Win nodded. “How many?”

Catcher answered. “We’re gonna concentrate on five because they’re the ones who stand a chance of gettin’ cleaned up enough to fit in. The others are too old, too pierced, too tattooed, too grilled, too bald, too bearded or too mean-lookin’ for the collegealums. They’dbe an instant turn off for the kind of women who show up to dance and drink at Night Flight.” He stopped and took a good look at Win. “Your face looks better. You’re gonna do fine.”

“Thanks.” Win looked at the screen. “Show me.”

They spent half an hour looking at both head shots and random photos collected from here and there.

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