Page 15 of Slow Burn

“Mrs. Howell,” he said.

She realized she’d been staring too long. Time to go. She gathered up her clothes—the mink had managed to fluff out again, there was quality for you—and was turning her panty hose back inside-out, when suddenly the TV went off. She looked up to find Paolo staring at her.

“I love you,” he said. There was nothing in his face, nothing in his voice. For a bad second she thought he meant it, until he started laughing. She got dressed and closed the loft door. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the methodical twig-snap of whipcracks. Ming was busy. Velvet squared her shoulders and started down the hall, toward the elevator. A hollow-eyed man dressed in a Metallica T-shirt and crusty gray pants sat at the far end, waiting; she wasn’t sure if he was a client or a bum or a killer. As she walked past him, she felt hands on her back, ghost-hands, cold.

Fucking hallways.

She really, really needed a drink or shewouldralph all over the mink.

Chapter Six

Robby

Robby adjusted her jacket and checked her reflection in the mirror one more time—hair neatly styled, makeup minimal, face under control. She felt ever so slightly sick to her stomach—souvenir of her half of a vodka bottle—but the headache was gone, thank god. She needed every brain cell firing.

She touched up her lipstick, a color just a shade darker than her lips, and blotted the excess away on a square of toilet tissue.Focus, she told herself. Her fingers were vibrating, and not from the scent of money. She clenched them hard enough to hurt, then relaxed them. The tremble was gone.

She opened the bathroom door and walked out into the garlic-scented dimness of the restaurant, past a stocky-looking waiter singing in a reedy tenor while he poured red wine from a wicker-wrapped bottle. It took a second for her eyes to adjust, and then she spotted Sol Lipsky in the back booth, smiling and nodding at her.

Panic flared white under her skin.

Jim wasn’t there. Goddamn him, Jim wasn’t in the booth, wasn’t anywhere in view, and Sol was making his big round Italian gestures, smile cool and getting colder the longer she paused.

She had to move. Door or booth. Escape or—

There was no escape, not really. She walked toward the booth.

“Robby, Robby, sweetheart, so good to see you. Wine? Good for the heart.” Sol never stopped to hear her answer. He didn’t pour very well; drops of red splashed on the red-checkered plastic tablecloth. Robby automatically dabbed them up with her thin napkin, then wiped some scattered bread crumbs off the table as well. It didn’t really matter; the plastic still felt as sticky as a porn palace floor.

She settled the stained napkin in her lap, fussed until it was square. The fabric had started out red and was now a nappy red-gray, edges fraying, old stains like ghostly Rorshach blots. The large one looked like the shadow of a knife.

“So,” Sol said. She looked up to see his eyes on her, dead-man gray behind rimless glasses. The shine in his slicked-back hair looked oily enough to be a fire hazard. “Baby, you look great. Just great.”

“Thanks, Sol,” she murmured, and sipped wine to keep from having to return the compliment. It was rough and vinegary on her tongue.

“I was just saying the other day to Mario, Mario, that Robby, she’s a real classy lady. Class through and through. Right? Hey. Pavarotti.” Sol snapped manicured fingers at the waiter. “What’s the matter with you? The lady needs a menu. Move.”

“Don’t you think we should wait until Jim gets here?” Robby asked a little desperately. The waiter scurried over and thrust a plastic-covered menu into her hands. Sol smiled at her and flicked his fingers to make the waiter go away. He leaned toward her across the table, and the red-glassed candlelight flickered hot over the side of his face and made red rainbows in his diamond pinkie ring.

“Sweetheart, I thought you understood, it’s just you and me. Just you and me. Business.” He didn’t bother to give her a choice, just shrugged and topped off her wine another quarter-inch. More red drops on the tablecloth; she resisted the need to wipe them away. She held her menu like a life preserver, a shield, but before she had time to do more than read the title—Pasta Romana—she heard Sol saying, “A bowl of minestrone for me and the lady. And two Caesar salads.”

His thick fingers pried the menu out of her hand and laid it aside. She looked up and saw that he was smiling, a benign contented smile.

“Something wrong?” he asked. She blinked. “You look worried, sweetheart. I don’t like it when you look worried. Gives you wrinkles.”

“I’m not worried.”

“Not even after the trouble yesterday?”

Oh, Jesus. She had to force herself to keep staring at him.

“Trouble?” she asked neutrally. “What trouble was that?”

“You think I don’t know?” He sounded smug instead of mysterious. “This stranger, this woman—”

“It wasn’t any big thing, Sol,” she said. Did she have an earnest look on her face? She couldn’t tell.

Sol chose to give her the reproving silent treatment, staring, and she gave in to nervousness and wiped up the wine droplets on the tablecloth, shook her napkin, folded it carefully in eights.

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