35

I don’t believe you can judge a man by what he drinks but you can tell a lot about someone’s character and aspirations by where they choose to drink, no matter whether it’s milk or vodka filling the glass. The zinc and blue resin bar where Finley stopped after work buzzed with those perfect people you find in LA who by the age of thirty have yet to acquire a wrinkle or lose one strand of hair, as though they regularly send not just their clothes but their entire bodies out to be dry cleaned. In the crush of the bar scene they tried to pick each other up, waved about nouvelle nothings from the adjacent restaurant, or, in a few desperate, isolated instances, actually drank. Finley had entered alone and after he spoke a few words to a brunette who quickly fled I guessed that he had not come to eat and, by the pale green bottle of Pelegrino on the bar before him, certainly not to drink.

I hooked the Caddy into the back alley and found a parking slot behind a beauty salon closed for the night. A caged security light illuminated the back door and in fading arcs diminished to darkness at the far slot. It was a good spot for bad business. I touched up my face by the light on the vanity mirror, circled to the trunk and dolled myself up in the blonde wig, a Wonder Bra and tight-fitting black cocktail dress guaranteed to flick the tongue of Finley’s reptilian brain. Before locking the car I stashed the pistol under the seat and the tyre iron under the lip of the trunk, just to the side of an artist’s portfolio stocked with photos of naked blondes.

I didn’t blame the men for looking when I walked into the bar; I couldn’t have advertised myself better with neon and half-price stickers. I slipped through the crowd, deflected the offer of a drink, nudged up to the bar next to Finley and ordered a Jack Daniel’s neat, water back. I focused on the movement of the bartender’s hands as he poured the bourbon and set it down before me. Then I allowed myself to glance to the mirror behind the bottled bar and, just as I figured, Finley was staring. When he caught my eyes he smiled.

‘That’s a strong drink for a little lady.’

‘This little lady has just worked a long, hard day under hot lights and she needs a stiff drink.’

That turned his attention full frontal. Finny was designer slick from Bruno Magli foot to Armani cuffs. I could see how some women would think him attractive. He was tall enough to look up to and his eyes were nice in a lost-little-boy way and he certainly dressed like he had some money in his creased trousers. Finley was like a lot of LA guys in their mid-twenties to late thirties regarding the importance he placed in surface values, from the clothes he wore to the car he drove and the bar he patronized after work; some people do not mature into themselves so much as construct an image of who they want to become and then imitate it. Trying to hold a conversation with one of these is like talking to a twelve-year-old boy behind a Tom Cruise mask. He looks good and he sure can smile but behind that it’s all zits and caca jokes. The lenses of Finny’s Armani glasses looked so thin I wondered if they corrected not a defect of vision but image; like the Pelegrino water at his side they served no useful purpose except to suggest he was a serious person, perhaps even intellectual.

The notion that he was intellectual was promptly dispelled by his next conversational gambit, which was to ask the quintessential LA question, the one strangers inevitably ask of each another within a minute of meeting in this town. ‘What kind of job do you, I mean, what do you do?’

I told him I was a model. Men like models in the same way they like marlins and other beautiful creatures: as something to catch and stuff.

‘A beautiful girl like you, I’m not surprised. What sort of model are you, I mean, what do you model?’

‘Nothing particular,’ I said. ‘I just, you know, model.’

‘No, no, let me guess then. You’re a product model, one of those women whose hands we see holding the dish detergent or the shapely legs inside a pair of nylons. Am I right?’

I giggled like I thought he was awfully charming. ‘No, you’re wrong.’

He stepped back, took our little game as an excuse to eyeball me toes to hair. I was a little short of five foot ten and my style less than haute couture but he wasn’t interested in accuracy at that point; he wanted to get laid. ‘You’re a fashion model.’

I swung my blonde curls back and forth like a veil. ‘Wrong again. I definitely don’t model with clothes, I mean, sometimes I’ll wear heels and a garter belt but it’s not exactly like Victoria’s Secret if you understand what I’m saying, the underwear is not the thing.’

‘You model in the nu – I mean you, magazines, that sort of modelling?’ The question came out in spurts, like he had a sudden problem controlling his breath.

‘Magazines, yeah, I’ve done a lot of magazine work, but most of the money now is in video.’ Then I remembered that little move Piña made, where she put her hands behind her neck and stretched. So I did that too and said, ‘I guess you could say what I model is myself.’

‘Well, that’s –’ his glasses slipped down his nose in the sudden flush of hormones and with a deft movement of his forefinger he poked them back into place ‘– that’s just, yes, really interesting, just fascinating, really.’

‘The way I look at it, God gave me this body, and it’s like I’m an athlete, he didn’t give me a beautiful body to hide it away, he gave it to me to share with others.’

‘I think, yes, that’s very generous.’ The way he looked at me it was like I was an open net with no goalie, no way he could miss this one. ‘Maybe I’ve seen you?’ He closed his eyes and shook his head, afraid I’d get the wrong idea. ‘I mean, I don’t subscribe to a lot of magazines, or watch a lot of, well, videos, but maybe? I’ve seen you? In one of your spreads, I mean layouts, I mean, what would you call it?’

‘Pictorials.’

‘Pectorals! Of course! Maybe I’ve seen one of your, uhh, pictorials, though again, I don’t really look at those things, I mean I look at them but not all the time?’

I put my hand on his arm to calm him. ‘Let me, no, you wouldn’t have seen that one, but how about Playboy? October ’98? The girl-girl pictorial? I wanted the centrefold, you know, it’s good exposure when you get to be the peeoh’em – sorry, that’s show-biz speak for Playmate of the Month – but I guess just being featured is honour enough.’

‘Playboy, I mean, wow, that’s the top end of the business isn’t it? No, no, I think it’s just, fabulous, really, that you were in any part of the magazine, I mean, if you want my opinion, they really made the wrong decision there, you should have been the centrefold, but, yes, I mean, just getting in at all.’

I didn’t make it sound like a come on, like once we got to the car I’d ask him for money. I knew enough about women who took off their clothes for a living from my time in stir. Sure, some hate themselves, but some are professionals, proud of their skills and how good they look, even if they’re usually doing so many drugs they don’t look that way for long. ‘Hey, you know I have my portfolio out in the car, maybe I could – no, I can’t bring it in here – but maybe I could show it to you, out in my car?’

Finley answered by signalling the barman and tossing a twenty on to the zinc. ‘I’d really like that, I mean, I think what you do is really interesting and I have an idea, I’m really hungry, maybe we could go, get something to eat?’

I gave him my arm, let him lead me out of the bar. I’m sure he thought he was a real wolf and I was some lamb, yum yum juicy, he was going to have himself a nice meal. On the way to the alley we had not one single awkward moment until we reached the trunk and I picked the keys from my clutch-purse.

‘It’s kind of dark,’ he observed.

I smiled up at him and popped the latch. ‘Don’t worry, I have a good trunk light.’

I reached across him with my left hand to flip open the portfolio to the first page, the movement screening my right hand as it gripped the tyre iron under the lip of the trunk. The portfolio featured an anonymous blonde who, considering the contortions of her body and the angle of the shots, could have passed for me or any other blonde. Naturally, Finley bent over the trunk to get a closer view and when he did that I didn’t have to hit him very hard, just a tap above the join between neck and skull and he toppled into the trunk so neatly all I had to worry about was the legs sticking out. I patted down his coat, removed his keys, wallet and cell phone and folded him up like a suitcase. At the top of the dumpster across the alley the green of a cat’s eyes glowed curious but wary.

‘That’s the way you catch a mouse,’ I said.

She skittered off the dumpster when I started the engine. I marvelled that my hands didn’t shake much at all, said to Gabe in his cardboard box, ‘You know, I really have a talent for this, one small twist of motive and I could be a real criminal.’ Then I laughed, because by almost any reading of the legal code I was a real criminal. I’d committed and been convicted of crimes, done time and after my release committed more crimes. Hell, I wasn’t just a criminal, I was a recidivist. I shouted my laughter like a victory cry, heard an echo coming from the back of the car, a muffled scream. I turned on the radio to a college radio station playing trip hop, turned it up full blast and cruised.