7

Till was prepared for the possibility that Kyra would simply not show up. Being in a business that was illegal relieved a person of some of the obligation to observe the usual rules and customs. If she had run a more extended search of the Internet and turned up something that said “undercover cop” to her, then she wouldn’t come.

He had decided to use his own name with this girl because the Internet explained who he was, including his careers as a cop and a private investigator. If she showed up, it would mean she had accepted him at his word. He had wanted to be sure that the girl never saw him as some kind of deceiver, and withholding information would have made her feel just that. If she knew the facts and he didn’t set off any alarms, then he would be far ahead. If she did get worried and talked to her friend, the man who had given her Catherine Hamilton’s jewelry, then he might be the one coming for Till.

When Till came out of the elevator into the big lobby he went to the front desk and found a bright-eyed young woman in a fitted uniform, with shiny black hair tied in a tight ponytail. He placed a hundred-dollar bill on the counter. “Could you please call my room at ten-twenty? My name is Jack Till. If I’m not in the room to answer it, can you please have me paged in Wright’s?”

She eyed the hundred-dollar bill as though it had nothing to do with her. “Certainly, Mr. Till. If we don’t reach you, do you have a cell number you’d like to give us?” He did. He watched her write it down. “Ten-twenty,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said. He pushed the hundred-dollar bill toward her, turned, and walked away.

There was a bar on the first floor situated at a crossroads where two perpendicular stretches of lobby met. There was a large set of doors on one side that led to the gardens outside, and a long, broad, open promenade big enough to accommodate a parade that led to meeting rooms in another part of the hotel.

He bought a glass of tonic and drank it while he watched the guests walking along the promenade. The dry Arizona air had been dehydrating him for hours. He bought another and went to sit in an armchair in front of a low table. His cell phone rang and he took it out of his coat pocket and slid the arrow across the screen. “Till.”

“Jack, honey?”

“I’m in a bar near the end of the lobby.”

“Sit tight where you are. I can see you now.”

“I hope you’re not disappointed.”

“This isn’t about me. It’s all about you tonight. But I’m not at all. I’m pleased. I’m coming toward you right now.”

He didn’t resist the temptation to end the call and look for her. He turned to his right and saw her. She was wearing a black dress that was very simple and elegant, with a high neckline and bare arms. He instantly searched for Catherine Hamilton’s jewelry, but with the black dress she had worn a thin white gold chain with a single diamond. On her feet were heels that were only slightly less than too high. He admired her business sense. She undoubtedly came to the major hotels in the area often. This was the oldest landmark hotel in the city, designed and built in the 1920s. There were plenty of groups and families who would not have been happy about an obvious hooker in their midst. Her outfit was understated, her makeup was subtle, so she didn’t raise any suspicions, but lots of eyes followed her as she made her way to Till.

He stood and smiled as she approached. When she reached him she stopped and stood still, expecting, like a model, to be looked at and appraised. Instead, Till took her hand, leaned to her, and gave her a peck on the cheek, and then gestured toward the other armchair ninety degrees from his at the low table. As she sat, he raised his hand to call the waitress.

The waitress came and said, “What can I get you, sir?”

He looked at Kyra. “What would you like?”

“What are you having?”

“This is just tonic. I’d like one now with gin in it, please. Hendrick’s with a slice of cucumber.”

“I’ll have one too,” said Kyra. As the waitress scurried off Kyra said, “Unless you don’t want me to drink.”

Till said, “I don’t have a preference. I want you to be comfortable, and I’ve found that most people feel comfortable having a drink before dinner.”

“Thanks,” she said. She moved only her eyes, scanning to take in the people around her. A couple passed on their way to another set of chairs grouped around a table. Then it seemed safe for her to speak. “I recognized you from your pictures on Google. You look better in person. I saw you, then called your number to see if you reached for a phone. I was glad when I saw you answer, because it meant you were you, not that guy by the bar.”

He followed her eyes. The man was tall and light-haired like Till, but ten years older. “Thank you.”

The waitress brought the drinks, and Till paid in cash and gave her a ten-dollar tip. He raised his glass. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.” She sipped. “Oh. It smells like flowers.”

“It does, but fortunately, it tastes like gin.”

The waitress moved off, and Kyra looked around again. “When is our dinner reservation?”

“We’ll go in after we’ve talked a bit and finished our drinks.”

“Okay,” she said. “What do you like to talk about, usually?”

“Let’s start with Phoenix. Do you like it here?”

She gave a practiced gesture that looked like a shrug, but was a pose. “I like it a lot when it’s seventy-two degrees in February, not so much when it’s a hundred and eleven in May.” She smiled. “What do you like the best about it?”

“So far, you,” he said. “But you’re probably not from here originally, are you?”

“Uh-oh,” she said. “This is something we should talk about. You’re such a pleasant guy, I can tell you’re sensitive. You’ll understand that I don’t like to tell a gentleman a lot of personal information about my history and stuff. I need to protect my family, who don’t know what I do for a living. But I don’t want to say no to you about anything, so if you’d like, I’ll make up a good story to tell you, and it will feel fine, but it can’t be true.”

“I understand perfectly. I was just forgetting to look at things from your point of view. Sorry. If something like that comes up again, just tell me you’re from Jupiter.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m beginning to like you a lot,” she said. She grasped his forearm. “Maybe you were a girl in a past life.”

“If I had a past life I was probably a rattlesnake or a garbanzo bean.”

She laughed. “I don’t think so.”

They chatted for a time, and then he set down his empty glass. “Are you getting hungry?”

“If you are.” She set her glass down, although she’d had less than half of it.

“Then let’s have dinner,” he said.

They stood and walked together into Wright’s. It was hard not to be put into a good mood by the room, with its high walls, the tall pillars of distinctive molded bricks, and the windows looking out on green vegetation. The hostess conducted them to a table on the right beneath the big skylight. As soon as she was gone, he said, “Would you like a fresh drink?”

“If you’d like.”

“I’m asking sincerely.”

She smiled and the candles on the table made two small stars in her blue eyes. “Jack, you don’t hire escorts very often, do you?”

“To tell you the truth, I never have before. I was alone, don’t know anybody in town, and so here I am. I know it shows, but I’m doing my best.”

“You’re being great. You just need a little bit of advice. So here it is. I’m in the happiness business, and you’re the customer. You’re paying me a lot. By the time the night is over you will have paid me like I was your psychiatrist. I won’t feel bad, because I’ll do you a lot more good than he will. If I didn’t like you a whole lot, I would never tell you any of this. You found me online, so you know that my business is very competitive. For a couple of hundred bucks a very young woman who was probably prom queen somewhere will drive to your hotel room and do anything you can think of for an hour. It won’t matter to her if it’s four p.m. or four a.m. She’ll be grateful that you picked her out.”

“I did notice there seemed to be a lot of ads.”

“There are about five different sites, and hundreds of girls on each listing.”

“Okay. So?”

“So when you hire me, I give you fair value. For these few hours, I belong to you. I’m the sure thing. I’m the girlfriend who does every­thing she can to please you because it’s your birthday, and who never says no. If you don’t want me to drink, I won’t. If you want to see me drunk, I’ll drink until it happens, and sleep it off in your room before I drive home.”

“Does that go for—”

“It goes for everything until our evening is over. There are very few limits. If you want to do something I don’t consider part of our standard deal, I’ll quote you a price. If there’s something I’m not able to do, I’ll try to make it up to you in another way. When this is over, you will be happy. It’s how we both measure whether I did my job.”

“I’m happy. You showed up looking beautiful, and I’ve enjoyed our conversation. This is one of the nicest dinners I’ve ever had, and I haven’t thought about the food.”

“This talk goes with the service because you’re sweet. I don’t want you to think about this evening later and feel I cheated you because you’re a rookie.”

“I’m hardly a—”

“You’ve never paid before.”

“No.” He considered. “What if I want to have sex with you right now?”

She pushed her chair out. “Just tell the waiter your room number for the check, and we’ll go. We can have a snack later. Come on.”

He shook his head. “I was just being theoretical.”

“If we were alone up in your room, all you would have to do is lift my skirt or unzip the back of my dress. You get whatever you want, when you want, the way you want it. That’s the arrangement.”

“It’s a very nice arrangement, from my point of view,” said Till. “Why is it worth it to you?”

She smiled. It was an imitation of a sly, flirtatious smile, or maybe an echo of an expression that was once real, but it was too expert now. “The business reason is that you’ll want to come back to me more and more often, and give me tips and presents. I can tell you can afford it. The other reason is that I’m still an actual woman. Having a tall, handsome older man who has a little crush on me take charge and have his way with me is something I’d probably pay for if I had to. When I know I’m going to have a good time later I start to get kind of excited thinking about it. Like tonight.”

“Do you have two kinds of dates—the kind that pay the bills and the ones that are for fun?”

“Things are—everything is—much more complicated than that. I can like a person and still try to get him to pay me more. And I can sometimes tell that a person who turns me on is going to be a mistake—maybe be too rough with me, or not pay me enough.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Uh, I told you I don’t answer things that are personal.”

“I’ll tell you what I was asking, and maybe you’ll feel more like answering. You were talking about difficult clients. I wondered if there was somebody who would help you if that happened. I should have said a girl roommate, and maybe it would have seemed less personal—just somebody so you’re not alone with a psycho.”

“You mean a pimp,” she said.

“I don’t even like the word,” he said.

“Neither do I. I have friends. Some are girls who do the sort of work I do. They understand the issues and the problems.”

He nodded and kept his eyes on hers. She was holding back.

“And yes,” she conceded. “I have some men friends too. One of them stays over sometimes because he travels.”

Till had found him. The man sometimes stayed with her. He had to be the one. “Is he there when you’re gone, taking messages?”

“No. I don’t have a landline. I only use a cell phone, and when I’m busy I turn off the ring and it goes to voice mail.”

“Who is he?”

“Just a friend. Friends are good.”

“Yes, they are.”

“You’re jealous, aren’t you?”

“That would be pretty stupid of me, wouldn’t it?”

She leaned closer and touched his cheek with a hand that felt like silk. “You poor baby. You think your mind does what you tell it to, don’t you?”

“Most of the time.”

“Good for you,” she said, as though she didn’t believe him, but liked him for his faith in himself. “Oh, here’s our dinner.”

He looked and saw the two waiters arrive and set plates down with considerable ceremonial grace and quiet warnings about hot plates. Then the waiters dissolved into the spaces behind them. The food was perfectly cooked and elegantly presented and served.

They ate happily and exchanged samples of food, then said how much they liked it. If Till had not had the sort of mind she didn’t seem to think existed, he would have thought he was on an exceptionally pleasant date with a beautiful woman who genuinely liked his company. He let himself feel that way for a while, as he thought about the male friend who sometimes stayed over. She had denied he was at her apartment answering her phone, but she hadn’t said he was not there.

He was surprised to see that she ate much of her food and about half the dessert, but he could tell from her arms and legs that she trained regularly at a gym somewhere, so maybe that was enough to burn off the calories. She put down her fork and looked up at him. “I’d like to go to your room now.”

“Really?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You got me talking about everything—which I almost never do—right after we met, and so I’ve been thinking about you for about an hour and a half, and staring at you to watch your reactions. And as I was talking about us, I was thinking, ‘Do I really want to tell this man that he can do anything he wants to me? That all he has to do is put something into words and I’ll do it?’ And ever since the answer came up yes, I’ve been marking time, waiting. And that’s like, right out of the secret book of women—get us thinking about it and then wait us out, be patient. Of course, for me, it’s even worse. I didn’t get into this business because I wasn’t interested.”

Till caught the waiter’s eye and made a writing motion, and the waiter nodded. In a moment he came across the room with the leather folder with the check in it. Till added the tip and signed it.

Till stood and stepped around the table to pull out her chair, then followed her toward the exit from the dining room. He took her moment of looking ahead to glance at his watch. It was only nine-fifteen. The paging he’d arranged was scheduled for ten-twenty.

She walked across the lobby to the elevator. When he joined her she whispered, “Please don’t do anything until we’re in the room. If I don’t act like a lady they’ll figure me out and I won’t be welcome here anymore.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m kind of a hypocrite, so I’m pretty good in public.”

She said, “It’s just that some men think an elevator is more private than it is.” The elevator door closed them in. “What floor?”

“Third.”

She pushed the button and the elevator began to rise. “Thanks. I’ll make up for anything you missed.”

Till had been sure he knew how to get out of this part of the evening, but as the elevator rose he sensed his options slipping away. The page from the front desk was still an hour and five minutes away. He could try to play sick so she would leave, but now that he knew her better, she didn’t seem likely to believe it. She didn’t seem likely to believe an urgent business call, either. He needed to have her trust him after tonight, or he’d never get near her male friend. He thought frantically, and then realized he wasn’t thinking of anything new. He considered pulling a fire alarm so the hotel would be evacuated, but the risk would be too great, and he would have to be far from her when he did it. Then he realized that he wasn’t thinking of anything because he no longer really wanted to.

They left the elevator and walked the twenty-five feet to his door. He took the key card out of his wallet and slid it into the slot on the lock, and the click told him the door was unlocked. He opened it only a couple of inches before she slipped in ahead of him, then pivoted and pulled him in by the arm. She turned the rheostat on the fixture beside the door to dim the lights. She led him to the bed and made him sit down, then smiled and slowly, tantalizingly disrobed. Under the dress she was wearing a black bra, a pair of thigh-high stockings, a garter belt, and a thong.

Till’s mind was racing. She’s half my age. Exploiting and using her isn’t something I want to live with. I just need information. I can try to stall for more time. He could wait for the call from the girl at the front desk. I can tell her my wife just died a year ago and I’m not ready for this after all.

She came toward him, and the last of his ideas disappeared with the last of her clothing. She stood in front of him and unbuttoned his shirt, then knelt to unbuckle his belt, and he stopped pretending that he wasn’t going to go through with it. When he was naked too, she suddenly said, “Just a second.”

She stepped to the desk, picked up the hotel telephone, pressed a button, and waited. “Hi, Beverly.” She listened for a few seconds, then said, “Thanks. Cancel Mr. Till’s call.” She put the phone in its cradle and returned to him.

She began to kiss his neck, his cheeks, his throat, his chest. “You paid the same person I do,” she said. “If you want to call this off, we can.”

“I changed my mind after I met you,” he said.

“I’m so glad you’re not a cop. They’re the ones who back out. It looks better in court.”

After that the time was no longer real. He had some idea that it must still be early, and then he caught a glimpse of the clock on the nightstand and it said nearly twelve. Briefly he wondered when his evening would be over, his time up, and hoped it would last until morning. The thought that kept returning was what would induce a girl like this to become a prostitute? But some self-protective part of his mind told him the answer could only be unhappy or tragically stupid, and should be avoided for now.

Then he saw the clock had moved to three, and sometime after that he fell asleep. He woke to some kind of disturbance among the birds outside and saw Kyra sleeping too, the fiery hair like an aura around her head on the white pillow. He pretended to be asleep as he watched her wake up. He saw her get up, gather her clothes, and make her way to the bathroom. In a few minutes she came out fully dressed.

He saw her notice his pants with his wallet in the pocket hanging on the straight chair by the desk, and he waited for her to reach in and take it out. She didn’t. He closed his eyes again.

A few seconds later he felt her hand, the same silky hand, make a swirl in the hair on his chest.

He opened his eyes.

“Hey, cowboy.”

He smiled. “Is that a good thing?”

“Yes. I’m too sweet to speak more plainly than that.”

Till could see that while his eyes had been closed she had opened the curtain a little bit, and now the sunlight poured in, making the room seem beautiful. Her white skin was luminous. He said, “The evening seems to be over.”

“I’m afraid that happened a while ago, lover,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go brush my teeth and my hair. You can get my money ready while I’m in there.”

“Okay.” He watched with regret as she scooped her purse off the desk and went into the bathroom.

Till got up, went to the safe in the closet, pressed the four digits, opened it, and took out twelve hundred dollars. Then he put the rest into his suitcase. He picked out the clothes he would wear, moved them to the right side of the closet, and shut the closet door. He collected the two Glock pistols and the rest of his belongings and put them in his suitcase.

In a few minutes, she emerged with light daytime makeup on and hair brushed straight. “Too chicken to run off without paying, huh?”

“That too. And partly the fact that I’ll sincerely remember this as one of the most amazing nights of my life.”

She patted him on the cheek. “I like you too, Jack. But now it’s day, and I’ve got to go.”

He handed her the little stack of hundred-dollar bills, and she shuffled through them like a bank teller. “A fifty percent tip. A night for the record books.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. Then she reached into her purse and produced a plain white business card that said “Kyra” and a telephone number. “Don’t lose my number.”

“I won’t,” he said.

She opened the door, blew him a kiss, slipped out, and let the door swing shut.

Till was already at the closet. As he threw on his clothes, he mentally gauged where she would be—walking down the hall toward the elevator, stepping in, descending. He grabbed the phone and dialed the garage. “This is Mr. Till in suite 311. Can you please get my car out right away?”

“Certainly, sir.”

Till ran to the bathroom, snatched up his toiletry kit, put it into his suitcase, latched it, and took with him the instant checkout folder and a pen. In the elevator he filled out the folder and put his key card into it. When the elevator door opened he put the folder in the little brass box beside it and went directly to the valet station beside the covered entrance to the building. He looked outside warily to be sure Kyra was still there.

When Kyra’s car arrived, it was a silver Jaguar. She handed the parking attendant a tip, got into the car, adjusted her sunglasses in the mirror, and then drove off.

As soon as Kyra was past the driveway, Till stepped out, saw his car already waiting on the circle, hurried to it, tipped the parking attendant, tossed his suitcase onto the backseat, and went after her.