Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(45)

He thought he had seen something in her eyes when she looked at him, a shadow of disapproval. She appeared to be in her late thirties, with a long-legged body and ample breasts slowly succumbing to gravity, a face still fighting entropy.

“Double Jack,” he told her. “Straight up.”

The bartender turned and walked away.

Ariel laid a hand on his cheek and turned his face toward hers again. “We could do a couple private dances,” she told him. “That would pass some time.”

“I’m afraid I’m not a very good dancer.”

She giggled softly. “It’s twenty dollars a song for a room dance,” she said. “But for fifty dollars you can have a twenty-minute couch dance.” She spoke with her mouth against his ear again. “And there’s a curtain across the door in the couch room.”

He nodded.

“Sound good?”

“Sounds very good.” He poured some champagne into her glass. She lifted the glass and took a sip. Then she placed her lips against his and forced a trickle of mouth-warmed champagne over his tongue. He tasted its wetness and the sweetness of her lips, and when the dizziness passed, he thought, That’s a good way to get hepatitis.

The bartender returned then and set his glass in front of him. “Thank you,” he said. She smiled tightly. As she walked away, she gave Ariel’s shoulder a quick tap.

Ariel’s eyes widened at the touch. She cut a glance at DeMarco’s face, then quickly looked away. “I’ll be right back,” she told him. She reached for her glass and the small bottle of champagne, slid off DeMarco’s lap, and walked away briskly. The fur trim on her white coat tried to cover her backside but fell short. He watched her go and knew that she would not be coming back. He wished he had stroked that fur when he’d had the chance.

DeMarco sipped his drink for a while. Finally he stood, glass in hand, and crossed to the bar. He smiled at the bartender, whose eyes held a dull sheen of resignation. “We know each other?” he asked.

“Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” she said.

“You made me for a cop. I saw you tap her shoulder.”

“I guess you look the type,” she said.

“My guess is we’ve met before.”

She shrugged. “In a previous lifetime maybe.”

“When I was working vice, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” she said.

He sipped his drink. She brought out a bottle from behind the bar and poured another inch into his glass.

“I’m not here to make trouble,” he told her.

“Neither am I.”

“I’m just looking for some answers.”

She stared at him hard for a few seconds. Then looked away. Then looked at him again. “If it’s about that professor, there’s not much I can tell you.”

“Good guess,” he told her.

She shrugged. “He’s the only one of our customers been in the papers lately.”

“And?”

“He was a customer. That’s the grand total of what I know about him.”

“Except that he’s a professor.”

She shrugged. “Some of the customers don’t know enough to lie about who they are.”

“What else didn’t he lie about?”

“To me? I never even spoke to the man except to take his drink order.”

DeMarco nodded and sipped his whiskey. He was feeling more comfortable now, playing a more familiar role. Ariel’s scent and warmth and touch had unnerved him for a few minutes, took him to a place of uncertainty he had not visited in a very long time. It had reminded him of how easily a man could succumb to such an invitation, how quickly he could find himself lost in that beguiling place.

But, he asked himself, a man like Thomas Huston? Huston had been married to a beautiful woman and, by all accounts, blissfully so. On the other hand, thirteen years of married life can make a man restless. Curious. Wistful for the unknown, the only imagined. Maybe even fearful of the slow slide into old age and all the loss it portends.

And what was it Bill Clinton had said when asked, Why would a man in your position, Mr. President, a man who has achieved everything he could ever want, ever stray?

Because I can, Slick Willie had said. He had done his best to look remorseful, repentant, self-chastising, but had been unable to banish a sly and arrogant smile from his lips.

Had Thomas Huston succumbed to a similar weakness?

“If you never spoke to him,” DeMarco asked, “how did you find out he’s a professor?”

“Girl talk,” she said. “Besides, just because I work in a place like this doesn’t mean I’m totally illiterate. I read the paper every once in a while.”

“That’s what puzzles me,” DeMarco said. “Why a man so well-known would jeopardize his public image by—”

“Fraternizing with us lowlifes?”

DeMarco considered her face. It was beginning to look familiar.

“Let me save you the trouble,” she said. “You took me in a couple times maybe ten, twelve years ago. Me and a couple of friends.”

“For keeping a disorderly house.”

“So they said. Personally, I consider myself a meticulous housekeeper.”

“Meticulous,” he repeated and smiled.