Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(63)
“Do you find that so hard to believe? Or you just don’t want to believe it?”
He had no answer, none he wanted to give. “Did the two of you ever talk about being together? Permanently, I mean.”
“Christ no,” she said.
“You never talked about what might happen if maybe his wife and family weren’t in the picture?”
“It was a fucking fling, DeMarco, okay? He knew it and so did I. I sucked his dick three times and fucked him twice. You want to know what positions we used? Is that relevant to your investigation too?”
“Neither one of you was smart enough to use protection?”
“I wear a diaphragm. Apparently they aren’t foolproof.”
DeMarco leaned back in his seat and stared at the steering wheel. The exhaustion he heard in Bonnie’s voice seemed to have spread to him now. The calmness was gone, replaced suddenly by a heaviness in his body, a dull numbness of the limbs. For the first time in a long time, he felt that if he closed his eyes, he would almost certainly fall asleep.
The light that flared abruptly from Whispers startled him. In the rectangle of yellow light, a large man stood, broad, bald, heavily muscled. In his right hand he held a baseball bat. He shoved the door open the whole way so that the spring hinge locked, then he came forward a few steps, paused, and squinted at the vehicles. Within seconds, he spotted the silhouettes in DeMarco’s car and strode toward them.
DeMarco threw open his car door. “You need to go back inside, pardner.”
But instead of halting, the bouncer increased his pace. Now DeMarco climbed out, turned on his flashlight, and aimed it at the man’s eyes. “This is state police business. And I am telling you to go back inside. Now.”
The big man stood in place for a moment. Then he took a step and a half backward, then turned and retreated into the building and pulled the door shut behind him. DeMarco slid back behind the steering wheel and eased his door shut.
“Tell me about Tex,” he said.
“His name is Tex,” she answered.
“Anything else?”
“He’s the bouncer.”
“Last name?”
“I think he said it was Doyle.”
“You think?”
“What did I already say about names in this place? And now I suppose you want to arrest me for giving a guy a job without clearing him through Homeland Security.”
“Why is he so interested in you being out here?”
“Because that’s what I pay him for: to watch over the girls and me.”
“He’s new?”
“Yeah, a couple of months or so.”
“Who was your bouncer before he came along?”
“My brother, Moby. You’ve seen him. So you know why I needed a new one.”
“Where’s Tex from?”
“Probably Texas, you think?”
“From what I hear, the two of you have a thing for each other.”
“Right,” she said. “I don’t even know his last name for sure, don’t know a damn thing about him, but I’m fucking him anyway. Hell, I guess I’m fucking everybody in the place. I’ll fuck you if you want me to. I run a club where girls shake their tits and pussies at men, so obviously I’m a fucking whore myself, right? I’m a fucking nymphomaniac, right? So whip out your dick for me, DeMarco, and let’s have at it.”
DeMarco allowed a few moments to pass. Then he asked, “Which of these vehicles is his?”
“How would I know?”
“You don’t know what car he drives?”
“I’m inside when he gets here. I’m inside when he leaves. For all I know he gets dropped off by a flying saucer.”
“So you’re going to force me to run down every license plate in this parking lot. Just to find out who your bouncer is.”
“I’m not forcing you to do anything. Besides, what difference does it make who he is? He’s got nothing to do with any of this.”
“Maybe I just don’t like guys who come at me with a baseball bat.”
“That’s your problem, not mine.”
He leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. The thump of music was grating on his nerves again. He felt the vibration in his eyeballs.
“So are you going to whip it out or not?” she said. “What’s the matter? Afraid to show me what you’ve got?”
He did not open his eyes. They sat in silence for another minute. Finally he asked her, “How can you work in such a sad business as this?”
“Haven’t you noticed?” she said. “It’s a sad fucking world.”
Another minute passed. DeMarco sat up, buckled his seat belt, put a hand on the ignition key. “I’ll let you know if I have any other questions.”
“I can hardly wait,” she said.
The slamming of the door jarred his bones. He started the car and the headlights flared on. He watched as she crossed the gravel lot. Her stride on the return trip had none of its previous adamancy. Now her gait was halting and weary. She had thrown her shoulders back and lifted her chin in an attempt to show that he had had no effect on her, but the trudge in her gait betrayed her. At times she almost appeared to falter and list to one side. He leaned forward to watch her more closely, but then she was at Whispers’s door. She yanked it open, stepped into the yellow light, and then was gone.