Fat Tuesday(90)

The week of Mardi Gras was always an enormous moneymaker. Nightly, the house was packed with regular clients seeking additional fun without their wives after the grand balls and parties, and out-oftowners who flocked to the city for the celebration. Men ranging from eighteen to eighty sought fun and frolic in the best whorehouse in the best party town in the country.

Most evenings Ruby could be found on the gallery above the main salon.

From this excellent vantage point, she could observe the activity going on below, while letting her excellent personnel handle the general operation. Puffing a cigar and sipping brandy, she mentally tabulated what this night's profits would be, and smiled complacently at the estimate.

Her smile deflated when she saw Pinkie Duvall.

Speaking to no one, he made his way to the bar and ordered a drink, which he drank quickly and ordered another. To Ruby, the most amusing of his pretensions was that of being a wine connoisseur.

Belying that image, he was tossing back shots of hard liquor as rapidly as a sailor on shore leave after six months at sea.

Catching the eye of one of her hostesses, she signaled her toward Pinkie. The svelte blonde was one of Ruby's classiest girls. A United States diplomat's daughter, she had traveled extensively with her parents and attended the most prestigious schools in the world. She spoke several languages fluently and was conversant on a wide variety of topics. She could hold her own with a stuffy intellectual, or be quite the coquette. No fantasy was too bizarre if it meant pleasing a client, although she drew the line at abuse and pain. Having absolutely no shame or inhibitions, she approached sex as an art form, practicing the exotic methods she had learned abroad while executing her own idea of foreign relations.

A nasty incident in Burma when it was still Burma involving her and a high government official had resulted in her father's dismissal from foreign service. He, in turn, had renounced her. Penniless and scandalized, she had made a natural career choice and had never regretted it. Clients paid dearly for her. Even after Ruby's percentage, she was getting rich, and because she looked younger than her years, she could probably work well into her thirties. She went by the name of Isobel.

Pinkie was an easy sell tonight. The transaction at the bar took less than a minute. He followed the beauty up the wide staircase. Ruby left her cigar smoldering in a crystal ashtray and intercepted them on the landing.

"Good evening, Pinkie." Although she'd rather have spit on him, she gave him her most disarming smile.

He was no happier to see her than she was to see him, and was probably annoyed that she had forced him to speak to her."Ruby."

"I haven't seen you since Bardo carved up my girl. How good of you to grace us with your presence."

He ignored the barb."Your business is thriving. But then whoring has always been profitable."

Ruby's smile turned brittle at the corners, and her eyes glinted with malice."Because there've always been men who can't get it without paying for it. Which brings me to wonder why you're here tonight.

Wasn't your wife in the mood? Remy, isn't it? Did Remy refuse your attentions tonight?"

She was rewarded by seeing the blood vessels in his temples expand.

With a brusque gesture, he motioned Isobel up the stairs.

Ruby thoughtfully watched them go.

During his bachelor days, Pinkie had come around several times a week.

Since his marriage, his patronage had slacked off considerably, although he wasn't entirely a stranger to the bedrooms upstairs.

Sometimes he came for recreation, other times to work off steam, but Ruby had never seen him as agitated as he was tonight. Interesting.

"Miss Ruby?"

She turned. One of the maids, who'd worked in the house even while Ruby was growing up in it, spoke to her softly in her melodious West Indies accent."You said for me to come get you when that poor little lamb woke up."

They moved along the gallery, then made a right turn down a hallway that led to the rear of the house and a room that was tucked under the eaves."How is she?" Ruby asked as they approached the closed door.

"Mostly, she's scared."

The chamber was comfortably furnished, although it was too small to use for business. Usually it was given over to a girl who was sick and needed to be kept quarantined from the others while she was contagious, or to a new girl who needed a place to sleep while she was being trained and taught the policies of the house.

Ruby approached the bed and leaned over the girl with the attention of a loving mother."How are you feeling?"

Dixie experimentally touched the tip of her tongue to the corner of her mouth, where blood had coagulated over a nasty abrasion."That bastard busted me up good, didn't he?"

"The doctor said none of the bones in your face were broken."

"The way he was hitting me, I don't know why not." Tears filled her eyes."Do I look like something a goat puked up?"

"You've looked better," Ruby said, laying a gentle hand on her arm.

"And you will again. Don't fret. The doctor left some pain medication.

You can rest here for as long as it takes to heal. I'd guess two weeks, maybe three."

"Two or three weeks?" Dixie tried to laugh, but the effort made her wince with pain. Moving only her eyes, she took in the room, Ruby, and the hovering maid."If I don't work, I don't eat. How am I supposed to pay you?"