“I’ll want to talk to all the, um, employees who saw this guy.”

“I’ll assemble them. But you won’t get much. They can’t describe his face.”

“Surely if they saw him right here-”

“But my girls are trained never to look a customer in the eyes. The entire face is to be avoided, as much as possible. We don’t want attachments forming. It clouds the judgment. In this line of work, it’s important to retain a certain professional detachment.”

Just my damn luck. My only eyewitnesses are sex merchants who’ve been trained not to look at people’s faces. “I’ll still want to talk to them just as soon-”

I was cut off by a piercing scream from down the corridor. I raced past the mistress, fumbling for my weapon, remembering that I wasn’t allowed to have one anymore. Damn!

Another cry, this one even more terrified than the first. I tracked it to a closed door, grabbed the knob, flung it open.

There were two women in the bed, both stark naked. The one on top, the one with the surgically enhanced knockers who was holding a huge dildo in her right hand, appeared to be the trained professional. The skinny girl who had pulled the covers up to her neck was undoubtedly the customer.

Darcy was on the floor at the side of the bed, hunched over in a fetal position, rocking back and forth. He was making strange nonsense noises, babbling, whimpering.

The mistress came in behind me. “What happened, Kimberly?”

The silicone princess dropped her equipment. “We were just-”

The mistress shot her a harsh warning look.

“-having a conversation,” she continued. “And this simp comes rushing into the room.”

Darcy looked as if he were having a total meltdown. I’d never seen him like this. He began pounding his head against the floor. I ran to his side and wrapped my arms around him. “Darcy-what happened?”

He flapped his hands, rubbed the sides of his head. “Did you think that one was in trouble? Because I thought she was in trouble.”

“But why-”

He couldn’t stop rocking. “She was screaming. Screaming real loud. I thought the big one was hurting her.”

I closed my eyes. “So you rushed in to help?”

“And I saw she wasn’t wearing any clothes, and I remember the bad man took all the girls’ clothes away, and I tried to help, and she hit me with-with-that thing.” He was hand-flapping with a frenzy. His voice was never well modulated, but now it sounded as if he was shouting. “Why did she do that? Why did she hurt me? I don’t think people should hurt each other!”

I took his wrists and tried to get him under control. “It was a misunderstanding, Darcy. She wasn’t hurting the other woman. She was just-”

Okay, where did I go from there? Even if O’Bannon had had that little talk with his son, would it have covered activities such as the one he’d just stumbled upon?

“Let’s go back to the car, Darcy,” I said. “We’ll get a custard or something.”

“Why would she scream if she wasn’t hurting? I screamed last night when I stubbed my toe because it hurt and she was screaming and she didn’t have any clothes on and-”

“Come on,” I said firmly. “We’re leaving.”

I made a few excuses to the mistress and got him the hell out of there. Damn it all. I should have seen that coming. Maybe Granger had been right. Maybe I didn’t have any business dragging Darcy to these horrible places. All kinds of traumatic things might be going on inside his head that I knew nothing about. I had enough problems without playing with fire of this magnitude. O’Bannon’s autistic son. Christ, what was I thinking?

Those are bad girls and I know they are and they were doing bad things. Bad people go to hell and I don’t want to go to hell. Mr. Strickland said that we have to behave ourselves and if we didn’t we’d go to hell and he took me by the hand away from the others and told me he knew what I was thinking that I had these ideas and all the boys like me did and we couldn’t control them but I had to or I would be a dirty boy and I would go to hell. Bad girls! And the smell was so yucky on the big girl with the mole under her right knee and the holes all up her arm. Like the smell of Mommy’s dishwashing gloves when Mommy was still alive.

I hope Susan doesn’t stop taking me places even though I had a fit and Dad told me to control myself but I couldn’t help it and I wanted to rip my hair out but I didn’t and I hope Susan doesn’t stop taking me because I was bad but I’m afraid she will because she has been smelling really funny bad and it isn’t funny and Dad wouldn’t let me read the D. H. Lawrence books because he said they would be bad for me and I think this is all scary and I wish people wouldn’t do those things to other people. Bad girls! Bad girls!

Midnight. Most of the operatives had gone home, but Dr. Spencer and several others were still in the hotel ballroom. The phone rang incessantly. He had an hour to go before his shift ended.

“This is really something, isn’t it?” Harv said with his usual conversational panache.

“Did you have a specific this in mind,” he replied, “or just a general this?”

“This. Everything.” He waved his arm about. “The whole works. Can you believe this operation was pieced together by one woman? What a pistol.”

“A… pistol?”

“Yeah, you know. A hot tamale. Proactive. Ballsy.”

“I don’t see that her efforts have produced much in the way of results.”

“Give her time, Ernie. They will. Everyone knows it. She must have that sick son of a bitch quaking in his boots.”

That might be something of an exaggeration, all things considered. “You seem to be enjoying this assignment.” Which might explain why Herb was still hanging around, even though his shift had ended half an hour ago.

“ ’Course I am. Didn’t I tell you I always wanted to be a cop?”

“Yes, but you weren’t and you still aren’t. You’re a security officer temporarily assigned to a private room. No one here is a cop.”

“I’m a lot closer than I was bagging pickpockets in the blackjack pit. I mean, you can feel the excitement in here. You can breathe it. Makes my whole body tingle. Hell, I’m having a moment as we speak.”

That was really more information than I required, he thought ruefully.

“On this detail, we’re a part of something that matters. The whole world is watching this investigation.”

“The whole world is watching the police investigation. This gang is little better than a well-financed vigilante squad.”

Harv ran a hand through his russet curls. “You’re pretty damn down on this operation. But I know you volunteered for it. Why? If you dislike it so much, why don’t you go back to policing the slot machines?”

Well, there was a very good answer to that question, but he wouldn’t be sharing it with Harv. “I need the money.”

“That bonus in the pay envelope was pretty good, wasn’t it? I may be able to take Elaine on that Halloween holiday she wanted.” He took a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped it across his brow. “No disrespect to my Elaine, but Dr. Spencer looks pretty damn good for her age, doesn’t she?”

He made a slight clicking noise with his tongue. “Too much hair. And the plastic surgery was a mistake.”

“Yeah, like you’d kick her out of bed for eating crackers.” He laughed. “The ladies are tough on you little guys, aren’t they?” He gave his co-worker a gentle jab that was not returned.

A few minutes later, a trim black man with a cell phone in each hand approached them. “Which one of you two officers is in charge?”

“I am,” Harv chirped.

He burned. Was that because you’re so incredibly tall? “We’re both of equal rank and stature on this security detail,” he replied.

“Well, the doctor needs someone to drive her to the airport.”

Behind them, Dr. Spencer approached with her usual no-nonsense deliberateness. “Hello again, Ernie. Car’s parked out back, same lot you people use. These bodyguards can get me to the parking lot. But I need a driver. So which of you lucky boys is going to do the honors?”