He is as unsure of the answers to those questions as he is unable to tear his eyes from the computer monitor. The stranger on the screen slips her bra over her shoulders, her back prudently to the camera.

And, in spite of his explicit instructions, Jack Paris peeks.

7

She is Ginger tonight; blond and demure. Grace Kelly with a leopard clutch purse.

The mark is black, in his late forties.

She has never gone out twice in one week. Far too risky, far too much wear and tear on her nerves. She usually prefers at least a one-month span between hits, preferably two, but something terrible happened when she watched Isabella from the phone booth that morning. For a few minutes, she had thought another child was her daughter, a little girl about the size Isabella had been six months earlier. When she realized her mistake she searched the playground, frantic for a few moments, then finally burst into tears when she saw Isabella, sitting on a bench, her shoes untied as always, waiting for someone to help. Isabella had been the girl in the navy blue coat and matching tam-o’-shanter. The first girl out of the building when the bell rang.

She had seen her daughter and not recognized her.

There was no longer any time to waste. Every day she doesn’t hold her daughter is a day she will never get back She is not going to live up to her father’s low expectations.

She closes her eyes, finds her center, finds Ginger, takes a deep breath, exhales.

When she opens her eyes, she glances over at the table in the corner and draws Willis Walker to the bar with a smile that yields the rumblings of his very first erection of the night.

“I’ve never seen you here before,” Willis says.

“Oh, but I’ve seen you,” Ginger answers.

“Is that right?”

“It is.”

Willis Walker leans against the bar, a huge slab of black man in a mauve three-piece suit, matching tie and socks. The president of Black Alley Records, a small hip-hop label run out of a warehouse on Kinsman Road, Willis smells of Lagerfeld cologne, dance-floor sweat, and Vidalia onions tonight, the lattermost courtesy of Vernelle’s special blend of barbecue sauce. The clientele at Vernelle’s Party Center on St. Clair Avenue is mostly black, mostly monied, mostly on the hustle in some manner or another. A beautiful young white woman, alone at the bar, usually means one of two things, both trouble. Everyone knows that.

But, this night, the woman is that fine, and Willis Walker is far too loaded to care.

Ginger lights a cigarette, moves a little to the music. She squares herself in front of Willis Walker, reels him gently in. “So . . . you gonna do a tequila kiss with me?”

“A tequila kiss?” Willis answers. “What’s that?”

“I’d prefer to show you,” Ginger says. “But it has something to do with an ounce or two of Cuervo.”

“Oh yeah?” Willis asks. “What else?”

Ginger arches her back slightly. Willis’s eyes stray to her breasts, back up to her lips. She waits. “A lemon, of course.”

“Gotta have that lemon.” Another smile. Big, pearly shark. He moves a little closer. “Anything else?”

Ginger parts her lips slightly, her eyes roaming Willis Walker’s considerable bulk. She whispers, “My mouth.”

Willis’s eyes light up. “Your mouth?”

“Sí.”

Willis calls the bartender.

“Not here,” Ginger says.

Willis looks dismayed for a moment. Then snaps the golden hook. “Okay,” he says. “Where?”

Ginger removes what looks like eight hundred dollars in cash from the inside of Willis’s suit coat, along with his watch, his rings, the sapphire stick-pin in his tie. There is no need for photo insurance this time. Willis Walker is not exactly the kind of man you threaten with blackmail.

Willis is spread out over one of the two beds in Room 116 of the Dream-A-Dream Motel on East Seventy-ninth Street. His shirt is unbuttoned, his pants unzipped. At the moment, he is snoring loudly, spreading a small pond of drool on the stained pillowcase.

Ginger shoves the cash into her oversized purse. An extraordinary haul for twenty-five minutes’ work, she thinks. As per her routine, she will now put on the dark knit cap she carries, along with the calf-length plastic raincoat that folds into a bundle no larger than a pack of Marlboros. At night, from even ten feet away, she would look like a bag lady. She would walk the five blocks back to Vernelle’s, and her car, pepper spray at the ready.

She peeks through the curtains as she slips on her raincoat. Dark parking lot. Fewer than five cars. Safe. She opens the door.

And knows that he is behind her, seconds before his fingers dig into her neck.

“Goddamn bitch,” Willis Walker screams, pulling her roughly back into the room. “Goddamn fuggin’ bitch!”

He bangs shut the door as Ginger crashes to the floor, rolls to her right, gets up, snaps off a heel. She stumbles into the wall, her heart racing. How had he survived that much Rohypnol? She had increased the dose because of his size, but here he was wide awake. How could he—

She does not finish the thought. Willis Walker interrupts the process with a right cross that smashes into her jaw, stunning her, showing her mind a galaxy of stars. Bile sours her throat as she hits the floor again—knees first, then hips, shoulders, head. The room tumbles like a crazy red clothes dryer.

“Fuggin’ kill you, bitch,” Willis chants, stumbling toward the nightstand between the beds, plowing into the table lamp, exploding the bulb against the wall.

Ginger finds her way to her feet, her head a shrieking carousel of noise and pain. She holds onto the wall, kicks off her shoes, finds her balance. For a moment, she thinks she is hallucinating. But there it is, rising into the shaft of moonlight streaming through the window, swinging her way.

A nickel-plated twenty-five.

Ginger dives into the bathroom, slams the door. She barely gets the knob on the lock turned before Willis pummels the door, rattling the hinges, splintering the jamb. “Biiiiiiiitch!”

She looks around, her mind reeling. No windows. Nothing even remotely resembling a weapon. She grabs the doorknob, attempting to help herself to her feet, but the lock explodes in her hand. Bits of hot metal and smoldering wood fly through the air as the bullet clinks off the side of the toilet and falls to the floor, inches from her feet. The smell of gunpowder and burned sawdust fills her nostrils.

This is it, she thinks. My life is over. He is going to shoot me. I am going to die in a filthy inner-city motel room.

But it is Isabella who helps her to her feet, then guides her over to the toilet where she removes the heavy cover off the tank. It is her daughter’s tiny hand that closes the shower curtain behind her as she steps into the tub, waiting, her pulse pounding in her ears.

With a crack of thunder, Willis Walker kicks the door in with a size-thirteen shoe, then lurches into the bathroom. “Where y’at, bitch?” he screams. “You want some? I got some for ya. Willis Walker got some for ya.”

He raises the gun, fires it drunkenly into the mirror—shattering it into a dozen pieces—then stumbles back, his ears momentarily stuffed from the gun blast, his central nervous system besieged by the drug.

It is Ginger’s moment to act.

Before Willis can recover, she shoves open the shower curtain and, with all of her strength, brings the lid down on the back of his head, twice, the sickening thuds mingling with the smell of discharged gunpowder, converging with her revulsion. Willis Walker slumps to the tile, rolls onto his back. She drops the lid. It bounces off his huge stomach and slides to the floor.

And, suddenly, as quickly as it had begun, it is over.

A linen silence fills the room. She looks down. Willis Walker is lying on the bathroom floor, still and quiet, a small puddle of blood beneath his head. She takes a mildewed towel from the rack, replaces the lid on the back of the toilet, wiping the blood and her fingerprints from it.