Player & the Game (24 page)

Suddenly, the room was filled with a spectrum of neon lights. Old-fashioned signs from strip joints from the '50s and '60s, showing half-naked women with large behinds, engorged breasts, and in seductive poses were stacked on top of one another creating a wall of nudity. Between several of the signs were television monitors that were filled with static. A woman's face suddenly flashed on all of the TVs.

“
Yeeeeees,
Razor!” she moaned, before the camera panned back, revealing Razor crouched behind her. The couple was obviously having sex.

Dawn cringed. She wasn't conservative by any means, but she wasn't sure how a porn show constituted art. She glanced up at Percy, watching his face in the flashing neon lights. He looked totally enraptured.

Why am I not surprised,
she thought dryly.

The monitors flashed several more pornographic scenes starring Razor and more than one sad, misguided young woman, and Dawn drifted off, losing interest. She pulled back her jacket sleeve and glanced down at her watch. She wondered if she'd make it home in enough time to catch the black-and-white movie marathon she had planned to watch tonight.

Dawn heard Sasha's voice and looked up, assuming that Sasha was announcing the end of the presentation.

Thank God,
Dawn thought.

Instead, Dawn saw Sasha's face on the video screens. The camera panned back and there was Sasha on all fours, crawling naked across the hardwood floors of Razor's bedroom. Dawn gawked.

“Holy shit,” someone muttered behind Dawn.

“Umm, is this for real?” someone else whispered.

“Bark!” Razor shouted off camera. “Bark, bitch!”

“
Arrf! Arrf!
” Sasha barked like some demented Chihuahua, still crawling toward him. She wiggled her behind. “
Grrrrr! Arrf! Arrf
!”

At that, Dawn almost spit out her Moët.

“What the... What the hell is this?” Sasha's husband, Teddy, shouted in the darkened room. “What is the meaning of this?”

The murmurs in the crowd grew even louder.

And it only got worse. Razor had obviously taped everything he and Sasha had done together in his apartment that night and he hadn't spared any footage. Sasha should have gotten a nomination for the porn awards because she certainly went all out.

Dawn started to hear a ruckus near the stage.

“You . . . you
whore!
”

“Wait! Teddy! Teddy, it's a mistake!” Sasha yelled. “Honey, don't—”

“Get . . . off of me! Don't touch me!” he yelled back. “You'll be hearing from my lawyer!”

Teddy then stormed off, shoving his way through the crowd toward the gallery's front door.

Dawn stood wide-eyed, looking at the scene around her, absolutely stunned. And to just think, if she had sex with Razor that night, he would have taped her too.

Sasha, who hadn't been as lucky, stomped up the stage stairs and strode to the monitors. “Turn it off!” she shouted, over the sound of her recorded moans and high-pitched squeals. She turned toward the audience. Her normally cool demeanor was gone. She was practically frothing at the mouth. “Goddamn it, Razor! Turn this fucking thing off! Right now!”

“But it's art, babe!” he said with a chuckle. “It's the
truth!
Don't try to silence the truth.”

“You little son of a bitch!” she screeched as Razor continued to laugh. “I will sue you! I will
ruin
you!”

“Now, Sasha, calm down,” Martin called in a placating voice from the edge of the stage. He climbed the steps. “No one's suing anyone. Just . . . Just take a deep breath.”

Meanwhile, the house lights came on and Sasha's assistant rushed toward the back of the room, trying frantically to find the button or the plug that would turn off the monitors. But Sasha didn't have patience for that. She let out another screech before shoving at one of the television screens. It pivoted slightly on its stand, but didn't topple over.

“Sasha!” Martin yelled, reaching for her. “Sasha, what the hell do you think you're doing? That's a
hundred-thousand-dollar
work!”

She ignored him and shoved at the television again. This time it did fall backward, landing with a thud and the sound of breaking glass. The crowd let out a collective gasp and stepped back from the stage as they watched the whole debacle. Sasha turned and shoved at another monitor, but Martin caught her this time. He held her tight around the waist but she bucked, screamed, and kicked. She clawed at him with her red nails.

“Security!” Martin yelled. “I could . . . I could use some help up here!”

The gallery's two blank-faced security guards finally stepped into action and rushed the stage. It took all three men to finally subdue Sasha and wrestle her to the ground. A minute later, Dawn watched as they carried her arch nemesis off the stage.

Razor was still standing off to the side, laughing like the jackass that he was. Rather than drinking from a glass of champagne, he took a swig from a bottle.

“Cheers!” he shouted before turning to an attractive young woman who tapped him on the shoulder. “Well, hello, babe,” he leered.

Several in the audience looked absolutely horrified by what they had just witnessed. A few who Dawn knew to be journalists and bloggers rushed from the room, madly clicking away at their phone screens and keypads.

Dawn sighed contentedly.

If she guessed correctly, come tomorrow, Sasha Duncan's name would be infamous in not only the DC art circle, but also a few across the country. Sasha would finally get the attention from the New York scene that she craved—but for all the wrong reasons.

Dawn felt as if she had just received an early Christmas present all wrapped with a pretty bow.

“Well, that was . . . interesting,” Percy said flatly.

“Wasn't it?” Dawn replied, giving a mischievous grin. “Damn, I love art!”

S
tephanie and Keith had arrived in Miami late in the afternoon, and Stephanie had made quick business of getting reacquainted with one of her favorite cities. She had visited Miami a few times with one of her ex-boyfriends, but didn't mention that to Keith. Instead, like Keith, she rolled down the windows and looked around wide-eyed at sultry downtown Miami with its palm trees and its riverwalk. She gazed up at the high-rises and scanned the high-end boutiques and beautiful tan pedestrians who strolled along the sidewalks. She loved the city's cosmopolitan Latin and Caribbean flavor. She always had. Too bad she wasn't here for fun, though she planned to enjoy steamy Miami and all it had to offer when their search for Isaac ended. For now, they were there to find the conman and, as Keith kept reminding her, “finding that S.O.B. in Miami will be as easy as finding a needle in a haystack.”

Keith was struggling to figure out where they should start. “It's not like we can stand on some random street corner showing everyone his picture,” he had muttered.

So Stephanie suggested that they instead focus on places where the victims Isaac usually targeted would frequent.

“How about ritzy day spas and hair salons?” she had suggested that evening as they sat at a small dinette table in a Cuban sandwich shop. They shared a plate of plantain chips between them. Stephanie took a sip of mango juice from her Styrofoam cup. “What do you think?” she asked.

“You know . . .” Keith tilted his head and shoved a forkful of rice and beans into his mouth. He chewed. “That's not a bad idea.” He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “So you're as smart as you are beautiful.”

She proudly raised her chin. “I try.”

“I guess the plan then is for you to go into these spas and salons and start asking questions? See if anyone has run into Isaac?”

“I get to do it?” She grinned. “You mean like a
real
detective?”

She had gotten a taste of what Keith did for a living when she talked to Big Red, but doing something like this would mean going around with a picture of Isaac and asking strangers if they had seen him—like a real gumshoe. It sounded so exciting!

“I don't see why not,” he said, eating more of his food. “You've been doing a pretty good job so far. There's no reason to hold you back now.”

She paused and squinted. “Wait. Can I do this type of stuff? I mean . . . Is it legal? I'm not licensed.”

“Well, technically, my license stopped working once I crossed the Virginia border. In the state of Florida, neither of us is really considered a ‘detective.' So hey, by all means, give it a try. Anyone's allowed to ask questions, right?”

She clapped her hands excitedly. “Private Investigator Stephanie Gibbons. I like the sound of that! I can't wait! It's going to be so much fun!”

He slowly shook his head and regarded her with amusement. “We'll see if you feel that way a few days from now, sweetheart.”

Keith was right. Stephanie would soon regret her words. She quickly discovered that detective work wasn't as fun or as easy as it seemed. Though she went to great lengths to look the part of a wealthy woman of leisure with her dark-tinted glasses, high heels, a flouncy sunhat and expensive maxi dress, it didn't mean things ran smoothly when she walked into the snooty salons and spas around town. She didn't always get the chance to ask her questions, even when she attempted to do it inconspicuously. One salon threw her out for soliciting even though she had tried to explain that she wasn't selling anything. Another spa asked her to leave because she was upsetting the clients.

“Sorry, the oxygen infusion process doesn't work as well when the clients are distressed,” one aesthetician had explained to Stephanie as she was escorted out of the facials area.

Another salon owner was a lot less polite. She threatened to call the police if Stephanie didn't leave the premises immediately. After a few days of footwork at more than two dozen high-end establishments spanning from South Beach to Coconut Grove, all Stephanie had to show for it was several manicures, a few pedicures, and newly highlighted hair. She still hadn't found any new information about Isaac.

Her ego was bruised and battered. She felt like a complete and utter failure.

“My feet are killing me!” Stephanie cried after flopping face first onto their king-sized hotel bed at the end of one particularly bad day of investigating.

They were back to sharing a room again. Their current hotel room was on the twenty-third floor of one of the high-rise hotels in downtown Miami near the convention center. They had a view of the river and at night they occasionally heard the thud of the drawbridge nearby as trucks passed over the steel grates.

Keith sat on the bed beside her and slowly pulled off her high-heeled sandals from her feet. “Rough day?” he asked, fighting back a smile.

“The worst,” she mumbled into the comforter then raised her head. She gazed up at him with saddened eyes. “How do you do it?”

He started to massage her feet. “How do I do what?”

“How do you do this detective thing?” She paused to close her eyes, loving the feel of his strong hands on her worn soles. She then slowly opened her eyes again. “People are either paranoid about me asking them questions, or just plain rude! Some of them wouldn't even look at the picture of Isaac I was trying to show them! It would've taken only a few seconds of their time, but they acted like they couldn't be bothered.”

“Well, it's not a job that's meant for everybody,” he conceded as his healing hands shifted to her calves, raising the hem of her dress as he massaged her tense muscles. “But you just have to keep at it. It just takes time.”

“I know,” she grumbled. “But I feel like we've been at this for weeks. I thought we were at the finish line.”

“We might not be, honey. Isaac might not even be in Miami. We could be searching for a man who's not even here.”

“
Ugh,
don't say that!” she cried, dropping her head back to the bed. “Please!”

“You have to face that possibility, baby.”

“I know! I know! But I don't want to,” she said sullenly.

“Look, don't think about any of that tonight. Focus on tomorrow. Tomorrow's another day and another opportunity to find Isaac. Plus, we agreed to at least give it a week before we discussed giving up and moving on to somewhere else.” He lowered her legs back to the bed and rose to his feet. “So come on. Get undressed.”

She raised her head again, turned to look at him, and frowned quizzically at his abrupt subject change. “Huh?”

“You need to relax. Get undressed,” he said again, pointing to her clothes. “I'll turn down the lights. Make a bubble bath then . . .” His smile broadened, revealing the dimples she so loved. “. . . We'll see where it goes.”

“
We'll see where it goes?
” She snorted. “Keith, you know damn well where it will go! It'll end up with me bent over the edge of the bathtub. That's usually what happens anyway.”

His eyes twinkled mischievously. “We can stay in the water, if you prefer.”

“Why do men think everything can be solved with sex?”

He shrugged. “Because it usually can be.”

She shook her head then pursed her lips. She contemplated his offer. If there was anything that could make her feel better, she knew that it was Keith's warm embrace. She seemed to forget everything when she was wrapped in his arms or moaning beneath him.

She slowly pushed herself to her elbows and stood. “All right,” she said, raising her hands to the strings around her neck that were holding up her maxi dress, “but only because you insist.”

 

Stephanie took a deep breath before tugging open one of the double glass doors of the Salon de la Agua. After a few days of doing this, each salon and spa started to blend into the next. They all had the same soothing techno muzak playing in the background. All the stylists and aestheticians were dressed head-to-toe in black. Everyone who worked in these establishments was so stylish and thin they looked like they had just stepped out of the pages of the fashion magazines their clients were browsing as the women waited to get their hair or nails done. But this particular salon had the distinction of having a floor-to-ceiling waterfall in the center of the room. Stephanie gaped in wonder as she stared at it.

“Hi, can I help you?” the perky blonde at the black-marble front desk asked.

Stephanie tore her eyes away from the waterfall and looked at the receptionist. “Uh, yes.” She took off her sunglasses. “I don't have an appointment, but I wondered if any of your stylists were open today. I just need a shampoo and a trim.”

The blonde looked at her contemptuously. “Well, we usually don't do same-day appointments, ma'am. Many of our stylists are booked months in advance, but I'll see what I can do.” The receptionist took her name and leaned her head toward their waiting area. “You can have a seat over there.”

Stephanie nodded and walked across the room to the sleek Bauhaus chairs in the corner. Two other women were sitting in the waiting area: a busty Latina brunette with big, long hair and a tall, thin redhead with a blunt bob. Stephanie smiled at them politely.

“Hi,” Stephanie said as she sat down.

The Latina nodded and grinned. The redhead ignored her, peering down instead at the cell phone in her hands.

“Do you two have appointments?”

“Yes, with Marisol,” the Latina volunteered. “She's one of the best stylists they have in here, but I guess she's running a little late today.”

The redhead only nodded.

“Yeah, I don't have one, unfortunately,” Stephanie said. “I wish I did though. But I've been so busy lately I haven't been able to schedule anything.” She reached into her purse and retrieved a three-by-five-inch picture. “You see I'm looking for someone . . . the guy in this photo. I wondered if either of you have seen him around.”

The Latina leaned forward and peered at the picture of Isaac. “No, I haven't seen him. Sorry.”

“Doesn't look familiar,” the redhead said. She had finally looked up from her cell phone. “Are you a process server?”

Stephanie paused, taken aback by the question. “No. Why?”

“Uh-huh,” the redhead said, looking as if she didn't believe Stephanie. “Look, if you
are
a process server and you're here to serve divorce papers, this is an incredibly tacky place to do it. My ex did that when I was getting a body wrap two years ago.”

The Latina raised her hand to her bubble-gum pink lips in astonishment. “
Oh, no!
Are you kidding?”

“I most definitely am not! There I was wrapped in seaweed and some asshole comes walking up with a stack of papers in his hand.”

Stephanie quickly shook her head. “No, really, I'm not serving divorce papers. It's nothing like that. I'm just—”

“All the women in the exfoliating room were staring at me,” the redhead continued angrily. Her face turned as red as her hair. “I was so humiliated! I will
never
forgive my ex-husband for doing that to me! Never!”

“I wouldn't either,” the Latina said.

“Miss Gibbons? Miss Gibbons?” the receptionist called.

Stephanie rolled her eyes, wondering if the receptionist had overheard their conversation and if she was about to be kicked out of yet another hair salon. She rose to her feet. She slowly walked back to the receptionist desk, ready to be escorted to the front door. But the blonde was smiling.

“You're in luck, Miss Gibbons,” she said. “One of our stylists just came open. That rarely if ever happens around here.”

“Great!” Stephanie exclaimed, relieved that she wasn't being shown the door for once.

Minutes later she was escorted across the salon to the chair of a young stylist with a spiked haircut. “So all you need is a wash and a trim, huh?” the young woman asked.

As Stephanie sipped the salon's complimentary green tea and sat in her styling chair discussing the layered hairstyle she wanted, she managed to show Isaac's picture to a few more people, including her stylist and the women sitting beside her, but none of them had seen him.

Soon after a cape was draped over her chest, she was escorted to the shampoo bowls where a bronze-skinned, dark-haired Adonis awaited.

“Hey,” he said with an impossibly white smile. “I'm Rafael. I'll be shampooing you today.”

He guided Stephanie to his shampoo bowl. She sat down and lowered her head. Rafael turned on the water and began to massage in the lavender-scented shampoo. She cooed as he kneaded and caressed her scalp. So he was cute
and
he knew how to pamper a girl. She knew plenty of women in Chesterton who would die to sit with their heads in his bowl—if you got her drift.

“You like that?” Rafael asked huskily as he ran the spray of hot water over her hair.

“
Mmmm hmmm,
” Stephanie moaned.

“I'm known as magic fingers around here.”

“I bet you are!”

He continued to wash her hair and Stephanie continued to enjoy it.

“Can I ask you something?” he asked five minutes into the wash.

“Sure.”

“Why do you have a picture of Manny's boyfriend?”

“I'm sorry.
Who?
”

“Manny's boyfriend, Devon. That's who's in the photo, right?”

Stephanie's eyes shot open. She suddenly raised her head out of the shampoo bowl. Soapsuds and water oozed down her temple and neck. It almost ran into her eyes, but she didn't care. She turned and gazed at Rafael in disbelief.