Lights Out

“What do you want?” Eddie replied, remembering the way Tiffany had gone into the bedroom soon after his arrival, and how he’d heard her voice mixed in with the TV voices. The prison, so rigid when he was in, reached out elastically when he was out.

“Dyslexic,” said the woman with the double-cream-coffee complexion. “I forgot.” She sat down at the table, brushed away crumbs with her beringed fingers. “We had a date, chico,” she said, mouth smiling, eyes not. “Arranged by a mutual friend. Arranged and paid for, if you’re going to make me spell it out, by this mutual friend. Blink twice if you get it.”

Eddie got it. “It’s the money.”

“Wow. You’re something, you know that? Yes, chico, it’s the money. You weren’t trying to abscond with it, were you, like some little sneak thief?”

Eddie didn’t like that. She could see that, but it didn’t seem to impress her at all. “I didn’t even know it was there till I tried to smoke that cigarette. You and El Rojo or whatever he calls himself are the ones playing games.”

She studied his face for a moment or two, then nodded. “That’s what they thought.”

“Who?”

“It was all a mistake. No rough stuff necessary.”

“Rough stuff?”

“Nothing to worry about. Not necessary.”

The phone rang in the bedroom. Eddie let it ring. The woman watched him letting it, the mocking look in her eyes. It rang for a long time. When it stopped she said: “Have you still got it?”

Eddie unzipped the back pocket of Prof’s sweats and handed her one of his hundred-dollar bills. She stuck it inside her fur jacket.

“I love happy endings,” she said.

“What’s this all about?”

“You already know the answer. Money.”

Eddie didn’t believe that El Rojo would go to so much trouble over a hundred dollars. Some matter of principle was involved, macho Latin bullshit principle or crazy inmate bullshit principle.

“Just money?” Eddie said.

“That’s right,” she replied. “Now how about our date?”

“What date?”

“Madre de dios. The date that’s paid for.”

Eddie laughed. He was laughing a lot all of a sudden. “We didn’t sign a contract,” he said. “I’ll let you wriggle out of it.”

The woman wasn’t laughing. “You’re not very bright, for a high-school graduate. There’s no wriggling out where our friend’s concerned.”

She paused to let this sink in. Eddie thought of their long-faced friend in the prison library pushing away the bloodied Business Week with distaste, and tried unsuccessfully to see the danger in him. Then he remembered how those liquid brown eyes had reminded him of maple syrup, and felt a tiny wave of nausea.

“So let’s roll,” the woman said. “I’ve got a car outside.”

Eddie didn’t want to go on a date; on the other hand, he had to get out of Tiffany’s apartment, and a car was waiting. He turned over the sheet of paper with the doodles on it and wrote, “Thanks.” What else? Didn’t he owe Tiffany some explanation? Then he remembered her phone call, the one that had brought this woman. Maybe he didn’t owe her anything.

Meanwhile the woman was on her feet. “There’s nothing to say-don’t you know that by now?” She dropped an envelope on the table. It was a thin-papered envelope; Eddie could see that there was money inside. “Let’s roll,” said the woman.

Eddie tore up the note, tossed it in the trash, and followed her out the door. They walked down the dark basement corridor, through the entrance hall, outside.

It was night. Late night, to judge from the quiet. Eddie was wide awake and disoriented at the same time. The state had regulated his sleeping patterns for fifteen years; now that he was on his own they were falling apart.

“God, you’re slow,” said the woman, crossing the street toward a silver sedan. She unlocked the door and they got in. “Ow,” she said, reached into her waistband, pulled out a gun, and laid it on the seat between them. “These things are so uncomfortable.” She started the car and zoomed away from the curb without looking. Eddie fastened his seat belt.

“Don’t trust my driving?” she said, speeding up.

“I don’t trust anyone with a gun.”

She laughed. “You’re going to be a very lonely guy.”

She drove into a tunnel, emerged by a river, cut down a side street and double-parked outside a club called L’Oasis. The clock on the dashboard read two-ten, but twenty or thirty people who had given some thought to what they wore were waiting to get in. The woman went straight to the head of the line where a big man wearing sunglasses stood with folded arms. He smiled when he saw her.

“Well, well,” he said. “Sookray. The night is young.”

“Bullshit,” said the woman. “And I’m freezing my ass off out here. Let me in.”

The door was an elaborate affair of leather and studs. The big man swung it open, saw Eddie coming and held up a hand.

“He’s with me,” Sookray told him; and Eddie, in Prof’s gray sweats, followed her inside.