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And that was that. But she didn't move away. They smiled at each other from a distance of a couple of inches, nose to nose, momentarily content with a silence which, to an earlier man, would have sounded like the center of an air raid. She was lovely, Polly. Her face was a lure and a danger; her figure, small and lithe and woman shaped, rippled with a dancer's grace beneath her loose green jumper. For the moment Matt looked silently into her eyes and felt very good. The moment passed, and they talked small talk.
The flow of the crowd carried them half across the room. Once they pushed back to the bar for refills, then let the crowd carry them again. In the continuous roar there was something hypnotic, something that might have explained why the crowded-room drinking bout was more than half a thousand years old; for monotonous background noise has long been used in hypnosis. Time ceased to exist. But there came a moment when Matt knew that he would ask Polly to go home with him, and she would accept.
He didn't get the chance.
Something changed in Polly's face. She seemed to be listening to something only she could hear. The hearing aid? He was ready to pretend he hadn't noticed, but he didn't get that chance either. For suddenly Polly was moving away, disappearing into the crowd, not as if she were in any hurry, but as if she remembered something she ought to do, some niggling detail she might as well take care of now. Matt tried to follow her, but the sea of humanity closed behind her. The hearing aid, he told himself. It called her. But he stayed by the bar, resisting the pressure that would have borne him away. He was getting very drunk now, and glad of it. He didn't believe it had been the hearing aid. The whole thing was too familiar. Too many girls had lost interest in him just as suddenly as Polly had. He was more than disappointed. It hurt. The vodka helped to kill the pain.
About ten-thirty he went around to the other side of the bar. The kid playing bartender was happily drunk and glad to give up his place. Matt was gravely drunk. He dispensed drinks with dignity, being polite but not obsequious. The crowd was thi
"Hi. Want a stand-in?"
"Guess so." Somebody changed places with him--one of Laney's tall escorts--and Laney led him through the thi
"Do you always get this looped?"
"No. Something bugging me."
"Tell me?"
He turned to look at her. Somehow his vodka-blurred eyes saw past Laney's makeup, saw that her mouth was too wide and her green eyes were strangely large. But she wore a smile of sympathetic curiosity.
"Ever see a twenty-one-year-old virgin male?" He squinted to, try to read her reaction.
The corners of Laney's mouth twisted. strangely. "No." She was trying riot to laugh, be realized. He turned away.
She asked, "Lack of interest?"
"No! Hell, no."
"Then what?"
"She forgets me." Matt felt himself sobering with time and the effort of answering. "All of a sudden the girl I'm chasing just"--he gestured a little wildly--'forgets I'm around. I don't know why."
"Stand up."
Hmph?"
He felt her hand on his arm, pulling. He stood up. The room spun and he realized that he wasn't sobering; he'd just felt steadier sitting down. He followed the pull of her arm, relieved that he didn't fall down. The next thing he knew, everything was pitch black.
"Where are we?"
No answer. He felt hands pull his shirt apart, hands with small sharp nails which caught in his chest hair. Then his pants dropped. "So this is it," he said, in a tone of vast surprise. It sounded so damn silly that he wanted to cringe.
"Don't panic," said Laney. "Mist Demons, you're nervous! Come here. Don't trip over anything."
He managed to walk out of his pants without falling. His knees bumped something. "Fall face down," Laney commanded, and he did. He was face down on an airfoam mattress, rigidly tense. Hands that were stronger than they ought to be dug into the muscles of his neck and shoulders, kneading them like dough. It felt wonderful. He lay there with his arms out like a swandiver, going utterly limp as knuckles ran down the sides of his vertebrae, as slender fingers pulled each separate tendon into a new shape.
When he was good and ready, he turned over and reached out.
To his left was a stack of photos a foot high. Before him three photos, obviously candid shots. Jesus Pietro spread them out and looked them over. He wrote a name under one of them. The others rang no bell, so he shuffled them and put them on the big stack. Then he stood up and stretched
"Match these with the suspects we've already collected," he told an aide. The man saluted, picked up the stack and left the flying office, moving toward the patrol wagons. Jesus Pietro followed him out.
Almost half of Harry Kane's guests were now in patrol wagons. The photographs had been taken as they entered the front door earlier tonight. Jesus Pietro, with his phenomenal memory, had identified a good number of them.
The night was cool and dark. A stiff breeze blew across the Plateau, carrying a smell of rain.
Rain.
Jesus Pietro looked up to see that half the sky was raggedly blotted out. He could imagine trying to conduct a raid in a pouring rainstorm. He didn't like the idea.
Back in his office, he turned the intercom to all-cha
"Is everyone that nervous?"
Laney chuckled softly. Now she could laugh all she wanted, if she wanted. "Not that nervous. I think everyone must be a little afraid the first time."
"You?"
"Sure. But Ben handled it right. Good man, Ben."
"Where is he now?" Matt felt a mild gratitude toward Ben.
"He's--he's gone." Her tone told him to drop it. Matt, guessed he'd been caught wearing a hearing aid or something.
"Mind if I turn on a light?"
"If you can find a switch," said Laney, "you can turn it on." She didn't expect him to, not in pitch blackness in a strange room, but he did. He felt incredibly sober, and incredibly peaceful. He ran his eyes over her lying next to him, seeing the tangled ruin of her sculptured hairdo, remembering the touch of smooth warm skin, knowing he could touch her again at will. It was a power he'd never felt before. He said, "Very nice."
"Makeup smeared over forgettable face."
"Unforgettable face." It was true, now. "No makeup over unforgettable body." A body with an infinite capacity for love, a body he'd thought almost too big to be sexy.
"I should wear a mask, no clothes."
"You'd get more attention than you'd like." She laughed hugely, and he rested his ear over her navel to enjoy the earthquake ripple of abdominal muscles. The rain came suddenly, beating against the thick coral walls. They stopped talking to listen. Suddenly Laney dug her fingers into his arm and whispered, "Raid." She means Rain, Matt thought, turning to look at her. She was terrified, her eyes and nostrils and mouth all distended. She meant Raid!