Los Angeles by Peter Moore Smith Page B

sure I could explain this. “Was she here last night?”
    I grabbed the waitress by the arm, and she looked at my hand as though it were a spider that had jumped on her.
    I released her immediately.
    “No,” the waitress said. “She definitely wasn’t here last night.”
    “The night before?”
    She thought for a moment. “I think she might have been here for a while. But I only worked until ten, and we’re open on weekdays
     until two.”
    “But you saw her? She was here?”
    “I don’t remember.” She leaned toward me.
“Angel,”
she said, hissing my name, “I have to bring you something to drink. I can’t just stand around talking like this… you know
     what I mean?” She glanced over to a yellow square of incandescence on the back wall. Inside it were silhouetted figures, and
     from the way she regarded it, I perceived a threat.
    “You don’t know what might have happened to her, do you?”
    “What might have happened?” She shrugged and gave me that disingenuous smile again. “Maybe she found another client.”
    “Another what?”
    She released a long breath, then turned and walked away.
    I was too stunned to stop her this time.
    Suddenly, this new thought made me feel even worse.
    The ten thousand dollars I had found in front of her duplex… Could she have been accepting money from a man? Maybe a regular
     at the Velvet Mask? Perhaps he had fallen in love with her and she had taken advantage of him, accepting his gifts, and then
     something had gone wrong and he had become obsessed, so he had kidnapped her and put her in the trunk of his car or had forced
     her into a closet in his basement or had trapped her into a small dark place so he could keep her as his slave, and then she
     had called me, finding my number on her cell phone, she had called and said my name, knowing I would come and rescue her,
     just as I had rescued her in the pool, and then this man had discovered that she had the phone in her possession and took
     it away and hurt her and now she was waiting for me, desperately waiting for me to save her.
    I looked around in a panic.
    Behind me I noticed that Buddha, his name was Lester, I remembered, sitting on his stool under the exit sign. He was dressed
     in the same funereal suit as the last time I had seen him, the same long black coat, the same silvery cravat, and his face,
     as before, was simultaneously tranquil and scary. “Sorry to bother you,” I said, coming closer, “but aren’t you Lester?” Even
     though he wore that gloomy costume, there was something childlike about this guy, almost cherubic. I noticed a red scratch
     across his face, a scrape from his jaw to his cheekbone that I hadn’t seen there the last time. I wondered if he’d had to
     bounce someone, if there had been a fight.
    But Lester didn’t respond; he hardly even looked at me.
    A hand was tapping on my shoulder and a voice was saying, “He can’t hear you.”
    I turned around.
    It was a dancer, the timorously thin blonde with the penciled-on eyebrows who had been onstage when I walked in. Now she wore
     a sparkling green evening gown that clung grotesquely to her emaciated ribs. Her fake breasts were like half grapefruits that
     had been fastened to her pectorals. She had matching eye shadow and nails so long they curled under. Right now, one of those
     lavish nails pointed to her ear, and she yelled over the music, “Lester is deaf.”
    Deaf? Why hadn’t Angela mentioned that to me? “Okay,” I said, perplexed. “Maybe you can help me.”
    “What do you want?”
    “I’m looking for a dancer who works here. Her name is Angela — I mean, Cassandra. Do you know her?”
    “Cassie!” I was rewarded with a big smile of realization. “Sure, I know her.”
    “Do you know where she is?”
    “No, no. Just, you know…” She made a swirling gesture that meant she only knew her from around here.
    “When was she here last? Do you remember?”
    She shook her head. “The other night, I