The Enemy by Lee Child Page B

Everything's cool."
    He said nothing.
    "Special Forces?" I said.
    He nodded. "Lost property?"
    "No big deal," I said. "Just something that went missing across the street."
    He thought about it and then he raised his bottle again and clinked it against where mine would have been if I had bought one. It was a clear display of acceptance. Like a mime, in all the noise. But even so a thin stream of men started up, shuffling towards the exit. Maybe twenty grunts left during my first two minutes in the room. MPs have that effect. No wonder the guy with the face didn't want me in there.
    A waitress came up to me. She was wearing a black T-shirt cut off about four inches below the neck and black shorts cut off about four inches below the waist and black shoes with very high heels. Nothing else. She stood there and looked at me until I ordered something. I asked for a Bud, and I paid about eight times its value. Took a couple of sips, and then went looking for whores.
    They found me first. I guess they wanted me out of sight before I emptied the place completely. Before I reduced their customer base to zero. Two of them came straight at me. One was a platinum blonde. The other was a brunette. Both were wearing tiny tight sheath dresses that sparkled with all kinds of synthetic fibres. The blonde got in front of the brunette and headed her off. Came clattering straight towards me, awkward in absurd clear plastic heels. The brunette wheeled away and headed for the Special Forces sergeant I had spoken to. He waved her off with what looked like an expression of genuine distaste. The blonde kept on track and came right up next to me and leaned on my arm. Stretched up tall until I could feel her breath in my ear.
    "Happy New Year," she said.
    "You too," I said.
    "I haven't seen you in here before," she said, like I was the only thing missing from her life. Her accent wasn't local. She wasn't from the Carolinas. She wasn't from California, either. Georgia or Alabama, probably.
    "You new in town?" she asked, loud, because of the music.
    I smiled. I had been in more whorehouses than I cared to count. All MPs have. Every single one is the same, and every single one is different. They all have different protocols. But the are you new in town question was a standard opening gambit. It invited me to start the negotiations. It insulated her from a solicitation charge.
    "What's the deal here?" I asked her.
    She smiled shyly, like she had never been asked such a thing before. Then she told me I could watch her on stage in exchange for dollar tips, or I could spend ten to get a private show in a back room. She explained the private show could involve touching, and to make sure I was paying attention she ran her hand up the inside of my thigh.
    I could see how a guy could be tempted. She was cute. She looked to be about twenty. Except for her eyes. Her eyes looked like a fifty-year-old's.
    "What about something more?" I said. "Someplace else we could go?"
    "We can talk about that during the private show."
    She took me by the hand and led me past their dressing-room door and through a velvet curtain into a dim room behind the stage. It wasn't small. It was maybe thirty feet by twenty. It had an upholstered bench running around the whole perimeter. It wasn't especially private, either. There were about six guys in there, each of them with a naked woman on his lap. The blonde girl led me to a space on the bench and sat me down. She waited until I came out with my wallet and paid her ten bucks. Then she draped herself over me and snuggled in tight. The way she sat made it impossible for me not to put my hand on her thigh. Her skin was warm and smooth.
    "So where can we go?" I asked.
    "You're in a hurry," she said. She moved around and eased the hem of her dress up over her hips. She wasn't wearing anything under it.
    "Where are you from?" I asked her.
    "Atlanta," she said.
    "What's your name?"
    "Sin," she said. "Spelled S, i, n."
    I was fairly certain that