Claudine Read online

  “It hasn’t yet,” she said brightly, paying his caution no heed. “I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast. Will the Grill Room still be open?”

  Andrei checked the time on the dash. “Should be.” He took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at her. “You don’t want to go clubbing tonight?” He straightened his tie in the rearview mirror. He was dressed immaculately in an English-tailored navy suit. Claudine glanced at him approvingly. His suit fit perfectly, just hugging his broad shoulders, and like his other gear, always the height of fashion.

  “No, not tonight. I’m not feeling up to it. Just a quiet dinner—the two of us. Sound good?”

  “Fine by me.”

  “Where are we tomorrow?”

  Andrei took his cell phone from its holder and used his right hand to scroll through a menu while keeping his left on the wheel.

  She looked at the screen when he handed her the phone. “Oh yes, Frankfurt. We have a transition day there and then next night I see my client. Who is it? Remind me.”

  Andrei was forced into a crawl behind a line of backed-up vehicles. He shook his head in irritation. “Gridlock even at this time of night. It’s the one thing I hate about London.”

  “You should be used to it. New York is worse.”

  “I’ll never get used to it. Your client’s a businessman—Hirsch. Imports electronics. But the appointment is for his son. The father’s worried because the young man’s turning twenty and still doesn’t show much interest—in either sex. Spends all his time gaming.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I’m the birthday present and I’m playing his favorite female avatar. Commander Shepard, I think. From something called Mass Effect 3. Should be fun.

  “Mass Effect 3? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  She laughed. “Neither do I. And the politician in Milan is two days after that—right?”

  “Yes. A party at a villa just outside the city.”

  “And then Rome at the end of the week?”

  “He canceled.”

  “Andrei, no! Any chance of making it up this close to the appointment?”

  “Sure. There’s a waiting list. But I won’t have time to do a proper background check.”

  “See what you can do. You know we need it to offset the cost of the hotel and the flights.”

  “It’s not the only consideration. You’ve got to think about your security.”

  “That’s what I have you for.” She snuck a glance at his handsome profile. He was smiling.

  Maria walked into her London hotel room and pecked Lillian on the cheek. “Thanks for waiting up, sweetie. We stopped off at the Grill Room.” She stripped off her clothes as she headed for the bathroom, “Did you have a good night?”

  “Not bad. I watched Britain’s Got Talent on TV. You’re back early.”

  “I know! Lucky break, huh? Because I’m exhausted.”

  She emerged from the shower ten minutes later, her skin damp and steaming.

  Lillian had the bedsheets turned down, a second cover thrown over to protect the sheets from the oils. Maria flopped onto the bed and turned facedown on her stomach. Lillian tucked a pillow underneath her lower legs and squirted citrus-scented oil on her hands.

  “Not too long tonight, Lil. I’m not feeling great.”

  “You aren’t coming down with something, are you?”

  “Just tired, I expect.”

  “I’m not surprised. You’ve been keeping an insane pace. You need a holiday.”

  A muffled sound came from her mouth and she lifted her head. “I have time for holidays?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean!”

  Lillian was the only person who dared to boss Maria around. A petite Filipino woman who barely topped five feet three inches, she was, nevertheless, a bulldog. An affectionate bulldog. A former movie makeup artist and hair stylist, she came recommended by another courtesan, a French film star who occasionally plied the trade.

  Lillian knew how to exert just the right amount of pressure to untie the knots in Maria’s muscles without causing pain. She ran her strong brown fingers down Maria’s spine, worked on her shoulders and neck and along the pale, beautiful skin that glowed with an inner radiance. It was completely unblemished except for the small scar on the inside of Maria’s right wrist. She’d had the scarification etched into her skin in the shape of a nightingale feather to hide the only blemish on her body: a discoloration caused when, as a child, her right hand had been tied to her crib railing.

  “Your skin is getting really dry,” Lillian said disapprovingly, applying more oil. “You should drink more water.”

  “It’s the flights. The air is parched.”

  Lillian’s strong hands kneaded Maria’s plump buttocks and finished with her lower legs, the arches of her feet and her toes. Then she tapped Maria’s shoulder to turn over. After oiling and massaging her upper body, Lillian noticed several blond hairs on her pubis.

  “Some hairs are growing back. You’ll have to get another laser treatment when we get home.”

  Maria groaned. Her skin was sensitive and her whole pubic area had been tender and red for several days after the last treatment. It stung horribly when she urinated. She hadn’t been able to work for a week. Yet the laser produced wonders; the hairs pulled out as easily as clumps of dead grass. She had to have a treatment every six weeks; this time she’d gone for seven. “Can you wax me instead? The laser treatment hurts too much.”

  Lillian tutted, pushing one side of her black bob behind her ear. She massaged Maria’s arms. “Yes, but now is time for sleep.”

  Maria rolled off the cover. Lillian swept it away and tucked the bedsheets over Maria’s legs while she sat up. She got a glass and a cold bottle of Iceland Spring from the half fridge and handed them to Maria along with her sleeping pill.

  “That’s too mild. Don’t I have any Benadryl?”

  “It’s too strong. You shouldn’t be taking that just to sleep.”

  Maria closed her eyes.

  “Is there anything else you want?” Lillian asked a little more affectionately.

  “No, that’s all, thanks.”

  Maria opened her eyes again in time to intercept Lillian’s worried glance. Maria had been relying on sleeping pills too much and had started taking Xanax during the day as well to keep herself on an even keel. Even that hadn’t been enough to produce a good night’s rest.

  “How was it tonight?”

  “Just fine, Lillian. Not to worry. He was a perfect gentleman.” Lillian harrumphed and turned off the lamps, leaving only the bathroom light on because Maria was unable to sleep in total dark. After bidding her good night, Lillian went to the adjoining room. Andrei had a separate suite across the hall.

  Maria waited until the sound of her companion’s movements next door ceased—once Lillian fell asleep, not even a bomb could wake her—and then slipped out of bed. She always packed two cases: one held lube, extra condoms and sex toys, the other cosmetics, nail polish, and hair and body care essentials. She rooted through both. No Benadryl. Nor could she find anything tucked away in the bathroom cabinets. Damn. Lillian was keeping it all in her room, to dispense as she saw fit. Maria grew annoyed, although part of her knew Lillian was right. Loading her body with drugs was a bad idea.

  In addition to the sleeping aids and Xanax, she took Lybrel to stop her periods. In her profession, they meant too much time away from work. She wondered if it was taking a toll on her body. She took a long look in the bathroom mirror. No one would guess she was twenty-six. But there were small signs. She ran her fingers over the tender skin underneath her eyes. A line or two. Almost imperceptible, but there. And she’d found a gray hair at her temple the other day. Just one, yet even that alarmed her. Her breasts were still full and perky—how long would that last? She didn’t have implants, and that set her apart. Most of her clients preferred real to silicone, and a number of them actually asked before they booked her. She’d steadily built her business over five yea
rs and was now at the top of her form, in demand around the world and able to command the highest prices. She’d always known her career would be short, like a professional athlete’s. One didn’t last in this game for very long. Her feelings about that were ambivalent: some days she wanted to be a courtesan forever—loving the fame, sexuality and power—other days she never wanted to have sex again.

  There were additional considerations too. Maria hadn’t had a boyfriend in months; in the past, they’d either become jealous when they found out what she did, or they wanted to watch. As for women friends, it had become too complicated to avoid the intimate confessions of friendship to hide her double life, to explain her frequent absences from New York and the comfortable lifestyle she enjoyed. Many interesting and intelligent women in her grad program at Yale had made overtures of friendship: invitations to coffee, art house films, drinks at the campus bar. She turned them all down. Who among them would understand her lifestyle? How many would befriend her if they knew the truth? She refused to justify her choices or be judged by puritanical standards. No, casual friendships were out of the question. The risk of discovery was too great and she didn’t want to lose what she’d earned through hard work. She was close to paying off her apartment, and if all went well with her thesis on early erotic literature, she was practically assured of a faculty position. Besides, she had two of the truest friends in Andrei and Lillian. They protected her, took care of her. They were her family and all she needed.

  Sleep wouldn’t come easily tonight. She was tired, but keyed up. She felt aroused—inexplicably so. She hadn’t found the earl particularly hot. Still, the sexual tension lingered. She rarely climaxed with clients. It happened spontaneously sometimes, or if she used a sexual aide. But the missionary position did nothing for her. She knew how to simulate orgasm convincingly; it was all part of her performance. Few of her clients ever detected the truth, and those who did probably didn’t care. On nights like tonight, when peace eluded her, an orgasm was the quickest route to a restful sleep.

  She shut the bathroom door and sat on the rim of the tub, her back to the tiled wall. She took her nipple between her thumb and forefinger and caressed it. Her vagina responded, contracting, growing moist. She closed her eyes, imagined a naked man, his face indistinct but his arms, his shoulders and his hands muscular and well-defined. His cock was ready for her. She put the flat of her palm on her sex and rubbed gently, and then more emphatically, imagining it was the man’s hand there, not hers. Fantasized his tongue tasting her tang, his fingers pleasuring her. She could sense the buildup now, warm sensations at her core, and fondled her clit, coaxing her body to climax. Felt the softening, got ready for the rush. She cried out as she came, an exultant tremble running through her. It was over too soon, followed by a curious flat feeling, as if the world had suddenly lost its color.

  Afterward, tucked into the big hotel bed, she fell into a dream-filled sleep. In her dream, she lay, cold and frightened, on a dirty cot in a pitch-black room, a cell. She tried to find the paler outline of the window, high up on the wall, but the darkness was too deep. When her eyes adjusted to the light, she made out a giant blackbird on the sill, with a long black beak and hunched neck—the kind that stole the young from other birds’ nests.

  The door creaked open and a vertical bar of light spread across the bare floor. A shadowy bulk in silhouette shuffled toward her. She heard raspy whispering, saw glittering blackbird eyes, felt the brush of wings on her bare stomach. She struggled against the pillow flattened against her mouth to stop her screams. The nightmare of her youth had come again.

  CHAPTER 3

  NEW YORK CITY

  Two weeks later, Maria sipped a cup of coffee while she lazed in bed, the midmorning sun pouring through the open window. She heard a knock, then the sound of Lillian’s voice in the hallway. Something in her tone made Maria sit up, alert. It was the clipped cold edge of fear. She jumped out of bed, ran her fingers through her messy hair, belted a pretty floral silk robe around her body and ran out of her bedroom in bare feet.

  “Who’s there, Lillian?”

  She heard Lillian pronounce loudly, as if in warning, “Please come into the living room. I will bring Ms. Lantos.” Lillian’s quick steps were followed by louder, slower ones, the heavy tread of shoes on the hardwood floor. She snuck back into her bedroom. Lillian rushed in, her bright expressive face tinged with anxiety.

  “What’s wrong, Lillian? Who is it?”

  “The police,” she hissed. “They want to see you.”

  Her eyes widened. “Me? What for?” She grew pale, and without waiting for an answer, slipped her feet into flats and hurried out the bedroom door. Lillian hovered behind her.

  Two plainclothes officers rose from the sofa when she entered the living room. Both darted glances at her cleavage, blinking when they did so, as if to give the impression they were not really eyeing her bosom. The taller one, who had close-cut auburn hair graying at the temples, held out his hand in greeting.

  “Detective Steve Trainor and Detective Julio da Silva, 110th Precinct, Queens.” Trainor wore a sharp suit that emphasized his muscles and height; da Silva looked small, rumpled and unkempt in contrast. “Your assistant, Lillian Flores, tells me you are Maria Lantos. Is that your legal name?”

  Maria took his hand, gave it a quick shake and stepped back, gathering her robe tighter at the neck. “Yes. What’s the problem, Detective?” She gave him just enough of a smile to appear welcoming. Smiles came easily to her even if they bore no relation to her real mood.

  “Can you show us some ID?”

  “Of course.” She retrieved her vintage Louis Vuitton wallet from the marble-topped credenza where she’d tossed it last night, extracted her driver’s license and handed it to him.

  He checked it and gave it back. “I’d like to see everything. Your birth certificate too, if you have it handy.”

  “Okay, but can you tell me what this is all about?”

  “We’re investigating a homicide. The victim, a young woman, was found with ID for Maria Lantos that listed her residence as this address. Including a birth certificate. Any idea how she got it?”

  “No, of course not. You said she died?”

  “We’re investigating a murder, Ms. Lantos.” Trainor spoke slowly, as if to a small child. “So you have no idea how someone got their hands on your ID? Your purse wasn’t recently lost or stolen?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Da Silva took a small spiral-bound notebook from his inside breast pocket and began jotting down notes.

  “Well, fake IDs are a big business. Maybe someone with access to your things had it reproduced and sold it.” He gave Lillian a suggestive look.

  Behind her, Lillian gasped. Maria turned around and said gently, “It’s okay, Lil. I’ll deal with this. Why don’t you let me discuss it with the detectives?”

  White-faced, Lillian hurried out of the room.

  Maria turned back to Trainor. “If you’re implying my assistant’s involved, I don’t think that’s the case here, Detective.”

  “Can’t be too careful, Ms. Lantos.” Trainor thumbed through her credit cards while she took her birth certificate from the credenza drawer and handed it to him.

  “You’re Romanian?” Trainor asked after he’d glanced at it and handed it to da Silva.

  “Yes. Born in Romania and adopted by my American mother when I was six.”

  “You were adopted but you kept your birth surname?”

  “I went back to it later. When I turned eighteen.”

  “Hmmm. The deceased was using a New York driver’s license with your name and address,” he said, handing the paper back to her, “and she looks a lot like you. Do you have a sister? A cousin, maybe?”

  A current of fear ran through Maria’s body. For a few seconds she was silent, trying to pull herself together. “I don’t have any blood relatives alive that I know of.”

  Da Silva had small eyes with overlarge whites bulging out from
underneath thick, fleshy lids. He swept his gaze around the room. Took in the chamois leather sectional sofa, the Chinese Ninghsia rug, the Frederick Cooper lamps, noted how costly they were. His gaze settled on her left hand.

  “Are you married, Ms. Lantos?” da Silva said.

  “No. It’s just Lillian and me here.”

  “What do you do for a living?” he asked, eyebrows raised. She imagined answering him truthfully. I fuck men for a living. Fathers, brothers, uncles, sons. Men who want to be sucked, groped, squeezed. Fat men whose stomachs have grown so pendulous they can no longer see their dicks when they stand up. Young men who think their cocks are gifts. High rollers, doctors, sports heroes, senators, actors. Lonely men who’ve lost their wives or sweethearts. Cheaters. Old men who’ve discovered the little blue pill and whose wives, thinking they’d been released from sex, turn away from them in dismay. Bachelors, husbands, men whose girlfriends say they want to watch but really don’t. Rich men. So many that they blur together in an infinitely repeating refrain you can never get out of your head.

  “I’m a postgrad student at Yale.”

  Da Silva looked up, alert. “Fancy place for a student. Mind telling me how you afford it?”

  “My mother helps me out.” Maria mentioned her adoptive mother’s name, a well-known New York lawyer. Da Silva recognized it immediately. His jaw twitched and he glanced over at Trainor. “I’m sorry for the intrusion,” he said, “We have to ask, you know.”

  “I understand.”

  Trainor reached inside a breast pocket for a thin, fake alligator-skin case. He unzipped it and took out two pieces of paper enclosed in a cheap transparent plastic folder. He held them up. “Do you know this girl?” He handed her the photos. There were two shots, front and back of a thin blond woman. She lay on a stainless steel gurney under bright lights. Her body was rigid and naked. No sheet had been draped over her to protect her dignity.

  She examined the frontal first. The murdered girl had the thin hips of a teenager just beginning to mature into womanly roundness; her parched blond hair splayed just below her shoulder was the same length as Maria’s. Her pouty childish lips were the only feature still recognizable in a battered face. Her overlarge breasts looked incongruous on the teenager’s body. Implants, clearly. But the worst sight of all was a jagged open wound on her pelvis, the skin and underlying tissue split apart all the way to her pubis.