Maelstrom

Chapter 25: Hellfire

Saturday night

"Do you know how to make a Dog Named Blue?"

HELL-oh. It was still early on Saturday night; Asylum had been open for less than half an hour, so I was surprised that one of New York's finest had gotten through the line so quickly. Then again, Officer Lindsay Craig – definitely one of New York's finest finest – was dressed to kill.

Perhaps "dressed to bust" would be more appropriate, given that she normally worked Vice. The raven-haired, sloe-eyed beauty had been working the beat for years and had helped me adjust to my role as a bogus prostitute, even taking me shopping for hooker-wear to get me started. In fact, the curve-hugging, zip-fronted, red vinyl minidress I was currently wearing came from our initial shopping spree. I pushed the Veronica Lake-style drape of platinum hair from my eyes and smiled at my former colleague.

"'Dog Named Blue'?" I repeated. Given our last conversation, I knew DiMarco was not actually asking for a meeting, just touching base and giving me a chance at one last face-to-face, just in case, so I stuck with the protocol and did not make the fake drink. "Sounds disgusting. How about a Hellfire instead? It's tonight's drink du jour." Earlier in the evening I had tried calling my concoctions the more-accurate boire de la nuit (drink of the night), but had just gotten strange looks so far, so I was stuck with "drink du jour."

Craig hesitated. "Come on," I coaxed, already pulling out my shaker and filling a pounder with ice. "It'll keep you warm, and the first one's on me."

"In that case." The Vice cop slipped out of her sequined bolero jacket and gestured for me to continue. "But just one; I'm working later."

She turned to the guy next to her who'd been eyeing her up since she'd bellied up to the bar. She laid a hand festooned with press-on nails on her hip. "Hey, baby," she crooned. "You lookin' for a date? I do oral, anal, whatever you like. Just none of that tie-me-up, tie-me-down, 50 Shades shit. Too many bruises," she whispered to me in a theatrical aside. "Bad for business."

The wide-eyed man grabbed his beer and left the bar without a word.

"You're bad," I laughed. I poured two ounces of Charbay Blood Orange vodka and a quarter ounce of cinnamon schnapps over the ice, slapped on the shaker, and started mixing.

Craig smiled. "He deserved it." She took a good look around Asylum, taking in absolutely everything, I knew. "So how do you like working here?" she asked casually. I stopped shaking the drink and created a gap between the glass and the tin just wide enough to strain the liquid into a martini glass. I carefully added a single drop of hot sauce, balanced one of the custom flags I'd made at the start of my shift on the edge of the glass, and slid it over to my mentor.

"It's a lot warmer than my last job," I said.

"Ain't that the truth." She lifted the garnish off her glass: a maraschino cherry circled with an orange peel with the tail end sticking out, all held in place with an extra-long toothpick. "What's this? A fireball?" I smiled. "Cute," Lindsay said, sliding the fruit into her mouth.

"I was going for 'fiendishly clever', but I'll take 'cute'."

Craig took a cautious sip of the Hellfire, apparently approved, then tossed the whole thing back and set the empty glass on the bar.

"Catch ya later, babe," she tossed over her shoulder as she parted the sea of bodies between herself and the front door.

I rang up the specialty drink and pulled $15 out of my still-nearly-empty tip jar to cover it. Shari bumped me in the arm and flashed a predatory smile. "Mm-mmm, your friend is hot; definitely my type."

I pouted my bright red painted lips. "Shari, I'm hurt. I thought I was your type."

Shari laughed loud enough to be heard over the music; in that moment she reminded me of Grace Jones. "Don't worry, baby girl; you're everyone else's type."

The male customers leering at me from the bar suggested that Shari was pretty close to being right. I started taking orders again, undeniably relieved to have my looming final check-in with OCCB out of the way.

DiMarco's promise to send someone to look in on me one last time had been holding me poised on the edge of all-out panic for the last couple of days; the very last thing I needed when Alkaev might be feeling suspicious was somebody whose appearance screamed "cop" striking up a conversation with me at work. But Lindsay Craig was perfect. If six years' worth of johns hadn't once pegged her as being on the job, I was pretty sure my Russian sex god and his security would be oblivious, too.