Chapter 2

Doc was known only as that — Doc. He was a licensed physician, or at least that’s what Philip always said. He had a black goody bag with the usual items you found in a child’s toy doctor set only they were real: a stethoscope, a thermometer, and bottles of brightly colored pills.

Just under six feet, his frame seemed to struggle under the burden of his bulging stomach. His sagging face, the trophy of a dissipated existence, his silver-streaked hair and heavy, jowled cheeks made him look more like a veteran porn producer than a doctor.

Only Doc’s heavy breathing broke the silence of the bedroom. One knee sunk into the mattress as he arched over the naked, unconscious woman, performing an examination.

Kat and Joe hovered on the other side of the bed, watching.

Doc pressed on the woman’s abdomen and ran his fingers in a piano playing motion across the undulating planes of her body, lingering over her breasts.

“Is that necessary?” Kat said.

“A doctor’s hands are sexless,” Doc wheezed.

“Bullshit,” she muttered.

Doc gave a grunt as he pushed his considerable girth off the bed, leaving a deep indent in the mattress. Picking up the woman’s purse from the night table, he flicked it open and rooted in the contents.

“So?” Joe said.

“Narcolepsy,” Doc said.

“Bullshit,” Kat and Joe said in unison.

Doc tossed the tiny flame-red clutch on the bed and placed his stethoscope in his bag. He turned to Joe. “A thousand dollars.”

“For that kind of money, aren’t you gonna wake her up?” Joe asked.

“Can’t. She’ll come around on her own.”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with her until then?”

“Wait.”

“For how long?”

Doc gathered his bag. “Not long. A thousand dollars.”

Joe sputtered in objection.

“Mr. Lessing,” Katerina said, “you need to give Doc his money . . . Mr. Lessing — ”

Kat waited for Joe to focus on her. “You need to give Doc his money,” Kat said, her voice strong. “I will find a way to get your friend home. Do we know where her husband is?”

Lessing seemed to have trouble focusing.

“Mr. Lessing — where is her husband?”

“He’s in Jersey. He’s driving back tonight. He could be home already. This was supposed to be a quickie.”

Kat nodded. “The money,” she said. She had no doubt that amount and much more was somewhere in the apartment. When Joe left the bedroom, Kat considered the unconscious woman in the bed. How the hell am I going to get this woman home?

She turned to Doc. “You sure about this?”

Doc opened the clutch and pulled out a medical bracelet with an ID tag.

Kat’s face flushed. Shit! I screwed up.

Doc tossed her the bracelet and she snapped it out of the air with an easy catch. “You’re still young, Miss Kitty. You got a lot to learn.”

Kat rubbed the bracelet between her fingers.

“She’ll be okay. Most of these cycles are short. She’ll have a sense of memory loss. Maybe that’s good. She’ll forget she was in bed with a schmuck.”

“Doc — ”

“I don’t like him.”

Lessing came back into the bedroom with a wad of cash. His lips moved as he counted out the bills. He made two separate piles and handed one to Kat and the other to Doc.

“Okay, so,” he said. “What now?”

The call box buzzer sounded.

Kat, Joe, and Doc turned toward the door.

***

Joe Lessing wore blue jeans, a white t-shirt, and a sheepish, cockeyed grin as he opened the apartment door for his wife, Constance, a slender brunette of medium height. She had a hard, unforgiving face and lips that had a generous application of too red lipstick.

“What took you so long?” she snapped.

“Sorry, babe,” he said, taking her briefcase. “I fell asleep on the couch.”

She grunted at his excuse and brushed past him.

“We need to move out of this place. There’s always a bunch of weirdos wandering around.”

“Like who?” he asked, vaguely realizing that he usually didn’t pay this much attention to her.

Mrs. Lessing let loose a string of complaints as she wandered through the apartment. Joe watched her out of the corner of his eye hoping she wouldn’t pick tonight as the night to change her usual habit of tossing her jacket over the chair. She was standing by the closet door.

•••

Kat had one arm wrapped around the waist of the unconscious woman, her other arm across her chest for support. The woman’s dress was half on. Kat was sure she would suffocate in the airless closet, trying not to breathe in the acrid odor of the wife’s hideous floral perfume. She listened to Mrs. Lessing’s robust bitching while straining against the growing dead weight pulling at her arms.

“. . . then the elevator doors open and this huge fat guy comes waddling out. He’s wearing this sickening aftershave, really disgusting. He stunk up the whole elevator.”

The blonde stirred, pulling in a deep breath.

“He looked like a pedophile or a pornographer . . . and he had this wheeze . . .”

The blonde raised her head, still drowsy. Kat clamped one hand over the woman’s mouth. The blonde’s eyes flew open as she tensed into fight mode.

“The wife is home,” Kat whispered in her ear.

The blonde froze.

Motionless, they listened to Constance Lessing’s voice trail down the hall along with her stiletto heels clicking against the hardwood floor.

“Why the hell do you have the window open? It’s forty fucking degrees outside. I wondered why the hell it was so damn cold in here.”

Kat and the blonde slid out of the closet, shoes and boots in hand. Treading on the balls of their feet, they raced to the front door and slipped out, hustling down the hallway to the stairwell. Kat cast a last glance back at the apartment door as it closed without a sound.

•••

The limo was waiting at the end of the block. A driver, six foot four with skin the color of almonds, leaned against the car. He had an amused look on his face as if someone had just whispered a joke in his ear.

He flipped the back passenger door open, and the blonde jumped in.

Katerina handed him a wad of bills which he tucked in his pocket without counting.

“Thanks for the favor, Luther. The lady will tell you where to go.”

“No problem, Miss Katerina. Anything for you,” he said. With the smirk firmly in place, Luther walked to the driver’s side and slid in behind the wheel; he eased the limo away from the curb.

The gentle whirring noise of the electric window rolling down made Kat look back. The blonde’s face peeked out. She mouthed the words “thank you” as the limo pulled into traffic.

Kat dropped her boots to the ground, slipped into them, and kneeled to tie the laces. A pair of tawny, slim legs, feet tucked into Louboutin leopard print stilettos stopped in front of her. Kat straightened up and found herself face to face with an impossibly attractive woman a few years older than herself. A shimmering black wraparound dress accentuated her curves; blond, straight, shoulder length hair fluttered in the light breeze.

“I take it you were Plan B,” she said.

“Yes,” Kat answered.

“It’s taken care of,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” Kat said.

The woman gave Kat the once over from head to toe. “I’m Lisa. You can tell me all about it over a cup of coffee. If I like what you have to say, I have an opportunity that may interest you.”

“What kind of opportunity?”

“One where you make a lot of money, doing what you did tonight.”

Kat hesitated, and then nodded.