Free Playing God by Kate Flora Page A

forever. Didn't have forever. A dead man was calling.
    Suddenly her hands stopped. "You're thinking again."
    "You can feel it?" He slid away from her, rolled onto his back, plumped up some pillows, and leaned against the head of the bed. He felt surprised and blessed. "You're good," he said. "Very, very good. This is what you should do for a living."
    "Oh, I'm definitely in the therapeutic relaxation business."
    "You know what I mean." She sat a few feet away, cross-legged on the bed, her hands resting on her knees, looking at him. The soft pink light suited her. Her skin glowed, her eyes glowed, she looked soft and mysterious beneath that cloud of hair.
    "Penny for your thoughts," she said.
    "How beautiful you are. But I came here for information."
    "Bullshit. You came here to get onto the soul train," she said. "To plug into the closest thing to a life you got, which is me. You want information, you coulda brought me in like the other girls. You came here to check up on me, because you think you're my daddy, which you aren't even close to. For starters, 'cuz you never beat on me and you never fuck me. You came here to do battle with temptation because you're just a big Catholic prick who thinks he's got life locked down but sometimes just has to let something out of a cage to see if he can tame it."
    "About the dead doctor," he said.
    She turned her back on him. "There's this pimp. Scary, mean son-of-a-bitch named O'Leary. Got a place near the bus station. That's good for business. They went there. Pleasant wanted to be tied up. Watch a little lesbo love. The whole nine yards." She shrugged. "I don't know. Not what I would have expected. The guy was so cold and clinical. Like, this was MTV and he's the education channel. Unless he's sci-fi."
    "This O'Leary. He got a first name?" She shrugged. Knew and wasn't telling. He wondered why. "Far as you know, Pleasant's always done it in the car?"
    "Couple times in the summer, when there were lots of tourists out, he'd go with girls to their places. He was here once."
    Burgess knew he was sitting on a hooker's bed but it felt funny, like being in bed with his victim. He started to get up, thinking it would be better in the kitchen. Get some nice, clinical distance.
    "Sit down," she said. "I'm not done. How's your head?"
    "I think I'll live."
    "Coming from you, that's high praise. I don't know. Being inside had a strange effect on him. I'd been with him in his car maybe five, six times, and it was always the same. Short, simple, clinical. When he was here he wanted to get more adventurous." She didn't elaborate and he didn't ask.
    "What else did you hear about the party at O'Leary's?" Alana looked away. "What? Come on. Talk to me. What?"
    Her eyes swept back, moving slowly down his body. There was more intimacy in her glance than in some twenty-year marriages. He felt a ridiculous urge to cover himself, even though her hands had just been all over him. Even though she did men's bodies for a living. "Dumb ass," she said. "You've got nothing to hide. You're one of those guys who look better with their clothes off."
    "What is it," he demanded. "that you're trying so hard not to tell me?"
    She pouted, thrusting out her lip and folding her arms. "What makes you think I'm not telling you something?"
    "Almost thirty years on the job."
    "It's like I told you before. I have to live here. On the street. With these people. So I just don't know—"
    "Alana, a man is dead."
    "Maybe he deserved to be."
    "People might say that about you. Say 'oh it's no loss, she was nothing but a hooker.' I don't make those judgments. In my book, death matters. No one gets to appoint him or herself executioner. So?"
    "You'd miss me. You'd think I was a loss, wouldn't you, Joe?"
    "Of course I would." He studied her tense posture, the evasive eyes. "What are you holding back?"
    She lowered her eyes and took a deep breath. "This is just street gossip, Joe. I don't know anything. I don't even know names, though