All The Way Down

Chapter 39

Esto and I finished our beers and went back out to the Cadillac. My ears were ringing as if I had gone target shooting with no ear protection. Esto seemed electrically charged.

"Did you see that?" he asked. He held out his hands like he was supporting a pair of big melons. "She is a goddess, is she not?"

"I saw. I saw," I said.

"I think she loves me!" he said.

I rolled my eyes. "What did you tell her?" I asked.

"That you wanted her, what else?"

"I just want to talk to her," I said. "I didn't say I wanted to have sex with her."

"It’s always better to eat a meal than to read a menu," Esto said. "This time the meal costs one hundred dollars. But well worth it."

I checked my wallet. I had four twenties, a ten and two five's. Perfect. I was spending my last cent on a prostitute I had no intention of sleeping with.

"She's beautiful, is she not?" Esto asked. "What a shame for the money go to waste!"

"I just want to talk to her, Esto… Michelle… Remember?"

Esto thought about it. "You have much willpower," Esto said. "It's a great gift for a man to possess. I myself am like an unbridled horse at times. Willpower is not enough to control a wild mustang."

Esto turned on some soft guitar music while we waited. I put my head back against the headrest and sank into the leather seat. When I tried to remember everything that had happened that day my mind boggled. I had started the day at the film shop. Then I found two corpses in the desert. I was jailed by a murderer, beaten in the drunk tank by thugs, and then dumped by a girl I had barely started dating. Now I was headed for an arm’s-length rendezvous with a prostitute.

I was bone tired but I needed information on Bullard, and Esto’s tomato was the only hope I had. Everything I had on Bullard up to that point was circumstantial. I needed something I could use to nail his hide to the courthouse door.

My head hurt from the fist fight in the jail, and the drinking I had done since Esto bailed me out had left me thick-headed and tired. I fell asleep in the car while Esto puffed contentedly on a cigar.

I awoke when Esto opened the door on his side of the car. He climbed out and tilted the backrest to his seat forward so the leggy stripper I had rented could get in. She wore jeans that looked as if they had been spray painted on and a scarlet tube top that seemed stretched to the limit. She slouched against the upholstery in the back seat and shot a phrase at Esto in Spanish. She was watching my face while she said it, and her words had some kind of challenge in it. Esto got back into the driver's seat and closed the door.

"What did she say?" I asked.

"She wants to know if you want to do it here or back at her place. She say her place is more comfortable."

"Tell her I want to go back to her place." Esto spoke to her and the woman replied in Spanish again. She leaned forward, resting her right arm on the back of my seat while she gave Esto instructions on how to get to her place. Esto put it in drive and we started rolling.

Then her left hand slipped down my shoulder and slid across my chest like a hot snake. I tried to tell her I just wanted to talk, but she wasn’t listening. When her hand headed south for my zipper I caught her hand in a firm grip and spoke to Esto.

"Tell her I just want to talk to her. Tell her that’s all."

Esto spoke to her and she said something back to Esto. "She say that's what they all say at first, but they always change their mind when the clothes come off. She wants to know if she’s going to get paid or not," Esto said.