A young Asian woman looked out at him, smiled luridly in red hot pants, stiletto heels, and a T-shirt that said GODDESS spelled out in glitter.
“It okay,” she said in halting English. “We no bite. You want come inside?”
Happy endings, Olmstead thought, and went toward her feeling an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the invitation.
Everything about the Superior Spa was a marvel to Olmstead, even the thumping rap music. But what entranced him most was the smell of citrus disinfectant. As one might with a freshly baked pie, he sniffed long and deep, flashing on the image of those corpses in Florida. Were they real? Was this?
He looked at the little thing in the red hot pants, said, “Any other girls working tonight?”
She pouted, poked him in the ribs. “What, you no like for me?”
“Oh, I like you fine, Little Thing. Just looking at options.”
A big, hard-looking man in a black T-shirt came out from behind the maroon curtain. A second Asian woman followed him. Scrawnier than Little Thing, she gazed at Olmstead with pink, watery, vacant eyes.
“See anything you like, bro?” the big guy asked.
“I like them both,” Olmstead said.
“You think this is Bangkok or something? Make a choice.?
??
“Cost?”
“Shower, soapy table, massage, seventy-five to me,” the bouncer replied. “Anything extra, you talk to the girl. Anything extra, you pay the girl.”
Olmstead nodded, pointed at Little Thing, who looked overjoyed.
The bouncer said, “Seventy-five and you gotta check your pack, bro.”
Olmstead went soft-lidded, nodded. “Lemme get my wallet.”
He swung the pack off his shoulder, set it on one of the plastic chairs, and unstrapped the top flap. He drew back the toggle that held shut the main compartment and tugged the pouch open. There was his wallet deep inside. And a beautiful Glock 21.
Was that a suppressor on the barrel? Was the weapon real? Was any of this?
Olmstead sure hoped so as he drew out the pistol. When it came to happy endings, a wet dream was rarely as satisfying as the real thing.
Chapter
6
Just after eight that night, I was getting ready to pack it in, head home, have a beer, see my wife and kids, and watch the last half of the game. So was John Sampson. It had been a long, grinding day for both of us and we’d made little progress on the cases we were working. We both groaned when Captain Quintus appeared, blocking the doorway.
“Another one?” I said.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Sampson said.
“Not in the least,” Quintus replied grimly. “We’ve got at least three dead at a massage parlor over on Connecticut. Patrolmen on the scene said it’s a bloodbath just based on what they’ve seen in the front room. They’re waiting for you and Sampson to go through the rest of the place. Forensics is swamped, backed up. They’ll be there as soon as they can.”
I sighed, tossed the Kimmel file on my desk, and grabbed my blue Homicide Windbreaker. Sampson grabbed his own Windbreaker and drove us in an unmarked sedan over to Connecticut Avenue just south of Dupont Circle. Metro patrol officers had already set up a generous perimeter around the massage parlor. The first television news camera crews were arriving. We hustled behind the yellow tape before they could spot us.
Officer K. D. Carney, a young patrolman and the initial responder, filled us in. At 7:55 p.m. dispatch took a 911 report from an anonymous male caller who said someone had “gone psycho inside the Superior Spa on Connecticut Ave.”
“I was on my way home from work, and close by, so I was first on the scene,” said Carney, a baby-faced guy with no eyebrows or lashes and no hair on his face or forearms. I pegged him as a sufferer from alopecia areata, a disorder that causes a total loss of body hair.
“Contamination?” I asked.