I glance over his shoulder and see her staring at me, an amused smile on her lips.
“She doesn’t have any availability.”
He gets close to my face and I can smell his dinner on his breath.
“I’ve been wanting to try the stew here, but judging by your breath, they’re using way too many onions.”
He shoves me. I shove back. We have a little shoving match before she finally calls out— “Enough!”
We step away from each other, glaring.
“Let him through,” she says. I pat Brutus on the back as I walk by.
She’s younger than I was expecting, long blond hair, maybe forty. Sexy as hell, and she’s giving me a thorough once-over.
“An End Man,” she says. “My, my, you boys certainly have a way of finding me…”
“It’s like we all know each other or something,” I say, sliding into the booth.
“So, Jackal,” she says, voice nearly as low as mine. “What brings you to the dark?”
“My favorite color is dark blue.”
She pulls a case out of her bag and offers me a slim cigarette. “Your favorite color is pink. That’s why you fly around in that ridiculous jet.”
“I was just trying to make you feel special,” I say.
“For someone as beautiful as you, it’s only fitting that you’re not very bright,” she says.
I laugh, and to my surprise, so does she. And then just as quickly, she sobers.
“Quit wasting my time and tell me what you want.”
“Information.”
“About?”
“Gwen Allison.”
The cherry burns between her lips as she considers my request.
“No one knows where Gwen is,” she says finally.
“Someone has to…”
She rolls her tongue over her teeth, looking at me with hooded eyes.
“Why do you want to know?”
“That’s information you’d have to paymefor,” I say.
I watch as she stubs the cigarette out on the tabletop and picks a piece of tobacco from her lips. “All right,” she says slowly. “Come back in a week. I’ll see what I can find out.”
We settle on a price, and I’m about to stand up, when I spot a familiar gait moving across the room and toward the door. She must have been here all along. How could I have missed her? I want to see where she’s going.
“Who do I ask for when I come back?” I turn to my informant. She shrugs.
“See you around, End Man.”