No Immunity

publicity photo of a glitzy redhead, mike in hand.
    “Hang on,” she called. “You’re early. If I had all of pharaoh’s laborers I couldn’t get myself put together in less than an hour. Go ahead and set up. I’ll be there in a minute.”
    He followed her voice through an archway into a hall.
    “I got these boots, real rhinestone cowboy boots. I’m thinking, maybe they’d work with the dress, you think?”
    “Wow!” Tchernak stopped dead at the bathroom door. The bathroom was the size of a two-car garage, so big the sunken black tub, wall of mirrored cabinets, three sinks, and sauna left room for a sofa across from one of the two toilets. The woman standing in front of the mirror was the one over the mantel. In the picture she looked fresh, natural, eager, and just a bit naughty. Here he could see the faux that went into the picture. The woman looked like a fever victim—cheeks too red, eyes too wide, skin too slick. She had big hair, red, the kind that would draw a comment from his mother. And her hands never stopped moving, grabbing facial brushes, tiny ones, big ones, spreading-brown on her cheeks, white over her eyes, stopping, looking, dabbing. Her green sequined dress came to the floor with a slit that sent his eyes right back up nearly to her crotch.
    Now it all fell into place. “I wondered who you thought I was. Brad Tchernak here. You do look spectacular.” Tchernak smiled.
    She stopped an instant in her ministrations, started to smile, then changed her mind. “What the hell are you doing in my bathroom?”
    “You said come in.” He grinned. “I’m a friend of your neighbor, Grady.”
    She considered, shrugged, and turned back to the makeup counter, fingering through four large shiny sacks as if he were a regular visitor to her bathroom.
    Was it him? Tchernak wondered. Did he give off trustworthy “vibes”? Or was she too sure of her big-girl body and her tough-girl voice to worry? “I’m trying to track down your neighbor, Grady Hummacher. No one’s seen him since he got back from Panama. People are worried. I knew him from college. He’s a guy you worry about. Have you seen him in the last couple of days?”
    “Brad, honey, you’re asking the wrong woman.” She had pushed three makeup cases out of the way and was rustling through the biggest one he’d ever seen. Soft brushes flew into the sink, pink disks, brown tubes, scattered. “And you’re asking at the wrong time. With the Millennium opening in a week, I wouldn’t see a neighbor if he moved onto my foot.”
    “The Millennium Casino?”
    “ ‘The Only Place to Be at le Fin de Siècle .’ ”
    “You’re in the show there?”
    “Honey, I am the show. I’m emceeing it all. There are five bedrooms in this house. Four of them we use just for dresses. There are fifty more outfits back there with enough sequins to pave the Strip.”
    “I should know your name, but I’ve been working out of town for the last few years.”
    “Cassie Marengo.”
    “The comethenne!”
    “Yeah. You want to see me, come to the opening next week. I’ll be there with a dynamite monologue I’ve been working on for a month. Whole new slant on Vegas. Stuff like you’ve never heard.” She paused, looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. “Actually do come. I’d really like you there. It’d be nice to know I’ve got a friend in the authence the biggest night of my life and all.”
    He was staring at her the way he never could if she hadn’t been a work in progress. Under the shades of brown and red he could make out a face that was too square, a chunky face on a body too spindly. The awkward kid who went for the laughs. Maybe she really did want a friend, even if that friend was a stranger in her bathroom. “Sure,” he said. “But if you’re emceeing the opening of a casino like the Millennium, you’re not going to be needing anyone like me. Out of town or not, even I’ve heard about the Millennium. I mean, build a ten-thousand-room casino now and blow up the place a year later at the millennium! Boy, it shows me there’s plenty I don’t understand about economics.”
    “Yeah, well, I don’t know how they’ll balance the books on that either. I just figure I’ve got this year, this chance of a lifetime and I plan to work my ass off. I’ll tell you, it’s hard to come up with new material night after night. A singer, he can sing the same songs the same way, week in, week out, and the authences hum along, like