The Baxter Trust

can find out if Zambelli ordered the hit, but if you should stumble over that information in the course of your investigations, please don’t throw it away.”
    Taylor looked at Steve with frightened eyes. “Anything else?”
    “Yeah. There’s a chance the police may have these names too.”
    “Oh yeah?”
    “Yeah. The list was in my pocket when the cops picked me up and searched me last night.”
    “When they what?”
    Steve grinned. “Oh, your detectives missed that too. Your pipeline into police headquarters isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
    Taylor was incredulous. “They arrested you?”
    “A slight misunderstanding. I’m not surprised your boys missed it. Sergeant Stams thought he’d cracked the Benton case. I’m not surprised they played it very hush-hush.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “Not at all. The point is, the cops had access to that list, so they may be running it down too. Only they don’t know what it is, so they won’t know what questions to ask. In case your boys should stumble over them in the course of the investigation, they should try not to give ’em a hint. Particularly since Zambelli would take it to mean we had spilled the information to the cops, and probably wouldn’t be pleased.”
    “Jesus Christ!”
    “So? Anything else?”
    Taylor laughed nervously. “Yes. Yeah, there is. I saved the best for last. I have a bombshell. At least I thought it was a bombshell. After that, it’s gonna seem like a firecracker, but I got it.”
    “What?”
    “Well, like I said, nothing’s coming out of police headquarters except the shit they’re feeding the papers. But one of my boys got lucky.”
    “How?”
    “The cops brought in a woman. Cheap. Flashily dressed. Looked like a hooker bust. But she wasn’t processed, she was taken upstairs. So my man tagged along on a hunch. Sure enough, they hustled her straight in to see Dirkson. She was there about an hour. When she left, it was quietly and by a side entrance.
    “My man was waiting and tagged along. He followed her home and checked her out. Without her knowing about it, of course.”
    “So? Who is she?”
    “Her name is Carla Finley.”
    “Why is she important?”
    Taylor grinned. “She was Greely’s girlfriend.”
    Steve’s eyes widened. “No shit. And the police picked her up?”
    “Picked her up and let her go again.”
    “She must have had a good story. What’d she tell ’em?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “Can I see her?”
    Taylor grinned. “You can see all of her.”

29.
    C ARLA F INLEY WAS LYING NUDE on a slowly revolving table. Her knees were drawn up and her legs were spread wide. Her hands were reaching around the insides of her thighs to give a little assist just in case the position itself was not sufficient to be truly revealing. Her neck was craned up from the table, and she had a look on her face that was surely supposed to pass for unbridled lust.
    Steve Winslow watched her through the window of his private booth, one of the dozen or so such booths that ringed the performing area. Steve, unlike the half a dozen other men whose faces appeared in the various windows, was studying her face.
    Carla was heavily made up, but, on close inspection, the powder and rouge could not hide the fact that the face behind it was worn, that this was a woman on her way out, not on her way up, if such expressions applied in her chosen profession. Her face was lined, but that was not the thing that really gave her away. It was her eyes. For despite the devilish gleam she was attempting to affect, there was another, more sincere look she was unable to keep out of them.
    They were tired eyes.
    Steve’s minute was up, and the blind on his window began to close. He bent down, looking under it until it closed completely.
    He fished in his pocket and pulled out another quarter, then dropped it in the slot.
    The blind went up again. As it did, he could see that Carla was getting up from the revolving table. She stood, stretched, smiled and then began walking around the room, cupping her sagging breasts and smiling at the customers in the windows.
    When she reached his window, he banged on the glass and pantomimed wanting to talk to her. She smiled knowingly, pointed toward the back of the shop, held up three fingers, and mouthed, “Booth three.” Then she moved on to the next customer.
    Steve watched until she finished her rounds and left the stage.
    He left his booth and headed for the larger encounter booths in the