Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

are you?”
    He didn’t answer at first. Then he said, “Omigod. Oh, Jesus—” The phone went dead.
    Chris shoved some more Old Weller at me, which I drank while I stammered out what Rob had told me.
    She said, “The guy must have come back.”
    I nodded. “He could be slashing Rob’s throat right now—Jesus! Maybe it’s Les.”
    “I think we have to call the cops. This is pretty bad, Rebecca.” Her voice was frighteningly serious.
    “What’s the point? If we can’t tell them where to go, they can’t go.”
    “Wait a minute. I’ve got the glimmerings of an idea. Let’s do what Rob did—go to the Tenderloin.”
    “Like this?” I gestured at our business suits. “We’d get killed.”
    “I mean let’s do it like Rob did—we can dress like bag ladies.”
    “There’s no time. Les could be killing him now.”
    “Well, what do you suggest, then? Finish off the bottle and let him tackle Les alone?”
    That did it. Chris doesn’t often speak sharply; the fact that she did then woke me up. She was right; if Rob was alive, it was up to us to find him—the cops wouldn’t have a chance even if they were willing to try. “Not bag ladies,” I said. “Too hard to pull off.”
    “Whores?”
    “Just burnouts. We can pose as friends of Miranda’s.” But I looked at Chris’s fancy haircut and felt my nerve slipping.
    She caught me at it: “Don’t worry about the hair. I’ve got some platinum spray I used last Halloween. Not only transforms the hair into instant shredded wheat, also turns the complexion a splendid chartreuse.”
    We went first to Merrill’s to buy some cheap cosmetics, made a stop for some Thunderbird, got some burgers and fries, picked up some clothes at my house, then headed for Chris’s, home of the platinum spray.
    We wet our hair to destroy all semblance of style, put a little cold cream on it to make it look dirty, and then turned Chris blonde. The platinum, as she’d promised, brought out yellow tones in her pink and white skin you couldn’t have imagined. By the time we applied some truly revolting foundation, the combination of her natural skinniness and artificial jaundice made her look as if she’d be dead of cirrhosis within a month. A little black eyebrow pencil on her light brown brows and fuchsia lipstick completed the picture.
    I looked more or less a fright in red lipstick and dead-white foundation, but still rather like a nice Jewish girl with awful taste. Chris held up the spray can, but I stopped her: “I have to be in court tomorrow.”
    “It washes out—see?” She pointed to instructions on the can.
    “Okay. Leave lots of dark roots.” She sprayed and in minutes my mother wouldn’t have known me. Would have disowned me at any rate.
    Our clothes were easy—beat-up jeans and T-shirts; America is still in some ways a Democratic country.
    Since we might need money and—God forbid—I.D.s, Chris put hers in my old black Sportsac, the more disreputable of our two bags; we could trade off carrying it.
    The final touch was the Thunderbird, which we put in Chris’s plant mister and sprayed all over each other—hair, neck, arms, T-shirts, everywhere—as if it were the latest designer delight, guaranteed to liquefy strong men. When I thought about it, the Thunderbird would do that, too—but women and children weren’t safe, either.
    Finally, we each helped ourselves to a stick of chewing gum. Then, at 11:30, we hit the streets. Once on them, though, a logical question occurred. “Where,” I asked the author of the outing, “do we start?”
    “Believe it or not, I’ve got an idea. What’s the one thing we know about whizbang’s habits?”
    “Miranda’s? That she drinks too much.”
    “Right. Probably Thunderbird—or beer. Actually, we know she drinks beer—that’s what she had when Sanchez was killed. She has to get it from some place, doesn’t she?”
    “Liquor stores! And corner markets.”
    “Right again.”
    “Let’s start near the Bonaventure Arms.”
    There was a market right across the street. We decided I’d go in and do the talking, with Chris outside as backup, in case I needed rescuing. An old black woman who looked as if she could hold her own with the neighborhood thugs sat behind the counter on a high wooden stool. I said: “You seen Miranda around?”
    “Don’t know no Miranda.”
    “She used to live across the street. Medium height. Skinny. Brown hair.”
    “Could be anybody. You want anything?”
    “Oh.