Watchers

as fresh-faced as schoolteachers. All were the kind of women that men probably had in mind when they talked about girls who were “stacked.”
    The hulk led Travis—and Travis led Nora, holding her hand—through that dressing room toward the door at the other end. As they went, one of the topless dancers—a striking blonde—put a hand on Nora’s shoulder and walked beside her.
    “Are you new, honey?”
    “Me? No. Oh, no, I don’t work here.”
    The blonde, who was so well-endowed that Nora felt like a boy, said, “You got the equipment, honey.”
    “Oh, no,” was all Nora could say.
    “You like my equipment?” the blonde asked.
    “Oh, well, you’re very pretty,” Nora said.
    To the blonde, Travis said, “Give it up, sister. The lady doesn’t swing that way.”
    The blonde smiled sweetly. “If she tries it, she might like it.”
    They went through a door, out of the dressing room and into a narrow, shabby, poorly lit hallway before Nora realized she had been propositioned. By a woman!
    She did not know whether to laugh or gag. Probably both.
    The hulk took them to an office at the back of the building and left them, saying, “Mr. Van Dyne will be with you in a minute.”
    The office had gray walls, gray metal chairs, filing cabinets, and a gray metal desk that was battered and scarred. No pictures or calendars hung on the bare walls. No pens or notepads or reports were on the desk. The place looked as if it was seldom used.
    Nora and Travis sat on the two metal chairs in front of the desk.
    The music from the bar was still audible but no longer deafening. When she caught her breath, Nora said, “Where do they all come from?”
    “Who?”
    “All those pretty girls with their perfect boobs and tight little bottoms and long legs, and all of them willing to . . . to do that. Where do so many of them come from?”
    “There’s a breeding farm outside of Modesto,” Travis said.
    She gaped at him.
    He laughed and said, “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting how innocent you are, Mrs. Cornell.” He kissed her cheek. His stubble scratched a little, but it was nice. In spite of wearing yesterday’s clothes and not having shaved, he seemed as clean as a well-scrubbed baby compared to the gauntlet they had run in order to reach this office. He said, “I should answer you straight because you don’t know when I’m joking.”
    She blinked, “Then there isn’t a breeding farm outside Modesto?”
    “No. There’s all kinds of girls who do it. Girls who hope to break into showbiz, go to L.A. to be movie stars but can’t make it, so they drift into places like this in L.A. or they come north to San Francisco or they go to Vegas. Most are decent enough kids. They see this as temporary. Very good money can be made fast. It’s a way to build up a stake before taking another crack at Hollywood. Then there are some, the self-haters, who do it to humiliate themselves. Others are in rebellion from their parents, from their first husbands, from the whole damn world. And some are hookers.”
    “The hookers meet . . . johns here?” she asked.
    “Maybe, maybe not. Some probably dance to have an explicable source of income when the IRS knocks on their doors. They report their earnings as dancers, which gives them a better chance of concealing what they make from turning tricks.”
    “It’s sad,” she said.
    “Yeah. In some cases . . . in a lot of cases, it’s damn sad.”
    Fascinated, she said, “Will we get false IDs from this Van Dyne?”
    “I believe so.”
    She regarded him solemnly. “You really do know your way around, don’t you?”
    “Does it bother you—that I know places like this?”
    She thought a moment. Then: “No. In fact . . . if a woman’s going to take a husband, I suppose he ought to be a man who knows what to do in any situation. It gives me a lot of confidence.”
    “In me?”
    “In you, yes, and confidence that we’re going to get through this all right, that we’re going to save Einstein and ourselves.”
    “Confidence is good. But in Delta Force, one of the first things you learn is that being overly confident can get you killed.”
    The door opened, and the hulk returned with a round-faced man in a gray suit, blue shirt, and black tie.
    “Van Dyne,” the newcomer said, but he did not offer to shake hands. He went around the desk and sat in a spring-backed chair. He had thinning blond hair and baby-smooth cheeks. He looked like a stockbroker in a television commercial: