The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,92
like that? Then I won’t ask what for. I still don’t know how I can help.”
“You could describe the guy. I don’t have a clue what he looks like.”
“Barbara won’t tell you?”
“Barbara doesn’t remember a thing.”
“Then how in hell do you know his name? And how do I know it’s the same guy as the one who hit on me?”
“You saw the two of them leave the bar together, remember?”
“Oh, right. But maybe she ditched him and went somewhere else and picked up some other boy wonder, and he was the one who fed her the Roofies. I just wish you could mention one thing about him so I was sure we were talking about the same person.”
“He has a very deep voice.”
“Yeah, that’s him, the son of a bitch. Now how on earth do you happen to know that?”
“That’s confidential.”
“Confidential, huh? Hang on.” She went away and came back just as I was having another sip of my medicine. “I could describe him,” she said. “He’s about six-three, very big in the chest and shoulders, with the kind of muscular development you get in the gym, and probably not without anabolic steroids. Biceps like Popeye when he’s full of spinach.”
“Tall and muscular,” I said.
“Dark complexion, as if he goes straight from the gym to the tanning salon. Black hair, and he parts it on the side and slicks it down with mousse or goo or something, so it wouldn’t move in a hurricane. Has a big jaw, not enough to remind you of Jay Leno, but it’s out there. Eyes are set deep, with a little bit of a slant to them.”
“That’s a pretty good description.”
“You think? It seems to me it would fit a lot of people. You couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, could you? Oh, I know!”
She turned around and came back with an order pad and a pencil, tore a sheet from the pad and turned it over on top of the bar. “I took a course,” she said. “Drawing on the right side of the brain. The trick is getting into a right-brain mode. Do you mind?” She picked up my glass of Laphroaig and downed it in a single swallow. “Yuck, I don’t know how you can stand that stuff. Just give it a minute. Okay, I think I’m shifting into a right-brain frame of mind.”
She began sketching, and I watched, fascinated, as Barbara’s date-rape date took shape upon the slip of paper. “He’s a good-looking guy,” I noted. “You wouldn’t think he’d have trouble getting girls on his own.”
“I suppose so. Not my type, though.” She turned the pencil around, erased an area around the mouth, then tried it again. “I like older men.”
“He’s thirty-four.”
“Well, he was born about thirty years too late. ‘If you’re not gray, please go away.’ That’s my motto.”
“Really.”
“Older men know how to treat a woman,” she said. “On the one hand they pamper you, and at the same time they see right through your bullshit. They may think it’s charming, but they know it’s crap. The worst thing about this job is the crowd’s too young. I never meet anybody I’m interested in.”
“The only older guys I know,” I said, “are either married or gay.”
“You can keep the gay ones, but married’s fine. I’m a lot happier with a man who’s got a wife to go home to.” She frowned at the drawing, turned it to face me. “It’s getting close,” she said, “but it’s not quite right, and—well, fuck me with a stick.” She picked up her drawing, crumpled it in her fist, and flipped it over her shoulder onto the back bar, where it nestled between bottles of Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark.
“Hey,” I said. “Even if it’s not Van Gogh, I could use it.”
“You don’t need it. Don’t turn around, not just yet. You’ll never believe who just walked in the door.”
Of course I believed it. I should have expected it. With the long arm of coincidence rolling the dice, how could William Johnson fail to make an appearance just as Sigrid was putting the finishing touches on his portrait?
And, granted a look at the original, I have to say she’d turned out an excellent likeness. Up close and in living color, there was a quality of spoiled self-indulgence she hadn’t quite captured, a look around the mouth reminiscent of some of the Roman emperors. And not Marcus Aurelius, either. More like Nero, say, or Caligula.