Just as she reached it, Sinclair walked in, carrying a drink in each hand. He stared at her as she brushed past, then stared at the bouncer, then at me. “What the fuck just happened?”
“Nothing,” I said, and when I said it, I realized that Sinclair must have arranged the whole thing. When he’d gone to get the drinks, he must have told the waitress I’d requested the dance. I had the distinct feeling that I was in over my head. “Nothing happened. I just got a little woozy, and I need to go. I’ve got to get up in six hours to catch my flight anyway.”
I sidestepped the bouncer and headed for the doorway. Sinclair made to follow me, but I waved him off.
“You stay and enjoy yourself. Don’t let me put a damper on your evening. Give Melissa my regards.” As I parted the curtains, I looked back over my shoulder. It took everything I had to add, “Call me when you have a final head count for the training.”
Would he call, or had I just lost the fish I’d been sent here to reel in? I didn’t know, and I didn’t much care.
I snagged a cab that had paused at the club’s entrance to disgorge three rowdy young men sporting military haircuts. I hoped they were generous with their applause and their tips. I hoped they were good guys. I yanked off my tie, halfway hoping that I’d banged the microphone a few earsplitting times in the process.
Rankin called to praise my performance, but I cut him off quickly. I went back to my tacky turreted hotel, stripped off my smoky clothes and the FBI’s recorder, and stood under a long, hot shower, trying to wash away the shame of having put out on my first date with Ray Sinclair.
CHAPTER 26
“SO HOW WAS YOUR VEGAS TRIP?” MIRANDA’S TONEwas casual. She was hunkered over a table in the bone lab, touching the tip of a 3-D digitizing probe to landmarks on the skull from donor 77-08, a skeleton that had spent the fall of 2008 by the foot of an oak tree at the Body Farm. Her back was turned to me, and she didn’t even bother to look over her shoulder at me as she asked. Her casualness, I suspected, masked something serious. Normally Miranda was the queen of eye contact. She could ask the most trivial question—“What’d you have for lunch?” or “What time is it?”—and the directness of her gaze would make the question seem profound. Asking about my abrupt departure and swift return without so much as glancing in my direction was a storm warning.
“Quick,” I said. “Strange. Las Vegas—at least the parts I was in—is a bizarre place. A theme park disguised as a city. I’m sure hundreds of Ph.D. dissertations have been written about the odd cultural anthropology of Las Vegas.”
“And wouldn’tthat be a waste of perfectly good trees.” She glanced at the numbers that the probe was feeding into her laptop computer. “Man, this guy had some wide-set eyes. The intraocular distance is eighty millimeters. That’s way wider than anything I’ve measured before. His depth perception must’ve been incredible.” She touched the probe to other landmarks on the skull: the high points of the zygomatic arches, the widest points of the nasal opening, the contours of the chin. “That’s a long haul to make in a day and a half. Was it worthwhile?”
Worthwhile.Her echo of Sinclair’s word gave me a pang. “I hope so,” I said. She didn’t respond, and in the silence a host of unasked questions and withheld explanations seemed to hang in the air.
“Glen Faust was giving a paper at a tissue-bank convention,” I said.
“I know.”
“You know? How do you know?”
“Peggy said you’d gone to a conference in Las Vegas on short notice. I Googled to see what was going on there this week, conference-wise. I figured you must be at either the cosmetology convention or the tissue-bank meeting.”
“Cosmology? What do I know about cosmology?”
“Not cosmology, the nature of the universe,” she said. “Cosmetology. Hair and makeup. A thousand cosmetologists are in Vegas this week.”
“Hair and makeup? What do I care about hair and makeup?”
She finally looked in my direction, sizing up my appearance. “Not much, clearly.”
I laughed. I’d lobbed that one right over the plate for her.
“I was hoping maybe you’d pick up a few style pointers,” she added, meeting my gaze for the first time.
“Then I saw Faust’s talk on the agenda for the tissue-bank meeting, and I abandoned all hope for your stylistic salvation.” The sarcasm, like the eye contact, was a relief—a hopeful sign that the invisible electrical charge in the air between us might dissipate, the way the static in the sky eases after a thunderhead passes over.
“He’s a good speaker,” I said.
“The abstract looked interesting. I can see why you felt moved to spend a thousand dollars and thirty-six hours to hear the talk, live and in person.”