Read Online NO Quarter by Robert Asprin - Free Book Online Page B

” She didn’t need to add that now it was too late to make friends with Sunshine.
    “How about customers?” I asked. “Anybody showing up to see her?”
    “Sure. But that goes for everybody. Not just the dancers. I get guys asking for me all the time.” She said this with some professional pride.
    I was hoping for something easy, I realized—one of Sunshine’s standard disastrous boyfriends, maybe a customer at the club stalking her. Something—some one —obvious.
    Chanel was already looking impatient. Who could blame her? A dead co-worker, and now my questions. Better ask while the asking was good.
    “Was Sunshine showing up for her shifts on time?”
    She shrugged, a bit petulantly this time. “I guess. Most of the time. She wasn’t, like, a total flake.”
    “How about money? Was she short on cash lately?”
    “I didn’t make a habit of going through her purse.”
    I grimaced. “Right. But was she strapped, did she borrow from you, from the other girls? Did she gripe about money a lot?”
    “Not to me. Borrowing? I never heard of her doing it. Look, Bone ... ”
    “I know.” I took a last puff off my cigarette and ground it out under my heel. I did have something I had to ask, had teased around it with my last few questions. It was delicate, and I was using up the last of Chanel’s good will. I didn’t want to, but—I had to ask.
    I drew a breath.
    “Chanel, was Sunshine turning tricks?”
    Those raw, tired eyes lit with a spark. She stiffened. If this was a hard-boiled gumshoe movie, I would be able to divine her body language instantly. Fact was, I didn’t know if I’d bumped against the truth or just provided a point of focus for her free-floating anger over Sunshine’s murder.
    With studied icy dignity she pulled herself tall. “You ought to speak a little better of the dead, Bone.” With a sharp flick she shot her cigarette butt inches past my left ear, and that was it. She turned and strode off, down Bourbon toward Canal, a straight crisp line.
    Leaving me staring after her, alone on the sidewalk with the street’s fumes and very little accomplished. Alone ... until I realized someone was standing behind me, very near.

    * * *

    Excerpt from Bone’s Movie Diary:

    A good way for an actor to grab the Oscar is of course to play a character with an affliction. Dustin Hoffman’s 2 nd Oscar for Rain Man (autistic); Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot (cerebral palsy); Tom Hanks’ double whammy of Philadelphia (AIDS sufferer) & Forrest Gump (mentally challenged); Pacino’s Scent of a Woman (blind); etc. Not always the actor’s best work, is it? Actresses fare well for awards & nods playing prostitutes & women of questionable morals. Elisabeth Shue got a nomination for Leaving Las Vegas , as did Annette Bening for The Grifters , Jodie Foster for Taxi Driver ; & the Oscar went home with Jane Fonda for Klute , Mira Sorvino for Mighty Aphrodite , Kim Basinger for L.A. Confidential , Anne Baxter for 1946’s The Razor’s Edge , Liz Taylor for Butterfield 8 , & so forth. There are good performances among those, with some glaring exceptions. Yet even the cautionary tales, the gritty & seamy ones ... they seem to subversively & perversely glamorize the lifestyle. We can safely observe and tsk-tsk the proceedings & most of these films encourage us—overtly or otherwise—to do so, but secretly we’re titillated by these “fallen women.” We are meant to thrill as they plunge headlong toward annihilation.

Bone turned around suddenly, but I’d glided up behind him, past whatever radar he had. He was startled and his stance was wobbly again.
    “Maestro—“
    “I thought you said you were going to stay at the Calf.”
    He recovered himself, shaking his head. “I didn’t say that. You said you were stepping out to ask about Sunshine. Well, I did the same thing.”
    I glanced past him, to the entrance to Big Daddy’s. “You went asking in there?” My tone was clipped.
    “Right. I know one