I tried not to look at the rack in the basement where Martin Benson’s life had come to an end. I found the set of folding doors next to a wall display of handcuffs, whips, gags, and other paraphernalia, and opened it.

There were half a dozen wigs there in a variety of shades. Merker grabbed the red one.

“We’re in business,” he said. “Now we just have to get hold of Annette and we go in and get my fucking money.”

I turned to head up the stairs, and Merker called to me. “Hey, look,” he said.

I looked back. He’d slipped the red wig onto his head and was holding one of the whips that had been hanging on the wall.

“Whaddya think?” He grinned. “Am I not fetching?”

CHAPTER 37

37

THE BAR WAS CALLED HANK’S, and it sat a couple of blocks north of the dockworks. It attracted local workers, but it also bordered a tourist district and was three blocks west of a community college, so there was an eclectic mix of clientele. Muscled stevedores, young kids with piercings, a middle-age out-of-town couple loaded down with shopping bags and a video camera.

The whole way back downtown, I considered my options.

If I got a chance to get away, I could call the police. But between the time that I got hold of them and the time they arrived at my house, Merker’d be able to get in touch with Leo. They’d be able to make good on their threat against Katie before the police arrived.

So that wasn’t a good plan.

If I could somehow get the drop on Merker, put him out of commission before he could make a call to Leo, then I could call the police, fill them in on the situation, and they could surround my house, with Leo and Katie and Ludmilla still inside. Once Leo and Ludmilla knew they were trapped, there wouldn’t be any point in harming Katie.

So that was a plan.

The only problem with that was that it involved subduing, somehow, Gary Merker, who, in addition to being a psychopath who could beat the living shit out of me without breaking a sweat, was in possession of not only a knife and a stun gun, but a real, honest-to-God gun that shot bullets.

Could I get hold of my friend Lawrence Jones? I’d seen him deal with bad guys with a certain degree of efficiency. And they didn’t scare him the way they did me. But how, with Merker watching me all the time, was I supposed to reach him?

And so here I was, in a bar with Gary Merker, trying to locate a woman named Annette who Merker thought, with the help of a red wig, could pass herself off as Miranda Chicoine as Trixie Snelling as Marilyn Winter. The only signature she’d have to forge convincingly would be that last one.