The Enemy Inside Read Free Page B

you?” I ask.
    He thought about it for a moment. “Come to think,” he says, “neither one of us did. She already had it written out. She just handed it to me.”
    “Didn’t you think that was a little strange?” says Harry. “A girl you just met handing out invitations to a party to strangers on the street?”
    “She looked like the kind of girl who would have rich friends,” says Ives. “When I got to the party, I realized I wasn’t exactly dressed for it,” he says.
    “What do you mean?” says Harry.
    “I mean, there were guys there wearing tuxes, women in expensive dresses and a lot of jewels. And they were all older. Gray hair everywhere I looked. I felt out of place, like maybe she should have warned me. I went looking for her. My first thought was maybe there was a younger crowd somewhere in the back. It was a big place, a lot of ground in the yard. Chinese lanterns lighting everything up. She was right about one thing. Whoever owned the place was part of the one percent,” he says. “A lot of money.
    “When I didn’t see her or anyone our age, I decided to leave. That’s when he came by.”
    “Who?” says Harry.
    “The waiter with a tray of drinks. They didn’t have any beer, but they had champagne. I took one glass, and that’s it. That’s all I can remember until I woke up in the hospital.”
    “Do you remember what he looked like, the waiter?”
    “Not a clue. Didn’t even look. It was crowded. There were people everywhere. I grabbed the glass and that was it.”
    “Do you remember what the girl looked like?” I ask him.
    “Yeah. You couldn’t forget her. Asian. Beautiful face. Great smile. Long straight black hair down to the middle of her back. Dark eyes. Bronze skin. About this tall.” Ives puts his hand flat on edge as if drawing a line across his upper body about nipple high.
    “What are you saying, about five five, five six?” I ask.
    “Yeah, I’d say that’s about right.”
    “Was she slender, heavy? How was she built?”
    “Yeah.” Ives gives me a kind of quick sheepish grin, the college jock. “I’d say she was pretty well built. You know what I mean?”
    “Tell us.” Commander Lust, Harry wants all the details.
    “Well, you know . . . showing some good cleavage. It was a nice sunny day. Summertime. A lot of the women, secretaries, come out of the buildings into the plaza showing a lotta thigh, short skirts. Hers was right up there. You couldn’t miss it,” he says. “As I remember, she was wearing a blue print dress of some kind, tight, a lot of curves, all in the right places, and . . . oh, yeah, she had a tattoo.”
    “Yes?” I look at him.
    “It looked like the tail of a dragon, blue and red; it was a colorful thing. It was on the inside of her left thigh. Fairly high up. By the way she was dressed I could only see the bottom part of it. But you could bet I wanted to see more.”
    “Looks to me like she was waiting for you,” says Harry. “Everything but a pole with a lure on it.”
    “With that kind of a lure, she didn’t need the pole,” I tell him.
    This thought is not lost on Ives. “I’ve wondered about that.”
    “Do you think you could have been drugged at the party?” I ask.
    “I’ve thought about that, too,” he says. “I guess I’m pretty stupid. But they didn’t rob me. They didn’t take any money, my watch, my phone, nothing.”
    “Any idea how you got way out to the accident site?” says Harry.
    “I’m not entirely certain where that was,” he says.
    “Try sixty miles out of town,” I say. “East, out in the desert.”
    He shakes his head. “It doesn’t make any sense. You think I could have driven all the way out there, gotten into an accident, totaled two cars, killed somebody, and not remember anything?”
    “I don’t know,” I tell him. “The only connection from what you’re telling us is your job, this story you were working on.”
    “She was part of it,” says Ives. He’s talking about