02. The Shadow Dancers (22 page)

"Rum and Coke," I told her. I'd eaten well before this, and also drank a whole glass of buttermilk. I figured I might have to drink a fair amount.

Now, one trick in this kinda thing is that you got to show you got money, and a fair amount, without showin' so much that somebody's tempted to just take it the easy way. I brought a hundred pounds, not super dangerous money but still an average week's salary in this world, and I brought it in mostly smaller bills. The money was different colors and sizes for different amounts so it was clearly not a huge wad in real value to an experienced spotter-like the waitress-but it was a huge wad physically and it made an impression. She gave my order to the barmaid, waited, brought it, got paid and saw the wad, then vanished in the back for a minute before reappearing.

For a while, nothin' happened, but I saw that none of the
guys left and a couple more came in. My first rum and Coke tasted mostly like Coke, but my second tasted mostly like rum-the over-a-hundred-proof variety. I was mostly through it when the show they was all waitin' for started.

It used canned music and hokey lights and the runway down the center of the bar, but the show was like no other these joints ever did. I knew from the joints on the strip that what they had in prudery everywhere else they didn't have in their shows, at least not here. There seemed little you could do in a joint like this that was against the law. But this-this was somethin' else.

The show involved three girls with the best bodies I ever seen in my life, one white and a real blonde, one black, and one Chinese. They got naked 'cept for real high spiked heels in record time-no pasties, no
nothin'-
and then they started really doin' it to each other in ways I never even dreamed of. I didn't even know the human body could bend that way or that three girls could do it to one another all at the same time with no conflict of interest, as it were-and all to the beat of the music! And they was all three clearly really enjoyin' it.

It didn't take too long to see what Harley meant. The three girls didn't look
real
somehow. For one thing, they looked
absolutely perfect,
and I do mean
perfect.
They had them lady bodybuilder's muscles, too-had to to do the kind of things they was doin' and hold them positions while doin' 'em. There was also somethin' else, harder to describe. A feelin', really, but real just the same, 'cause Harley and the folks who'd named them felt it, too. An emptiness, somehow. The feelin' that you was watchin' three perfect and perfected Disneyland robots, not livin', thinkin', feelin' women.
Shadow dancers . . .

I was told by everybody that all the shadow dancers was twenty-one or under, even by Lindy, but that was true only of the white girl and the Chinese girl. The black girl was older, though she still looked real young and fantastic. I couldn't take my eyes off her, almost from the start.

The black shadow dancer was me.

7.

Unmasking in Hell

All right, all right, I knew right off from seein' her that it couldn't be no accident. It broke all their rules, for one thing. But
this
Brandy was me and wasn't me. I kept my straight hair from Beth; she had my old bush neatly trimmed. And my body-nobody human's body-never looked that perfect, that good, or could.

Fact was, the more I watched, the more I got turned on myself. Really turned on. They could do it to a stone, no matter which sex. But I was a pro, and I knew somethin' was not right. The odds against a Brandy bein' in this world was about even-we wasn't that far off my world's line and it was possible Daddy would have married the same woman, maybe even founded an agency. The odds of that Brandy bein' a stripper or whore wasn't all that low, neither. Fact was, I knew I was pretty much that in most of the worlds where I existed at all. But the odds of my bein' in this particular bar in Atlantic City in November as a victim of what I was put investigatin' and just happen to be a performer the night I show was beyond any odds of hittin' a jackpot lottery I knew.

There was no doubt that these bastards knew I was here, who I was, and why I was here. The only thing I couldn't be clear on was if they did this every night till I finally showed up or whether they had made me that night. Yeah, I knew who that dancer was, but did she, or they, know who
I
was? That was a big question. I had to guess they didn't-not yet, anyways. Why bother with this show if they did? Just slip somethin' in the drink and they had me. I had to figure they trotted put their Brandy every time there was a black woman in the house, with or without friends and companions. This was bait, and you don't bother to feed bait to a hooked fish.

Thing was, I was hooked good and proper, but I wasn't 'bout to get reeled in right then if I could help it. One thing they hoped to do was to throw me so off guard I couldn't think straight and they come close-but only close. It was tough, though, when the act was over and they all bounded from the runway to the center bar counter and then into the place itself, naked, wet, and drippin'. And the black one, the other me, came straight over to me.

"Hey, sista'!" she whispered in my ear. "Don't that look
good?
I seen ya here, feelin' yo'self up. Want a private lesson?"

My voice never sounded like my voice to me, but it was close enough to know it really was. Not the accent, though. She was more ghetto-southern, more damned
ignorant-
soundin', too, in the way she used the words. Damn it, though! I was tempted! Not so much by the real offer as by getting this girl, this other me, alone somewhere in a room. Just us. But, then, that's what they figured on.
And this wasn't me!
Maybe we was genetically the same, maybe even the same fingerprints, but this Brandy had taken a different route than me a long time ago and made a lot more wrong choices, and we was literally worlds apart. On the other hand, "sister" was more than just a friendly term here.

"No," I answered huskily, tryin' to lower my voice a little 'cause it always sounded higher to me than it really was. "I just ain't up to you girls." And weren't
that
the truth!

She pressed a little, and I was real nervous she'd see through it all and feel who I was, but she didn't. You don't look the same lookin' at another you as you look even in a mirror. She backed off while I played it cool, and then started workin' the guys. I relaxed a bit, but continued to drink. I was real shaken, but I wanted out of that place in one piece and without tippin', and if they was lookin' for me then I didn't want to leave while
she
was still in the same room.

They all three got customers with no problems and disappeared in the back, and the barmaid come back over. "What's the matter hon? No guts when it counts?"

I looked up at her. "Not with
them.
There was just
somethin'
... I dunno. Now
you
I could go for."

There was something in the waitress's eyes and expression when I made that first comment. "I understand," she whispered, more like talkin' to herself. "Hon, after watchin'
that
I might take you up on it, but not tonight. I got to work till two and I been here since four. You come 'round tomorrow this time, though, when I don't work late, and maybe we'll watch the show and have a little fun, huh?"

"Maybe I will," I told her. "My name's Sam, by the way. Short for Samantha but I never use that." I took a twenty out and slipped it to her as a tip. She took it real smooth.

"I'm Deb. You come 'round tomorrow a little earlier, like eight, and we'll see."

I finished my drink, got up, and walked slowly out of the bar and onto the street. I had to walk a couple of blocks over just to get some distance, then waited in the cold until I finally got a cab back to my apartment. My mind was really in a kinda roar, and I needed to sort things out.

First I called Camden information and tried numbers for Harold Parker, Spade & Marlowe, and a few more. I drew a blank, but I kinda expected to. I wanted to call in to Lindy or her people locally and run this thing down, but I wasn't sure I could. Fact was, they knew I was in this world and workin' to find them. The only ones who knew and could get the word out would be Aldrath, Bill Markham, or- Lindy. Not necessarily Lindy herself, but definitely folks within her organization. If so, I couldn't use her, or them, much again.

Things started to tumble into place now, bit by bit. Maybe this world was a damn sight more important to this whole plot than Aldrath and Bill had been led to believe. Maybe Vogel took care of the far-out research, but
this
world was the center of the actual plot, whatever it was. No investigator is ever any better than the quality of his or her information. Aldrath depended on Lindy's organization for most of the information that he got. Maybe, in fact, Vogel was a red herring, somebody to be discovered as a big player in the game when in fact he was a side operation.

If they was feedin' a stock line, and givin' just enough information that some of Aldrath's boys could independently check out as right, then they had it made here. They might even, in the end, raid both Fast Eddie's harem and
even the compound in Guiana and blow it to hell and never really touch what was goin' on here. But, then, why reveal the Guiana thing at all-unless that, too, was a cover, the base to be exposed. That was research, while this was some kinda little thing involvin' the local mob.

Then I showed up and got involved. I'm a real danger, not to the operation, but to Lindy or whoever it was in Lindy's crew that was really workin' for the opposition. They got to send out my reports-Aldrath will be expectin' 'em. So they decide to see just how far I can get, and even set a trap with an alternate me.

That only made sense to a point, though. That other Brandy weren't no new addict; she'd been hooked for a long time to get that look about her and get so practiced at that act. That meant they had her before we got involved, maybe long before we ever was brought in to go after Vogel. They just switched her here to Atlantic City 'cause they knew it was flypaper and honey to me. And there was only one reason they'd have another me all set up before all that took place.

They was plannin' a switch. Her for me. But either somethin' went wrong or we got directly involved and they couldn't risk it. No, wait-Vogel. That was the key. They was gonna pull the switch
after
the Vogel job, which they'd been plannin' in that Security Committee for months before tellin' us. That meant my not gettin' shot serious in the tunnel wasn't no accident. That also meant that Sam was supposed to be shot, maybe killed. That's why they took the time to shoot everybody. They couldn't be sure in that small area and time which was Sam.

Then why hadn't they made the switch? I looked at myself in the mirror once more and then I knew.
I
kept my hair straight and my complexion a little lighter and smoother!
They couldn't move this big-time equipment over here; the heat was on too much. They couldn't get enough big medical shit over to make it take. They didn't have Doc's or the Center's big experts and gadgets where they could make her over into me. That explained somethin' else, too. Why they might get Vogel a hypnoscan.

Maybe there weren't no Brandy in this world. Maybe she was from someplace else, just like me. I know there was a
couple in worlds just near our own. Ones that went bad. Ones that never met Sam. The competition had used folks from one of them worlds the first time we'd tangled. Maybe this one was from the same one.

But why me? And why make a switch with somebody like me? I didn't work for the Company. About the only one I could see was Bill Markham, and they could try for him without me if they really wanted to. Or was it even worse?

Could somebody be a good-enough shot and a cool-enough head to nail everybody in a Labyrinth cube 'cept Sam and me, and then nail me in an unimportant spot and Sam exactly in a way that would cause what happened? Maybe not, but even if Sam had died I'd'a had special status with the Company. Access to the Labyrinth, access even to headquarters. But that didn't make no sense, neither. I had a special, unique, unbreakable code inside me. I knew it was unbreakable 'cause if it was breakable they had all sorts of ways of sneakin' in and out. That twin of mine might be able to learn how I walked, talked, thought, and be made over to be a perfect double, but she could never have that code.

Still, I knew now I was on to somethin', and it was big. I was sure right to have gotten involved-I now had proof positive that the enemy was plannin' to draft me, anyways.

Still and all, there was a number of missin' pieces. Even grantin' they had some way to get her in headquarters as me, so what? It'd hav'ta be real quick, since they hadn't managed to get any of this damned super drug in and she was sure on it. Most she'd dare risk would be a few hours. What could
I
do in just a few hours, takin' nothin' in with me and dependin' on Aldrath's folks to get 'round the place and even translate? The answer was nothin'. A big, fat zero.

That was the thing 'bout this case. Every time you thought you had somethin' figured, it just asked another crazy question. Still, I was gettin' more and more convinced that the answers to many of 'em was right here-or, over there, in the Purple Pussycat. Trouble was, they was layin' for me, and if they missed me tonight they might not miss me again.

I had a sudden bad feelin' and told the driver to let me out a block down and around the corner from the apartment. I was pretty sure they never knew 'bout my streetwalker life, but they did know Beth Louise Parker, and her bank, and the apartment she had in her own name. I'd gone back there tonight for the first time in a couple of weeks. I guess they got sloppy. After all, I walked in dressed like a whore but I'd left to go shoppin' as me and come back, then walked out dressed like a dyke. I had to figure they'd be on their guard and fully staffed this time. Trouble was, my streetwalker clothes was up there, and all I had on me was a hundred and twenty-one pounds. I had another two hundred and fifty up there, enough to use for a switch without goin' to the bank where they was sure to stake me out.