Chapter Thirty-Five
The Crystal room was full. People crowded the corners. Shadowed, modern dressed men and women sat around cloth-covered tables. On glass shelves fronting a mirrored wall, behind a long mahogany bar retrieved from Chicago’s only World Fair, top shelf liquor stood at attention, and two men in rented uniforms guarded the entrance door. “Your turn will come later,” Emilio Vargas had promised.
At nine P.M., Randy moved Slut54 through the rear door by an elbow and placed her onto the nearest bar stool. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted red to match her fingernails, and her face caked with makeup. Framed in blue mascara, her bold black eyelashes quivered, and the scars on her shaved head looked like pink jagged birthmarks. A wide black dog collar elongated her neck, an
