Waitress Wanted (Kit Tolliver #5) (The Kit Tolliver Stories)

W
AITRESS
W
ANTED

A
K
IT
T
OLLIVER
S
TORY

L
AWRENCE
B
LOCK

Copyright © 2013, Lawrence Block

All Rights Reserved

Cover Design: Jayne E. Smith

Ebook Design:
JW Manus

F
our.

Four men who’d been with her. Four men, each of whom could see her walking down the street, nudge a friend, and say, “You see that one? Nice, huh? Well, I had her once.”

There’d been others, of course, who could have made that claim. You couldn’t say there’d been too many to count, but it was true that she could no longer count them, because they weren’t there to be counted. They no longer existed. They were dead, and their successes with her—if you wanted to call them that—had been expunged from the record books.

Her pattern for a few years now had been simple enough. She found a man, or was found by one; she went to his bed or took him to hers; she left, and left him dead. If he had money, she took it with her, but the money was never the point. It was useful, certainly. It let her live with a degree of comfort and paid her way from one hunting ground to the next. She’d take a job now and then, but she worked only when she wanted to.

And the jobs never lasted. Because sooner or later she’d hook up with one of nature’s noblemen, and she’d give him what he wanted, and then take it all back with interest. And then, of course, it would be time to get out of Dodge. Or Philadelphia, or Toledo, or Louisville, or Kansas City, or—well, wherever. The places all tended to merge in her memory. So did the men. And why make an effort to bring their images into focus? They were gone, and once they were gone it was as if they had never existed.

In Toledo she’d erased a man from her past, and even as his body was approaching room temperature she was on her way to Denver. She stayed a few days at the Brown Palace, where she flirted with a few suits—a corporate lawyer, a real estate guy, a venture capitalist—but didn’t let any of them get any further than a little conversational double entendre.

She flew from Denver to Phoenix, checked into a Courtyard by Marriott, and was walking down a street near the hotel when a sign in a diner window caught her eye.
Waitress Wanted.
The place was unprepossessing, and none of the handful of customers struck her as a potential big tipper. Could she even take home enough to cover her hotel room?

Still, it might be interesting, slinging hash at the Last Chance Café, or whatever it called itself. And what did it call itself? She looked up above the window, where a sign read
STAVRO’S DINER.

She went in, unfastened the Scotch tape that held the
Waitress Wanted
sign in place, took it down and carried it to the counter, where a stocky man with a moustache raised his abundant eyebrows and watched her from beneath them. “You must be Stavro,” she said. “You can put this away. I’m your new waitress.”

“Just like that? How you know I wanna hire you?”

“What do you want, references from Delmonico’s? A letter of recommendation from Wolfgang Puck? You need a waitress and I need a job. So?”

He gave her a look, and then a look-over. His eyes were a sort of muddy brown, and she could feel them on her breasts. Their expression said it was his place and his eyes could go where they wanted. And so could his hands.

“Steve,” he said.

“Steve?”

“My name was Stavros,” he said. “Not Stavro. Idiot who made the sign, thinks if you put an S you gotta put an apostrophe in front of it.”

“Couldn’t you make him do it over?”

“ ‘I ain’t payin’ you,’ I told him. He said he’d do it over. ‘I still ain’t payin’ you,’ I said, and that’s where we left it. Stavros, Stavro, what’s the difference? Everybody calls me Steve anyway. You can call me Steve.”

“Okay.”

“What do I call you?”

What indeed? She hadn’t bothered to figure out that part, and didn’t want to use the same name she’d written on the registration card at the hotel.

“Carol,” she said.

“Like a Christmas Carol? You probably hear that all the time.”

“You’re the first.”

“Yeah, I bet. You wanna start now? There’s an apron on the peg. It’ll fit you. Last girl worked here, she was about your size, but I gotta say she didn’t have your shape. You got a real nice shape to you.”

She’d drawn a few cups of coffee, served a couple of Blue Plate Specials, and had Steve brush up against her a few times, with an apology each time, always with an inflection to belie the words. And the next time she passed through the kitchen he dropped the accidentally-on-purpose pretense and ran a hand appraisingly over her bottom.

“Very nice,” he said.

Well, she’d thought she might stay a while in Phoenix, and that didn’t seem likely now, did it? Oh, she could deflect his pass and make it clear she wasn’t willing to play, but she didn’t get the impression Steve would take no for an answer. She sensed that making herself available to him was part of the job description, which might explain why the vacancy had existed.

She could quit, of course. Take off the apron, throw it in his face, and tell him to save it for the next girl with a nice shape to come along.

But the son of a bitch got her motor running. He was crude and crass, and you couldn’t call him good-looking, but there was a sexual magnetism about him that she couldn’t deny. Even the rank smell of him, all musk and sweat and a shirt that had gone too long between washings, was part of the package; she might wrinkle her nose when she breathed in his scent, but that didn’t keep her from getting wet.

Now? Or later?

Either course held its attractions. She could hurry the two customers at the counter, then turn the sign on the door from
OPEN
to
CLOSED
and return to the kitchen. Look at him through half-lidded eyes, part her lips a little and run her tongue around them. It wouldn’t be all that difficult to give him the idea, given that he already had the idea, had had it the moment he laid those muddy brown eyes on her, and let them linger.

She’d take off her panties before she went in there. Then just pull up her skirt and bend over the counter, and he’d be on her like a mongoose on a cobra. She imagined his hands on her, his cock deep inside her, her nostrils filled with the raw smell of him.

And in the afterglow, while he was catching his breath and thinking of all the things he’d soon get to do with his hot new waitress, she’d be well placed to finish what she’d started. It was a kitchen, there were knives and cleavers all over the place, and she’d grab one and put it where it would do the most good, and he’d be dead and she’d be gone. Back to her room and under the shower—God, she’d need a shower—and then goodbye Phoenix.

But what was her hurry? He’d want her even more if she gave him a taste and made him wait for the rest of it. Why strike while the iron was hot when all it could do was get hotter?

In the end, it was he who turned the sign from
OPEN
to
CLOSED
. “Okay, time to go,” he said to one old lag sitting with an empty cup of coffee and a newspaper another customer had left behind. And, as the old fellow got to his feet, “Hey, Joe, don’t be a cheap bastard. This is Carol’s first day, ain’t you gonna leave her a tip?”

Shamed into it, the man put a pair of quarters on the table. “Last of the big spenders,” Steve said, and scooped up the coins, presenting them to her like a cat depositing a dead mouse at its owner’s feet. And, with the window sign turned and the door bolted, he gave her a grin and motioned her into the kitchen.

She didn’t have to pretend to be excited when he handled her breasts and buttocks and ran a hand up between her legs. There was nothing artful about his technique, but the crudeness itself was exciting. Oh, one would tire of it soon enough, but for now—

“Not tonight,” she said.

He was a man who would indeed take no for an answer, but not until the fourth or fifth time he heard it. She’d fend him off and he’d go at her again, until at last he realized that no meant no. He let out a sigh and leaned back against the counter.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Tonight, it, uh, it wouldn’t be good. God, you’re exciting. I can’t wait until tomorrow, Steve.”

“So why wait?” He looked at her, then shrugged. “Never mind. I guess you got your reasons.”