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"I've got Control bucks," Valentine said.
"Then it's one lonely dollar, my friend," Nel said. "Control's scrip is really worth something."
Valentine tapped the bar and the bartender poured him something from a Maker's Mark bottle. It tasted like nitric acid.
He wondered what The Inlet had been, formerly. Perhaps an officers' housing complex with the diner and lounge conveniently attached. The River Patrol was famous for its accommodations for boat captains and their lieutenants-probably to keep the lower ranks serving in hopes of promotion to an officer's splendor, and to prevent the officers themselves from simply steering their craft to a much less luxurious lifestyle up an enemy river.
The only customers were two river patrolmen playing cards, separated by a hedge of amber Nashville's Best empties and a petty officer reading his Bulletin. Valentine wondered if he was sending away for any merchandise.
"My name's Randy. Want to go upstairs?" one of the blondes asked. She had a painted-on dimple, a practice Valentine never understood.
"My thought precisely," Valentine said.
"What do you have in mind?"
"I was just thinking you had a very nicely shaped mouth."
"Thirty, if it's Control," Randy said.
Valentine showed the cash.
"Pay Nel," she said, flashing a hand signal to the madam.
Valentine handed over the captured bills and took her callused hand-did Nel put all her girls to scrubbing the floors every morning?-and led her up the world's shortest staircase.
"Watch it, man, that's the loosest slip on the Tennessee you're going into there!" one of the card players guffawed.
"Check for crabs, meat!" his partner said.
"Don't worry about crabs," Randy said. "Or anything else. I'm clean. I get to the doc in Cadiz really regular. He fucks me too, so I know he's not lying."
The room smelled like someone had spilled a gallon of perfume and tried to clean it up with pine cleanser. It depressed Valentine that she entertained in her own living quarters, but since everything else in this hair trap was cheap and functional, the girls' business rooms would be too.
It had a window big enough to climb through-unusual for a brothel. He tested the locks holding it on.
"Mind turning off the light?"
She flicked a switch at her bedside. A soft red night-light went on, tucked somewhere behind her slat headboard.
"So, you want to listen to some music, have a little massage first, or-hey, careful with those screens, bugs'll get in."
Valentine carefully set the screen next to the window.
"You ever do it on a rooftop?" Valentine asked.
"What, are you kidding?"
He squeezed out her window, felt for the edge of the roof, tested his grip. He got a leg up, and briefly hung head down, looking in on her room.
"You aren't paying me enough for this!" she said.
"Just having a smoke. I'll be right back in."
Valentine shucked the handle so the reflector went wide, flicked off three flashes, then three again, then a final three toward the woods where Gamecock waited.
A brief red flicker answered.
The Bears wouldn't attack yet, but the signal would get them close enough to the fencing for the dog to smell. Valentine would send up a flare, or they'd go in when the shooting started.
