My spiPhone translates my spoken question into Polish: "Is this the best spot?"
Anja nods: "The exclusive whores work for the escort services, the nightclubs and the magazines. The cheap hookers work in the industrial park. The best ones can be found here, at the red traffic lights in the shopping centre. Every car has to stop here. The shop-owners have made a deal with the town hall: these traffic lights stay red twice as long, forcing people to watch shop windows and buy more. That's why they call this the red-light district."
Scarlett is uncomfortable: "I don't like it here. I'd rather go home."
I look at her. She looks terrific. She's got the looks, and she's getting all the looks. High boots with high heels, black shiny leather with laces, form the foundation. The rest of her legs are captured in a savage maze of black stockings, all the way up to a pair of candy-cane-pink shorts, two sizes too small. On top, she wears a white top, that's well filled, but hardly covers what fills the covers of the magazines that interest the visitors of this open-air meat palace.
Anja tries to talk some confidence into her new colleague: "«Success» starts with «suck»."
Scarlett doesn't stop pulling her top up and pulling faces of embarrassment: "Tell me again, Red. What are we doing here? This is a terrible plan…"
"This is a terrific plan. The best mouse trap has a «welcome» mat in front of the door, inviting the mouse to come in. It will work. Trust me. I'm good at this game."
A car pulls over and the window opens. Anja speaks with the driver in Polish, negotiations about prices and what can be expected. Then, she enters the car, blows us a kiss, and wishes Scarlett good luck. We're on our own, together with five or six other self-employed women from the adult entertainment business.
I look at my reflection in the shop window on the other side of the street: horrible. If I were a man… I know, I am a man, but right now I'm dressed up as a woman with a platinum-white wig and cheap lipstick and false eyelashes and a mint-green miniskirt and a blouse that hardly hides my false tits… If I were a man who passed by now, I wouldn't give myself a second look, but rush home to take a cold shower.
I feel naked too. For obvious reasons, I left my Makarov in Pension Chopin, but even without my gun, I have bad dreams about men, asking me if I'm hiding a gun in my knickers because they can't imagine I'm just glad to see them.
"Tonight, you're Roxanne. We're setting a trap for William Oglethorpe, the banker of Treesome Ltd. He is the mad genius who convinced your ex-boss to fire you, the powerful tycoon who threatened to cut the credit and close the company if profit didn't go up, the one who lowered the interest given on savings and pumped up the interest to pay on loans, so the bank can go on with its policy to let bad debtors get away with their behaviour, while good, thrifty clients pay the price and the bonuses."
"Right. And now I'm dressed up like a hooker and you're disguised as a… Sorry, a monkey in the zoo looks sexier than you in that miniskirt, Red."
"Perhaps I look terrible, but this plan looks terrific, Scarlett. We checked what we could find of Mister Oglethorpe, we found the number of his private bank account, we convinced The Nerd to crack that account, we rewarded him with a set of photos of Roxanne, and we found out that our man has a very regular life, that he pays all his expenses with his bank account, except… Every Thursday, between 19:00 and 20:00, he takes out 1.000 zloty in cash. I wondered why he would do that, but you thought that Mister Oglethorpe, a single, ugly elephant, might spend his cash in this shopping centre, buying some nice female company for the evening. So we dressed up for a stake-out, we asked Anja to help us find the place where we might have the biggest chance to catch our fish, and now we wait."
"No need to wait anymore, Roxanne. You can come with me. Your price is exactly what I had in mind."
I look behind us. A man in his late fifties, shabby suit, badly shaved, with hardly any hair, tries to put his hands on Scarlett's merchandise.
"Looking is free, but for touching, you pay a price.", I warn (with a treble voice, afraid to blow my disguise).
"And what might that price be?", Shabby Suit asks.
"A black eye, two missing teeth, and if you want more, I'll break your arm too."
Shabby looks at me, thinks for half a second, says: "Okay, fair deal.", and grabs Scarlett's buttocks with both his hands.
Rostov! We didn't come here to do business like this. I grab the man's hand and turn his arm up his back: "I said «don't touch». Are you deaf?"
"Yes, are you deaf? I said I saw her first."
A man who looks like a lorry driver, almost two metres tall and arms as thick as my thigh, grabs bald Shabby in the neck and throws him away. He offers Scarlett his muscular arm and says: "Come with me, Roxanne. I'll protect you. You don't need to wear that dress tonight. I'll get you out of it in no time."
A well-dressed man in a tuxedo takes Scarlett's other arm: "Just one moment, Sir. You've made a mistake. I've already booked this lady for my party tonight. I'm sure she'll like my company much better than your indecent behaviour. Come, Roxanne. You don't need to sell your body to the night. I give you a better price and much better treatment."
Shabby Suit has picked himself off the ground too: "I told you once, I won't tell you again, 'cause it's a bad way."
This is getting nasty. The lorry driver is the strongest of the three, but Tuxedo and Shabby have a trio in mind and work together, blows and hands, to make the lorry driver change his mind. The lorry driver did not come here for so many hand-jobs and blow-jobs. He steps away from the fight, giving me the chance to take Scarlett by the arm and escort-service her to relative safety: "I don't share you with another boy, Roxanne."
I push her out of sight, in the shadows of the entrance of a closed shop, and stand guard before her while I watch the outcome of the unfair fight of her three admirers.
"How much?"
A car stops, not interested in the fight but in the service of my body.
"I'm not that kind of woman, Mister.", I say in my treble voice.
"I know. You're a man. That's why I ask. How much?"
With my normal tone, I answer: "You can't afford what I have to offer."
I can't afford to look at the man in the car, as the lorry driver is getting the upper hand now, both hands, as his left hand is at the neck of the shabby suit and his right hand is holding the tuxedo at its collar, clarifying how tête-à-tête is, like French kissing, an efficient way to solve small problems. While he convinces his two competitors by clashing their heads together, I make my move.
The man in the car doesn't want to give up yet: "Don't underestimate me."
"Don't underestimate me either, Mister. Watch and shiver…"
In one step, I'm behind the lorry driver and end his plans for the evening with a sharp kick in the nuts (my sharp-pointed pumps are prohibited to be sold as assault weapons, but work excellent as self-defence). He doubles with his hands between his legs. My elbow lands full force on the backside of his neck (he must be quite annoyed right now, thinking I'm a pain in the neck) and he drops on the pavement, next to his two friends who both bleed from nasty head wounds. A local girl wouldn't stand here without protection, meaning condoms, and I left my protection at home, meaning my Makarov, but I did come prepared: I take a handful of capsules out of my pocket, OC-V 340, a.k.a. Tumble Tornado, a scentless, fast-working and highly explosive sleeping gas. They break under the noses of the three on the ground, making sure they won't disturb any more peace until tomorrow morning.
The man in the car is full of admiration: "You have no idea how charming you are when you get mad. Do you also throw things at people when you're angry?"
I take my place before Scarlett again and say to the driver: "I'm not charming and I'm not angry. I'm not interested in you. Sorry. No hard feelings."
The red light turns green, the window closes and the car drives on.
"Why did you do that?", Scarlett asks.
"Those three men were trying to hurt you. All I did was divide and rule, let them have a threesome first and take care of the last man standing."
"I'm not referring to those three horny men on the ground. I'm referring to William Oglethorpe in that car, offering you to come with him. It would have been a perfect way to get into his house. All you had to do was give him a low price and a dirty look. But no, you had to blow it. And now what?"
Rostov! That man in the car was William Oglethorpe? We set up a mouse-trap for a straight mouse, but William… doesn't pick up women on Thursday night. He comes here to find a boy. He's gay…
I look around. The six women are angry because I chased their customers away. Three unconscious men lie on the ground, two of them with serious head wounds. Scarlett is angry at me too. Worst of all: I broke my nail. Suddenly I want to go home, eat three bars of chocolate, cry, cry, cry, and forget about this whole thing.
"Sorry. I blew it. I'll call an ambulance for those men and then we go home, okay? Tomorrow we'll make a better plan. Okay?"
Scarlett looks at herself, still uncomfortable, still plucking on her top: "Okay. I would rather go home too. This was a terrible plan after all."