CHAPTER NINE
Every society, even one at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, wants a place to unwind – a place where adults can take in a show, a day of shopping, or try their luck in a casino. In Rapture, one such place was Fort Frolic, featuring everything from the fine arts, such as music and theater, to the more salacious distractions, such as strip clubs and gambling. It was also a shopping destination, featured many boutiques selling goods from the most luxurious clothing to the finest tobacco and liquor, even some items with the black mark of being surface imports.
They called it a fort, but there wasn't anything military about it. It was a candy shop for adults. Another one of Ryan's little ironies. I hate ironies. Normally, the thing to do when a police is looking for a call girl would be to hit the strip clubs and casinos first. Something told me that wasn't where I would find her. Call it intuition – not that it had always served me well. I had agreed to come to the deep, after all.
Stepping off the Express, I made a beeline for the theaters. I couldn't take the same train as the girls for fear of being made, so I had taken the second one. Problem was, they had about ten minutes on me, and weren't conveniently waiting around for me to arrive. I had no idea if anyone had realized I'd ditched my post sitting around waiting for Fontaine to confess to a pair of goggles in a window. I was onto something here, and wasn't about to let go of it. If I played it right, it looked like Fontaine was good for it anyway, so Sullivan would get his for Ryan, too. I'd rather ask forgiveness than wait for permission. Still, not a single redhead in sight. When you can't find your prey, you have to draw it to you.
It was getting past dinnertime now, and the shows would start soon. There weren't many people around yet, which worked in favor of what I had planned. I walked up to the ticket booth of the Grand Atrium. The largest theater hall in Rapture had its sales window open all day, and a barker outside extolling the vaunted virtues of the night's performance, the dashing leading man Martin Finnegan, the captivating leading woman Anna Culpepper, and the mystifying genius of the musical composition by Sander Cohen. How anyone could stomach his rubbish was mystifying, alright. I'd never seen a stage show in my life, well, not the kind anyone would call fine art, that is.
Passing by a pane-glass window in a shop called Sophia Salon that sold designer clothes for prices I couldn't even look at, I ran my hand over my head to rumple my hair. I untucked my button-down shirt on one side over my slacks, and I placed my Irish flat cap on top. I ducked into the store and grabbed a unsupervised clipboard with some paper forms on it. Looked like an inventory of women's britches. It would work. Clipboards always work.
I sped up as I approached the youthful street barker and clicked my feet together when I made it to where he stood. Ryan didn't like us throwing our weight around as police, so most of the time it was up to me to improvise.
"What are you do-ing?" I asked, stretching out the last word in shock.
The young boy looked sunnily stunned for a moment before answering. "I'm calling the show tonight, sir. What else would I be doing?"
"And did you check with the stage manager, boy?" I asked.
"Stage manager? I'm here every night from two days before a show starts til closing night. They tell me the details and I do the calls, is all. I tell just what they want me to, and I, I never forget the names of the cast and crew, not once," he said, beginning to stammer.
"But don't you see, that's exactly the problem. Exactly," I said, almost screaming, my hand clasped tightly to the clipboard tucked under my arm.
"Sir, what is?"
"Tonight our normal leading lady, Ms. Culpepper has taken to ailing. She will not be able to perform, and her understudy – you do understand what an understudy is, boy? Good – will be performing in her place. You see the issue, now?" I asked, as if explaining to a toddler.
"Oh straight away, straight away, sir," he said, eager to keep his job. "Just you say, sir, what is the, uh, the understudy's name?"
I pulled out the clipboard and glanced down at it. "Dana Wales."