Where is he?

With no small effort, she managed to handle the quartet of admirers strutting about her bar stool like peacocks. When they weren’t inspecting, they were preening. When they weren’t preening, they were jockeying for position. Of course, she acknowledged, this was a men’s club-their men’s club. She could deal with matters so long as she didn’t run out of small talk and synonyms for no.

One of the men, with sloppy-drunk eyes and a sagging face that could have passed for a Rorschach inkblot test, was becoming a problem.

“So, baby mama, are we going to dance or not?” he slurred.

“I’m sorry, but I’m a customer, not an employee,” she answered him, stone-faced.

He turned with a huff and Jillian smiled to herself. Again, she checked her watch. Nick seemed resourceful, but that did not stop her from worrying. Years in nursing had turned concern into a sort of sixth sense that was impossible for her to shut off. Even so, she knew her feelings for Nick were shaped by more than a professional instinct for his well-being. There was an attraction to him she simply could not deny.

“I’ll pay you double whatever he offered,” a man was proposing, leaning close enough to give Jillian a lungful of Old Spice.

Jillian was readying to rebuke the advance when a tall man, dressed in a black turtleneck and a tailored Brooks Brothers jacket, stepped between them.

“Hey, what gives?” Old Spice snapped. “The lady said she wanted to hang with me, so back off.”

“I said no such thing,” Jillian shot back.

The two men glared at each other and Jillian would not have been surprised if they started to growl. The tall man, who had thinning black hair, an aquiline nose, and confident dark eyes, reached inside his blazer, pulled out a toothpick, and slipped it into the corner of his mouth. His narrow face was pocked by acne scars that were ill concealed by his rough five o’clock shadow. The diamond studs pinned on each ear had to be two carats at least.

“Hey, friend,” the newcomer said, “why don’t you take a hundred Pearl Bucks and go hang with a lady that wants your company.”

With his Jersey accent he could have easily passed for one of Tony Soprano’s henchmen. He pulled out a roll of fake bills.

“You think you can buy me off with toy money because you’re big into jewelry?”

“No. I think I can buy you off because I own this place.”

Jillian watched with amusement as Billy Pearl padded the Spice man’s sweaty hand with a wad of colorful Pearl Bucks.

“Sorry about that,” Pearl said, turning to Jillian. “We love it when women stop by at the club-especially beautiful women.”

“Thank you,” Jillian said, feeling no threat from the man.

“Our patrons come here and pay a good deal of money to behave like sharks. Sometimes innocent guppies become part of their feeding frenzy. You have my apology.”

“No need, but accepted. I’m a very fast swimmer.”

“Have you been here before, Miss-?”

“Jillian.”

“Miss Jillian. Buy you a drink?”

“Thanks, but you’d better have a lot of Pearl Bucks on you to do that.”

“I appreciate the feedback. I’ll make sure to tell the boss. I know this sounds like a line, but what’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?”

Jillian laughed. She liked Pearl.

“Actually, I’m here with a friend, whom I can’t seem to find at the moment. We came in to talk to one of your employees, Manny Ferris. Do you know him?”

Pearl’s eyes narrowed and his lips tightened. She was being assessed by him, but for what and why, she did not know.

“Know him? Yeah, I know him,” Pearl said finally. “Manny’s my cousin. What do you want with him?”

“He’s not in any trouble, Billy, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Maybe your business with Manny isn’t any of my concern, but seeing as he’s family, and he’s, well, not all there, if you know what I mean, I kinda need to make it my concern.”

“I’m a nurse on the psych unit at Shelby Stone. I need his help, is all. We think Manny may have information about a man we’re trying to find.”

“I promise you, Manny Ferris doesn’t have information about anything, at least not information he can get in touch with.”

“What does that mean?”

Billy studied her for a time, as if deciding if she should be trusted.

“You’re a nurse,” Billy said. “Maybe you can help.”

“Help with what?”

“What do you know about brainwashing?”

“We studied it in a psych course,” Jillian said. “The modern version goes back to the fifties. It involves breaking down a person’s sense of self so they can build a new one.”

“Manny was a sharp kid, even when he came back stressed out from war and was drinking all the time. Then he disappeared for a while and one day he showed up here. He looked as if someone had cut up his face and he seemed to me as if he had been brainwashed.”

“How sad. What makes you think he was brainwashed?”

“It was like the old Manny was gone, but replaced with nothing. He couldn’t tell me where he was, or what he had been doing. Only that he needed a place to stay and something to eat. Drugs? Pain? I don’t know who did it or how, but somebody wrecked his mind.”

“My friend went to find him in the men’s room. I don’t think he found him there.”

Pearl laughed.

“Manny doesn’t have much range. If he isn’t in the bathroom, then he’s in the basement storeroom sleeping on the job. When you can’t rely on your bathroom guy, you’re really in trouble.”

“He sleeps in the basement?”

“It’s not as bad as you’d think. In my more colorful youth, I used to store other stuff besides toilet paper and cups down there. The space had to be comfortable and roomy enough to work in, but also well concealed, if you get my drift.”

“Can I see him?” Jillian asked.

Pearl considered the request.

“Well,” he said finally, “if you don’t mind following me into the men’s room, I’d be happy to give you a tour.”

“What about my friend Nick? I’m getting a little worried. He hasn’t come back.”

“I’ll check with the guys out front and find out where he is. I’m sure that if he’s not in the washroom with Manny, then they’re downstairs. Come on, I get a kick out of showing off the room anyway.”

Billy Pearl knocked on the men’s room door, waited less time than Jillian would have liked, then escorted her inside and made a quick assessment of the situation.

“Okay, so Manny’s not here. That means he’s downstairs. Here’s the deal; I’ll give you two hundred Pearl Bucks if you can find the secret door.”

“Pearl Bucks. Tell me the truth, Billy, did you plan on naming your money after the writer, or was it a coincidence?”

“Next to the location of the mystery door, that’s my biggest secret. But I will tell you that my eighty-nine-year-old mom still has my diploma from James Madison High up on her wall.”

“Got it. But what would I do with two hundred Pearl Bucks anyway?”

“Okay, make it three hundred.”

Jillian groaned, then began to walk the elegant black-and-white bathroom perimeter, observing that it was hospital clean and blessedly odorless. As for finding a door to some secret chamber, she knew at the outset that she had no chance. Pearl watched with keen interest as she continued to look in all the wrong places. He kept his arms folded tight across his chest and his face etched in a know-it-all grin.

“I give up,” Jillian conceded quickly. “I’ll have to pass on the Pearl Bucks.”

Beaming at his own ingenuity, Pearl marched over to the row of bathroom sinks and wrapped his hand around one of the opaque plastic soap containers.

“Showtime,” he announced.

Turning the container clockwise a full 180 degrees, Pearl pulled the stainless steel mount out three inches from the sink backsplash. A spring-held door next to Pearl, camouflaged to look like part of the black-tiled wall, popped open without making a sound. Jillian, who was standing only a few feet away, stepped back in surprise.