A young woman two booths away was interested in the baby. Her eyes were alight and she kept mugging at Loretta, big open-mouthed grins. Laura watched her, bemused. Something about the woman’s broad-cheeked, freckled face struck Laura as quintessentially Texan. A kind of rugged, cracker look, Laura thought—a genetic legacy from some hard-eyed woman in calico, the sort who rode shotgun through Comanche country and had six kids without anesthetic. It showed even through the woman’s garish makeup—blood-red waxy lipstick, dramatically lined eyes, hair teased into a mane.... Laura realized with a start that the woman was a hooker from the Church of Ishtar.