Paul Levine: Lassiter

The list of possible suspects just multiplied, I thought. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

“I tried to warn her, Jake. The men, the drugs, the violence. But she was a kid and you couldn’t tell her anything. She started shooting four or five videos a week. Ziegler just cranked them out, using up girls and finding new ones.”

“She get involved with any of the actors or crew?”

“Not that I know of. But she was doing her drug dealer off and on. A guy who called himself ‘Snake.’ Rode a Harley. Smelled like motor oil, but handsome as sin in that bad-boy way.”

“A biker named ‘Snake’?” I couldn’t hide my rolling eyes from my voice.

“It’s true. Tattoos, leather, the big ass Harley. He wanted Krista to go to California with him.”

“You sure she didn’t go?”

“Doubt she would have left Ziegler. He was paying the bills, giving her a sense of security.”

“And the last time you saw her …?”

“The parking lot of our apartment building. Said she was going to Ziegler’s house for some wild party with the high mucky-mucks.”

Whoa. That was big. If Krista was last seen heading to Ziegler’s, he just stepped to the front of the line called “persons of interest.”

“Any idea who might have been at the party?”

“All I know is Krista said there were always cops and politicians. Even judges, if you can believe that.”

I could. Easily.

“Her car wasn’t in its space the next morning,” Sonia said, “but that wasn’t unusual. A couple days later, she still hadn’t shown up. All her clothes were still in the apartment. I didn’t know what to do, so I drove over to Ziegler’s office. They said they hadn’t seen Krista, and Ziegler was out of town.”

“Anyone file a missing persons report?”

“Me. But you know how it is. Stripper and porn actress. Not the cops’ highest priority.”

Over the line, I heard two quick whistle blasts and the exhalation of steam in the background.

“I found Krista’s home number in her things,” Sonia said, “and called her father. He flew down the next day.”

That solved one small mystery. “You gave him the photo from Bozo’s.”

“Yeah. And I told him the truth about what Krista was doing. You could see the light in him just die. Maybe I did the wrong thing, Jake.”

“The truth is always best.”

A policy I didn’t really believe and clearly didn’t adhere to.

“I could tell from her dad’s face,” Sonia said, “he wasn’t going to look for her. He just wrote her off.”

We were both silent a moment. I heard two more whistle blasts. Then I asked the same question I leave with every friendly witness. “Can you think of anything else that might be useful, Sonia?”

After a moment, she said, “There’s one thing, but I almost hate to say it.”

“What?”

“I knew a couple girls who worked in one of Ziegler’s clubs. They were always stoned, so you can’t believe half of what they said. But one of them told me something really scary.”

“Yeah?”

“That Ziegler was making snuff films in Mexico. Whenever one of the girls gave him a problem, he’d say, ‘How’d you like your next movie to be your last?’ Or ‘You’re worth more to me dead.’ Creepy stuff like that.”

“Did she see any of the films herself?”

“No, she was just repeating what she’d heard.”

“Hearsay on hearsay.”

“I know, Jake. But that day I went to Ziegler’s office, looking for Krista, they told me he was out of the country.”

“So?”

“They said he was in Mexico.”

“Sure, I remember Charlie’s Girlz,” Coleman said. “Thin story lines but decent production values. All hard core. A lot of S and M.”

“I don’t suppose you have any of their videos.”

“ ‘Videos?’ No. Everything’s been transferred to DVD.” Coleman sucked on a Lucky Strike and gestured toward a back aisle. “Check between Hustler and Vivid in the last row.”

A former client, Elmore Coleman was manning the cash register at a XXX-video store on South Dixie Highway. He was a small-time grifter in his fifties with grayish skin, a snow-white ponytail, and nicotine-stained fingernails. A couple years ago, he’d been caught at the airport soliciting cash for tsunami relief, but the only tidal wave was the whiskey he’d consumed with the money he’d collected. I walked him out of the courtroom with a nice fat Not Guilty. Then, a few weeks later, he was busted for selling counterfeit Girl Scout cookies. I lost that case, and Coleman served eight months before getting early release, courtesy of jail overcrowding. That’s when he landed the job at the video store, thanks to his only lawful skill, an encyclopedic knowledge of pornography.

“The Charlie’s Girlz brand had its run in the early nineties,” Coleman told me. “Won a couple AVNs for its Bound and Gagged series. They’re the Oscars of porn.”

I thanked him and moseyed toward the aisle he’d pointed out. It was just after six P.M., and there were three or four guys in the place. All well groomed and normal-looking, deeply engrossed in examining DVD covers.

I scanned the covers of the Charlie’s Girlz videos, searching for Krista Larkin. The photos were a succession of boobs and butts and a few bald crotches. The head shots started to look alike. Young blondes with fake eyelashes, phony smiles, and invented names. Cherry Cola. Lolita Lick. Jenny Talia. Many titles were highly descriptive: Three Guys and a Girl . Some sounded like instruction manuals: How to Fuck on a Jungle Gym . And others were just lousy puns: Remembrance of Times Gone Bi .

I found the “Bound and Gagged” series and thumbed through the stack of DVDs. It only took a minute before I found Krista-all auburn hair and freckles-on the cover of She Likes It Rough . Bent over a wooden stool, she wore a black leather bustier that propped up her small breasts, and her bare butt was being paddled by an unseen man.

Coleman inserted the DVD into a master player behind his counter, and I settled into a booth in the back. The plot, such as it was, combined incest with sadomasochism. Krista was a schoolgirl in a plaid mini-skirt, bunny barrettes in her hair. She’d been cutting class, a handy excuse for her father-potbellied and balding-to paddle her. The plot turned to irony here. Krista was supposed to like the paddling. The pinker her butt shone, the more she licked her lips and begged for another whack. But her eyes were dead, her mind elsewhere. “Harder, Daddy!” sounded hollow and false.

The air was bad in the enclosed booth, and I felt hot and itchy, as if spiders were crawling up my pants legs. When Krista straddled the lard butt and rode him, cowgirl style, a memory came back to me. That night long ago, I’d seen the same shimmy of her hips. Were there sparks in her eyes then, or the same cold flatness I saw now?

My stomach was starting to feel queasy, and I wanted to get the hell out of there. I had what I needed. “Charlie Ziegler” was the guy’s name. Krista had been one of “Charlie’s Girlz.” I could turn this over to Amy Larkin and weasel my way off her Most Wanted list. Go back to my life of work and play and play some more. Focus on the present, not the past. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?

But something kept my ass glued to the chair, my eyes on the screen. The camera cut to a close-up, revealing Krista’s smile to be all artifice, her moans halfhearted. Girl at work. Her job was to make the pig grunt and to feign pleasure herself. This was a transaction. She was paying her rent.

On the screen, Krista was pleading, “Fuck me, Daddy!”

My stomach heaved, and I tasted bile. Was I any better than the bastard screwing her on the screen? Any better than Charlie Ziegler? For one night, at least, I was as sleazy as the pimp and porn king. Only difference, he made a career of it.