Don Pendleton - War Against the Mafia

"Another case. Say a guy is in town just for the night, and he wants some company. He lets it be known, just like a guy would in any town. You know, a word to the desk clerk or a waiter or a bellhop. You know the routine. In a matter of minutes one of my field men is on the horn, talking to one of the office girls. He places an order for a model, and he knows the program code to use. Sometimes in less than ten minutes a girl is on the job, and we got a happy client, and a totally dumb staff clerk who would testify on a stack of Bibles that all she ever did was call a free-lance model who's listed in our computer service. See? It's clean, it's clean as hell.

"We're pretty well protected from the girl end, too. There isn't much to tie her back to us, if she ever gets careless or unlucky. It's happened a couple of times, and we get very indignant, see. Imagine that! A prostitute, perverting our sacred service to ply her shameful trade!

Get the picture? We been took by the girl, see, and naturally we can't be responsible for anything like that."

"That doesn't say much for protection for the girl, does it?" Bolan inquired.

"Aw hell, they just get their wrists slapped. If it looks like she's in real trouble, you know, like they're gonna throw the book at her-why, we get her a lawyer-under the table, you know. We pay legal fees, or some of 'em, and we'll advance the money to cover fines. We take care of our girls. Unless they're way outta line. You work for the organization, the organization works for you. Remember that, Bolan the Bold. When the girls are okay to come back to work again, we run 'em into the computer with a new name and a new district and that's that. But you can see the security of the thing, can't you? I mean, we're covered, S arge."

Beside Turrin and the programmer there were five other organization men in the operation, these five respectfully classified as "sales representatives" and referred to as "field men." The job title sounded better than "pimp" but the effect was precisely the same, even though much of their contact work was in the rarefied strata of big business, conventioneering, and politics.

"These are sharp boys," Turrin reported proudly, "-most of them are better educated than me. They can move around in the best circles, and in fact they got to. They hardly ever see their girls, and probably not one girl in ten would know any of these guys if they saw 'em at the same party, or even in the same bed. The field men work on a commission, so they're go-getters. They don't have a lot of contact with the street girls or the house girls, and damn little to do with their own party girls and call girls. We're up tight all the way, Sarge."

"With everything run so impersonally," Bolan probed, "I suppose you never have contact with any of these girls either, eh?"

Turrin winked and smiled knowingly. "Don't worry,

my sergeant, you'll have all the female flesh you can stomach." He laughed "I make personal contact when I feel the need to. Not so much with the girls on the top end. Oh-" He frowned "-sometimes a certain personal touch is called for. Sometimes I take a personal interest in a new girl, to get her started off right. You know." He laughed again. "But I got a wife and three kids, you know. I mean, I don't lay around with whores all the time."

Bolan dug his elbow into the other's ribs. "Hell, I bet you got a dozen fillies on your personal list right now," he persisted.

"Oh, I don't know..." Turrin sobered, then grinned suddenly. "A guy can go ape at first, if he don't use some will power. And that's bad. You either start to lose your appreciation, or you start to lose your head. And that is real bad. Sometimes a girl is referred over from one of the other operations. In those cases, I take a personal interest, get her logged into the computer, that sort of thing, you know. That's outside the regular recruiting channels. Sometimes I'll take a personal interest in the kid, help her get off with her best cheek forward, you know what I mean." Bolan knew what he meant, and a muscle twitched in his cheek Turrin was not looking at his companion, however. "But I don't get into no entanglements," he continued. "Know what I mean? You can't get emotionally straddled with these girls. You know what I mean?"

Bolan nodded. "I think so," he said curtly.

"Besides, these girls getting fifty to a hundred bucks a toss get to thinking they got a gold-plated ass or something. I don't really like 'em. When I feel like cutting up a little, I go down to one o' my houses."

"You have those, too," Bolan observed wryly.

"Oh, sure. Really, I understand that end of things a lot better." Turrin grinned. "I like it better. That end is run entirely different. We got a madam for each house, just like the olden times. She runs her own books. We keep her supplied in girls, she runs the house, runs her own books, and feeds the money back in to the field man in her district. She works on commission, too, just like the field man, and he gets an override on everything she makes."

"Sounds like very big business," Bolan commented.

"You'll find out just how big," Turrin replied, "if you stick close to your C.O. Listen, we got ten women who do nothing but recruit girls. And you'd be surprised where we get some of them from. College campuses, factories, office buildings-" He raised his eyebrows, "-suburban homes- one gal we took on last month had just come off her honeymoon. We got chorus girls, models, would-be actresses and even some part-timers who really are actresses. Listen, every woman who is a woman has got at least a little whorin' streak in her. A lot of our call girls are part-timers. You know-they do other things, too. All of our party girls are part-timers, moonlighters. Hell, some of 'em wouldn't say 'fuck' if they was getting gang-banged. Nicey-nice, you know- but not too damn nice to pick up some extra coin here'n there." Turrin frowned. "For my part, I'll take the good old honest whore. Well-" He paused, frowning even deeper. "You'll go outta your mind with the turnover we got in this business, Sarge. Understand something, and make sure you understand it. We have no competition in this town. Or anywhere around. If a girl is selling it within fifty miles of where you're standing, then she's selling for the organization and she's working for me. We-"

"I'm glad I understand that," the executioner said brusquely.

"Yeah- well, we don't even allow no amateurs to operate. We bust 'em fast, damn fast-and they either join our team or they get the hell out. That means we gotta fill the demand if we don't want a big payroll of nothing but broad-busters. I mean, there's no profit in that sort of thing. You understand that. I want you to understand me too, Sarge. I might not talk Yale or Harvard, but I'm a businessman and I know my business and I run my business all the way. Understand? All the way. No loose gooses around here, and just because I'm a good guy some of the time don't mean I'm an idiot. You better understand that. And just because I like you don't mean I won't bust you if you get outta line. You got that understanding?"

"I have that understanding."

"All right. You understand this, too. It's more profitable to keep the demand filled than to run around bustin' amateurs and chiselers. We got the high class hotels and motels pretty well covered with our computer call girl services, and we even got a few high class clubs and dining rooms as clients. But we got walking girls, too- we call 'em field girls. They operate strictly free-lance, some of 'em using their own pad as home base, and we trust 'em to play their finances square with us. We spot-check from time to time, but generally we use the honor system with the walking girls. They cover the little bars and clubs and some of 'em even serve as house girls for the crummy little hotels. We let 'em operate and we give 'em the protection of the organization. But they all belong to us. Understand that. Every damn one of them. Get the picture?"