Faye Kellerman - Moon Music

Completely Steve.

A miracle how he’d snagged Alison.

A pause.

Not so, Rom old boy. Alison wanted to be snagged. Back then, she had wanted something mainstream … something very, very normal.

Delatorre was still scanning the file.

Cagily, Poe turned his back to the video camera, and with sleight of hand, slipped the photograph into his pants, moving it down until it sat between the upper part of his thigh and pants. Helped that he was wearing snug jeans.

Delatorre was talking. “… can’t see the rest of the file, Rom. Sorry. Confidential information in here that could affect others. You want to look at it, I’ll need a subpoena.”

“S’all right.” He pulled out a notepad and pen. “Can you give me her vital statistics?”

“Uh … yeah, I suppose—” Delatorre’s beeper went off. He looked at the pager, read the number. “Trouble, Sergeant. I gotta go.”

“Real quick job for me, Pete? You don’t want another one of your girls to end up like she did.”

“She wasn’t one of my girls.”

“She ended up a mess, Pete. It’s bad for everyone if this isn’t solved quickly.”

Delatorre muttered, but quickly scanned through her application.

“Born in ’seventy-five, five-eight, one-ten, blond hair, blue eyes … seven years of dance training in L.A., worked as a secretary before taking this job. Recommendations from her dance teacher, her former boss, some friends, and some state senator in California. Bet she sucked him to the root to get that. Found out about the job through her boyfriend. It’s local. You want the address?”

Poe sighed inwardly. Guess where he was now headed at four in the morning. “Shoot.”

Delatorre gave him numbers, closed the chart. “Oh, I’ll need that picture back.”

“I returned it to you.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Open the file. It’s the one where she’s resting her head on her hand.”

Delatorre opened the folder. Sure enough, there was a picture of Brittany Newel leaning her head against an open palm. “I didn’t give you this one. I gave you a head shot.”

“I don’t have it, Pete.” He held his arms out straight from his waist. “You want to frisk me, be my guest. I’m a captive audience.”

Delatorre studied Poe’s face, closed the file, and put it back in the cabinet. Licking his lips and saying nothing, he punched some numbers on a wall panel and the door opened. He whispered, “After you.”

“Thanks.”

Delatorre led Poe back through the maze, back out to reception, walked with him halfway through the casino. Then he stopped. “I still think you owe me a picture, Rom.”

Poe grinned. “I promise I won’t play in your pits.”

Delatorre stared at him. “Fucking Digger.”

Poe ignored the insult. “I’ll keep in touch.”

“Fine,” Delatorre said. “Only next time, use a phone.”

At twenty-three, Brittany Newel had hit the skids—a bargain-basement whore whose rapid descent from high-priced showgirl/call girl to ten-buck-a-pop blow jobs had been made possible by Mr. Crack. Her address led Jensen to a seedy bungalow apartment complex in the north side of town. Brittany had lived with a roommate named Ria—a pale wisp of a woman also running on a fast track to nowhere.

To Jensen’s surprise, the place wasn’t a total sty. Sure, there were some dirty dishes in the sink, sticky counters and gummy tabletop. But the couches, though old, were cleared of debris. The carpet was an odd fluorescent green weave that looked like Astroturf, but basically clean. The place did hold a somewhat stale odor of people who spent too much time in bed.

Ms. Ria had greeted him and Fat Patty wearing a robe, the flaps unbelted but overlapping. As soon as she sat, she let the sides fall open, exposing huge silicon jobs under a flimsy white tank top. Her ass was barely covered by a pair of red lace panties.

Said Simple Simon to the pieman, let me taste your wares.

The way Ria glanced at him, Jensen knew she was sizing him up as a possible trick. She looked familiar. Could be he had slept with her before.

He turned to Patricia Deluca, hoping his partner would wrap it up before daylight. They had already asked her the routine questions—who, what, where. Ria spoke in one-word answers. Even that seemed to tax her brain. She did let them rifle through Brittany’s belongings. There wasn’t much to sift through. A closet of hooker clothes and shoes, a bathroom holding pills, dope, and lots of condoms. No needles but several crack pipes. Jensen wanted to go home, but Fat Patty insisted on a few more questions. Deluca was new on the job … trying real hard. Jensen liked her. Funny, because he had never just “liked” any woman before.

Back to the living room. This time, Ria had elected to forgo the robe altogether. Patricia ignored the woman’s brazen dress and said, “I just want to nail down what you told me, so stay with us a few moments longer.”

“If it’s only a few moments. I’m real tired.”

“I appreciate your time. If you could just hang in there—”

“Do I have a choice?”

Patricia flipped through her notes, studying Ria’s petulant face—round saucer blue eyes leaking mascara-stained tears. She had dyed her hair platinum, giving it little contrast to her ghostly complexion—not unusual at four in the morning. Her cheeks held slight pitting from teenage acne … a wasted-away body with very augmented breasts.

Ria made Patty and her extra poundage feel healthy in comparison. Deluca smoothed out her draping black suit. Half-sizes seemed to be designed by Omar the Tentmaker. As if fat women didn’t have figures. Well, she had a figure. It was just a large one.

“You stated that the last time you saw Brittany was around eleven in the morning?”

Ria lit another cigarette, talked in a whisper. “More like in the afternoon … around twelve.” Eyes to Jensen, eyes back to Deluca. “She was up before me. That I remember.”

“And she was where?” Jensen asked. “When you got up?”

Her knees now totally apart. “I told you … just sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffee.”

Showing Jensen bush. He noticed a little mole on her thigh. A sense of déjà vu. He was really beginning to think that he had slept with her. “Drinking a cup of coffee.”

“That’s right.”

“Maybe smoking as well?”

Ria paused, nodded.

“Was she smoking crack or tobacco?” Patricia asked.

Ria’s eyes did another dance. She stubbed out her smoke. “You expect me to answer it?”

“We’re from Homicide, ma’am, not Vice.”

“You’re cops,” Ria answered. “That’s enough for me.”

Patricia said, “After she was done smoking, Ria, what did she do?”

A shrug. “Said she’d see me ’round. Then she got up and left. End of story.”

“Did she tell you where she was headed, what her plans were for the day?”

Ria shook her head no.

Jensen said, “You said she serviced the hotels.”

“That’s what she told me.” She shrugged. Thin shoulders attached to balloon breasts. Patricia wondered if they hurt her back. Ria added, “Hotels, motels … wherever there was business.”

“Did she work with a pimp?” Jensen asked.

A sigh. “You know, I didn’t know that much about her. We’d only been sharing this dump for a couple of months. I was gettin’ a little tight on cash, so I figured I take on someone to help me out. She was the first to answer the ad.”