John Locke - Lethal People

“You got my information yet?”

“If you’re referring to the age progression on Kathleen, I e-mailed it to you an hour ago.”

“What about the match profile on Lauren?” I asked.

“Well, I didn’t know her name till just now, but you were right. If her picture is current, our guys can get her up to 91 percent.”

“So that’s a powerful resemblance,” I said.

“It is.”

“If I wanted to pass Lauren off as Kathleen, who could I fool?”

Lou thought about that a bit. “You wouldn’t fool her spouse or a close friend or relative. Beyond that, you’re probably okay.”

“Good. That’s what I was hoping to hear.”

I asked Lou about getting me a jet. He put me on hold a few minutes while he made the arrangements. He got back on the line and said, “Got one. It’ll be waiting for you at the FBO in White Plains, at the Westchester County Airport.”

“How far is that from where I am?”

“Depends on where you are,” Lou said.

I told him. He hit a few computer keys and said, “Fastest way is to get you a chopper. The flight is only ten minutes, but it’ll take me about forty to set up. If you’re not in a hurry, you can use a driver, but I’d wait a couple hours before heading there, since it’s rush hour now.”

I looked at my watch. “If I leave the hotel around seven?”

“You’re looking at an hour’s drive to White Plains, maybe more.”

I told him I could live with that. I hung up and started packing my gear. My cell rang.

Joe DeMeo.

“You’ve been busy,” he said.

“Jesus, Joe, where’d you find those guys?”

“Ah, what can I tell you? Short notice and all. Look, sorry about today. Your whole thing caught me off guard, pissed me off . You shoulda called me first instead of poking around out there. I’d have cut you in. Now the whole thing’s turning into a mess.”

“You get my message about setting up a meeting?”

“Our phones are secure. We can work this thing out right now.”

“I’d rather meet face-to-face.”

“You got some balls, my friend. I always said so.” He sighed. “Okay, Creed, we’ll meet. You say when, I’ll say where.”

We worked it out for Saturday morning in LA, which gave me plenty of time to do some other things, including having another Maker’s while waiting for my seven o’clock drive to White Plains.

And flying to Cincinnati to meet my good friend, Lauren.

And making plans to meet a certain young model wannabe at a beachside hotel in Santa Monica on Saturday afternoon—assuming I survived my Saturday morning meeting with Joe DeMeo.

CHAPTER 17

Lauren Jeter had been an escort since the early days of the internet. Over time, she’d built a clientele that included a dozen of Cincinnati’s most prominent public figures, most of whom managed to spend quality time with her several times a year. Add the income from these wealthy regulars to her hourly outcalls and Lauren was pulling down more than a hundred grand a year, all cash.

Not a bad business, but not without risk.

This particular morning, around ten o’clock, she knocked on the door of the upscale hotel room in downtown Cincinnati where I was staying. I handed her a quarter-inch stack of hundreds, and she smiled and said, “You’ve always been way too generous with me.”

Lauren loved her Mimosas with fresh-squeezed orange juice, and she enjoyed several as we caught each other up on our families, our problems, our health, and the books we’d read in the months that had passed since my last visit.

At some point she smiled and asked, “So, you wanna …?”

Instead of answering directly, I told her I had a unique proposition for her: we could spend the next few hours in the traditional manner and afterward go our separate ways happy and richer for the experience, or I could pay her an obscene amount of money to let me beat the shit out of her.

For a split second, Lauren’s smile remained frozen on her face, caught in the moment like a deer in the headlights. Then she made a funny noise and bolted for the door. She fumbled a bit, trying to get it open. When she finally did, she flew out of the room and slammed the door behind her. I watched her do all that, and after a minute or so, I topped off my glass, sipped some more champagne, and moved closer to the phone. A few minutes passed before it rang.

“You didn’t chase me,” she said.

“Why would I do that?”

“I thought maybe you’d snapped or something. No offense.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s just—I don’t know, I guess I’ve always had the feeling you could turn violent on me, though you’ve always been a perfect gentleman in the past. Still, what you said a while ago, well, you sort of threw me for a minute there.”

“And now?”

“Now I feel sort of bad that you paid for an overnight and I bailed.”

“You were scared.”

“I was really scared!” she said.

We were quiet awhile.

“You’ve got a good heart,” I said.

“I’d like to be your friend, Donovan,” she said, “but I might be just a little afraid of you right now.”

“I can’t fault you there.”

“Should I be?”

“What’s that?”

“Afraid of you?”

I paused a moment. “No.”

“Well,” she said, “you didn’t grab me or hit me. You didn’t force me to do anything. When I ran you didn’t chase me. And you’re very generous—the money, the champagne.”

“Does all that add up to let’s try again?”

“I don’t know, Donovan. I’d like to save our relationship …”

“But?”

“But I’d have to feel safe.”

“Well,” I said, “I didn’t chase you.”

She thought about that some more. Then she said, “I’m only about a block away, sitting in my car. If I agree to come back, will you promise I’ll be safe? I mean, I’ll treat you real good and all, but can you promise not to hit me?”

“Yes. If you want, you could bring someone with you.”

“Another girl?”

I laughed. “No, I meant a guy. You can bring a guy with you, for protection.”

She pondered that a minute. “Is there anyone I’m likely to bring who could protect me if you wanted to hurt me? Even if he had a gun?”

“No,” I said, “but, Lauren, you have my word. This choice I mentioned, like anything else we’ve ever done or might do, is completely up to you.”

“And you have my answer to your offer, right?”

I laughed. “You’ve made it abundantly clear. No hitting, no hurting.”

Back in my room a few minutes later, she asked, “Do you get off on beating up women? Again, no offense meant,” she added.

“None taken,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I would never get any pleasure out of hitting a woman, and I don’t understand those who would.”

“Then why?”

I thought about telling her Kathleen Chapman’s story, how she had experienced years of physical abuse at the hands of her ex. I wondered if Lauren could possibly put herself in Kathleen’s place, imagining the heartbreak, the pain and anguish, the humiliation Kathleen had suffered all those years.

My idea did have one major flaw: when you came right down to it, I’d be beating Lauren up now to protect Janet from getting beaten up someday. Of course, Lauren would have made the conscious decision to be beaten up. I wondered if that type of logic would provide suffcient justification for the way I’d feel later.

In the end, I just waved it off . “My mistake,” I said. “Water under the bridge.”

Lauren looked me over carefully. When she spoke, her voice was clear and steady. “You don’t appear to be a freak,” she said.