Selling Out (9 page)

It wasn’t usually an Asian fetish that drew men here. Like a
prime-time sitcom, any escort agency offered an assortment of white girls, with
a token black and Asian to round out the group. Men usually came here for the
convenience—women available without an appointment, location secured.

Jade stepped out, wearing her usual uniform of a
floral-patterned pajama suit cinched at the waist and cheap leather and
cardboard sandals. Her hair was sleek black in a crop that would be hip on
someone thirty years younger. There was an era of timelessness to her; she was
ancient with smooth, pale skin, not a wrinkle or age spot to give her away.
Still, no one would mistake her intensity; even the boys straightened under her
hawk-like gaze.

“What you want?” she asked them.

“Uh…” They hemmed and shuffled, clearly reluctant to reveal
any lascivious intentions to a woman who could have been their friend’s mom,
but too polite—and horny—to leave now.

“You want massage? Why you come here if you don’t want
massage?”

“We do, we do.”

The quieter one stepped forward, not willing to lose his
shot at a happy ending over his dumbfounded friend.

“We just were wondering… I mean, when you say massage…
Because we heard…”

Jade glared at them, her irritation almost palpable. This
place was full-service, but everyone knew not to talk about options or anything
sexual outside the room. It was part of the way they protected themselves from
narcs, but it was obvious these two boneheads weren’t undercover; they were
just stupid.

“Massage only,” she said flatly. “Very relaxing. You like.
No refunds.”

Flustered, they dug around in their pockets to come up with
the right amount, thirty-minute sessions for each of them. Watching their reluctance
as they handed over the cash, I wondered if they had even kept any back to pay
for extras. And yeah, they’d be shitty tippers.

After Jade led them to the back, she motioned me upstairs
into her office, which was arranged more like a regular sitting room. Out of
courtesy, I accepted her offer of a drink and received a very small glass of
flat soda. Here, alone, her accent dwindled to a lilt, her tone still sharp but
less abrasive.

“So, you in trouble. It was going to happen. Just matter of
time with that one.”

“With…” Henri?

“You know Jenny? Pretty girl. Stoner.”

The girl at the party, the one we’d left behind in the hotel
room. The reporter had made no mention of a dead hooker, which was certainly
newsworthy if only for the salacious appeal. She had probably bailed shortly
after we did, I assured myself. “Is she okay?” I asked.

Jade snorted. “How should I know? Maybe, maybe not. Henri
knows it was you, and she makes him money, so why would he hurt her?”

“Great,” I said faintly.

“She start maybe three years before you.”

“Jenny? I guess. She was pretty far in when I started, but
she isn’t the type to pull rank.”

She seemed not to hear me. “Her mother was a nurse, gone
during the day. Jenny started getting high, so her mom kicked her out. Tough
love, they say. Jenny quit school and moved in with her boyfriend. A common
story.”

“Mmm-hmm.” It was a common story. The kind that made Jade’s
business possible. So I wasn’t sure why Jade was telling me this, but
conversations with her were often circuitous. Once she had talked for fifteen
minutes about her kidney stones before segueing into telling me about
Marguerite and the women’s shelter she ran, concluding they were both a pain in
her side. At least this seemed more relevant.

Jade flipped through a
Vogue
magazine and pulled out a yellowed newspaper clipping. She slid it across the
glass coffee table toward me. It appeared to be a small inner-page article
titled “Dead End in Drug-Related Shooting.” The piece explained that a
twenty-three-year-old male had been found shot dead in his apartment. Due to
his previous history of dealing charges and the circumstances of the break-in,
police assumed the hit was drug related. Rumors indicated that the victim had
poached the territory of a well-known dealer in the city, Henri Denikin, but
there was insufficient evidence to link him to the shooting. A chill ran
through me.

The last paragraph remarked that the only possible witness,
the victim’s seventeen-year-old live-in girlfriend, had been missing since the
shooting. Her name was Jennifer Ponds. There was a grainy black-and-white
photograph of a girl who looked about nine years old, dressed up for her school
picture. A younger, happier version of the Jenny I knew, one who couldn’t
imagine the indignities that would be visited on her body.

Beneath the photo was a number for the missing-persons
hotline. With a jerky motion, I threw the clipping back on the coffee table,
but it caught on the air and floated to my feet. My fingers had black smudges
left from the ink.

“What is this?” I asked. “What does this have to do with
me?”

Jade shrugged. “Maybe nothing.”

Unaccountably, I felt angry. “This is from the original
paper, not a printout. So you knew about this at the time. Did you call this
number? Did Jenny even have a chance?”

“Call them?” she asked scornfully. “What for, call them?”

I shook my head, throat tight. Her words replayed in my
head:
“What for, call them?”
That
wasn’t how this worked; I knew that. Every one of these girls had a story.
Every one of us had a story, and it didn’t matter. I had a story. Don’t think
about it. What for?

“Hey,” Jade chastised. “Did the rich bastard fuck you so
hard your brains are broken, huh? You want to save your skin, or the girl you
have, then pay attention.”

I looked down, feeling properly chastised. Of course Jade
was helping me. My gut told me this was important, and I would never have found
it without her.

Focus on Jenny. On Ella. This wasn’t about me.

I picked up the clipping again and stared at her bright
smile. Was this the most recent picture her mother had owned of her daughter?

“Yesterday Henri had those men shot in retaliation. The same
thing he did before, with her dealer boyfriend.”

Jade shook her head. “You are determined not to see truth.”

“It could be a pattern,” I said more gently. “Maybe those
guys at the party had done something to Henri. Cheated him.”

She gave me a look not unlike the one she’d used on the
customers earlier. Idiot.

Okay, then. “So if it’s not that… That’s how he acquired
Jenny. It wasn’t random. Maybe it was even a little bit of revenge, to whore
out the girlfriend of a man who screwed him over.”

She looked approving, if that was what the retreat of her
scowl meant.

I continued, “And if that’s how he acquired Ella too, then it
explains why she was so clueless about it. It also explains why he doesn’t want
to give her up.”

“Face,” Jade said curtly.

Everything was face with her. Face meant a man’s reputation,
his respect, his ruthlessness. If Ella represented some sort of revenge to
Henri, he wouldn’t let her slip away so easily. Killing the men and framing her
for the murder might have been the most convenient way of finding her in the
large city.

“So what do we do?” I asked.

“If you hand over the girl, Henri will owe you.” At my
shocked look, she raised her eyebrow. “Maybe owe you enough to let you go.”

My freedom or the girl. Oh, she was good. Maybe she had been
sent by Henri after all.

“No,” I said, my voice just a little too loud to be
confident.

She didn’t look overly perturbed by my refusal. “I assume
you won’t send the girl away to live on the run and turn tricks for her money.
Otherwise you would have already let her go. The last option is look to the
source. If you restore face in some other way, maybe Henri will be happy. He
will make cops look somewhere else. You both free.”

I was skeptical. “Did Henri tell you that?”

“He tells me nothing. I hear things. You know this.” Her
surprise looked genuine. “So don’t listen to me. What do I know?”

“No, no. I’m sorry. I’ve been messed up from this whole
thing. How can I find out what happened? Please tell me.”

“I should make you ask girl for that.” Then she seemed to
reconsider. “I tell you what I know. I always like you. Henri is scared of the
girl, because she is only one who can put him away.”

“No.” The word slipped out of my mouth, the thought of Henri
afraid so preposterous. Though he was hands-on, he still had his men do the
dirty work. If the heat for one of his employees became too much, that person
disappeared. And on the rare occasion that failed, he had his hands in CPD’s
pockets and the best lawyers dirty money could buy.

Something gleamed in Jade’s eye. “Not only what she sees.
She has proof of this.”

Her accent slipped—not completely absent but not nearly as
thick. I had a sudden vision of her playing a part. The most garish
representations of her culture propped up like a prostitute’s slutty clothes.
This plastic-covered sofa her version of a hotel room bed. Maybe she sold
herself as much as any girl down the hall. Maybe she spent every day faking it
too.

“You want Henri brought down,” I said, knowing it to be
true.

She slipped back into her role. “I been waiting long time.
This will be return favor enough.”

I paused, mulling it over. “What does this have to do with
Luke?”

Her deeply lined face split into a smile, showing white,
even teeth. “I wonder when you bring him up. Luke should come with you. Alone,
you will probably get raped and killed. With him is the only way. He is only
one cares enough.”

“I’m not sure he wants to help me.”

“Tell him you are looking how Henri acquire girl. He will
come.”

Jade’s awareness of the underground certainly proved useful,
but it was disconcerting to think she might have better understanding of those
close to me than I did. She seemed to know Ella’s mind, Luke’s motivations,
when I could barely manage not to piss them both off.

Well, it seemed I needed to have a very stern, pointed talk
with Ella. If this was true, she had been hiding something that had damn near
got us killed, something that might be salvation for us both.

“You want pay respects?” she asked softly.

Along the side wall, a small, fragile-looking table held a
meditating Buddha—surprisingly, this was the thin, serious-looking version and
not a jolly fat one. A thin reed of incense sent smoke into the air. I knelt in
front of the table and deposited my two-hundred-dollar tithe into a small tin
box in the back.

After a moment of quiet, I heard the swish of Jade’s
clothing as she came closer.

“Your Luke,” she said. “He searches for someone. Another
girl in the life.”

My breath caught. All this time, Luke had been religiously
following the rules. All this time, he had been going after Henri to find some
other girl, some other prostitute. Not me. It shouldn’t have mattered. Shouldn’t
have been a surprise—since when had I been anyone’s end goal? Since when had I
been more than a way to pass the time? A stepping stone to the girl he really
wanted. Yes, that was me.

I stood. “I will do you this favor.” I hardened my voice, infusing
it with whatever influence, whatever face I held in my own right. “But don’t go
to Allie’s house. Don’t ever bother her again.”

* * * *

“I swear I don’t know anything,” Ella insisted, falling back
onto the bed.

She hadn’t strayed from that line the entire time, probably
because my interrogation technique amounted to some variation of
Come on! Please?

I sighed. This was getting us nowhere. If Jade had lied, if
she’d been wrong… But I didn’t think so. It made too much sense and hurt too
damn much to be wrong.

“It would be easier to believe you,” I said, “if you told me
anything useful. Who you are, what your name is. How did you end up in that
hotel room?”

“This is stupid. I didn’t see any crime.”

But I could feel her relenting. My breath quickened. “Just
tell me.” I played my trump card, since I had already figured out she had a
weakness for sacrifice. “This is my ass in trouble too, remember?”

She flung her arm over her eyes—defeat. “Okay. So I’m with
some friends, going to this party downtown. You have to be twenty-one to get
in, but my friend hooked up with this guy who makes fake IDs. He was the one
who told us about it, actually.”

I sat down cross-legged on the bed beside her. “Go on.”

“So we get there, and you know, it’s crazy loud. Everyone’s
drinking a lot, smoking weed, and other stuff. I’m just standing around, and
these guys kind of cornered me. At first I liked it. I guess I was flattered,
but then I started to get scared. I didn’t know how to make them leave me
alone. People were only a few feet away, but no one looked over, while those
men were just…herding me along.”

Closing my eyes, I could almost see her uncertain smile,
feel her nervous energy, smell the pungent smoke. I had been there myself, the
teenager with too much curiosity and money for her own good. I’d been hit on,
fended off the drunk and slightly violent, only to scamper away breathless. I
had always been lucky on my wild excursions, like some sort of cosmic payment
to balance out the unluckiness I found at home. But I already knew the ending
to Ella’s story, and whatever had gone down, she hadn’t been blessed with the
same unnatural immunity. She was too young, too inexperienced, like a tight bud
just bloomed, unknowing of the world around her but more fragile than ever before.

“We ended up in this room.” She moved restlessly as she
spoke. “It was kind of like what happened in the hotel room, except everything
was dirtier and… Well, I guess that was the main difference.”

“There aren’t many differences in fucking men, but that’s an
important one. That and tipping, so you can see why I prefer them rich.”