Chasing the Dime

by Michael Connelly

  Pierce clicked on the BLONDE ESCORTS tab for no reason other than it was a place to start looking for Lilly. The page opened in two halves. On the left side of the page was a scrolling panel of thumbnail photos of the blonde escorts with their first names appearing under each picture. When he clicked on one of the thumbnails, the escort's page would then open on the right —the photo enlarged for easier and better viewing.

  Pierce scrolled down the panel, looking at the names. There were nearly forty different escorts, but none was named Lilly. He closed it out and went to the brunettes section next. Halfway through the thumbnails he came to an escort with the name Tiger Lilly under her picture. He clicked on the photo and her page appeared on the right. He checked the phone number —it wasn't the same as his.

  He closed the page and went back to the thumbnails panel. Further down he came to another escort named simply Lilly. He clicked her page open and checked the number. It was a match. He had found the Lilly whose phone number he now had.

  The photo on the ad was of a woman in her mid-twenties. She had dark shoulder-length hair and brown eyes, a deep tan. She was kneeling on a bed with brass railings and was naked beneath a black fishnet negligee. The curves of her breasts were clearly visible.

  The tan lines of her crotch were seen also. Her eyes looked directly into the camera. Her full lips formed what Pierce thought was meant to be an inviting pout.

  If the photo had not been altered and if it was really Lilly, then she was beautiful. Just as Frank Behmer had said. Pure fantasy, an escort dream. Pierce understood why his phone had been ringing constantly since he had plugged it in. The wealth of competition on this website and all the others on the net didn't matter. A man scrolling through the photos — shopping for a woman, as it were —would be hard-pressed to go past this one without picking up the phone.

  There was a blue ribbon posted below the photo. Pierce moved the cursor to it and a popup caption said "photo verified by staff," meaning the model in the photo was actually the woman who had placed the ad. In other words, you got what you saw if you arranged to meet the escort. Supposedly.

  "Photo verifier," Pierce said. "That's not a bad job."

  His eyes moved to the ad copy below the photo and he scrolled down as he read it.

  Special Desires Hello, Gentlemen. My name is Lilly and I'm the most soothing, pleasing and down-toearth escort on the whole Westside. I'm 23 yoa, 34-25-34 (all natural), 5-1 and 105 lbs. and don't smoke. I'm part Spanish and part Italian and all American! So if you're looking for the time of your life, then give me a call and come visit me at my safe and secure townhouse near the beach. I never rush and satisfaction is guaranteed! All special desires considered. And if you want to double your pleasure, visit my girlfriend Robin's page in the Blonde Escorts section. We work together as a team —on you or ourselves! I love my work and love to work. So call me!

  Incall only. VIPs only.

  Below the ad was the phone number now assigned to Pierce's apartment, as well as a cell phone number.

  Pierce picked up the phone and called the cell number. He got her voice mail.

  "Hi, it's Lilly. Leave your name and number and I'll call you right back. I don't return calls to pay phones. And if you're in a hotel, remember to leave your full name or they won't put my call through. Thanks. I hope to see you real soon. Bye-bye."

  Pierce had made the call before he was sure of what he wanted to say. The beep sounded and he started talking.

  "Uh, yes, Lilly, my name is Henry. I sort of have a problem because I have your old phone number. What I mean is, the phone company gave it to me —it's in my apartment and . . . I don't know . . . I'd like to talk to you about it."

  He blurted out the number and hung up.

  "Shit!"

  He knew he had sounded like an idiot. He wasn't even sure why he was calling her. If she had given up the number, there was nothing she could do about it now to help him except get it off the website. And that thought raised the primary question: Why was the number still on her site?

  He looked at her photo on the screen again. He studied it. Lilly was stunningly beautiful and he felt a heaviness at his center, the growing hunger of lust. Finally, a single thought pushed through: What am I doing?

  It was a good and valid question. He knew what he needed to do was pull the plug on the computer, get a new number on Monday and then concentrate on the work and forget about all of this.

  But he couldn't. He went back to the keyboard and closed Lilly's page and went back to the home page. He then opened the Blonde Escorts panel again and scrolled down until he found a thumbnail photo with the name Robin beneath it.

  He opened the page. The woman named Robin was blonde as advertised. She lay naked on her back on a bed. Red rose petals were piled on her stomach and strategically used to partially cover her breasts and crotch. She had a red lipstick smile. There was a blue ribbon beneath the picture, indicating that the photo had been verified. He scanned down to the ad copy.

  American Beauty Hello, Gentlemen. My name is Robin and I'm the girl you have been dreaming about. I'm a true blonde and blue-eyed all-American girl. I'm 24 yoa, 38-30-36 and almost six feet tall. I don't smoke but I love champagne. I can come to you or you can come to me. It doesn't matter because I never rush you. Absolutely positive GFE. And if you want to double your pleasure, visit my girlfriend Lilly's page in the brunettes section. We work together as a team —on you or on ourselves! So give me a call. Satisfaction guaranteed!

  VIPs only please.

  There was a phone number and a pager number at the bottom of the ad. Without thinking too much about it, Pierce wrote them down in his notebook. He then moved back up to the photo. Robin was attractive but not in the aching sort of way that Lilly was. Robin had sharp lines to her mouth and eyes and a colder look. She was more in line with what Pierce had always thought he would find on one of these sites. Lilly wasn't.

  Pierce reread the ad and was left wondering what "absolutely positive GFE" meant. He had no clue. He then realized that the ad copy on both pages —Robin's and Lilly's —had likely been written by the same person. Repetitive phrases and structure indicated this.

  He also noticed as he looked at the photo that the same brass bed was in both photos. He pulled down his Internet directory and quickly switched back to Lilly's web page to confirm.

  The bed was the same. He didn't know what this meant other than perhaps another confirmation that the two women worked together.

  The main difference he picked up from the copy was that Lilly only entertained clients at her apartment. Robin worked it either way, going to a client or allowing him to come to her. Again, he didn't know if this meant anything in the world in which they lived and worked.

  He leaned back in his chair, looking at the computer screen and wondering what to do next. He looked at his watch. It was almost eleven.

  Abruptly he leaned forward and picked up the phone. Checking his notes, he called the number from Robin's page. He lost his nerve and was about to hang up after four rings when a woman answered in a sleepy, smoky voice.

  "Uh, Robin?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm sorry, did I wake you?"

  "No, I'm awake. Who's this?"

  "Um, my name's Hank. I, uh, saw your page on L.A. Darlings. Am I calling too late?"

  "No, you're fine. What's Amedeo Techno?"

  He realized she had caller ID. A shock of fear went through him. Fear of scandal, of people like Vernon knowing something secret about him.

  "Actually, it's Amedeo Technologies. Your readout must not show the whole name."

  "Is that where you work?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you Mr. Amedeo?"

  Pierce smiled.

  "No, there is no Mr. Amedeo. Not anymore."

  "Really? Too bad. What happened to him?"

  "Amedeo was Amedeo Avogadro. He was a chemist who about two hundred years ago was the first to tell the difference between molecules and atoms. It was an important
distinction but he wasn't taken seriously for about fifty years, until after he was dead. He was just a man ahead of his time. The company was named after him."

  "What do you do there? Play around with atoms and molecules?"

  He heard her yawn.

  "Sort of. I'm a chemist, too. We're building a computer out of molecules."

  He yawned.

  "Really? Cool."

  Pierce smiled again. She sounded neither impressed nor interested.

  "Anyway, the reason I'm calling is that I see that you work with Lilly. The brunette escort?"

  "I did."

  "You mean not anymore?"

  "No, not anymore."

  "What happened? I've been trying to call her and —"

  "I'm not talking about Lilly with you. I don't even know you."

  Her voice had changed. It had taken on a sharper edge. Pierce instinctively knew he could lose her if he didn't play it right.

  "Okay, sorry. I was just asking because I liked her."

  "You'd been with her?"

  "Yeah. A couple times. She seemed like a nice girl and I was wondering where she went.

  That's all. She suggested the last time that maybe all three of us could get together next time. Do you think you could get a message to her?"

  "No. She's long gone and whatever happened to her . . . just happened. That's all."

  "What do you mean? What exactly happened?"

  "You know, mister, you're really creeping me out, asking all of these questions. And the thing is, I don't have to talk to you. So why don't you just spend the night with your own molecules."

  She hung up.

  Pierce sat there with the phone still to his ear. He was tempted to call back but instinctively knew it would be fruitless attempting to get anything out of Robin. He had spoiled it with the way he had handled it.

  He finally hung up and thought about what he had gathered. He looked at the photo of Lilly still on his computer screen. He thought about Robin's cryptic comment about something having happened to her.

  "What happened to you?"

  He moved the screen back to the home page and clicked on a tab marked ADVERTISE

  WITH US. It led to a page with instructions for placing ads on the site. It could be done through the net by submitting a credit card number, ad copy and a digital photograph. But in order to receive the blue ribbon signaling a verified photo on the ad, the advertiser had to submit all the materials in person so that she could be confirmed as the woman in the photograph. The site's brick-and-mortar location was on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

  This was apparently what Lilly and Robin had done. The page listed the office's hours as Monday through Saturday, nine to five during the week and ten to three on Saturdays.

  Pierce wrote the address and hours down on his notepad. He was about to disconnect from the site when he decided to call up Lilly's page once again. He printed out a color copy of her photo on the DeskJet. He then shut down the computer and disconnected the phone line. Again a voice inside told him he had gone as far with this as he could go. As he should go. It was time to change his phone number and forget about it.

  But another voice —a louder voice from the past —told him something else.

  "Lights," he said.

  The office dropped into darkness. Pierce didn't move. He liked the darkness. He always did his best thinking in the dark.

  5

  The stairway was dark and the boy was scared. He looked back to the street and saw the waiting car. His stepfather saw the hesitation and put his hand out the car window. He waved the boy forward, waved him in. The boy turned back and looked up into the darkness. He turned on the flashlight and started up.

  He kept the light down on the steps, not wanting to announce he was coming up by lighting the room at the top. Halfway there one of the stairs creaked loudly under his foot.

  He stood frozen still. He could hear his own heartbeat banging in his chest. He thought about Isabelle and the fear she probably carried in her own chest every day and night after night. He drew his resolve from this and started up again.

  Three steps from the top he cut the light off and waited for his eyes to adjust. In a few moments he thought he could see a dim light from the room up ahead of him. It was candlelight licking at the ceiling and walls. He pushed himself against the side wall and took the last three steps up.

  The room was large and crowded. He could see the makeshift beds lined against the two long walls. Still figures, like heaps of rummage sale clothes, slept on each. At the end of the room a single candle burned and a girl, a few years older and dirtier, heated a bottle cap over the flame. The boy studied her face in the uneven light. He could see that it wasn't Isabelle.

  He started moving down the center of the room, between the sleeping bags and the newspaper pallets. From side to side he looked, searching for the familiar face. It was dark but he could tell. He'd know her when he saw her.

  He got to the end, by the girl with the bottle cap. And Isabelle wasn't there.

  "Who are you looking for?" asked the girl.

  She was drawing back the plunger on the hypodermic, sucking the brown-black liquid through a cigarette butt filter from the bottle cap. In the murky light the boy could see the needle scarring on her neck.

  "Just somebody," he said.

  She looked away from her work and up to his face, surprised by his voice. She saw the young face in the camouflage of oversized and dirty clothes.

  "You're a young one," she said. "You better get out of here before the houseman comes back."

  The boy knew what she meant. All the squats in Hollywood had somebody in charge.

  The houseman. He exacted a fee in money or drugs or flesh.

  "He finds you, he'll bust your cherry ass and put you out on —"

  She suddenly stopped and blew out the candle, leaving him in the dark. He turned back to the door and the stairs, and all his fears seized up in him like a fist closing on a flower. A silhouette of a man stood at the top of the steps. A big man. Wild hair. The houseman.

  The boy involuntarily took a step back and tripped over someone's leg. He fell, the flashlight clattering on the floor next to him and going out.

  The man in the doorway moved and started coming at him.

  "Hanky boy!" the man yelled. "Come here, Hank!"

  6

  Pierce awoke at dawn, the sun rescuing him from the dream of running from a man whose face he could not see. He had no curtains in the apartment yet and the light streamed through the windows and burned through his eyelids. He crawled out of the sleeping bag, looked at the photo of Lilly he had left on the floor and went into the shower. When he was finished he had to dry off with two T-shirts he'd dug out of one of the clothing boxes. He'd forgotten to buy towels.

  He walked over to Main Street

  to get coffee, a citrus smoothie and the newspaper. He read and drank slowly, almost feeling guilty about it. Most Saturdays he was in the lab by dawn.

  When he was finished with the paper it was almost nine. He walked back to the Sands and got into his car, but he didn't go to the lab as usual.

  Fifteen minutes before ten o'clock Pierce got to the Hollywood address he had written down for L.A. Darlings. The location was a multi-level office complex that looked as legitimate as a McDonald's. L.A. Darlings was located in Suite 310

  . On the glazed glass door the largest lettering read ENTREPRENEURIAL CONCEPTS UNLIMITED.

  Beneath this was a listing in smaller letters of ten different websites, including L.A.

  Darlings, that apparently fell under the Entrepreneurial Concepts umbrella. Pierce could tell by the titling of the site addresses that they were all sexually oriented and part of the Internet's dark universe of adult entertainment.

  The door was locked but Pierce was a few minutes early. He decided to use the time by taking a walk and thinking about what he was going to say and how he was going to play this.

  "Here, I'll open it."

&nbs
p; He turned as a woman approached the door with a key. She was about twenty-five and had crazy blonde hair that seemed to point in all directions. She wore cutoff jeans and sandals and a short shirt that exposed her pierced navel. She had looped over her shoulder a purse that looked big enough to hold a pack of cigarettes but not the matches. And she looked as though ten o'clock was definitely too early for her.

  "You're early," she said.