The Hinky Bearskin Rug

by Jennifer Stevenson

  Shock plus shock! Jewel would have liked to probe further, but she’d better stay on task. “I can’t believe this still goes on. God knows I can’t afford to be a prude either. But I had no idea.”

  “Oh, Steven is the only real offender,” Sharisse said. “Until he started bucking for partner after John Baysdorter died, it was all pretty consensual. Old John put Lena through private school, finishing school, and college. I couldn’t make ends meet without Hugh’s help. Precious, of course, is playing Mike Redpune for what she can get, but she’s also playing Steven, which will get her canned someday.”

  “Precious is spying on Steven for Mike,” Tonia said positively.

  “Precious could be spying on Mike for Steven, and Mike would never know. Mike’s too butt-dumb arrogant,” Geri said.

  Jewel waved a hand. “I don’t care about the white-guy politics. I want to know who put the Viagra in the coffee at that staff meeting.” And I want to talk to this Lena. Anyone who had dirt on Steven should be interesting.

  The girls looked at one another. “You first,” Sharisse said to Geri.

  “Okay.” Geri said, “I have zero proof, but I think Steven doped the coffee to discredit Mike.”

  “That’s dumb,” Tonia stated. “Nobody could have imagined what would happen.”

  “What happened?” Jewel burst out. “Were any of you there?”

  Sharisse looked at Tonia. Geri raised her hand, looking from Tonia to Sharisse with her chin in the air. The other two hunkered down on their swivelly bar stools to listen.

  Geri said, “The thing is, we’ve all been on edge for months. As in, horny. Even Precious didn’t take up with Mike until this spring.” The subtext, audible to Jewel, read, Precious is a total skank. “It was like the air conditioning stopped working. Know what I mean?” She looked Jewel in the eye.

  Jewel said, “Girl, there’s whole weeks go by and I just need it all the time.” Years.

  Geri put up a palm and Jewel high-fived her. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I was ripe. I could blame Precious, I guess. She always makes such a production out of these rollout meetings. Coffee and pastry, low light, a music track on her Powerpoint. She does it to impress Mike, and boy, did it work this time. He was dancing around with his laser-pointer like a monkey on crack. He got all worked up.”

  Geri sipped her sangria. “And the funny thing was, we were all getting worked up, too. I mean, we’re talking condos going into a downtown Omaha landmark bank building with a strip mall rehab on the side,” she said drily. “When Mike put his pointer down we actually clapped, and he turned to Precious and said something like, ‘Great job!’ and gave her a big wet one, and she threw her arms around his neck and gave it right back, and the next thing I know, I’m hugging Anna from Accounting, and Hugh Boncil jumps on Diane from Marketing and two other girls are rolling under the conference table.” Geri shrugged. “It just snowballed. I can’t explain it.”

  Jewel hated to interrupt. “Steven wasn’t there?”

  “Nope,” Geri said.

  “It must be killing him he missed it,” Sharisse said.

  “Huh,” Tonia said. “I think he did it. Whatever it was. Viagra, Ecstasy, Spanish Fly, whatever.”

  “Oh, I do, too,” Geri said. “It was Steven. He’s been smug ever since, which just shows you. Zip-lipped, but smug.”

  “Then what happened?” Jewel said.

  “I walked in,” Sharisse said, “late, because I’d been notarizing and filing some stuff at court for Mr. Boncil, and when I saw all the bare skin I just shut the door and walked back to my desk and sat there, shaking.”

  “I heard there was something hinky about the whole scene,” Jewel said. Here we go. Mentally she crossed her fingers.

  “Other than Mike Redpune banging Precious against the ceiling like it was a king-size bed?” Geri said tartly. “And bringing the ceiling tiles down? And Mike chanting, ‘Bitch, bitch, fuck me, bitch,’ revolting pig that he is? And two of the girls turning into dogs and humping?” She looked at her fingernails. “Anna sprouted two extra tongues.”

  Jewel realized her mouth was hanging open. She shut it.

  “Then Maida walked in and gasped, and it felt like she sucked all the air out of the room at once. Mike and Precious fell off the ceiling. Maida almost passed out. She, like, staggered and leaned on the table and one of the girls who was an actual real bitch bit her on the hand. Hugh Boncil looked up from sitting on Diane-from-Marketing’s face—I’m sorry, Sharisse, but that’s what he was doing — and he said, ‘Close the door, Maida,’ and Maida screamed, and the bitches turned back to normal. And Maida left.”

  “Good grief,” Sharisse said faintly.

  “What about you and Anna?” Tonia said, her nose shiny with sweat.

  Geri fluttered a hand. “Oh, that. That was days ago. I think it was just the heat of the moment, know what I mean?”

  “So who called it in?” Jewel said. See who knows.

  “Maida, of course,” Sharisse said. “Everybody knows that. Steven’s hit on every girl she hires for him, and when he has no girl of his own he hits on the rest of us. He’s gotten, like, totally out of control. She wants you to scare him straight.”

  “Fat chance,” Tonia said.

  “Bloated,” Geri agreed.

  “Shit,” Tonia said, and Sharisse looked at her in shock. “It’s twelve-thirty.”

  That broke up the sangria party.

  Chapter Nine

  Jewel bailed on BB for the afternoon to pursue the clue Clay had found in O’Connor’s apartment. The boys brought her Tercel to the curb on Michigan Avenue. Jewel moved Randy to the back seat so she could sit in front. “Clay, you drive. I’m still high from lunch.”

  “You smell like a party,” Clay remarked.

  “Sangria with the girls. I was pumping informants.” She rubbed her head against the head rest, yawning. “I didn’t tell you to bring him,” she muttered.

  “He wouldn’t stay home,” Clay muttered back.

  Jewel groaned aloud. “You two clowns behave, hear?”

  “Naturally,” Randy said from the back seat.

  “Naturally,” Clay said.

  “Where’s our paperwork?”

  Randy handed a file over the seat back.

  Clay said, “Ed says the majority stockholder died about two years ago, and the new owner hasn’t re-registered the place as Adult Use.”

  “What does adult use signify?” Randy said.

  “It means,” Jewel said, “that unless they’re grandfathered in, they have to go through Revenue and Zoning to register as an Adult Use business. And even if they’re grandfathered in, we have to establish that they haven’t been out of business for any interval since the original registration. Plus, if they’ve diversified, i.e., if they have any dependent divisions, those have to register separately.”

  “Gibberish,” Clay said.

  “It’s perfectly clear to me,” Randy said. “Even in this republican state, one’s grandfather is important.”

  “Right. Except Cook County is solid Democrat,” Jewel said.

  “So they register and then they kick us out,” Clay said.

  “No, no,” she said. “You don’t know the game. It’s an excuse to get us in the door. Once we’re in, they’re wide open.”

  They found the address soon enough, but parking sucked, and they had to weave through the meat packing district looking for a spot.

  “This area is one of my favorites,” she said as they crawled through a neighborhood of low brick warehouses and about a million trucks. The sidewalks and streets here were used as extensions of the loading docks. Burly guys carried whole dead pigs on their shoulders. Lidless boxes of dead fish gaped open on the sidewalks. People in rubber waders hosed down the pavement with hot water, and blood literally ran in the gutter, along with lettuce leaves, oranges, and discarded plastic gloves. Jewel sniffed the air and smiled.

  “You have strange tastes,” Clay said.

  “It’s a
ll real. Stuff is being bought and sold. Food is being prepared and put in trucks and taken someplace where somebody will eat it. It’s not pork futures, it’s real pork. It’s not a law office, it’s actual sharks getting skinned and sliced. Wow, you ever seen so much zucchini in one place?”

  She maneuvered them through a steaming maze of trucks, loaded pallets, and workers in gore-stained white aprons.

  “Strange place for a porn company,” Clay said.

  “Good place for one,” she said. “You won’t find a bunch of soccer moms protesting in the meat packing district. Although condo creep is moving closer every day.”

  They parked illegally in half a space by a locked-off lot that hadn’t seen traffic in years. Jewel put her official business tag on the dash, and they picked their way through the detritus of the City of Big Shoulders.

  The Artistic Publishing Company was a five-story red brick building occupying half a city block. The name was carved into limestone over the front door, and it rang a bell for Jewel. Who had mentioned this company to her recently?

  “What’s that aroma?” Randy said. “Cinnamon?”

  Clay pointed to the corner of the Artistic Building.

  Jewel gave a heart-cry.

  “Hoby’s!” Her stomach rumbled. “I need pastry! I need it now.” Leaving the boys on the street, she ran into the bakery.

  Hoby’s Bäckerei was a room-size pastry bong smelling of melted chocolate, browning butter, cinnamon, toasting pecans, and fresh coffee. A guy in white rolled in a big rack of hot cow plops. Jewel bought three and ran back to her team with her white bag.

  “These,” she said, handing them out, “are fresh cinnamon cow plops, the finest non-chocolate pastry money can buy.” She bit into the edge of hers. It was so hot, the crunchy crust sizzled against her tongue. “Ohmigod, it’s fabulous.”

  “Cow plop.” Randy looked dubiously at his. “I suppose there is a facetious resemblance.” He nibbled. “Good.”

  “I wouldn’t eat anything made in this building,” Clay said.

  “You eat ’em at work every day,” Jewel said thickly. “Be done in a minute.” She looked at her half-eaten cow plop. “No, I won’t. If I finish this one I’ll want another. Here.” She handed the rest of her cow plop to Randy, who put it all back in the white bag. “Business before pleasure.”

  “Must I stay in the car?” Randy said.

  “I’ll watch him,” Clay said.

  Jewel shook her head. “I just realized, we need his hinky radar.” She scanned the building. “They’ve been here for ages. Wide open in a dozen ways. Their only hope is to make nice.”

  “We’re nice,” Clay said.

  “Exceptionally so,” Randy said.

  Jewel put on her cop face. “Let’s go.”

  There was a security guard inside the entrance. You could either turn left and buy porn at wholesale, or you could sign in and go right to a set of blank gray double doors or to the elevators, or straight up a grand staircase. Jewel gave the guard their names and titles. He phoned upstairs.

  “Go on up to four. Miss Tannyhill will see you.”

  Jewel elbowed Clay. “Tannyhill! Holy shit, do you suppose there’s a connection?”

  Clay muttered, “Don’t curse. It puts off the marks.”

  On the fourth floor they were met by Miss “call me Onika” Tannyhill. Onika was a sixty-something old bat with hard miles but an excellent repaint job. She wore her dyed orange hair in a smooth Hilary, tons of striking makeup, white mink on the collar of her deep blue suit, and diamonds on her long cigarette holder. Her eyes were as blue and snappy as her suit. She ushered them into a vast, hypermasculine office full of dark wood and leather wing chairs.

  They sat in the leather wing chairs. Onika said, “What can I do for the City of Chicago today?”

  Jewel explained about Adult Use registration. Then she said, “We were surprised to find that Chicago had another adult publishing company.”

  Onika fitted a cigarette into the jeweled holder and lit up. “Don’t mistake me for Christie Hefner. I don’t have her brains or her money. She went to Brandeis for summa cum laude, I went to the Bahamas for a tan. I’m just a bad girl who got handed a great big fun toy.” She grinned around the cigarette holder.

  “So Artistic is a family business?”

  “Yep. My grandfather founded this company almost a hundred years ago.” Onika sucked in smoke, coughed, sucked deeper, and coughed again. “My father took over in seventy-six. I got it—” she paused and coughed horribly for a minute, then croaked, “Oh, hell,” and stubbed out her cigarette. After a sip from a glass she said, “I’ve only been in charge two years. You’ll forgive me if I don’t know what the kumshaw runs to these days.”

  Jewel said, “We don’t do shakedown in my department, ma’am.”

  “Guess that’ll have to wait, then,” Onika said, unruffled. “Did you want a tour?”

  “That would be great,” Jewel said, keeping her temper. Everyone stood. Something caught her eye. Bingo! “Who’s the blonde beauty in the painting?”

  There she was, the minx they’d seen in poppet form both in the locker at the Kraft and in O’Connor’s apartment. The oil painting made her look classier. Jewel was reminded of the nude who reclines full-length over the bar in a cowboy movie. It was a nice painting. The blonde’s blue eyes sparkled, and she seemed to say Peel me a grape from clear across the room.

  “Sweet, huh?” Onika said in her gravelly voice. “The original model was named Teüschnelda Wilmerding, but everybody here calls her Wilma. She’s our mascot. You’ll be seeing a lot of her.” She put down her glass, which contained Scotch by the smell of it, and shepherded them all out of her office.

  Chapter Ten

  Onika showed them layout and editorial. She showed them photo production. She showed them accounting, MIS, and website management. In the elevator, they felt a deep, rhythmic thump. “The presses are old and slow, so they run twenty-four-seven when we’re on deadline.”

  Wilma was everywhere. Framed paintings of Wilma from the Year One, wearing a lacy corset and high button shoes. Tattered posters under glass of Wilma in abbreviated pink gingham undies, pinning a rose on a WWI doughboy. Wilma cooing over a puppy held between her perky naked breasts. Wilma roller skating naked. Naked Wilma laughing while she roped a snorting, bucking Brahma bull from the back of a bucking horse.

  Yeah, it was total fantasy, but it had energy and wholesome appeal. Wilma was out-of-control sexual, yet adorably innocent.

  Jewel felt herself blushing, which embarrassed her and made her blush hotter. Darnit, I’m too sophisticated to let lame porn bother me. The pages of the current issue tacked to the corkboard in editorial were considerably raunchier than Wilma. She swallowed.

  A young woman with horn-rimmed glasses and a her dark hair in a bun came up to them.

  “This morning’s online orders, Onika.” Her dark suit was so severe, it was a parody of Jewel’s navy polyester. She was the picture of everything Jewel couldn’t measure up to at Baysdorter Boncil: trim, sleek, and pseudo-virginal, as if she wore her virtue like a carnival mask.

  “Honey, this is Jewel Heiss and her team from Consumer Services downtown. This little gal’s my right hand.”

  The brunette nodded at Clay and dimpled demurely at Randy. Jewel felt her hackles go up.

  “Of course that’s not what you’ve come to see. Honey, tag along.”

  The assistant handed off her folder and fell in beside Randy. Clay took Jewel’s elbow, and they went down a big marble staircase. More Wilmas hung in the stairwell.

  Onika gestured grandly. “A hundred years of smutty pictures. My inheritance.” On the ground floor, she pushed open the gray double doors. “And this is the money shot: the old studio, where we take feelthy pictures — stills only, of course. Who’s the talent today, honey?”

  “Flash Titty, and Sancho and the Tokyo Twins.”

  “They won’t mind company.” Onika paused at the door to the studio. She grinne
d wickedly at her guests. “You wanted to see it all. This is what everybody wants to see.”

  Randy bowed. Clay smiled. Jewel squeaked, “Sure.”

  “Cigarette,” the assistant murmured. Onika swore and put out her cigarette in the ashtray by the door.

  “Who writes your salacious stories?” Randy said as Onika ushered them in.

  “Bunch of dirty-minded newspapermen,” Onika said. “We need new blood. Care to try?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Randy began.

  Jewel said, “Oh, hush.”

  All four of them stopped in the shadows outside a brightly-lit tableau.

  Under bright lights, three people were moving around on a huge, red-plush, heart-shaped divan, or bed, or something.

  The women wore peasant blouses and bright ruffled red skirts bunched around their waists, kneeling side by side on the red velvet thingy.

  Sancho wore only chaps, big fancy ones, all over fringe and shiny silver medallions, and silver-tipped cowboy boots. He was kneeling behind both women, hard at work with flesh and with plastic.

  In spite of Jewel’s sophistication, her temperature rose.

  The twins howled and barked and bayed. Sancho preserved a thoughtful, almost abstracted expression.

  The camera flashed. The photographer yammered in a breathless monotone, “Dumi, twist right. Duyu, twist left. Sweet. Good action, Sancho. Duyu, grab your right cheek and look back. Dumi, how about a frig. Atta girl. More elbow. Love it.” Somehow that was even sexier than the sex.

  Speechless, Jewel found herself looking at the women more than at the man. They were impossibly skinny. It was fascinating, and somehow appalling, and she realized half of her discomfort was because the women were also beautiful. I would look like potato salad doing that. Potato salad with cellulite.

  Onika said to someone standing nearby, “Flash Titty, this is Jewel and Clay and Randy.”

  Jewel shook hands with a totally naked, totally gorgeous woman who believed in truth in advertising. Clay was warm and friendly and didn’t look at her below the neck, which Jewel thought was carrying chivalry too far. Randy shook hands, too. In some way Randy acted more polite than Clay and yet something, his taut posture or the sparkle in his eye, told Jewel he was fully aware of Flash Titty’s qualifications.