Hundred-Dollar Baby

by Robert B. Parker

  “No.”

  Then Johnny said, “You got a gun in that desk drawer that’s open.”

  “I do.”

  “I’m gonna take something outta my coat pocket,” Johnny said. “It ain’t a gun. I don’t want you shooting me.”

  I picked up the .357 from the drawer.

  “Take it out slowly,” I said.

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “Trust but verify,” I said.

  Johnny stood. He was wearing a brown tweed overcoat with big patch pockets. He took a videotape out of the right-hand pocket and put it on my desk.

  “Ollie had a bunch of these,” he said. “We used to watch ’em in the office. I scooped this one, show to my girlfriend.”

  “You know where he got them?”

  “No. But they’re, like, real people doing it, you know. They don’t look like regular porn stuff.”

  “Maybe they’re a clue,” I said.

  “I figured they might be,” Johnny said. “I hope you catch the sonova bitch.”

  “How many did he have?”

  “’Bout half a dozen, I’d say.”

  “You know where he kept them?” I said.

  “I thought he kept them locked up in his desk in the office. He let me borrow this one, but he told me I better fucking bring it back.”

  “I’ll take a look,” I said.

  “You got a broad, watch it with her. Some of it’s pretty hot.”

  “Good tip,” I said.

  Johnny nodded and turned and left.

  45

  I called Frank Belson.

  “Anybody find any videotapes in Ollie DeMars’s place?”

  “No.”

  “His home?”

  “No.”

  “Crime-scene people go over that couch in Ollie DeMars’s office?” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “They find anything?”

  “Besides Ollie’s, they found forty-seven separate DNA samples. All female.”

  “Anyone we know?” I said.

  “Nope.”

  “Well,” I said. “At least Ollie kept busy.”

  “Yeah,” Belson said. “Nice to know he didn’t live a meaningless life. What’s with the videotapes?”

  “Guy told me there were some, now there aren’t. I figured it was worth asking.”

  “Videotapes of what,” Belson said.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Who told you this.”

  “Guy named Johnny,” I said.

  “Johnny what?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Belson was silent for a moment.

  “You’re bullshitting me,” he said. “I know it. You know it. And you know I know it.”

  “You think?” I said.

  “I know,” Belson said.

  “Frank,” I said. “Are you losing that buoyant optimism we’ve all learned to expect?”

  “Fuck you,” Belson said. “You’re being cute again. You got something.”

  “I didn’t have to call you,” I said.

  “You needed to know what we found.”

  “Would you tell me?” I said.

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I owe you,” Belson said. “We both know that.”

  “You know that,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “But owing you and giving you a free ride ain’t the same thing,” he said. “I have to, I’ll put you in jail.”

  “I ever cheat you, Frank?”

  “Not maybe exactly,” Belson said. “But you are convinced of how smart you are, and you got all these odd fucking things you’ll do and not do. I am not in deep fucking despair over the sudden demise of Ollie DeMars. World’s probably a better place. But it’s still against the law to shoot him.”

  “I ever find who shot him, I’ll explain that to him.”

  “I find him first,” Belson said, “and I find out you were covering up something that mattered, you go, too.”

  “I’ll race you,” I said.

  46

  “Guy that gave me this tape said if I had a broad, I should watch it with her,” I said.

  “And I’m the broad you chose?” Susan said. “How flattering.”

  “I was told the tape was hot,” I said.

  “Well, then of course you chose me. What is it?”

  We were in my living room. Susan had a martini. I had scotch and soda. Pearl had her accustomed two-thirds of the couch, leaving Susan squeezed up against me on the other third. I didn’t mind. The videotape was in the player. We were ready.

  “I don’t exactly know. I haven’t seen it yet. But it might be evidence in the Ollie DeMars case.”

  “Which involves April,” Susan said.

  “That’s the case,” I said.

  “Do you have any idea, yet, what’s going on with her?”

  “Other than that she is lying to me?” I said. “No.”

  “But you think this tape might be a clue?”

  “This is one of six that are missing from Ollie DeMars’s office after his death.”

  “Do you have the other five?”

  “No.”

  “So maybe somebody took them?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, maybe it is a clue,” Susan said.

  I picked up the remote. “And maybe it isn’t,” I said. “We’ll have to watch to find out.”

  “And it is, after all, hot,” Susan said.

  I clicked the remote. The tape started. There was no sound, no titles. The picture was in black-and-white and there was no camera movement. A man was having sex with a woman. It took me a minute.

  “That’s Amy,” I said.

  “Amy?”

  “One of April’s girls,” I said. “She’s a grad student.”

  Amy was agile and vigorous. The man was maybe fifty, pretty good shape.

  “He’s quite well endowed,” Susan said at one point.

  “It’s just the camera angle,” I said.

  Susan smiled. “That aside,” she said, “the camera work is not inventive.”

  I got it.

  “It’s fixed,” I said. “Security camera. Ollie got hold of the security tapes from April’s house.”

  “Security tapes, even in the bedrooms?”

  “Apparently.”

  “I’ll bet the clients didn’t know that,” Susan said.

  “I would guess not.”

  Several times during the action, Amy’s partner was full face into the camera.

  “I don’t think that’s an accident,” I said.

  “I’d say none of it is an accident,” Susan said.

  “No, I mean the full face to the camera. I think she maneuvered him into position.”

  “Blackmail?” Susan said.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “They start blackmailing clients, pretty soon they won’t have any clients.”

  “What then?”

  “Protection. If they have trouble with a client. They have leverage.”

  Susan nodded. Pearl in her languor had allowed her head to slip off the couch and it now hung almost to the floor. Her feet stuck up in the air as a sort of counterbalance, and her interest in the sex tape seemed minimal. We watched the rest of the tape. It featured Amy and several different men, each of whom was full face to the camera at least once during the proceedings. Finally, it simply ran out.

  “You get any tips?” I said to Susan.

  “Ick,” she said.

  “Is that a Jewish word for wow, what a hot tape?” I said.

  “No.”

  “It is a sort of ungainly business, if you sit and watch it.”

  “It’s a participant sport,” Susan said. “This, at least, was not tiresomely gynecological.”

  “Nor particularly contemptuous of the participants,” I said. “Most porn is humiliating.”

  “You don’t enjoy it,” Susan said.

  “No, not much. If someone says, ‘I have a nude picture of an attractive wo
man, wanna see?’ I’ll say sure. If he says, ‘I’ve got a tape of sex-crazed bitches hungry for hot sex,’ naw!”

  “I like a man with standards,” Susan said. “What do you make of the tape.”

  “I can see why they would have the security cameras. Even in a high-class house, you get some weird guys. And Ollie must have copped some of the tapes somehow, and probably was going to blackmail April, or the clients, or both.”

  “He’d have to know who the clients were,” Susan said. “I assume he wouldn’t recognize them on sight.”

  “Good point,” I said. “Just the tapes, and their potential for damage, might have given him some bargaining edge with April for something.”

  Susan nodded. Pearl snored faintly.

  “Goddamn,” I said.

  “Goddamn?”

  “If there was trouble,” I said, “and it showed up on the security monitor, who intervenes.”

  “Bouncer?”

  “In more conventional blue-collar whoring, the pimp sort of serves that function,” I said. “Or allows the girls to think he does.”

  “And here?”

  “There is no bouncer.”

  “Shouldn’t there be one?” Susan said.

  “Normally, you don’t want to have to call the cops in that kind of operation. Unless there’s a special arrangement,” I said, “a bouncer is cheaper and quicker, raises fewer questions.”

  “So there should be one.”

  “Yes, there should be one.”

  “Does April have a gun?” Susan said.

  “She says so, but you don’t want to be shooting people, even if you have the, ah, ovaries for it. A murder investigation is ruinous to whorehouses.”

  “Did she think you would be there to help?” Susan said.

  “She was in business up here awhile,” I said, “before she came to see me.”

  “So why is there a security system and no one to enforce it?” Susan said.

  “I suppose, with these women, who have a sort of mainstream life when they’re not working, that it might help keep them in line.”

  “Are you going to talk with April about this?” Susan said.

  “Not yet,” I said. “She’s lied to me so much so far that I want to get as much data as I can before we talk.”

  Susan nodded.

  “Why did Ollie take the tapes?” she said. “Did he have access to the names.”

  I shrugged.

  “Do you think Ollie was killed to get these tapes back?”

  “It’s a question to explore,” I said.

  “I suppose it is far better than having no questions to explore,” Susan said.

  47

  I got to Amy through Darleen, the same way I got to Bev. We met in an ice-cream parlor and coffee shop in Newton. We sat in a booth in the back, away from the big window that looked out on Washington Street. I had coffee; Amy had a hot fudge sundae.

  “People hate me,” she said. “I can eat anything and my weight doesn’t change.”

  “I’m the same way,” I said. “I guess we’re in it together.”

  Amy didn’t look like Bev, but she had the same suburban-mom quality. She was wearing a thick sweater over jeans. Her hair was short. She wore sunglasses like a headband.

  “So how come you’re just having coffee?” she said.

  “Bad for the tough-guy image,” I said, “eating ice-cream sundaes in public.”

  “If you’re after image,” she said, “you should be drinking the coffee black.”

  “I’m not that tough,” I said.

  She giggled.

  “You’re a cutie,” she said.

  “But intrepid,” I said.

  “An intrepid cutie,” she said and giggled again.

  There was nothing arch in her flirting. She seemed what she was. A woman who liked men. Who appeared to like me. Who liked to flirt, and who probably liked sex. No hint of depravity. Neat. Clean. Pulled together. Sense of humor. It was hard to be disapproving. I decided not to bother.

  “You know about the security cameras at the mansion,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “Ever see any of the tapes?” I said.

  “Nope.”

  She ate some of her ice cream. I noticed that she ate around the maraschino cherry on top. Like I would have. Saving it for last.

  “I get to see the live action,” she said, “up close and personal. Don’t need instant replay.”

  “I’ve seen one of the tapes,” I said. “You’re on it.”

  “How do I look,” she said. “How’s my ass look? My ass okay?”

  “Top drawer,” I said. “It looked like you maneuvered your companion around so he’d look full face into the camera.”

  “And smooth, don’t you think? He just thought it was ecstasy.”

  “April ask you to do that?”

  “Sure. All the girls. She wanted to be able to identify every client’s face.”

  “Why?”

  Amy looked a little startled.

  “I don’t know. She said something about a record in case there was trouble.”

  “You didn’t mind the cameras,” I said.

  “Mind? No. You’re stark naked, alone with a strange guy in a room with the door locked. I liked it that someone was keeping an eye.”

  “Ever any trouble?”

  “You mean like a client getting out of hand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not often,” she said. “The clients are screened pretty good.”

  “But now and then?”

  “Now and then you get a creep,” she said. “One of the house rules is that none of the girls has to do something they don’t want to. I mean, you know, creepy stuff. Bodily functions, ick!”

  “And?”

  “Now and then you get some guy, drunk or stoned, and he wants something and you say no and he goes off on you.”

  “And the security cameras alert someone and they come to your rescue.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who would that be?” I said.

  “Used to be Vernon,” Amy said.

  “Bouncer?” I said.

  “Security director,” Amy said and smiled. “Bouncer.”

  “What happened to Vernon?”

  “He left a little before the trouble started, unfortunately.”

  “You think there’s a connection?” I said.

  “Between Vernon leaving and the trouble starting?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t know. You think he got scared off or something?” Amy said.

  I shrugged.

  “Vernon was pretty big and tough,” she said. “I think he used to be a cop, maybe.”

  “Know his last name?”

  “Brown.”

  “What did he look like?” I said.

  “Big, bigger than you. Bald.”

  “Totally bald?” I said.

  “No, you know, male-pattern baldness.”

  “White?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know where he was a cop?”

  She shook her head. She had eaten most of her sundae and was now looking at a small island of ice cream with a cherry. She popped the cherry into her mouth and smiled at me.

  “Best for last,” she said.

  “What did April say about his departure?” I said. “Did she talk of a replacement?”

  “She said she had somebody on standby.”

  “Was that encouraging to you?”

  “Standby where? I never saw anybody. Vernon used to sit in the front parlor. He could be there in thirty seconds.”

  “You like Vernon?”

  “Yeah. He was fun,” Amy said. “He never hit on anybody. He was sort of uncle-y, you know.”

  “And you don’t know who the standby was?”

  “No. All I know is he didn’t show up when those goons came in and started pushing everybody around.”

  “April have any explanation?” I said.

  “I didn’t ask,” Amy said.

&n
bsp; “Why not.”

  She scraped the last of her sundae from the sides of the big tulip glass and ate it. Then she put the spoon in the empty dish, patted her mouth with her napkin, careful of the lipstick, and sat back.

  “I got a husband,” she said. “I got a kid. I got my master’s to finish up. I care about those things and I can control those things, at least sort of. I think about them. I don’t think about other stuff.”

  “What do you think is going on at the mansion?” I said.

  “Just my part of it,” Amy said.

  “Which is?”

  “Lot of high-function poontang,” she said. “When it’s over, I leave and do my homework.”

  “How are your grades.”

  She smiled at me again.

  “Honor roll,” she said. “Both.”

  “I expected no less,” I said.

  48

  My years of investigative experience paid off. I looked in the phone book under both Brown and Browne. There was one Vernon. He had an address on Elm Street in Somerville. I went there and rang the bell. It was a two family house. When Vernon didn’t answer, I rang the other bell. A woman came to the door wearing a loose flowered dress.

  “Do you know where I could find Vernon Brown?” I said.

  “Who are you?” she said. Her hair was in a tight gray perm. Her feet were in camp moccasins. Her eyes were pale blue and her gaze was sharp.

  “Old army buddy,” I said. “I haven’t seen him forever, and I’m only in town a few hours.”

  “I didn’t even know Vern was in the army,” the woman said.

  “Thousand years ago,” I said. “Know where I can find him. I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he sees me.”

  “He tends bar,” she said. “On Highland Ave. Packy’s Pub.”

  “Thank you very much,” I said.

  Packy’s was at the top of the hill on Highland: plate glass window in the front; small, narrow room; bar along one wall, booths along the other. There wasn’t much light. There were half a dozen guys getting a jump on the day at the bar. None of them looked like the day held a lot of promise. The guy behind the bar was a big guy, some fat, a lot of muscle, with male-pattern baldness. He came down the bar and put a small paper napkin on the bar in front of me. Style.

  “What can I get you?” he said.

  “Coffee,” I said.

  He shrugged as if I were a sissy.