by Todd Borg
For the first time since Faith’s boat had exploded, I had the sense that I was getting somewhere.
THIRTY-EIGHT
I found the Hard Body Workout gym on a side street in Incline Village. It was in a three-story, contemporary building just behind one of the shopping centers. I parked and walked into the foyer. The deep booming sound of music heavy with bass thudded through the building. There was a sign listing the occupants, and it read more like it was in Berkeley than in Nevada’s richest community. The top two floors had an herbalist, a psychic, an alchemist, an aroma-therapist and a feng shui artist. The basement floor was devoted to the Hard Body Workout. I went down the stairs.
I pushed in through glass doors and walked into a wall of sound. It was a cavernous room lined with floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Half the room was filled with shiny chrome workout equipment on vinyl flooring. The other half had a hardwood floor. Music boomed from speakers in all four corners.
A group of about two dozen women in bright spandex with bold patterns jumped and danced to the beat. There was a hierarchy to their position. The fat women were at the back, the skinny women just in front of the fat ones. The front two rows had the showgirls and showgirl wannabes.
The leader of the group was an athletic woman in her early forties. She wore a glossy black suit with a lacy, pink design across the shoulders and down at the top of her butt. She had on pink high-top athletic shoes and big, bouncy, strawberry blonde hair. She called out commands as she danced, but the commands were lost in the music. Unable to hear, the sweating group watched and tried to imitate her. The music was deafening and the scent was suffocating, perfume and sweat and a touch of patchouli.
It was the kind of gym I’d expect in the inner city, surrounded by the steel and concrete jungle. But in the outdoor recreation capital of California and Nevada it seemed surreal.
I walked up to the front desk where a teenage girl sat on a stool. She looked up at me, her lips stuck in a petulant pout. “Yeah?” she shouted over the music.
“I just stopped by to see Lady K.D.,” I shouted, hoping the phrasing would work regardless of whether K.D. was in or not.
The girl glanced over at the woman who was leading the group, then scowled at her nails. “Well, she’s gonna be awhile.”
“I’ll catch up with her later,” I said.
“Whatever,” the girl said without looking up.
I left.
I took Spot for a walk around the area, always listening for the boom boom of the dance music. When it stopped, I put Spot back in the Karmann Ghia and loitered near the building. K.D. Scarrone came out, walking fast. She’d changed into a business suit, gray jacket, gray pants, low, black pumps and a black leather briefcase that hung from a shoulder strap. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun. She walked over to a polished black Mercedes.
“Lady K.D.?” I said, approaching.
She opened her car door and stood behind it, ready to jump in and lock the door. “And you are...?”
“Owen McKenna. I’m a private investigator. You and I have some business in common that I’d like to speak to you about.”
“What business is that?”
“Faith Runyon.”
“I don’t know any Faith Runyon.”
I leaned on the fender of her Mercedes. She glared at where I was touching her car. “K.D.,” I said, “I don’t play games, and I don’t like to waste time. Either I get the information from you or I start asking around town until someone else can help me. I’m discreet, and I have no desire to tell others about your other business, but I imagine it will get out. Maybe you don’t mind that.”
It took her two seconds to make a decision. “Get in. We’ll talk in the car.” I rode shotgun as K.D. Scarrone drove her polished black Mercedes through Incline Village. We took some back roads and ended up on Lakeshore Blvd. Her perfume had a hint of pepper, and it mixed with the leather of the car’s interior.
“I know you were Faith Runyon’s madam,” I said after we’d driven a mile.
K.D. glanced at me. The Mercedes drifted toward the edge of the road. I gestured toward the windshield. She looked and corrected the car’s direction with a jerk of the wheel. She drove straight for a moment, then pulled over and parked in front of a mansion with a “for sale” sign out front.
I waited for her to speak. The big metal sign was stuck into the grass near my passenger window. It said WOODS REAL ESTATE. Below the title were the words Can’t See The Real Estate Forest For The Trees? Call Daniel Woods.
She didn’t speak, so I decided to provoke her. “How could you do that?” I said. “Selling Faith like a commodity. She was well-spoken, beautiful, no doubt intelligent. She could have earned a living doing countless other things.” My voice had a bite to it. “What kind of person are you?”
“Don’t you dare to judge me without knowing what my circumstances are!” K.D. Scarrone glared at me across the front seat, her fingers white on the black leather steering wheel. Her nails were perfectly shaped and painted with little songbirds. A different species for each nail.
“What are your circumstances?”
K.D. stared out through the windshield. Her lower lip twitched once. She stopped it and tensed her lips together.
I waited half a minute. An automatic sprinkling system turned on in the yard next to us. A dozen black, sprinkling heads spit and crackled and then sprayed half-circles of water over thick, green grass. A red Porsche flashed by, going twice the speed limit. The Mercedes made the slightest of rocking motions in the wake of the Porsche. She still didn’t speak.
“K.D.,” I said, “Faith knew something about Glory, the singer who died. She was going to tell me what it was, but she died when she was coming to meet me out on the lake. Since she contacted me, someone has been trying to kill me. They will try again. If they think you knew whatever Faith knew, they will come after you as well. The more I know about Faith and you, the better I’ll understand what I’m dealing with.” I shifted in the car seat, cocked my left knee to the side and turned toward K.D. Her tension had added a bitter edge to her perfume. Her hands still gripped the wheel.
When she finally spoke, her words were slow and measured. “I first saw Faith ten years ago on South Virginia in Reno. The worst section of the street. I was driving back from a party. It was maybe two in the morning.”
K.D. paused and closed her eyes, remembering.
“She was walking down the sidewalk, wearing these little white hot-pant shorts with nylons and high-heeled boots. I slowed and pulled over. This girl kept coming down the sidewalk toward my car. She listed, not like a drunk, but worse. Like a drug addict. She came up to the passenger window and shouted at me. Her words were slurred and I couldn’t understand. She shouted again. I realized she was asking if I wanted sex. I hit the button to roll the window down.”
K.D.’s eyes were still closed, tighter now with the memory. “When she saw that I was a woman, she leaned against the car and started sobbing and mumbling about needing money. Her shorts were filthy with dirt and her nylons were run. She was skinny as an eyeliner pencil. I unlocked the door, opened it and told her to get in. She looked at me with suspicion and moved away. So I told her I’d give her money if she got in. She was wary, but helpless with drugs and hunger. She got in.”
K.D. opened her eyes and turned to look at me. “I turned on the inside lights. Up close I could see that she was a child. Fifteen or sixteen years old. Her makeup was thick to try to cover up a black eye and bruises on the side of her head. She shook with withdrawal symptoms.
“I took her home and got her cleaned up,” K.D. continued. “She cried and shook all night. At one point she screamed that I had to take her back to her man who would give her a fix. I had to physically restrain her. In the morning I got my doctor to come to my house. He gave her something and said she’d be okay if I could keep her in one place for a week and get some food into her. He said that’s how long she’d wrestle with the physical craving for drugs.”
K.D. sighed. “That was the hardest week of my life. But I got her calmed down. I learned that she was a runaway from Idaho. She’d had a terrible childhood. The worst kind of abuse. So I told her I was going to take care of her, get her back into school and, if she wanted, teach her the gym business.”
“But she was still a hooker ten years later,” I said. “What happened?”
“After she’d been with me for two weeks, she ran away. I found her three days later, back down in Reno, walking the street. I brought her home again and tried to keep a tighter watch on her, but she ran away again.”
“If you gave her a better opportunity, a chance at a better life, why did she keep going back to the street?”
“I’m not sure. I imagine it was because that was the only world she knew. It was how she had always earned her keep, and more importantly, how she found approval.”
“And how she got her drugs,” I said.
“Yes,” K.D. said, nodding. “It took me longer to find her the second time. I put the word out to streetwalkers, paid them, called their pimps. Eventually, I got a call that Faith was working a different neighborhood. I found her and brought her to my home one more time. This time, I decided that if she was going to be a hooker, at least I could show her how to do it a much better way.”
“That is heartless. You sold a young woman for profit?”
K.D. didn’t respond. She sat there, gritting her teeth.
“What made you do such a thing?”
K.D. stared out the windshield. She glanced over at the sprinklers, then looked across the street where the lake was just visible between the mansions.
I was getting very irritated. “K.D...”
She finally shouted at me, “Because that was the world that I knew best, too!”
THIRTY-NINE
K.D. brought me back to the gym. I transferred to the Orange Flame where Spot waited. I followed her up to her house.
It was a small, dramatic structure that clung to the mountain up above Incline Village. We sat in her living room. It had floor-to-ceiling windows that provided a grand view of the lake. In one corner of the room was a large cobblestone fireplace with a natural gas insert. On the mantle was a picture of a man who was made up to look like Charlie Chaplin. He was mugging for the camera. The resemblance was impressive. I picked it up.
“My old boyfriend,” K.D. said. “Baker Camden.”
“Quite the name,” I said.
“Quite the cutup. I was introduced to him by my father. Baker was a disaster by every measure. Only reason I still have the photo is I thought it was funny. He liked to play dress up. Pretend he was someone famous.”
Evening had come and there was a chill in the air. K.D. touched a thermostat and the gas fireplace grew a blue flame among the ceramic logs. Spot was already lying in front of the fireplace. K.D. walked over to a small bar and poured us each a drink, a beer for me in a tall glass, bourbon on the rocks for her. She sat on the hearth and pet Spot near his wound.
“What happened to your dog?”
“The guy who is trying to kill me shot into my cabin one night. He got Spot instead of me.”
K.D. gasped, her eyes huge. “That is terrible! The poor thing!” She pet Spot tenderly, running a finger up his nose and over his head. A big, long-haired tabby cat came out from under a couch and walked toward them. Spot lifted his head to look. The cat paused, then continued forward and sniffed Spot, nose to nose.
“Animals can always tell who is safe, don’t you think?” K.D. said. “Whether it’s people or other animals.”
I nodded. In the warm evening light, I saw that K.D. was quite pretty, with high cheekbones and green, almond-shaped eyes.
“I was an only child,” she said. “My mother died in a car accident when I was three. My father tried to raise me. But he didn’t know how to be a father, never mind be a decent human being. He wanted to be a Navy fighter jock but didn’t make the cut. He spent his career fixing air conditioning systems on aircraft carriers. I was left with a neighbor lady whenever he shipped out. Dad paid her a few bucks a day, and she spent it on smack. Low-grade, street heroin. I was eleven years old the first time I shot up.” K.D. gripped the inside of her elbow. “I almost died. But I was the strongest-willed kid you ever saw. If it didn’t kill me, I’d try it again.
“Dad would come home and find me strung out. He’d beat me up, tell me I was no better than a street whore. Then he’d leave me again. I hated him more than I can say. Still do.”
“So you became what he detested to spite him.”
“Partly, yes. And partly because I came to hate myself just as much as him.”
“Is he still alive?”
“Yes. The jerk popped a vessel in his brain and ended up in a home in Fresno. He can’t talk, but his brain is still there. I can see it in his eyes.”
“Now you’re a successful businesswoman. Can’t you leave him behind and focus on the rest of your life?”
“No. I’m going to be sticking my success in that bastard’s face as long as he is still drooling on himself. Sometimes I’d like to hit him the way he hit me. I’m strong and physical.” She put her arms up like a karate student and turned on the ball of one foot and the heel of the other. “I could kick him from here into the next life.”
“What about Faith? Why let her go the same route?”
“Her childhood was not unlike mine,” she said. “Never mind the sordid details. All I wanted was to teach her the lessons I’d acquired the hard way. But it seemed hopeless. The girl was stubborn and willful. Hell, I’m beating around the bush. The truth is she was the most impossible little witch you can imagine.”
K.D. stood up, walked over to the windows and looked out at the darkness. She started crying. “I still can’t believe she died.” K.D.’s tears grew until she was sobbing. She pressed her hand to her face and bounced her forehead against the window glass. I waited while she cried.
“You know how life presents you with choices every day,” she said with her back to me. “It seems so simple for most of us, making the right choices. By the age of twenty-one I’d come around and was making choices in my own best interest, accepting that they included working in the sex trade. I steadily upgraded my pimps, then found a madam who specialized in a higher-class clientele.” K.D. turned to face me. “But with Faith, it was the opposite. She made the wrong choices at every opportunity. It was as if everything she did was designed to make her life more difficult.”
K.D. took a long drink, the ice cubes piling up around her upper lip as she drained the last drops of amber from her glass. “It was seeing that incredibly self-destructive behavior that made me start to understand myself.” She shook her head as if still amazed. “There I was in my early thirties, trying to straighten out a broken girl, and I was only beginning to understand that I still hated what I’d been, where I’d come from. I was still broken myself. Maybe I still am. But I’m trying.” K.D. swallowed.
“So I taught her how to present herself. How to talk, how to listen, how to walk. I taught her bedroom tricks, what to do with clients to keep them calling back.” K.D. paced in front of the windows. “Lady K.D.’s finishing school for street whores.” Her voice was hard and derisive. “I knew there should be a better way to keep Faith off the street and away from the pimps and their drugs. I just didn’t know what that way was. So I figured that if she was going to be a whore anyway, I’d teach her how to be a high-class whore.
“Within a few years,” K.D. continued, “Faith was very successful. She had a regular clientele of some of the richest and most powerful men on the West Coast, men who were willing to pay a fee that, frankly, was exorbitant. But these are multi-millionaires, even billionaires, so cost didn’t matter. They would pay anything to have Faith with them for an evening. She was that captivating. The more obscure clients would take Faith out on the town, either here in Tahoe or down in Reno. The famous clients who didn’t want to be recognized would go to their private estates, gated mansio
ns on the lake where only the butler and wait-staff would see them.”
“Faith must have been getting rich.”
“Yes, she was. But she still hated herself, just like I did. I tried to talk her into changing her life. She had more than enough money to quit. I talked to her about self-respect. But she wouldn’t hear it. I think she hated me as well. And I guess I don’t blame her considering I kept her going in the profession. I got her cleaned up, got her off drugs, made her rich, but none of that mattered to her.”
“What makes you think she hated you?”
“It wasn’t anything direct. Just her pride, mostly, in having my ex-husband as a client. She liked to have that subject come up.”
“Who’s your ex?”
“Doesn’t matter anymore. Just one more of those rich clients of hers. I first met him as a john before he became the big guy on the block. It was dreamy, the way he took me on as a personal project, romanced me, treated me to a nice life. We married and had a few good years. I think he even loved me a little. First time I’d ever experienced that. Then I turned thirty and he moved on to younger women.
“It wasn’t until Faith had been with me for years that my ex called me up and wanted a date with her. One of his famous friends had recommended her.”
“That must have been painful,” I said.
K.D. made an exaggerated nod. “And as a personal insult, he offered such a ridiculous sum to have Faith that I thought it was a joke. The next day I discovered he’d deposited half the money in my account. He called back and said it was a down payment.”
“He knew your bank and account number?”
“It wouldn’t make any difference with him whether he did or not. He has people who can find out.”