Cotton

by Paul Heald

  “How did you get my name?”

  “I called the FBI office in Los Angeles yesterday and asked for some help, but they’ve got more urgent things to spend their time on. They gave me your name as someone with expertise in the area.” He could hear her tapping on a keyboard. “There. I’ve just sent you the URL. If you click on the link, you’ll see the victim. Definitely kidnapped, probably murdered. We don’t know if there’s a connection for sure between the crime and the pictures, but I’m intrigued enough to want to track down the lead.”

  His email was already open, so he clicked on the highlighted web address in the new message and saw the intriguing smile of Diana Cavendish. For a perverse moment, he imagined the voice from Atlanta belonging to the disappeared woman. He merged the lovely face and the lovely voice as he considered the attorney’s request. Classes were over, and once grading was done, there was no reason not to divert himself by tracking down an obscure soft-core pornographer.

  Stanley asked the young woman to repeat her name and contact information. He was surprised that she was a Melanie, a name he strongly associated with Scarlett O’Hara’s simpering friend in Gone with the Wind. Despite the Georgia connection, he suspected that the US attorney was nothing like the passive wife of good old Ashley Wilkes. As soon as their conversation was concluded, he searched her out on the Internet, but Melanie Wilkerson generated too many results on a Google image search to be helpful, although a beauty pageant contestant by the same name was worth a lingering glance.

  * * *

  The exams could not grade themselves, so the sociology professor postponed his search for Sweaty Palm Productions until he finished a marathon ten-hour session with his red pen flying, fueled by two pots of strong coffee and almost a dozen doughnuts. He arrived home, buzzing and bloated, unable to sleep and curious as to whether he could find more on the Internet about the shadowy website than had his new acquaintance in Atlanta, so he sat down on the reclining chair in his living room and surfed from his laptop until exhaustion hit around two in the morning.

  He found nothing more than the Atlanta attorney had when he did a general search of the web, just the same traces of a commercial presence and then the hint of a buyout by another company. He went to the California secretary of state’s website and searched for Sweaty Palm, but it had never incorporated or filed a d/b/a registration. A search of online yellow pages and white pages revealed nothing more interesting than a medical clinic in Arizona advertising a cure for the glandular condition that caused sweaty palms. In his academic work on industrial sociology, he had used several fee-paid services to search the corporate structure of the firms that he was studying. A year-long subscription paid for by the college was still in force, so he checked the Dun & Bradstreet and Hoover’s databases for any sign of the company but came up empty.

  He sat in the chair and tapped the frame of his computer with the ring finger of his left hand. The moon was rising and the mountains that seemed to begin at the edge of his backyard were bathed in a soft yellow light. A coyote howled in the distance and it was hard to believe that he was sitting in Los Angeles County and not some rural town in New Mexico. Sleep was finally slipping upon him, but he needed to check two more sources before he went to bed.

  Sweaty Palm had neither incorporated nor registered as a partnership in California, but it might have wanted to protect its intellectual property. He ran a search on the US Patent and Trademark Office website and was not surprised to discover that the company name had been registered as a service mark. The address, however, was the same fictitious listing he had found in the Whois database of Internet domain-name owners. Stanley muttered and scrolled down the complete record. The filing date was from seven years earlier, well before the possible buyout of the firm. At the bottom of the page, he was gratified to see the name of the attorney who had prosecuted the trademark application: Xavier Quintana. No address was given, but the Martindale-Hubbell database of lawyers in the United States quickly revealed two attorneys of that name, one of whom was a trademark specialist in Burbank with an address out by the Bob Hope Airport.

  “Bingo,” he said as he snapped down the top of his computer and laid it on the carpet next to his chair. A quick trip to the attorney’s office the next day might solve the little mystery.

  * * *

  The next morning all calls to Xavier Quintana went directly to the attorney’s voice mail, so Stanley decided to drive to Burbank and track him down in person. He grabbed a breakfast burrito, a cinnamon roll, and a mammoth cup of coffee from a doughnut shop and took US 210 along the mountains toward Pasadena just as the sun was breaking through the late-morning haze. The Los Angeles National Forest beckoned off on his right, traces of snow still whitening the highest elevations, and he wondered whether he should drive up the winding road to Falling Springs and take a little hike on the way back home. When he had arrived in Southern California for the first time, fresh off a plane from Chicago, he held nothing but movie stereotypes in his head: beach and smog, freeways and sprawl. He had no clue about the mountains, but they had spoken to him since his first drive west from the airport. Whenever he saw the rugged terrain, he felt his spirit lift, only to be reminded in the next instant that resisting its allure and staying in the Midwest might have preserved the lives of his wife and daughter.

  I need to find the ugliest place in the world, he had once told a friend after too many beers. Some industrial slag heap of a town in the old East Germany is where I need to go. Someplace with nothing to remind me of beauty.

  He turned on the radio, rolled down the window of the car, and tried to blast the memories from his head. With nothing but golden oldies, country music, and talk radio occupying the bandwidth, it was easy to avoid the tunes that formed the musical soundtrack of his life with Angela. Their special songs were college-radio favorites from alternative bands in the nineties that he couldn’t find on the FM dial even if he tried. He finally settled on a public radio station just beginning to play a long Mahler symphony. Perfect, he thought. Mahler was a kindred spirit. The composer’s wife had been upset by his plan to set a series of depressing poems about childhood death to music and warned him against it. Mahler ignored her and completed his poignant Kindertotenlieder, but shortly afterward their eight-year-old daughter died of scarlet fever and his wife never forgave him. Angela had been similarly unsuccessful in convincing him not to take them to Southern California.

  The radio was not playing the Kindertotenlieder, but rather Mahler’s mammoth Second Symphony, so Stanley stayed on the 210 through Pasadena and looped to the east of the Verdugo Hills that loom more than two thousand feet above Burbank. He exited on La Tuna Canyon Road and spent almost an hour making his way down the back way into the city. He watched the planes landing and taking off from the airport and speculated that escape via Southwest Airlines, rather than Mahler, would be a more effective cure for his mood.

  By the time he arrived at the attorney’s address in a small, two-story professional building, it was well past lunchtime. His stomach was grumbling, but he went to check on the lawyer before eating. Stanley pressed the buzzer underneath the name of Xavier Quintana, Esq., and while he waited for a response, looked for any information on the tenant list that would help him locate the attorney in case he was not in. A business card with an email address tacked to the lobby’s bulletin board would have been nice, but only a neighboring dentist had posted any listing of hours and contact information.

  To the professor’s surprise, a high-pitched male voice, completely devoid of any Spanish accent, responded from a small speaker next to the door.

  “Bilski?”

  “No,” Stanley answered, “my name is Hopkins. I’ve got a trademark matter that I’d like to discuss with you.” There was no immediate reply, but after a moment a loud buzz and a metallic click sounded and the professor headed up the stairs.

  The large man he found standing in the office foyer looked to be about fifty, with a shaved head and wearing a lightw
eight poplin suit that had probably fit him better twenty years earlier. His eyes were intelligent, and he was barking directions over the phone in an authoritative manner. Eventually, he agreed to file the document that was the subject of the conversation, hung up the phone with a dissatisfied shake of his head, and turned his attention to his visitor.

  “What can I do for you?” He reached out and shook Stanley’s hand with a forcefulness that matched his bulk. “You need a trademark registered?”

  “Well,” the professor replied, “I wanted to ask you about a trademark that you registered seven years ago for a video-production company called Sweaty Palm. I want to talk to the owners, but the address listed in the registration is inaccurate.” He could see the attorney’s eyes narrow. “The company may have gone out of business.”

  “Why do you need to contact them?” He sat down behind the reception desk and motioned Stanley toward a chair in the near corner of the room. “I don’t divulge the names and addresses of my clients without a court order.” He offered an obsequious smile. “Nothing personal, Mr. Hopkins, it’s just good business.”

  “Of course, it is.” Although the sociology professor had never used his law degree, he was prepared for Quintana’s predictable posturing. “I’m here on behalf of Milton Barkley,” he dissembled, invoking the name of a sleazy porn-studio mogul with whom he had clashed in the past. “Chimera Productions is interested in purchasing the Sweaty Palm trademark from whoever owns it.” He gave the attorney a disarming smile. “I’m sure there would be some sort of a negotiation fee involved.”

  “Sure,” the attorney replied, all traces of suspicion disappearing from his face, “I’ve done plenty of transfers and licenses before.” He ducked from the small reception area into his office with the evident expectation that his visitor would follow. The space was small, but surprisingly neatly appointed. The desk, chairs, and cabinets looked like they came from the same section of Ikea, maybe one of the slightly pricier corners of the megastore. Quintana sat down in his chair and rolled over to a wooden filing cabinet.

  “I remember doing the registration—it’s a pretty memorable name,” he explained as he plucked out a file and began to flip through it, “but I don’t remember the client.” He continued to talk while he read. “Sometimes I never meet ’em at all. Some clients send me all their info by email—you submit trademarks and specimens to the trademark office in JPEG files now.” He paused and then flipped to the last page. “Looks like that’s what happened here.” He read off a name and address. The information matched the Whois and trademark filing data exactly.

  “That’s what I already have,” sighed Stanley. “It’s an address and phone number of a hotel in Beverly Hills. Sweaty Palm was a porn-production company, as far as I can tell. Maybe the principals didn’t want to be identifiable.”

  The attorney frowned as if he had already collected and spent his license fee in his head. He closed his left eye and squinted at the file. “I wonder how they paid me,” he asked himself after a minute’s pause. “A personal check might have a different address on it.”

  “Any way to find out after seven years?”

  “Maybe.” He nodded optimistically. “I’ll ask my accountant to look.”

  The professor almost handed the lawyer his business card before he realized that it would not mesh with his story. Instead, he wrote down his name and cell number on a sticky note and passed it over the desk. Quintana promised to be back in touch if he heard anything. When the lawyer’s phone suddenly rang, Stanley motioned for him to take the call and headed downstairs in search of a savory plate of loaded meganachos.

  * * *

  Burbank was only a couple of suburbs to the east of the porn epicenter of the United States, in Van Nuys and Canoga Park, so after lunch Stanley decided to visit one of his contacts in the industry and ask whether he had ever heard of Sweaty Palm Productions. During his first trip to Los Angeles, he had met with the heads of several major porn studios to get permission to interview their employees for an academic book he was writing. He had stayed in contact with several who had provided his entrée into the sordid world of adult entertainment.

  After thirty minutes on busy commercial streets, he pulled into the parking lot of the former bowling alley that housed Janus Studio. He sat in his car for a moment and stared at the front door of the studio, resisting maudlin memories of his first trip to the place. With a shake of his head, he sprang out of the car, slammed the door shut, and strode briskly to the blacked-out storefront. Ten minutes later, Herb Matteson invited him into his office and listened carefully to his story.

  Matteson was a rangy fellow, at least six feet two, and possessed an expressive but not handsome face. A thick mop of reddish hair crowned his head, and when he got excited it quivered slightly, like a willowy wall of Jell-O shaking in an earthquake. The walls of his office featured adult-film awards that he had won over the years, and the space also contained a generous sprinkling of DVD and video-box covers featuring various stars in the Janus stable of talent. Stanley had never been a fan of pornographic movies, especially after seeing one being filmed, but he found the promotional materials to be rather eye-catching. Lingerie, swimsuits, and suggestive poses did more for his imagination than the graphic close-ups that seemed more appropriate for an anatomy textbook than a sexy film.

  “The name doesn’t ring a bell,” the director admitted, knitting his woolly brows together in consternation. “If it was a studio making videos, I’d know about them for sure—it’s just not that big a world around here—but I don’t keep track of every kid who’s set up a website with some snaps of his ex-girlfriend.”

  “It’s a bigger operation than that,” Stanley explained. He told the director to wake up his computer and check out Mygirlfriendsbikini.com. It was an extensive website with thousands of pictures of hundreds of different girls, organized into different categories based on poses from “dancers” to “yoga girls” to “tramp-olines.” Matteson clicked through a dozen pictures or so and nodded his head.

  “Yeah, you’re right.” He turned and shrugged his shoulders. “Not too bad. You’ve got to have a decent viewership to justify that many uploads.” He gave Stanley a sleazy little smirk. “I may have to troll through it again for some new talent.”

  “But no clue who might be behind it?”

  “Nah.” He thought for a moment. “What you want is to find out who’s selling content to the site or who the guy running it might sell to. Find some other soft-core sites where at most you might see some cleavage or a bit of camel toe.” He shook his head as if he did not understand humanity. “Some guys feel guilty about watching hard-core stuff, so they’re waxing the dolphin at these swimsuit sites instead.” He flipped down his laptop. “Anyway, find some similar sites and ask them if they know the competition.”

  “But how am I going to find out who owns those sites?” The professor despaired of conducting dozens of fruitless searches for website owners. He doubted any of them told the truth in their Whois disclosures.

  “Not everybody is hiding.” A thoughtful look passed over Matteson’s face. “Some of the muscle magazines post this kind of stuff, but with super juiced-up chicks. Playboy even has a girls-next-door section on its site. I might be able to get you an intro over there.”

  Stanley considered his options and saw that the director had a valid point. Sweaty Palm would be best known within its own corner of the trade. He stood up and thanked Matteson for his help. Despite the director’s lack of moral scruple, Stanley shook his hand and offered him a smile of genuine gratefulness. As he turned and walked out of the room, the director stopped him and flipped his computer back open.

  “Hang on just a second!” He typed and tapped. “I’m just thinking that the site has to have advertisers. You could ask them who they write their checks to.” He stared at the screen for a moment and laughed. “Yup, they’ve got two sponsors: somebody selling stay-hard pills and another selling herbal penis enhancement. It might
be worth trying to track the advertisers down.”

  Stanley nodded, thanked his informant again, and soon was on his way back to Claremont. He eschewed the hiking expedition he had proposed on the drive to Burbank in order to dive more quickly into his research. As much as he loved the mountains, the distraction of work was more therapeutic than quiet contemplation in the wilderness.

  IX.

  GENEVA, 2007

  Six years before Stanley went to California or Melanie moved back to Georgia or James discovered pictures of a dead student on the Internet and before Diana Cavendish had even disappeared, Elisa van der Vaart was sitting in a tavern in Geneva, Switzerland, wondering why her friend Brenda had all the luck with men. The young English woman had just marched into their favorite brewpub with a handsome young American who had been fortunate enough to be studying his map on the sidewalk in front of the train station when Brenda walked by. She gave him directions to the City Hostel Geneva but invited him to first have a beer or two with her friend. A few minutes later, she was showing off her prize to Elisa at their usual Friday afternoon haunt.

  Elisa decided that intrinsic good looks had nothing to do with Brenda’s success. The Dutch girl reckoned that she was somewhat slimmer than the busty English girl, a little less curvy, to be sure, but in the Eurozone an aggressive bit of cleavage was hardly the gold standard—the French girls proved that. She was surely in better physical shape than the Londoner, who was always ready to substitute a trip to the pub for a trip to the gym. Elisa jogged almost every day in the summer and skated whenever she could in the winter. Brenda’s hair was a little darker and fuller, but when Elisa pulled her uninspiring locks back in a tight ponytail, her cheekbones leapt out nicely and her smile revealed a straighter and whiter set of teeth. No. It was Brenda’s personality that attracted guys the way a politician attracts lobbyists. She wasn’t slutty—although she did have more men stay the night than her roommate; she was simply open and friendly and possessed the sort of natural initiative that led her to scoop handsome young Americans off the street with no thought for the consequences.