by K. K. Beck
Brad weighed in with his legal opinion. “It’s probably okay, honey.”
“How much money did Ed owe you?” said Lukowski.
She shrugged. “Eight-fifty.”
“Did he usually stiff the girls?”
“Ed? No. It’s just that with the credit card stuff we had to wait a day or two. But then he disappeared. When we heard what happened to him, we figured someone else owed it to us. I mean someone has to owe it to us, right? His boss or whatever. I mean, does the credit card company keep the money?”
“His boss?”
Brad cleared his throat. “Yeah. You can’t tell me that guy at the station didn’t know what was going on. He must have been skimming off something. For rent.”
“We have no evidence that the people at the radio station knew anything about this,” said Lukowski. “But we’d like to know just how Mr. Costello’s operation worked.”
Jodie shrugged. “How do you think it worked? Ed answered the phone. Beeped us. Kept a percentage. We kept all the tips. Ed was a smooth guy on the phone. Made everything sound, you know, classy.” She wrinkled her nose. “Not like some of the sleazebags in this business.”
“How did he find you?”
“Oh, we found him,” she said. “There’s a bunch of us used to work for this old bitch up on Queen Anne Hill. She got greedy, so one of us asked Ed if he’d handle the business side of things.”
“Who recruited Ed?”
“Her name’s Lindsey. She knew him ’cause he used to put together parties for his clients at some radio station.”
Lukowski nodded. “So did Ed like to party, too?”
“Ed? No way. He was too pussy-whipped. That spend-spend-spend wife of his had him by the throat. Ed was strictly a salesman. He thought up that dorky baseball name. I thought it was lame, but he said the customers would feel more comfortable if it sounded kind of all-American, you know.”
Lukowski turned to Brad. “Did you try to collect from Ed at some point? Maybe go down to the radio station and confront him?”
Brad held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, no way!”
“Mind telling me where you were at one o’clock last Thursday morning?”
“I was working.” Brad named a rowdy Pioneer Square club where he was employed as a bouncer. He gave a big dumb grin. “I got, like witnesses and everything.”
“So what are you girls going to do now that Ed’s out of the picture?” said Lukowski, turning to Jodie.
“I don’t know. I’m thinking of going back to school. Maybe become a dental hygienist,” Jodie added without enthusiasm.
Lukowski had a hard time imagining her poring over plaster casts of teeth and memorizing facts about gum disease. “Yeah. Okay,” he said skeptically. “It’s probably a lot less dangerous.”
Why was he even bothering? As far as Lukowski was concerned, smart, sensible hookers existed only in the movies. If he needed any more proof that Jodie had poor judgment, he had only to look at the oafish Brad.
“Dangerous?” Jodie rolled her big brown eyes and gave him a look that said, “I know how to handle myself.”
“Involvement in this kind of activity may be what got Ed Costello killed,” said Lukowski.
She shrugged and said, “Whatever.”
“Did Ed have any enemies that you know of?”
“Ed? No. He was nice to everyone. It’s too bad about what happened to him.”
“Yeah it is. Listen, I want the names of the other girls. And the woman on Queen Anne you used to work for.”
Jodie had a wary look in her dark eyes. “I’m not sure I can remember.”
“Don’t give me a hard time,” Lukowski said in a slightly louder voice. “Someone in your business can’t afford to mess with me, okay?”
“Okay. But you won’t tell anyone I gave you their names and numbers, will you?” She went over to the phone in the kitchen and picked up paper and pen. While she was writing down names and numbers Brad said, “Think Ed’s wife has Jodie’s money?”
“I think you’d better not try to shake down anyone else for a debt that’s the result of criminal activity,” said Lukowski. “Especially when the guy you think owes it has been shot to death. You might just get yourself messed up in something you can’t muscle your way out of.”
Brad mulled over this advice. “Bummer.”
“Gee, Brad,” Lukowski said sarcastically. “Maybe you’ll just have to live with the thought that a couple of guys screwed your girlfriend for free.”
CHAPTER TEN
After a series of harassing phone calls to the police, implying that business had ground to a screeching halt and the station was losing a huge amount of business because the police had all of Ed’s papers, Franklin finally got them to release the box.
Before sharing it with Alice, he decided to go through it himself. Locking himself in his office and asking his secretary to hold all calls, he began his search. It didn’t seem very promising. There was nothing that looked remotely like a legitimate buyer.
He dismissed the leads file, shuddering for a moment at the Asian Dolls catalog. That would have been a humiliating addition to the KLEG client roster! Ads for diminutive, obedient wives. Or maybe Ed was using this to recruit these poor women for his stable.
Franklin began phoning the numbers he found jotted down on Post-it notes. He reached a chiropractor’s clinic, a few advertising agencies, and a golf course. He told all the receptionists that he had misdialed and hung up. When he found a number with “Gary” written on it, he dialed and actually got a real person. “Hello,” said Franklin, “I’m calling on behalf of the late Ed Costello.”
“Never heard of him,” Gary answered in a terrified voice, slamming down the phone. Franklin thought he might be a Home Run Escort Service customer who had read about Ed’s murder and was lying low. This wasn’t going to be easy. With a sigh, he decided he’d been crazy to think he could track down Ed’s mystery buyer. Anyway, if the buyer was serious, he would contact Franklin himself, wouldn’t he? But what if he called the station and talked to Caroline?
Ed had said on the voice-mail message that the prospective buyer was someone who’d once worked with him in radio. Seeing as Ed had worked at every station on the dial in his long, sagging career in radio sales, the possibilities were practically endless.
Franklin stirred around in the box and came up with one more message. This one said “Chip,” and the name had dollar bills doodled next to it. This was promising.
Chip had a machine, which announced in deadpan tones: “If you are interested in educational tapes exposing the U.S. government’s complicity in a conspiracy going back to a secret order of medieval Knights Templar on a small Mediterranean island, press one now. If you love freedom, are willing to lay down your life for the right to resist the forces of one-world government, and are interested in rigorous military training in a remote setting to prepare for the day of reckoning, press two now. If you want to learn how Seattle public schools are brainwashing our youth, making them into zombies in the service of world government and dupes in an international campaign against the Anglo-Saxon race, press three now. If you are interested in one of our convenient and economical Armageddon survival kits, press four now. If you have a message for Chip, press five.”
Franklin was tempted to leave a message for Chip offering, as a public service, to buy him a lobotomy. Instead he hung up in disgust.
Those doodled dollar signs no doubt meant that the services Chip wanted to buy from Ed’s escorts would cost a lot extra. Perhaps he’d requested the statuesque and Aryan-looking Dagmar doing something mean-spirited in a Waffen-SS uniform accessorized with heels and a whip.
Making these calls was ridiculous and beneath his dignity. Franklin suddenly realized he’d have to be out of his mind to think that a loser like Ed Costello could have come up with a legitimate buyer for KLEG. Ed was a complete scammer, and Franklin was ashamed to think he’d bought into one of Ed’s cheap come-ons on the b
asis of that posthumous voice-mail message.
With a decisive air, Franklin threw all the Post-it notes back into the box and carried it out to his secretary. “Would you please seal this up and send it by courier over to KLEG?” he said. When he saw Winston Smith, another of the firm’s attorneys, wandering into the reception area, he added in a loud voice, “Be sure to bill it to my personal account.” Winston was the office snake, always looking for something to use against his partners.
“Still screwing around with the little radio station that time forgot, huh?” Winston said, with a smirk that went beautifully with his heavily starched, striped Brooks Brothers shirt and pale yellow suspenders. “Haven’t you unloaded that yet?”
“I’m working on it,” muttered Franklin, feigning a deeper interest in his handful of phone messages than he actually felt.
“Hope that albatross isn’t interfering with your practice of law,” said Winston in less than sympathetic tones.
Franklin ignored him and scurried back into his own office in an agitated state. One of the messages was from someone named Chip. His number looked like the one Franklin had just called, only to get that fruitcake voice-mail menu.
Great! First ill-mannered prostitutes show up at the office. Thank God Winston had been off playing squash during that little scene! Now Franklin supposed he’d have to prepare for Führer Chip with an assault rifle. He tore the message into little pieces and threw it in the wastebasket.
* * *
Alice spent a soul-shattering morning calling on businesses that had once advertised on KLEG. Vinyl Value Mart was a shop in the University District specializing in used LPs. The owner, a portly aging hippie with a moth-eaten-looking beard, said he’d love to be back on the air. “But it’s not a good time right now,” he said sadly. “My old lady needs an operation, and the house needs a new roof. Seems like everything falls apart at once.”
At Barb ’n’ Betsy’s Beans, a gourmet coffee-bean shop in trendy Madison Park, a couple of blond women who looked like overaged sorority girls explained that the advertising budget was pinched because business just wasn’t very good lately. The ladies wore matching pink-and-white striped aprons with “Barb” and “Betsy” embroidered on their chests and a lot of diamond jewelry. “Our husbands told us that this place is getting to be more than just a convenient tax write-off thing,” said Barb fretfully.
Betsy piped up in a hurt voice, “Starbucks has done so well. I don’t get it.”
“Maybe advertising would help,” suggested Alice.
“For now I think we’ll just stick to the Junior League newsletter,” said Barb nervously.
In a slightly defensive tone, Betsy added, “We’re thinking of bringing in a line of really lovely dried flower arrangements. We met this neat gal who makes them at a women’s entrepreneurs fair. They’re very unique.”
“When should I get back to you?” asked Alice, sure that by the time she did, the husbands would have pulled the plug on this marginal enterprise.
Her third stop was at Flexomorph, a company selling adjustable beds from a 1-800 number. They were located in grim warehouse offices in an industrial park south of the airport near the county line. Here Alice’s sales call was aborted by a frowning receptionist who pointed silently to a sign on her desk: Salespeople May Call on Thursdays between 1:00 and 2:00 P.M. Apparently, around here, flexibility applied only to the beds themselves.
With reactions like this from established customers, Alice wondered how she could ever make cold calls on potential new clients. God, she thought to herself as she drove the twenty miles back to the station from Flexomorph, why didn’t I listen to Mom and get a teaching certificate years ago? I could have had a steady job, summers off with Zack, and a retirement plan.
Remembering Franklin Payne’s suggestion that she listen to competing AM radio stations, Alice fiddled with the car radio until she heard a nasal voice saying, “Yeah, I guess everyone here in the Northwest has to struggle with slugs. Let’s go to the phones. Our guest today is the Happy Gardener, Ivan Dobbins.”
“This is Chip,” said the caller. “I’d like to say that we should all develop horticultural skills against the time when our food supply will be cut off by occupying forces.”
“Well,” the gardening expert said tentatively, “vegetable gardening can stretch your food budget.”
“I’m talking about Armageddon here,” said Chip. “If things keep going the way they are, I fully expect massive shortages and marauding bands of criminals stealing food from those with the foresight to plan ahead. We’ve got to be prepared to defend the perimeters of our crop-producing areas with weapons. No plowshares without swords. We all have a right to bear arms. Defend your crops, America. You know—”
The caller was cut off. “Interesting point of view,” said the host sarcastically. “Seems like that’s how Mr. McGregor felt about Peter Rabbit sniffing around his garden. Marge from Tacoma, you’re on the air.”
* * *
After interviewing Dagmar a.k.a. Lindsey, Amanda a.k.a. Trisha, Dominique a.k.a. Kim, and Candy, whose real name was Candy, Lukowski was discouraged. The women all gave him the same basic story he had heard from Carmen a.k.a. Jodie: Ed Costello had done a competent job of lining them up with out-of-town businessmen, straying husbands reluctant to cruise Aurora Avenue, yuppie scumbags who didn’t want the hassle of pretending to be interested in their sexual partners’ personality traits or emotional needs, and various loners who were too ashamed to reveal their specialized sexual tastes to women they might have to face later in a social situation.
Ed had run ads in the Yellow Pages and newspapers, answered the phone, reassured the customers, quoted rates accurately, sent the girls out on dates to hotel and motel rooms, bachelor parties and private homes.
As far as these women knew, no one had ever bothered Ed, and Ed hadn’t bothered anyone. They couldn’t recall any customer who felt aggrieved for any reason other than his own inability to get it up, usually due to too much booze.
As for the woman on Queen Anne Hill who had run the Sleek and Sassy Escort Agency, where the girls had previously worked, she had apparently retired and moved to a luxury mobile home near Palm Springs with her companion of many years, a cocktail waitress and former semiprofessional golfer, and their three miniature schnauzers, Larry, Moe and Curly.
Was there someone who felt that Ed Costello had lured a young woman into prostitution? A parent, sibling or lover? The girls all scoffed at that idea. Ed wasn’t a pimp, just a business manager. He never recruited new girls. And their own families, they all maintained, had no idea what they did and wouldn’t care if they did.
Lukowski reminded himself that hookers were liars by definition. Their whole way of life was based on the one big lie guys either were dumb enough to believe or were willing to overlook in a commercial transaction, which was of course that the girls enjoyed their work. But their stories seemed to ring true.
His colleagues in vice had never had dealings with Ed Costello, but said they’d ask around. They were thinking of launching another one of their halfhearted undercover operations aimed at call-out sex services, and maybe something would turn up then. Meanwhile, they were struggling along, trying to keep street prostitution and its accompanying drugs, disease and violence contained.
Lukowski’s partner, MacNab, had ascertained that Mrs. Costello had no apparent motive to have her husband removed from the picture. His term life insurance policy was skimpy—about enough to bury him in style. He’d cashed in a hefty whole life policy a few years back when he was in financial straits. KLEG didn’t provide its employees with life insurance. As a line of credit, Ed Costello was clearly more valuable alive than dead, at least as long as he kept answering his private line down at the radio station.
According to Mrs. Costello’s confidantes—her hairdresser, personal trainer, professional shopper, nail technician, tennis coach and masseuse—she never complained about her husband or intimated there was anyone else in he
r life. Her tennis bracelet alibi worked out just fine. If she’d eliminated her husband, it wasn’t for any easily apparent motive, and she would have had to hire the job out.
Lukowski began to think that he’d have to investigate other aspects of Ed’s life more thoroughly. This was a daunting task, considering he was working about five other active cases at the moment and had two more coming to trial. He supposed he’d better ask more questions down at that creepy little radio station. Beginning, he decided, with the elusive Teresa.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Alice got back to KLEG, Judy said in a menacing way, “Out trying to sell, huh? Any luck?” Alice just shrugged, and Judy handed her a phone message. “This person says they want to advertise. A big schedule. Try not to discourage them.”
Over at her desk Alice discovered a large box. It seemed to be the box of papers Franklin had talked about. Pushing it aside, she eagerly phoned the travel agency that had left her a message.
A pleasant-sounding young man said he was considering a saturation schedule promoting a classical music cruise. Off-season Seattle Symphony performers and members of the Seattle Opera Chorus would be on board to provide chamber music and vocal concerts. Eagerly, Alice wrote down the details.
“So tell me something about your audience,” said the young man.
“Well,” she began, “of course, they love classical music. And they’re very loyal. A testimonial from one of our personalities goes a long way.”
“Are they real old?”
“I think you’ll find we have a stable, mature audience,” she said nervously.
“Good. These cruises go over big with old people. In fact, we always bring a couple of coffins, just in case. How soon can we get on the air?”
“The sooner the better, I guess,” said Alice. Presumably he wanted to reach customers before they dropped dead. “I can come over with a contract this afternoon. If you hang on for a minute, I’ll tell you how much the kind of schedule you’ve described will cost.”