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Sexile

Page 3

by Lisa Lawrence


  ♦

  The next day I made progress—but only in finding out who Felicity wasn’t. Helena was probably right that I shouldn’t bother Carl with this, at least not yet. Fortunately, I had my own reliable contact in Europol, a girlfriend who declared straight up that Kim’s new lover wasn’t on their agent list. What next? Well, as Kim had so recently reminded me, my father’s a professor. I don’t often go running to Daddy, but he knew the right people over at the London School of Economics and within half a day I had a partial profile of Felicity Eden.

  Scanning the material passed on to me at home. I noted sixteen phone messages from Kim. I took a few minutes out to listen to them all, then deleted them. My friend Steve had already come over at ten in the morning to replace the locks.

  Back to the mystery of Felicity Eden. She fared well, rather too well, at her studies. One recent dark cloud was an allegation of plagiarism over a certain paper, but that went away. According to Daddy’s sources, there were those in the halls of academia still wondering about that one. They were also wondering how Felicity Eden even managed to plagiarize the source at all, since it was apparently an internal economics report written by an analyst for Orpheocon. Her prof had noticed because he did occasional consulting work for the Octopus, as critics like to call the oil conglomerate (I prefer to call it the Forces of Darkness).

  What the hell was going on?

  Time to pay a visit to the address I had for Felicity, according to the information given to the LSE.

  When I say pay a visit to the address, I meant just that. Since most people find the breaking and entering of their house traumatic, I try to be considerate and do it when they’re not at home. I had no idea of her personal schedule, but I imagined that she was at least supposed to be at classes. I took a chance.

  I anticipated a couple of obstacles. The first was that if I’d been followed the other night after Smersh, there was a good chance I’d be followed again today. And I didn’t need any witnesses to what I was about to do. My tails were obviously very good—good enough to make me believe for a couple of days that I was just being paranoid—and I only thought I had a sure bead on one of them this afternoon. I needed to get down to Elephant and Castle, where Felicity’s place was supposed to be (convenient proximity to Kim’s flat, I thought bitterly). The quickest route was to jump on the Tube, take the District Line, and change at Embank ment to the Bakerloo. I wasn’t interested in the quickest route. I dragged my shadow friends on a merry chase over to Southwark.

  The beauty of Southwark Station is that it’s so big and shiny and relatively new. It has these wide concourses where at the right time if anybody wants to tail you they’ll be quite out in the open and exposed. They’re forced to fall back, which is when you duck into some nifty hiding spots (if you’ve planned ahead) and change direction.

  This is how I amuse myself during train delays. Other people daydream, plan an evening meal, listen to their iPod, or play a game on their cell phone. Me, I figure out the best places to lose surveillance. According to Helena, this does not qualify as a “hobby.’

  So far, so good. It didn’t take long to lose my conve nience of shadows.

  Free and clear, I had to meet my second obstacle. Students tend to be poor, and when you’re poor, you usually live in tight spots where there’s bound to be little privacy. I knew from Kim that Felicity lived alone, so I expected to find a sad bedsit on a council estate or a basement rip-off not worth its deposit. There might be older neighbors having a smoke out front and students at home in their own flats, keeping odd hours. So I’d have to work fast scrubbing the lock (yes, that’s pro speak for locksmiths—and burglars). That’s if I didn’t want to draw at tention or take too long, which would mean I’d be a memorable visitor.

  Here’s where it gets surreal. Felicity Eden’s home address turned out to be a doctor’s clinic. No sign of any residential tenant on a higher floor or in a basement. Odder still was the fact that the clinic was shut in the middle of the week. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the office number. No surprise I got an answering machine. All right, I thought, we’ll take a quick look. If we see framed diplomas, well-trodden carpeting, and year-old issues of Ideal Home, we know somebody made a mix-up, likely me.

  Took me thirty seconds. Hard lock. Then I was in, even more confused. No reception area, no examination rooms with any pressure cuffs, no equipment at all. But yeah, you could call it sterile. Not one photo of an occupant, no ashtray, not even a dirty tea towel left in the kitchen. Dishes all neatly stacked in cabinets. I was about to switch on the computer when my phone rang. No ID offered.

  “Hello?’

  A male voice, very smug, enjoying himself: “At first we thought it was your romantic loss that prompted you to dig into Miss Eden’s background, but I think we should give you more credit. You ditched our surveillance.’

  “You picked up my trail quick enough,’ I replied. “My obvious next step was to come here.’

  “True, you couldn’t know we’d anticipate that.’

  Patronizing bugger.

  “Miss Knight, you won’t find anything on that computer. It has an emergency broadband connection and a program that wipes most of its hard drive clean when it shuts down.’

  I sighed. “Cameras watching me right now.’

  “Quite correct.’

  I walked out the door and closed it behind me. A convenience of shadows waiting.

  ♦

  A huddle of them stood with their umbrellas open in the cold drizzle. Four men and two women in the drabbest business clothing imaginable, very tweedy, and this small phalanx would have been comical if they didn’t have me bang to rights for breaking into the house.

  I didn’t know who to address, couldn’t yet match the voice on the phone with a face, so I threw out the question to all. “Are you going to tell me now why you’re harassing my friends and everyone I know?’

  A man two inches shorter than me with receding hair, a weak chin, and eyes of a washed-out gray dabbed the corners of his mouth with a handkerchief. “ ‘Harass’ is rather exaggerating it, don’t you think?’

  He never looked me in the eye, always at my shoes or down the road. There was a teardrop-shaped stain on his paisley tie, and I imagined it was old blood.

  “No, I don’t,’ I answered.

  He made a little irritable grimace at that. I got the sense he wasn’t used to people contradicting him.

  “My name is Desmond Hodd,’ he announced, as if I ought to be impressed, which was odd considering the next thing he was about to tell me. “We’re MI6.’

  Oddly enough, this wasn’t the first time someone had tried to sell me that one. “Of course, you are,’ I drawled. “And I’m with Cirque du Soleil.’

  “You normally have this response to authority?’

  “No, give me a couple of drinks, and I can manage open contempt.’

  “You might wish to rein in the attitude, Miss Knight, seeing as though we’re a potential client.’

  “You’re the government’s cloak-and-dagger team,’ I said, “and you want to hire me as a detective?’

  “That’s right.’

  And so help me, I burst out laughing, long and loud, on the street. The trouble was, he was perfectly serious.

  ♦

  I was invited to sit in Hodd’s limousine. I didn’t know spymasters get limousines. Hodd booted up a computer notebook as he asked, “Have you ever heard of a man named Luis Antunes?’

  “Any reason I should?’

  “Not particularly. He’s building a small reputation in the independent film world—to be more precise, soft-core porn. Pretensions to plot for the large-budget ones, though he doesn’t bother with it for the on-line video download samples.’

  “What’s your interest?’

  “Better to show you,’ said Hodd, and he hit the enter key. Windows Media Player started a full-screen movie, and I got the idea quickly.

  “I’ve seen porn, thanks,’ I snapped. “And if
there are any children or other evils in this, please turn it off. I don’t need those images in my head or—’

  “No, nothing like that,’ he cut in.

  I watched for a full two minutes and couldn’t find anything remarkable or attention-getting. Girl-on-girl action, girl-boy-girl, two guys and a girl, some female wailing that sounded authentic, some obviously fake, many of the women not looking like they enjoyed themselves.

  There was quite a rainbow of black and mixed-race girls. It was clear from the off-camera remarks in a foreign language, too far from the mic to identify, that this probably wasn’t shot in London. That and the gorgeous sunshine spilling in through the windows in the background. I worried for a moment that Hodd was setting me up for the shock of a genuine snuff film, but no, the video rolled on, orgasms abounded, and The End.

  “Sorry, still not clued in,’ I said at last.

  “The movies Antunes puts his name on over here are all aboveboard, with young women—for better or for worse— choosing to do what they do,’ explained Hodd. “These women, the ones you just saw, well… We’ve suspected for some time that many if not all have been forced into prostitution and into having sex on screen. He doesn’t officially import the films—we think he gets them through an underground pirate DVD network.’

  “Unless I’m very wrong, this looks like it wasn’t shot in the UK,’ I said. “And if I’m right, well, yeah, it’s deplorable, but what can you possibly do about it?’

  “Trust me, we’ll drop the whole weight of international law on him if we confirm it.’

  I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I don’t get this at all. Why should MI6 care about a porn merchant? Yes, he’s an evil little shit if your allegations are true, but this has nothing to do with espionage or foreign intelligence.’

  “That’s not your concern.’

  “Everything’s my concern when it comes to my clients.’

  “Not this.’

  “Then find someone else,’ I said, and I opened the door and stepped out of the car.

  “There is no one else,’ replied Hodd, clumsily following me. An umbrella instantly came to the rescue from his entourage. Heaven forbid his wispy comb-over got damp. “Believe it or not, we don’t train operations officers for situations like this one.’

  “So I shouldn’t believe what I see in the movies? The scenes where they show a seductive spy nicking the microfilm as she snogs the enemy?’

  Hodd ignored my sarcasm. “Let us just say you have experience with hypersexualized scenarios. That strip poker nonsense—you did a very neat job of keeping the high and the mighty out of the tabloids. Of course, we’ve kept an eye on your old radical friend Janet Marshall for a long time, but you couldn’t know that—’

  “I’d hardly call Britain’s High Commissioner to South Africa radical.’

  He sneered at that one and pressed on. “We haven’t quite confirmed what the New York authorities say about you. They’re a little confused themselves over the more lurid details. In any case, you handle yourself reasonably well; you think on your feet, though you can make bloody stupid mistakes like the one that cost—’

  “Don’t,’ I said, my voice tight. He was hitting a nerve that I didn’t want touched. I tried to stay calm. “You actually believe that because of what I did in those cases I’ll walk into this porn merchant’s studio and take off my clothes for Queen and country?’

  “No, no,’ he said quickly in an astonished voice. I think he wasn’t lying—maybe the suggestion really hadn’t occurred to him. “We’re not asking you to go undercover as one of his girls. We think he’d see through that. You’re too confident, and too old.’

  “Really?’ I said, folding my arms. This was a milestone Mum had never warned me about. There will come a time in your life, Teresa, when you will be too old to be exploited in pornography. Sorry, darling, but there it is.

  The foot-in-mouth occurred to him on time delay. One, two…There it is: a hard swallow, eyes still looking away, but this time with purpose. Even spymasters know better than to wound a woman’s vanity. “Now listen, I only meant these girls are often nineteen, twenty—the cutoff he has for them is usually twenty-four.’

  “ Uh-huh. So what are you expecting me to do?’

  “We want you to apply for his production crew, as a film editor. Don’t worry, we’ll train you on the latest computer editing systems. That means you’ll see raw footage, which you can hopefully smuggle out to us if you need to, and you’ll be able to move into his inner circle. Get him to trust you, get him to talk. We’ll follow up on what you report to us. You’ve done a bit of modeling work in the past, haven’t you? So one can believe you once held ambitions of being an actress, but you gave that up to work behind the cameras. We’ll doctor up a diploma from one of the film colleges, make it look like you really have put in a year or two at the craft.’

  “How long do I actually have to learn this stuff?’

  “Two weeks.’

  I rolled my eyes and stamped my boot heel into the pavement. Unbelievable. “This is absurd!’ I protested. “You’ve got people for this, worse than this. This is what you professional paranoids do, isn’t it? Sneak into places? Get a short guy who can disguise himself as a coffee table? And you still haven’t explained why you’re involved—if you are who you say you are—and why the police don’t handle this. Then there’s the Serious Organized Crime Agency. They—’

  “We will pay,’ he started loudly, steamrolling over my complaints, “this authorized amount for a minimum of two months’ work, direct deposit of sixty percent on signature.’ He dug through his jacket pockets and yanked out a stapled set of pages folded into thirds, very official-looking. He showed me the contract sum.

  Whoa. That shut me up.

  “We will not discuss with you why our organization is involved,’ said Hodd. “And you’ll be bound by the Official Secrets Act. Naturally, you’ll argue that in your distinguished career as a troublemaker you have sometimes begun investigating one thing and stumbled—and I’m sure that word is accurate—stumbled onto a larger design. We don’t care. Her Majesty’s Government will be your contracted employer this time, and we’re not like your usual clients. We don’t give carte blanche like SW madams or petty gangsters with their own fiefdoms in Bangkok. You see or hear a peculiar detail of interest, you hand it over to us. We take care of it.’

  “I see.’

  “Now, Miss Knight,’ he said with a thin smile, doing his best to appear civil, “can we count on you or not?’

  I found myself glancing from him to the silent others, none of whom had spoken, none of whom had identified themselves. Yet you still felt a group pressure. I knew I shouldn’t care. They could be his bodyguards—or hell, they could be tagging along to pick up his dry cleaning later.

  It was a generous fee. To be honest, it was an outrageous fee. To stop the kind of creeps I enjoyed stopping.

  “Miss Knight?’

  “The answer’s no.’

  “I beg your pardon!’

  I took a couple of steps, preparing to walk away. “You heard me. You can make all the snide comments you like about what I do, and you can even say I’m not a trained professional at this. Which also begs the question why you want me. I occasionally help people—that’s all. But when I do, I try to be thorough about my client before going in— what he or she needs, what’s happened to spark a crisis. You’re deliberately holding back details, and I won’t go into a situation—especially undercover—with blinkers on.’

  “Is that all that’s stopping you? That we can’t tell you everything?’

  “No, I also happen to think you’re full of it. I don’t believe you’re MI6; I don’t know what you are—unless MI6 stands for migraine in six minutes. There’s also the matter of Felicity Eden.’

  “Because she seduced your lover. I see. If it is any consolation, I plan to reprimand her for poor judgment.’

  “Please,’ I scoffed. “If you are who you say you a
re, you don’t tolerate poor judgment. You had her target my partner. I’d be very interested to know why.’

  Hodd didn’t say anything.

  “And then you have the gall to try to hire my services.’

  He was still looking away, checking traffic. “Maybe I was wrong that you make business decisions coolly, dispassionately, and with a level head.’

  “You want a cool dispassionate business decision, you don’t fuck with my personal life,’ I said. “I’m going home now. If your entourage here wants to follow me, I promise not to look behind lampposts.’

  I thought that would be the end of it. I should have known better.

  1

  Ibriefed Helena on how it was, indeed, me who was the target of all the snooping. A week passed in which nothing happened—well, almost nothing. Helena did get me a quick job, the ultimate private detective cliché, really: surveillance on a cheating spouse for a friend of hers. Sitting in a rented car, taking snaps with my digital camera and writing down descriptions of where the husband ate, who he met, I was excruciatingly bored to tears, and I realized how lucky I’d been up to now—few mundane gigs like this one. When the job was done and I’d caught a guy having sex with someone other than his wife, I was a little frustrated myself—intellectually. And I enlisted a couple of Helena’s escorts to look for the kind of porn Desmond Hodd had shown me on the computer notebook. Guys should know where to find that stuff, right? Not as easy as it sounds, not when there’s an avalanche of porn out there in every shape and form and debased degree. I was trying to locate that rich sunshine backdrop. I was trying to find those girls of color who appeared less than thrilled on-screen—con scripted into sex instead of volunteering.

  My male contacts all grimaced at me and rolled their eyes at the idea of this search. It was because of a dirty little secret—that men are cleaner than we like to believe. What I mean is this: There’s obviously a demand for the product out there, but I happen to think there’s a silent majority of males who are really, no lie, turned off by hard-core porn.

  I’ve had guys confess to me that in all sincerity they just don’t get it. And they don’t want it. They don’t see the need for the juvenile coarseness in the Web site titles, the close-ups of genitalia that depersonalize everything, and they wonder why cum shots are obligatory, since if anything, they smack of homoeroticism. The males I know, at least, like real eroticism. Feathers, not the whole chicken. Or, all right, they like seeing the chicken, but… Okay, the meta phor’s breaking down, and maybe I just know a better class of guy. After all, several of them are Helena’s escorts, guys who by definition like women and enjoy pleasing them.

 

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