Chasing the Dime (6 page)

‘I did.'

‘You mean not anymore?'

‘No, not anymore.'

‘What happened? I've been trying to call her and — '

‘I'm not talking about Lilly with you. I don't even know you.'

Her voice had changed. It had taken on a sharper edge. Pierce instinctively knew he could lose her if he didn't play it right.

‘Okay, sorry. I was just asking because I liked her.'

‘You'd been with her?'

‘Yeah. A couple times. She seemed like a nice girl and I was wondering where she went. That's all. She suggested the last time that maybe all three of us could get together next time. Do you think you could get a message to her?'

‘No. She's long gone and whatever happened to her ... just happened. That's all.'

‘What do you mean? What exactly happened?'

‘You know, mister, you're really creeping me out, asking all of these questions. And the thing is, I don't have to talk to you. So why don't you just spend the night with your own molecules.'

She hung up.

Pierce sat there with the phone still to his ear. He was tempted to call back but instinctively knew it would be fruitless attempting to get anything out of Robin. He had spoiled it with the way he had handled it.

He finally hung up and thought about what he had gathered. He looked at the photo of Lilly still on his computer screen. He thought about Robin's cryptic comment about something having happened to her.

‘What happened to you?'

He moved the screen back to the home page and clicked on a tab marked ADVERTISE WITH US. It led to a page with instructions for placing ads on the site. It could be done through the net by submitting a credit card number, ad copy and a digital photograph. But in order to receive the blue ribbon signaling a verified photo on the ad, the advertiser had to submit all the materials in person so that she could be confirmed as the woman in the photograph. The site's brick-and-mortar location was on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. This was apparently what Lilly and Robin had done. The page listed the office's hours as Monday through Saturday, nine to five during the week and ten to three on Saturdays.

Pierce wrote the address and hours down on his notepad. He was about to disconnect from the site when he decided to call up Lilly's page once again. He printed out a color copy of her photo on the DeskJet. He then shut down the computer and disconnected the phone line. Again a voice inside told him he had gone as far with this as he could go. As he should go. It was time to change his phone number and forget about it.

But another voice — a louder voice from the past — told him something else.

‘Lights,' he said.

The office dropped into darkness. Pierce didn't move. He liked the darkness. He always did his best thinking in the dark.

Pierce awoke at dawn, the sun rescuing him from the dream of running from a man whose face he could not see. He had no curtains in the apartment yet and the light streamed through the windows and burned through his eyelids. He crawled out of the sleeping bag, looked at the photo of Lilly he had left on the floor and went into the shower. When he was finished he had to dry off with two T-shirts he'd dug out of one of the clothing boxes. He'd forgotten to buy towels.

He walked over to Main Street to get coffee, a citrus smoothie and the newspaper. He read and drank slowly, almost feeling guilty about it. Most Saturdays he was in the lab by dawn.

When he was finished with the paper it was almost nine. He walked back to the Sands and got into his car, but he didn't go to the lab as usual.

Fifteen minutes before ten o'clock Pierce got to the Hollywood address he had written down for L.A. Darlings. The location was a multi-level office complex that looked as legitimate as a McDonald's. L.A. Darlings was located in Suite 3I0. On the glazed glass door the largest lettering read ENTREPRENEURIAL CONCEPTS UNLIMITED. Beneath this was a listing in smaller letters of ten different websites, including L.A. Darlings, that apparently fell under the Entrepreneurial Concepts umbrella. Pierce could tell by the titling of the site addresses that they were all sexually oriented and part of the Internet's dark universe of adult entertainment.

The door was locked but Pierce was a few minutes early. He decided to use the time by taking a walk and thinking about what he was going to say and how he was going to play this.

‘Here, I'll open it.'

He turned as a woman approached the door with a key. She was about twenty-five and had crazy blonde hair that seemed to point in all directions. She wore cutoff jeans and sandals and a short shirt that exposed her pierced navel. She had looped over her shoulder a purse that looked big enough to hold a pack of cigarettes but not the matches. And she looked as though ten o'clock was definitely too early for her.

‘You're early,' she said.

‘I know,' Pierce said. ‘I came from the Westside and I thought there'd be more traffic.'

He followed her in. There was a waiting area with a raised reception counter in front of a partition that guarded an entrance to a rear hallway. To the right and unguarded was a closed door with the word PRIVATE on it. Pierce watched as the woman walked behind the counter and threw her purse into a drawer.

‘You'll have to wait a couple minutes until I get set up. I'm the only one here today.'

‘Slow on Saturdays?'

‘Most of the time.'

‘Well, who is watching the machines if you're the only one here?'

‘Oh, well, there's always somebody back there. I just meant I'm by myself up front today.'

She slid into a chair behind the counter. The silver ring protruding from her stomach caught Pierce's eye and reminded him of Nicole. She had worked at Amedeo for more than a year before he happened upon her in a coffee shop on Main Street on a Sunday afternoon. She had just come from a workout and was dressed in gray sweatpants and a sports bra, exposing a gold ring piercing her navel. It was like discovering a secret about someone of longtime acquaintance. She had always been a beautifully attractive woman in his eyes but everything changed after that moment in the coffee shop. Nicole became erotic to him and he went after her, wanting to check for hidden tattoos and to know all of her secrets.

Pierce wandered around the confines of the waiting room while the woman behind the counter did whatever it was she had to do to get set up. He heard a computer start booting up and some drawers opening and closing. He noticed on one wall an arrangement of logos of various websites operated through Entrepreneurial Concepts. He saw L.A. Darlings and several others. Most of them were pornography sites, where a $I9.95-a-month subscription bought access to thousands of downloadable photos of your favorite sex acts and fetishes. It was all presented on the wall in complete, unashamed legitimacy. The Pink-Mink. com banner could have been the same as an advertisement for acne ointment.

Next to the wall of banners was the door marked private. Pierce glanced back at the woman behind the counter and saw that she was preoccupied with something on her computer screen. He turned back and tried the doorknob. It was unlocked and he opened the door. It led to an unlit hallway with three sets of double doors spaced twenty feet apart on the left side.

‘Um, excuse me,' the woman said from behind him. ‘You can't go in there.'

Signs hanging on thin chains from the ceiling in front of the doors marked them as studio A, studio B and studio C.

Pierce backed out and closed the door. He returned to the counter. He saw that she was now wearing a pin with her name on it.

‘I thought it was the rest rooms. What is that back there?'

‘Those are the photo studios. We don't have public facilities here. They're down in the building's lobby.'

‘I can wait.'

‘What can I do for you?'

He leaned his elbows on the counter.

‘I've sort of got a problem, Wendy. One of the advertisers with a page on L.A. Darlings dot com has my phone number. Calls that should be going to her are going to me instead. And I think if I were to show up at somebody's hotel room door, there'd be some disappointment involved.'

He smiled but she apparently didn't appreciate his attempt at humor.

‘A misprint?' she said. ‘I can fix that.'

‘It's not exactly a misprint.'

He told his story of getting a new phone number, only to learn that it was the same line on the web page ad for the woman named Lilly.

She was sitting behind the counter. She looked up at him with suspicious eyes.

‘If you just got the number, why don't you just get another?'

‘Because I didn't realize I had this problem and I already had change-of-address cards with the number on it printed and mailed out. It would be very expensive and time-consuming to do that all over again with a new number. I'm sure if you told me how to contact this woman, she'd agree to alter her page. I mean, she's not getting any business off it if all her calls are going to me anyway, right?'

Wendy shook her head like his explanation and reasoning were beyond her.

‘All right, let me see something.'

She turned to the computer and went to the L.A. Darlings site and into the Brunette Escorts list. She clicked on the picture of Lilly and then scrolled down to the phone number.

‘You're saying this is your number, not hers, but it used to be hers.'

‘Exactly.'

‘Then if she changed her number, why wouldn't she change it with us, too?'

‘I don't know. That's why I'm here. Would you have another way of contacting her?'

‘Not that I can give you. Our client information is confidential.'

Pierce nodded. He had expected that.

‘That's fine. But can you see if there is another contact number and then you could call her and tell her about this problem?'

‘What about this cell number?'

‘I tried it. It takes voice mail. I've left three messages for her explaining all of this but she hasn't called back. I don't think she's getting the messages.'

Wendy scrolled up and looked at the photo of Lilly.

‘She's hot,' she said. ‘I bet you're getting a lot of calls.'

‘I've only had the phone a day and it's driving me nuts.'

Wendy pushed her chair back and stood up.

‘I'm going to check something. I'll be right back.'

She went around the partition behind the counter and disappeared into the back hallway, the slapping sound of her sandals receding as she went. Pierce waited a moment and then leaned over the counter and scanned all surfaces. His guess was that Wendy was not the only one who worked at the counter. It was probably a job shared by two or three minimum-wage employees. Employees who might need help remembering passwords to the system.