Hints of Heloise (14 page)

Heloise wasn't sure that was true, but Sophie probably knew more about diamonds than she did. Although Sophie's family wasn't rich, she had grown up in New York City, in proximity to people with great fortunes. Still, Heloise understood how Sophie felt. Her beauty, her sexual allure, was a commodity, yet she was prohibited to trade on it. To be sure, Sophie could “make” more by marrying a millionaire than she would working for Heloise for a few years, but she would be on call 24/7. Why not work eight to ten hours a week and earn thousands?

When Heloise hired Sophie, she gave her the talk she gave all the girls: No drugs, they're illegal. Bondage had to be preap-proved; don't let just anyone tie you up. And it was better to use condoms, always, for everything. Yes, Heloise asked her clients to submit blood tests, but they could be up to six months old. (Most men who went to prostitutes didn't mind taking regular blood tests, she had found. She just wished she could get a piece of
that
action, own a lab. The fees they charged were ridiculous.) But there were men who would pay extra for not wearing a condom. Technically, Heloise forbade this, but it was ultimately between the girls and the clients, just like tipping. And, as with tipping, she couldn't prevent it or regulate it. She recommended reporting cash income, or at least some of it. She recommended using condoms and avoiding drugs. What the girls did, however, was between them and their consciences.

Some people would call what Heloise did turning a blind eye. But she wasn't blind. She knew. She
knew.
What she had given Sophie was a winking eye— go ahead, have unprotected sex for the extra bucks! What had it added up to, in the end? A pair of beautiful shoes, a dress, a sofa? Not enough for a modest car, even. And certainly not enough to buy Trizivir every month, at seventeen hundred bucks a month, for the rest of her life, which would probably be at once too short and too long.

Leo was right: There was nothing to keep Sophie from working some kind of job, technically. Except for her raging self-pity. She sat in the little apartment she rented in North Baltimore, in one of the older, shabby-chic buildings along University Parkway. It was the same building that housed the One World Café, not that Sophie cared about what she put into her body anymore. She ate the most astonishing array of junk, although she remained thin, too thin. She was still beautiful, but it was more ethereal now. The juicy promise that had attracted everyone to her was gone.

All of Sophie's regular clients were gone, too, expunged from Heloise's rolls. She had been straightforward, notifying each that he'd been with a girl infected with HIV. She urged all of them to get tested. Of the ten men who had been with Sophie in the three months before her diagnosis, seven railed at Heloise, said she was running a slipshod business and that they would take her for everything she was worth if they found out they were infected. Three accepted the news quietly.

Heloise was pretty sure that the man who had infected Sophie was one of the first group, although she could never decide which one it was. Deny, deny, deny. That's the way it goes. To be safe, she felt she had to let them all go, which she could ill afford. Ten regulars, gone from the rolls. After Sophie, new girls were told that failing to practice safe sex was grounds for firing. Barn door, meet the gone horse.

“I'll visit her soon,” Heloise promises Leo. “See what she wants to do.”

“I talked to her not long ago,” he says.

“You did? I would prefer you not talk to the employees directly.”

“She called me. Said it was a question about her W-2, but she also wanted to know if she qualified for workers' compensation. I told her that was only for injuries and liabilities that were part of a job, not for long-term illnesses, no matter how grave. I'm not sure even a hospital worker could get coverage for HIV— that is, unless the worker could prove some sort of negligence on the employer's part. But, of course, it has no bearing here.”

Leo's face is bland, so bland. He doesn't blink. Then again, he never blinks.
This is trouble,
Heloise thinks. She's just not sure what brand of trouble it is.

The Most Dangerous Thing
I'd Know You Anywhere
The Girl in the Green Raincoat
Life Sentences
Hardly Knew Her
Another Thing to Fall
What the Dead Know
No Good Deeds
To the Power of Three
By a Spider's Thread
Every Secret Thing
The Last Place
In a Strange City
The Sugar House
In Big Trouble
Butchers Hill
Charm City
Baltimore Blues

L
AURA
L
IPPMAN
has published eighteen books, which have been awarded every major American award for the mystery novel, including the Edgar, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Anthony, the Nero Wolfe Award, the Gumshoe, the Barry, the Macavity, the Strand Magazine Critics Award, and the Romantic Times Award for Best PI Novel. She has also won the Maryland Author Award and the Baltimore Mayor's Award for Literary Excellence. In 2007 she received the Quill Award for Mystery/Thriller for her
New York Times
bestseller
What the Dead Know
. That book was also nominated for Britain's prestigious CWA Gold Dagger.

In 2011, Laura had four books on the
New York Times
bestseller lists—
The Most Dangerous Thing
in hardcover,
I'd Know You Anywhere
and
The Girl in the Green Raincoat
on the trade paperback list, and
Baltimore Blues
on the e-book list. Since 2007, when she published her breakthrough novel
What the Dead Know
, all her novels have been
New York Times
bestsellers. Her books have also been on the
Wall Street Journal
,
Washington Post
, and
Publishers Weekly
bestseller lists as well as being
New York Times
Notable Books of the Year.
I'd Know You Anywhere
was one of Stephen King's Best Books of the Year in
Entertainment Weekly
.
The Most Dangerous Thing
was chosen as one of the best crime novels of 2011 by
Publishers Weekly
, Amazon .com, and the Fort Lauderdale
Sun-Sentinel
. In the annual poll conducted by Baltimore's
City Paper
, she has twice been chosen by the readers as their favorite Baltimore writer.

Every Secret Thing
has been optioned for film by the actress Frances McDormand. The Tess Monaghan series has been optioned for television by Bill Haber of Ostar; Jay Cocks has written the pilot. Laura's books have sold to England, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Holland, Portugal, Sweden, Spain, Russia, Croatia, Taiwan, China, Poland, Norway, Brazil, Czech Republic, Korea, Turkey, Thailand, Denmark, Romania, and Indonesia.

Laura is a former journalist and worked at the
Baltimore Sun
as a features writer and reporter for twelve years. She has been featured on
CBS News Sunday Morning
in a piece on her dual role as journalist and novelist and was on the CBS
Early Show
to discuss her books in 2005, 2006, and 2007. She was profiled in the
New York Times
on August 21, 2004, in a long piece by Mel Gussow and profiled again in the
New York Times
on July 28, 2005, in a piece on the subject of young girls' friendships, which she explored in
The Power of Three
. She has most recently been on the
Late Late Show
with Craig Ferguson three times. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her family.