In The Falling Light (25 page)

It’s important I remind you that limo
drivers are working class guys. Being around the glitz all the time
can have a strange effect on people, and sometimes drivers forgot
who they were, started believing it was their lifestyle too. Those
are the guys who end up broke, unemployed or worse. I never forgot
that this was a job, I was here to get paid, and I was only a prop
in their luxury life. Careful with the money, that was my
philosophy.

About the money. Probably your idea of good
money and mine are different, and I don’t want to give you the
impression I was carting home suitcases full of cash every night.
Working class, remember? But even in my late twenties I was pulling
in better than what a pair of thirty-year, union auto workers put
together could earn, and all of it tax free. Plus I rarely got my
hands dirty. I drove
all the time
, and I learned to love
those hundred dollar bills I was seeing on top of the basic tip, on
top of the run percentage and the by-request percentage. I learned
to cultivate whales.

That’s where the real payoff was, the
steady, repeat high-rollers. People who owned their own businesses
and wanted to impress clients. The rich elite who wanted to show
off. B and C-list celebrities who acted like A-listers. Foreign
tourists. You’ve heard people say,
“They didn’t get rich by
giving it to people like you.”
I say bullshit. These were the
kind of people with no real concept of how much they had, tossing
it around freely because there was always more where that came
from. I had a monthly, two-night run to Carmel and Pebble Beach
with one old bag who inherited an airline. She liked vodka with
cranberry and paying too much for jewelry and clothes she wouldn’t
wear. She also didn’t like to deal with the “little people” (that’s
actually how she worded it) and would start the run by handing me
four-hundred dollars so I could take care of all the tipping, and
she wouldn’t have to be bothered with it. I’d break it into tens
and fives and take care of everyone from bellhops to doormen to
bartenders, even the kid in the hotel garage who I’d pay to wash
the car and fill the ice bucket. Of course one of those hundreds
went right in my pocket. The best part? When the four-hundred was
gone, I’d tell her and she’d hand over another four hundred. No
questions asked, no need for accounting. And the runs were always
by-request, with sixteen hours of executive protection contract per
day. Sweet, sweet runs. I only had to do “executive protecting” one
time, when she got really drunk and nasty with another patron in
the hotel lounge, a guy who looked like he was getting ready to
smack the shit out of her, old lady or not.

“Go take care of him,” she slurred at
me.

I walked over to the guy (who stood up and
clenched his fists), smiled, and peeled off a hundred-dollar bill.
“I’m really sorry my client is such an asshole,” I said, and
shrugged. “What can you do?” Then I offered to buy a round for the
table.

He smiled back and shook my hand. Conflict
resolved. When I got back to her I said, “I straightened him out,
told him who you were, said I’d break his head if he said anything
else.”

The bartender winked at me, then poured her
four fingers of Grey Goose to shut her down. She was snoring in her
room fifteen minutes later, and the bartender earned himself an
extra twenty for that. In the morning she gave me five-hundred
dollars for being “her hero.”

By far my heaviest whale was Big Al, owner
of a small oil company in central California. Because of him I made
a fortune. And because of him I surrendered my soul to eternal
damnation. Here’s where we talk about
real
money, and sex,
and murder. And since you might be suspicious, no, I didn’t procure
young girls for him to sexually brutalize and dispose of in some
horrific manner.

Big Al was a monthly, by-request client who
lived in Sacramento. Like clockwork, his assistant would call me
and set up an overnight to Lake Tahoe for Al and a couple of
business associates, with the executive protection option. The
first time we met, he decided he didn’t care for my real name but
announced that I looked like a “Rocco,” so that’s what he called
me. Not a problem. Give them what they want. His business
associates and friends started calling me Rocco too, and after only
a single Tahoe run, so did the pit bosses.

“Good evening, Mr. (we’ll leave his name
out.) Good evening, Rocco.”

Those guys don’t forget a thing. And they
treated Big Al (and his buddies, and consequently me) like royalty.
He’d hand the pit boss fifty grand to put on his account, and draw
from it all night. If it ran out, they’d put him on a tab without a
word. The bosses ensured he and his guests got first class service,
never had to call for a drink, always had a fresh pack of smokes.
No one ever gave me a hassle about the bulge under my left armpit
(my carry permit was for California, not Nevada,) and they let me
sit at the table even though I wasn’t playing. It was the best
place to be, because when Al was winning, he’d slide green,
twenty-five dollar chips towards me to put towards the tip fund. Of
course that was just extra. I never came away from a Big Al run
without a grand, plus the thirty-five percent, plus the chips. If
he was
really
hitting, those sliding chips turned into black
hundreds. Regardless of the color, I’d say thank you and tuck them
away.

Of course the chips slid a lot less
frequently when he wasn’t hitting. Big Al didn’t like to play
blackjack. He liked to
win
at blackjack, and if he was
losing, he turned into a monstrous prick. It didn’t bother me, and
it didn’t bother the pit bosses. We were in the service industry,
and the smile you got was the same, rain or shine. Win, lose, fall
off his chair with a stroke…we were there to get paid.

On my third run with him, he steps away from
the table to stretch and I step away with him.

“Rocco, we wanna get laid.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I said.

Between you and me, I wasn’t sure how I was
going to deliver on that casually given promise, but I figured if
you couldn’t find a hooker in a Tahoe casino, you weren’t really
looking. I’ve learned that the best place to find anything in a
hotel, especially things people won’t talk about, is from the bell
captain.

I gave him a twenty-dollar handshake, with
more ready just in case. “I have clients looking for a little
companionship.” I probably didn’t come across as smooth as it
sounds. I’d never done this before (though once I did stop in
Chinatown so a hooker could climb in and blow a group of college
freshmen out for a night on the town. I told them I needed a fifty
first, and then pulled over at the first skank I saw.)

The bell captain reached into his little
podium and pulled out a photocopied map, handing it over like it
was a tourist brochure. No shit. I thanked him and examined the
map. It had the route from Tahoe to Carson City highlighted, with
half a dozen smaller side roads also marked, each ending in a
circle with the name of a cathouse written next to it. That was
when I first learned prostitution was legal in Carson City. Of
course my clients would never be permitted to learn that I had just
discovered this amazing tidbit of information. It paid much better
to be that smooth, “Rocco will make it happen” kind of character
they expected me to be.

“We’re in business,” I said when I went back
to the table. He collected his buddies and we were off, driving out
of the mountains, me following the map in the front seat where they
couldn’t see it.

“Rocco, where we going?” Al shouted from the
back.

“To get you guys laid!” I shouted back. They
roared their approval and started giggling like junior high boys.
It was just the line Al wanted his friends to hear, and it earned
me an extra hundred on the spot.

I chose the “Double D Pleasure Ranch”
because it was close to Tahoe, and I liked its name better than the
“Velvet Pussycat” and the “Ride ‘em Cowgirl.” I’d never been to a
cathouse, had no idea what to expect, and was immensely let down
when I saw it was a cluster of connected double-wides surrounded by
chain link, under a flashing neon sign showing a voluptuous woman
with neon pasties that blinked from stars to nipples every second.
Classy. Ours was the only car in the gravel lot. Of course it was
close to two in the morning, so not very surprising.

Inside, however, it was just like I’d
imagined it would be. There was a main greeting room with mirrored
walls, naked gold statuary, red carpet and red, crushed velvet
couches. Vera, the madam – I guessed they were called that – was a
full-figured, older gal with pale skin, platinum blonde hair and a
leopard print top, likely someone who had earned her position here
after years on her back. She gave us a warm greeting and called out
the girls.

They came out of a doorway and lined up so
Al and his buddies could choose their favorite flavor. I heard them
quietly coming to arrangements for what the guys wanted and what it
would cost, and then they all disappeared. Before my clients left,
they each handed me a fat money clip, Al’s the fattest of all. It
must have been close to forty grand in total, and I told them they
were smart. It wouldn’t do to fall asleep in a room with a whore
while carrying that kind of cash. You’d wake up broke, and she’d be
long gone. It was safe with me. I never screwed a client, and I
certainly never stole from one.

While they were in back, I sat in the lounge
and chatted with a pair of girls who hadn’t been selected, one dark
haired and one light, neither more than eighteen. It was friendly
conversation, I didn’t ask judgmental questions and they didn’t try
to sell themselves to me. We just talked like real people. It was
nice.

At one point Big Al showed up in the
doorway, bare-assed with half a hard-on. “Rocco, you want a spin
with them?” He pointed to the girls. “I’ll spring for both, my
man.”

The girls raised their eyebrows.

“Thanks anyway, Al,” I said, “but I’m
working.”

He shrugged and disappeared again.

About now you’re ready to call bullshit,
right? I’m in a cathouse in the middle of the night, and someone is
offering to pick up the tab so I can screw two eighteen-year-old
hard bodies at the same time, and I say no? I know, I know, but
that’s how it happened. I was working, I was there to get paid, not
laid, and now I’m carrying all their money and an unlicensed
firearm. Better to stay right where I was and jerk off later.

Two hours go by, and I’m beyond sleepy, even
though the girls have been bringing me coffee. I told them they
should just go to bed, but they said they’d keep me company. Out of
another doorway comes this guy who’s not smiling, and my brain says
muscle.
I even got up from the couch, suddenly not so sleepy
anymore. He’s bigger than me, wearing a black turtleneck, a real
goombah type, and all I can think is,
What did those assholes
do? I’m just working, man! I’m not their babysitter!

He asks me to step inside with him and I go,
but I unbutton my jacket. Then he shows me into a well-lit business
office, and there sits this young woman with glasses in front of a
computer screen with a green spreadsheet on it.

“Can I have your business card?”

I give it to her, ready to tell her that the
limo service – and especially its driver - can’t be held liable for
any damage or harm these guys might have caused. Instead she files
the card in a Rolodex, taps out some numbers on an adding machine
while she’s looking at the screen, opens a drawer and starts
counting out cash. Then she hands the cash to me. It’s a little
over a grand.

This is the part where I should say
something smooth, but I just stare at the cash with this dumb look
on my face. She laughs. “Drivers get ten percent of the action when
they bring in clients.”

“Right,” I manage, and she laughs again.

“You didn’t know. It’s okay, it’s your first
time here. I won’t tell anyone.”

I fanned through the bills, then tucked them
away. “You’re serious. Ten percent?”

“Yep.”

“These guys have had ten grand worth of sex
tonight?”

“And you get a piece of every sick twist
their little heart’s desire.”

I couldn’t help but smile. Only in
America.

She looked over her glasses. She was really
pretty, much prettier than any of the girls who had lined up
earlier, and I had a tough time believing she got her start in the
trailer rooms. She looked more like NYC Business School.

“We like new clients and repeat business.
Make a few more runs and we’ll up your percentage. If we decide we
like you, we’ll discuss more…lucrative jobs. You seem like a man
who appreciates being well-compensated for delivering that extra
level of service.”

It didn’t occur to me to wonder how she’d
managed to peg me so well after only a few minutes, but I guess she
knew a whore when she saw one. I told her I’d be happy to bring her
as much business as I could arrange.

“Ladies!” I heard the madam yell, her voice
carrying throughout the trailers, and immediately there was the
sound of opening and closing doors. I started out the door to see
what was going on, but the office girl gripped me by an arm and
pulled me down into a chair – she was a lot stronger than she
looked – and said, “Wait here with me for a bit.” I did.

Half an hour later I met my three clients as
they shuffled back into the entry lounge, shirts unbuttoned, hair
skewed and looking exhausted. I got them back to Tahoe as the sun
was coming up, then home. They slept through the ride, and when I
dropped Al off last he hit me with a three grand tip and a “See you
next month, Rocco.”

You bet your rich white ass, Big Al.

Al wasn’t the only client I took to the
ranch. I knew I had locked into a good thing, and started putting
all my efforts into bringing in customers. Bachelor parties were
the easiest, drunk and horny young guys eager for some action. I
always warned them to bring plenty of cash, and they obliged. More
importantly, they came back for more, and I made out. Thirty-five
percent on the run since of course they asked for Rocco, a healthy
tip, and ten percent of the action at the ranch. It didn’t take
long before the girls were calling me Rocco too, and the pretty
accountant (her name turned out to be Veronica) quickly bumped me
to twenty, then twenty-five percent. My boss was happy. He thought
I was doing Tahoe runs, had no idea about the Double D, and he
certainly had no complaints about the business I was bringing in.
He gave me my choice of gigs, so when I didn’t have a group for the
ranch, I was working money runs. And of course there was Big Al and
his blackjack every month, my number one whale.