Another Life

by Andrew Vachss

  “That front seat was big. Then he said I could have another thousand if I did exactly what he told me to do.

  “The man was way cool, how he put it. No bargaining, no games. If I didn’t want the extra thou, I could leave right then. Just open the door and step out. With the money he’d already given me.”

  She looked over at whoever was on the other side of the thick slab of matte-black material that formed some kind of table between them.

  “Naturally, I went for it. He gave me orders. Nothing special; nothing I hadn’t heard before. He didn’t hit me, or make me call him ‘master’ or any of that scene, but he was very, very precise: get on all fours, unzip him, pull up my skirt . . . .

  “When it was over, he said—God, I swear I will never forget this—he said, ‘You see? A whore will always do as she is told. You pay; she obeys. Whatever you want. Anytime you want. However you want. You want, the whore does. That is the world.’

  “At first, I thought he was talking to himself—some of them do that, especially afterwards—but I . . . couldn’t help myself, I guess. I looked where he was looking. Into the back seat. And that’s when I saw it.”

  Silence.

  “A baby! Strapped into one of those little seats. I couldn’t even tell if the kid understood a word, or what he might have seen, but it scared me worse than the time a trick made me suck off his gun. He put the barrel right in my mouth and made me slobber it good. When he cocked it, I . . .”

  Maybe the interrogator made some gesture; I couldn’t tell. But this time, it didn’t slow the flow:

  “That psycho with the gun, he was doing himself at the same time, with his hand. He spermed all over the dash when I . . .”

  Silence from the interrogator. Same result:

  “That time—with the gun, I mean—I just kind of staggered out of the car,” the hooker said. “I remember throwing up. I remember pulling off my panties and throwing them away. Then I washed myself with every towelette I had on me. I couldn’t stop shaking. I could smell myself.

  “But this, this was a million times worse. I can’t explain it, but . . . seeing that baby, thinking about it watching, I just . . .”

  Silence.

  “Then the guy in the Rolls told me to get out. He didn’t call me dirty names like some of them do when they’re done. He was very calm. But I’ll never forget those words. ‘I have no more use for you, hole.’

  “He said ‘hole,’ not ‘whore.’ I could hear it. He made sure I heard it. I still hear it. He said, ‘When you close the door behind you, it is as if I have flushed the toilet.’ And then he said: ‘You see?’ He was talking to the baby.”

  By then, her hands were shaking too violently to pull a cigarette out of her pack. A hand reached into the frame, holding one out to her, already lit. A web-fingered hand.

  The hooker took a long, deep drag. Closed her eyes. Said: “Please don’t make me talk about this anymore. You promised me, if I told you everything, you’d take care of—”

  “That’s already been done,” Pryce’s undisguised voice said.

  “That’s it?” I asked him. Knowing it wasn’t.

  “Three more. Cross-confirmed.”

  “And you think this one is mine because . . . ?”

  “You’re the pattern-master,” he said. “The feds have a billion bucks’ worth of computers, but they’re working with ten cents’ worth of data. They’ve got a lot of different names for what they do, but it all comes down to the same thing: Guessing for Dollars. That’s fine for proposal writing, but, in your world, it’s what suckers do with bookies. People come to you for only one reason: because you know.”

  I stopped fencing, asked: “You have a chronology?”

  “The one you saw was the third of the four. But we assume many others had preceded her.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Way too stylized. You think he was going to keep escalating?”

  Pryce shrugged; guessing wasn’t his game, either.

  “But there’s at least one you know about that you don’t have on tape.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because she’s not talking,” I said, not guessing. “Was she paid off or . . . ?”

  “The other.”

  “Got a body?”

  He shook his head “no.”

  “But enough of a spoor so that you know it was him, right?”

  “Yes,” he agreed.

  “And any evidence that did exist, your guy has the scratch to have it erased.”

  “Given the known data, such a scenario meets the criteria for both validity and reliability,” he acknowledged. “But on paper, it didn’t happen.”

  “This prince of yours, he knows about your ‘data’?” I asked.

  Pryce gave me a blank look. He wasn’t confused; he was drawing a line.

  Being me, I stepped over it. “A working girl’s gone. One you don’t have on tape, but you’re sure your guy had . . . contact with her, right? That means some pimp never got his merchandise back.”

  “How do you know she wasn’t just some—?”

  “How about we stop, okay? No way we’re talking about some underage runaway scooped off the street. You already said your guy was riding an escalator, and you don’t find girls who turn edge-tricks down on the sidewalk. You want one of those, that’s the penthouse—reservations-only territory.”

  “You’re the expert; you tell me.”

  “Okay. Those girls never work blind. They don’t go out every night, or even every week. Takes time for the marks to heal. Surgical repairs take even longer. So every rental brings mammoth money, but there’s a long turnaround time between them. A manager loses a girl like that, costs him a lot of cash, at both ends.”

  He looked a question at me.

  “Front-end investment. You have to set up contact points for clients to find you. Web sites are for dominas, not subs . . . at least not the kind that can command major bucks for a single session. You need all kinds of screening mechanisms to protect your merchandise. Serious security. You need a way to wash the cash. Accountants. Lawyers. Offshore men. All that money is spent to make money. An investment, understand?”

  “So, if a trick does go too far, it’s the perfect blackmail scenario—is that what you’re saying? Because his identity would already have been verified, and—”

  “Not this time,” I said, catching the wisp of surprise that flickered over his face. “In fact, your guy isn’t blackmail material at all. He’s got money, all right, but it’s so fucking much money that threatening him could get you very dead.”

  He nodded at the back-alley logic: Anyone who did the kind of research you need to work a stable of edge-girls would know that some tricks are too high up to touch. That kind, they have a stable of their own—assassins with diplomatic immunity.

  When I was sure he was with me, I asked: “So why not spend some of that money in front, eliminate all the back-and-forth?”

  “I don’t under—”

  “There’s places in L.A. where you can rent a Bentley, but that’s all about front. The rental places might call you ‘sir’ they might ass-kiss like a doorman at a Beverly Hills hotel . . . but they know. It’s in their eyes. They’ve got your number. If you were the real thing, why would you be renting?”

  “You mean—?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know this ‘missing’ girl. So I don’t know who was running her. But I know their kind. And if the price was right . . .”

  “Are you saying—?”

  “Your record’s stuck in the same groove. You know as well as me that humans get sold all the time. They’re just a commodity, like wheat, or pork bellies. What lawyers call ‘fungible’ goods; one grain of wheat’s the same as another. But some humans are unique property.

  “Even for sex, there’s a general market price, but it still varies, depending on the person and the packaging. A lap dance in a backstreet dive in Queens won’t cost you anything close to the same thing in some upscale Manhattan join
t.

  “Girls who turn lump tricks get used up quick. The harder and longer they get used, the less they’re worth. Baby-sellers know how quick the price drops for used goods—you think pimps are any different?”

  Now it was his turn to shrug. “I told you, this isn’t about money. Or law enforcement. This is very, very simple: the client wants his baby returned to him. We want to satisfy the client. That’s the place where you come in. The only place.”

  I caught his meaning, and the warning it was wrapped in: If their precious prince had bought himself a human sacrifice, that wasn’t their problem. And I better not make it mine.

  “What’s all this about ‘patterns,’ then?” I asked him. “What do you need me for?”

  “Without the baby, the client appears to have stopped his . . . nocturnal activities.”

  “So?”

  “So we don’t believe we’ve come close to interviewing all the other women he may have . . . used. But we don’t know any places to look for them that we haven’t tried.”

  “You think maybe one of the pain-for-pay girls set him up?”

  “How would we know?” Pryce said, reasonably. “We found some of them by going back down the money trail. But that’s such a murky world that there must be others. And we were told there are women who do . . . this kind of thing for their own reasons. Not prostitutes, women who actually seek out such encounters.”

  “Sure,” I said, putting a “who doesn’t know that?” look behind it.

  “As I said, that world presents a rare barrier for us. Money will provide access, but not to the . . . depth we require, especially in the time allotted.”

  I got it then.

  The woman who opened the door for me was wearing a maid’s outfit. A costume, not a uniform—she wasn’t dressed for housework.

  “Hi, Rejji,” I said.

  “It is you,” the fantasy-dressed brunette squealed. “Those ‘security’ cameras—you can never be sure.”

  “Shut up, you stupid little bitch,” a tall blonde whose severe black dress did nothing to de-emphasize her outrageous breasts snapped. She gave the maid a mild slap and pointed toward a corner of the living room. “I was sure, or he never would have gotten past that simpering little ‘concierge’ downstairs.”

  As the brunette stood in the corner, hands clasped obediently behind her back, the blonde smiled at me. “You finally decide to come out of the closet yourself, Burke? Good timing. Rejji was due for a punishment tonight anyway.”

  “When I do, you’ll be the first to know, Cyn,” I told her, playing off her long-standing joke—if that’s what it was—that I was hiding my true nature from myself.

  “You’re so lucky,” she hissed at the brunette, who shivered her bottom in mock terror.

  “Cyn . . .”

  “Yeah, I know. Business. Sit down over there and tell us what you want.”

  When I was done talking, Cyn said, “I don’t think you’re looking for a risk-taker.” She glanced over at Rejji, who was sitting next to her on the loveseat. They were holding hands.

  “That’s right,” Rejji said. “It’s all about the lines.”

  I looked from one to the other, waiting for them to decide who should lay it out for me. On their Web site, Rejji spent a lot of time being “disciplined” by Cyn; that’s what their customers paid for. Cyn owned Rejji. They lived in a world you could look in on, provided your debit card had enough for the ticket. But all that would let you see was a small slice of the globe—like the tiny little tattoo on Rejji’s right hip, or the dog collar she wore on special occasions. The rest of it—the never-for-sale part—was that they loved each other. I didn’t know what they did when they were off camera; I didn’t know where the acting started or stopped. But I knew the love was unscripted.

  Our accounts had been squared years ago; I was there to put myself back in their debt. There was never a question in my mind that they’d tell me whatever they knew. And not because the pendulum is always swinging, and they might need me again someday. That’s the way it is in Pryce’s world, but even he knew he couldn’t buy his way into this one.

  “You know how it works,” Cyn began. “We don’t do stills—just our video library and some real-time. Pre-pays only. The client sends in the scene he wants, and we play it for him. We’ve got a lot of stuff stored. Usually, we can just click-click and they’re ‘watching’ what they asked for. Sometimes, over a thousand of them at the same time—like an afternoon matinee. Subscribers get a discount, and we pay a lot of money for the encryption.”

  “They’re not all men,” Rejji put in, and caught a look from Cyn. “Well, they’re not,” she said, pouting. “One woman, she always asks for—”

  “He’s not here about that,” Cyn said, more sharply than before. She turned to me, said, “Everyone in our business has a ‘line,’ okay? A client asks for . . . well, it doesn’t matter, just something you don’t want to do. So you say no. Sometimes, that’s it. Sometimes, they offer you more money. After all, we do it for money, so, the way people like them think . . .”

  “I get it.”

  “With me and Rejji, regulars know better—you don’t even ask. And for newbies, it’s right on our site: Just click the ‘Don’t Even Go There!’ banner and you get an ‘Out of Bounds’ list. Ignore that even once, you’re barred for life. But some stuff, well, it’s marginal, and we have to make a judgment call.”

  I made a “like what?” gesture.

  “Lots of clients want to see naughty-schoolgirl stuff. That’s okay, but if the dialogue goes wrong . . .”

  “I know!” Rejji said. “Like that foul—”

  “Shhh,” Cyn said, patting the other girl’s thigh tenderly. “He wanted Rejji to be a little schoolgirl,” she explained. “I mean, she’s never going to look like some ten-year-old, not built the way she is, but this client wanted her to talk like one. And I wasn’t supposed to be the headmistress of her school; I was supposed to be her nanny.”

  “I know you didn’t just let that one—”

  “If you’ve got more than a screen name—like say a credit card—it’s amazing what kind of information the feds can come up with,” Cyn said, solemnly. “Apparently, enough for a search warrant.”

  I bowed slightly, said: “Beautiful. But I need to go darker than that one.”

  They exchanged looks.

  “You’re looking for a kid?” Rejji finally asked. “An actual kid?”

  “It’s not that simple,” I told her. “Yeah, I’m looking. But not for pictures. Not for scenes. Not even for buyers. I’m following a trail. Starts with a guy who works the strolls. He’s not the kind of wannabe dom you run across in your business; he’s only interested in piece-of-meat merchandise.”

  “Use and abuse?” Cyn asked.

  “His use is abuse. But all we’ve got documented is verbal. He doesn’t need to role-play; he is what he wants to be. He pays; the girl does what she’s told. Every time he does his thing, he’s making a point.”

  “Not fooling himself?” Cyn asked, making sure.

  “Not even close. This isn’t the kind of guy who pays to spank a girl while she calls him her boss, or her ‘master,’ or whatever gets him off. The one I want, he’s right out front. With him, it wouldn’t be ‘You’re a bad girl,’ it would be ‘I pay you cash; you bend over and take it.’ No scenes, just payment for services.”

  “That’s asking a lot,” Rejji said. “Most pro subs like it at some level. I mean, they may not like the client, but they get off on the scenes themselves. Spanking, that’s the comfort-zone end. But some of those girls, they’re pretty close to the other edge—RL.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Real Life,” she said. “Even if they’re being pimped, their boyfriends—or their girlfriends—have to be into the scene themselves. One girl we know, she broke up with the guy she was living with because he wouldn’t choke her. In her mind, that was supposed to be their special thing. She’d let a trick flog her for money, but
asphyx sex, that’s not for strangers. You’ve got to trust to play that way.”

  “Maybe. But anytime you let a stranger tie you up . . .”

  “That’s right,” Rejji said. “That game, it’s all risk. If you’re going to trick, you never know. Not everyone follows the script. You remember Olivia?”

  “Mistress Greta,” Cyn added, as if that would clear things up for me.

  I shook my head.

  “She did the whole Nazi thing,” Rejji explained. “You know: blond wig, black uniform, high leather boots, German accent.” She stifled a yawn with a very ladylike patting of her lips. “Had herself a complete dungeon setup, very expensive. Regular clientele, too. Like making an appointment for a facial.”

  “And?” I asked, ignoring her word games.

  “And she’s dead. Somebody—probably more than one—put her through hell before they finished her off.”

  “You heard this?”

  “We saw it,” Cyn told me. “On the Internet. Somebody posted the video, and made sure it got around. The URL’s gone now, but we figure it’s been downloaded plenty of times. Not even illegal to possess it; they only showed her taking it, not the finale. That makes it art. Probably could have sent it in to apply for an NEA grant.”

  “No strangers; no exceptions,” Rejji said, schoolgirl-proud that she’d memorized the material.

  “No contact.” Cyn pulled the leash even tighter. “We deal with strangers all the time, but never in the flesh. Rejji and I, we make little movies. We do it all: casting, directing, set design, lighting, sound. Now if you want to be the screenwriter and you’ve got the money to finance the production, we’ll consider it. But, no matter what, you never, ever get to meet the actors.”

  “That’s your rule. But it’s not the—?”

  “Of course not,” Cyn said. “There’s . . . levels in this business, same as any other. Standards, too.”

  “You mean, like, security systems?”

  “No,” she said, crisply. “I mean what I said: standards. Wait . . . .”