There was a pair of twisted pomegranate trees guarding the open gate and the ground beneath them was gory with broken crimson fruit that crunched and splattered under the wheels of my little black Mini. Pulling into the wide circular driveway, I kept expecting to spot Norma Desmond burying her pet chimpanzee in the overgrown rose garden. I felt better once I saw Sam’s red ‘84 Corvette with its vanity plates that read HAMRXXX. It was parked near a massive wooden door that looked like it ought to open into a medieval Spanish dungeon. I parked behind Sam and got my old shoot bag off the passenger seat. There were a few other cars I didn’t recognize in front of Sam’s, a generic mid-sized rental and a tricked out, over-the-top black Ferrari that had to be Jesse’s. Car like that just screamed dick-for-hire. Parked directly in front of the Ferrari was the battered blue Honda Civic with which I would soon become so intimately familiar.
I’ve spent a lot of time since then going over and over those short minutes in the driveway, wondering why I didn’t sense something wrong, why I just waltzed right in like some barely legal bimbo from Indiana. I try to tell myself it was because I trusted Sam, because he was my friend for nearly twenty years, but if I’m honest I have to admit that was only part of it. The simple truth is, I had a girl boner. All the blood had run out of my brain and down between my legs. I’d had this semi-regular thing with a rockabilly bass player that had lasted nearly six months, but it had recently gotten stale and predictable and I’d decided it was time to move on. It had been three weeks since I’d gotten any new action. Now I found myself in a ditzy hormonal fog, gone blonde at the thought of putting Jesse Black’s lean, hard, twenty-one-year-old body through its paces. So I walked, crotch-first, right into a trap.
The wheels of my little roller suitcase bumped along over the cracked pavement and the lonely echoing sound seemed way too loud in the deserted courtyard. The door wasn’t locked. I thought they might be shooting some dialog or pick-up footage so I didn’t knock. I just slipped quietly inside.
The first thing I noticed was that there was no furniture. It was a huge, hollow room with a cathedral ceiling, Spanish tile floors and a massive iron chandelier on a chain that looked like something Zorro would use to swing over the heads of the bad guys. There were several large windows, but they were covered with opaque plastic, letting in only a soft, muted fraction of the afternoon sun. It smelled like fresh paint.
“Angel?” Sam’s voice called from the top of an elegant, curving staircase. “That you?”
“Yeah,” I replied, squinting up the stairs.
“We’re up here,” Sam said.
I pushed down the telescoping handle on my case and hefted it to carry it up the stairs. Luckily, it was just the small shoot bag and nearly empty. Sam said I’d only need lingerie and heels so I had run by the house on my way over and thrown together a couple of sets and stockings to give him some options. It’s been years since I had my shoot bags packed and ready all the time, everything organized into neatly labeled Ziploc bags and categorized with titles like fetish, slut, or GND, which stood for Girl Next Door.
“Sam?” I called when I got to the top of the steps.
“Come on in.” Sam’s voice came from the far end of a long hallway.
There was a partially open door with a bright light inside and I walked toward it. There were no fat yellow cords duct-taped to the floor, no adjacent rooms full of giggling girls powdering their implant scars and gluing on false eyelashes. There was no one hanging around smoking or talking on a cell phone. Just that long empty hallway. I like to think I was starting to wonder a little at that point, but I didn’t leave. I just pushed the door the rest of the way open and went right in.
The room at the end of the hall was mostly empty, except for a large wrought-iron bed with a bare mattress covered in plastic. Sam stood against the far wall, beside an empty fireplace. There were two other men I didn’t recognize, but I didn’t get much of a look at them because Jesse was right by the door looking delicious, dark hair tousled and blue eyes smoldering, ready to go. He wore leather pants that hung so low on his lean hips that you would have seen his pubic hair if he hadn’t shaved it off. His sleek, lanky torso was bare and sheened with sweat that highlighted the symmetrical perfection of every muscle. He stepped up to me, gave me an appreciative once-over and smiled.
“Angel Dare,” he said. “Wow. You look amazing. This is gonna be awesome.”
He reached down and squeezed his most famous feature through his tight leather pants. Then he punched me in the face.
3.
I wasn’t out cold, but it hurt like hell and everything went red and swimmy. I could feel rough hands on my body, wrenching my clothes and throwing me down on slick, crinkly plastic. Scratchy rope around my wrists and ankles and my first semi-delirious thought was, Bondage, are they crazy? You can’t shoot bondage and sex in the same scene!
Then the pain kind of tightened and focused down to a nasty throb in my left cheekbone and temple and I was able to see again, to put my mind to the task of moving beyond the holy shit phase and into working out exactly what sort of trouble I had gotten myself into. I should have known something wasn’t right about this set-up as soon as Sam gave me the Bel Air address. Nobody in porn ever goes over the hill for anything if they can help it.
Near as I could figure, I was tied in a sloppy and unimaginative spread eagle, face up. My shirt and bra were shoved up under my chin and my skirt was torn up to the waist. I had no idea what had happened to my panties. Jesse stood over me to my left with the kind of lobotomized expression men get when they have their hands in their pants. Behind him was one of the two strangers. Thick and dead-eyed with skin the color of boiled potatoes and a build like a rhino on steroids. He was wearing tight leather gloves and did not have his hand in his pants. He had Sam by the arm, holding him near the bed like a naughty kid about to be punished.
“They have Georgie,” Sam said, his voice barely audible. “I’m sorry.”
The rhino gave Sam a casual cuff to the side of the head that would have knocked him to the ground if the guy hadn’t been holding him up.
“Jesus!” Sam said.
“Shut up,” the rhino said, mildly, like he was ordering a beer.
Sam squeezed his eyes closed and hung his head.
I was about to say something really stupid that involved the rhino’s mother when the other guy came forward, sliding slowly into view on my right. I knew then that the rhino was the least of my worries.
This guy was the type you don’t even see. Invisible, just a guy like a hundred other guys. Medium build, brown hair, forgettable features above a forgettable shirt and a forgettable tie. But once you did notice him, once you saw past the bland, everyman veneer, once you looked in his eyes, you saw this was a very bad man. He gave off a powerful alpha vibe that all the other men in the room deferred to without hesitation. There was no question that he was the boss.
“Where is the money?” he asked.
I didn’t even bother to say what money or anything at all. I just squinted at him, silent and furious and wondering what it was going to take to get out of this in one piece.
The boss tilted his chin toward me.
“Ask her,” he said.
Jesse smiled and gave me a tight right to the belly.
I had a few panicked seconds where I was sure I was about to puke. My body fought to curl up around the pain, but my limbs were tied so I stayed splayed, drowning in nauseous agony.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, or tried to. What came out was more of a breathless wheeze with no consonants.
“A girl came into your office with something that didn’t belong to her,” the boss said. “A briefcase. She left without it. It isn’t anywhere in your office or your house. Where is it?”
It all came back to me in a sickening rush. That girl. The anxious blonde with the Dracula accent who came to my office just before lunch, about six hours before Sam’s call. The one who was looking for one of
my models, Zandora Dior.
“Lia,” she said her name was, sitting there on the other side of my desk and seeming lost inside an extra large Lakers t-shirt.
Her big green eyes were evasive, her body language tense and urgent. Her frosted blonde hair was obviously expensive, and her thick fake nails were fresh and glossy, but her body was undernourished, toneless and skinny-fat and her skin was bad, broken out around her tiny rosebud mouth. She wore no make-up but I could tell that she would still doll up well enough to shoot for another six months or so. The t-shirt was as long as a dress, nearly covering the tight black skirt beneath and making her look like she had forgotten her pants. The briefcase sat between her big feet. I barely noticed it.
“Do you have ID?” I had asked her, sizing her up, looking at her pale, childish legs and the expensive high heels that were way too dressy to go with the t-shirt. I saw nothing but trouble. “I can’t even take test shots of you if you don’t have an American driver’s license.”
“I am not wanting work,” she said. “I am wanting Lenuta Vasilescu. In the movies, she is Zandora Dior.”
I looked the girl over again, wondering what this was all about.
“Zandora’s featuring,” I said.
Lia frowned like she had no idea what I was talking about.
“She’s out of town, featuring.” I elaborated. “You know, dancing. On the road.”
“When will she be back?” Lia asked.
“Monday,” I replied.
“Oh,” Lia said, looking down at the briefcase and twisting her skinny fingers in her lap like a child. “Can I please have her phone number? We are friends together as children in Brasov. It is very important. I need to speak to her right away.”
Maybe because she knew Zandora’s real name, or because she was obviously Romanian too, or maybe because she looked so small and desperate, like a bird with a broken wing, I impulsively felt like helping her out. There was no way in hell I was going to give her Zandora’s private cell number, but I also wasn’t going to just tell the kid to fuck off with her sitting there looking like she was trying really hard not to bust out in tears.
“Do you want me to give her a message?” I asked.
“It’s...” The girl swallowed hard and looked away. “It’s private.”
“Tell you what,” I replied. “Why don’t you write her a note with your phone number and whatever else. I can fax it to the club Zandora’s booked at and then she can call you.”
“Okay,” Lia said. It was clear that she was not happy about it, but in too much of a hurry to argue. “Can I have paper?”
I gave her a blank sheet out of my printer and a sparkly purple Daring Angels pen. She leaned over my desk and wrote fast and hard, like she was trying to engrave the words into stone. She was clearly writing way more than a phone number. In fact, I didn’t see anything that looked like a phone number at all. Just a crowded block of looping, girly script infested with strange hooks and squiggles. Even upside down, I could see she wasn’t writing in English.
I felt a little weird sending Zandora a note I couldn’t read, but after all, it was only a note. Even if it turned out to be some crazy stalker shit or who knew what else, Zandora didn’t have to respond. It wasn’t like I was giving the girl Zandora’s number or even letting her know which club would be receiving her mystery message. But it should be enough to placate the anxious blonde and get her out of my office. Her wounded bird routine was starting to make me nervous. It made me feel like I’d better look out for cats.
While I whipped up a quick cover sheet and faxed the note off to Eye Candy in Vegas, Lia stood and drifted like a ghost over to the single window, peering through the blinds at the uninspiring view of dull, empty Vesper Avenue below. She stood like that while the fax machine beeped and chugged and the note fed through and spat out below. Then, when she turned back to me, I noticed that her body language had changed in some subtle way. She’d gone strangely stiff and almost formal, like some kind of catwalk Stepford wife. She turned her head on her long neck, expressionless face toward me, eyes looking at nothing.
“Where is the bathroom?” she asked.
“Back through the reception area and to the right,” I told her. “Didi’ll show you.”
She nodded and lifted her note from the fax tray, popping the combination lock on the briefcase and opening it just enough to slip the note in. I couldn’t see what else was inside and I didn’t even really try all that hard to look, but I couldn’t help noticing the combination for the lock. 666. Funny, I wouldn’t have pegged her as a death metal fan.
I watched her slender back as she opened the door. Maybe I thought it was weird that she was carrying a man’s leather briefcase instead of a purse, or maybe I was just glad to see her go. She didn’t say thank you or even goodbye.
Minutes later, two men came into my office.
“You can’t just walk in there,” Didi was saying, but they already had.
The first guy through the door had a distinct Eastern Bloc look to his weasely, intense features. He was deeply tanned, dressed like an Armenian pop star, and had to be a good two inches shorter than me. His tall buddy in the doorway looked more like a corn-fed redneck, with thinning blond hair, cold blue eyes and a fat but powerful body like those guys that pull trucks with their teeth. His simple, all-black clothes were all business. Bad business.
“I don’t book male talent,” I said. “Try Eros over on Sherman Way.”
“Funny,” the weasely guy said. He was clearly the mouth of the two and had a faint, slightly different variation on Lia’s accent. “We’re looking for Lia.”
“Just missed her,” I told them.
“We didn’t see her come out of the building,” the weasel said, eyefucking me like he learned it from TV. “Why do you suppose that is?”
There was a faint shuffling from the bathroom and the weasel snapped his head toward the sound like a hungry predator.
“She had to powder her nose,” he said. “Is that it?”
“Look, I don’t know you or her,” I said. “And I don’t want anything to do with...”
Before I could finish, the redneck strode back into the reception area, past indignant Didi to the bathroom door and kicked it open.
“Hey!” Didi cried.
The bathroom was empty. Lia’s expensive shoes were on the floor by the toilet. The window was open, just enough for an underfed girl to worm her way through. My office was on the second floor. It was a doable jump, though you wouldn’t like hitting the concrete of the parking lot next door. Especially not with bare feet. You’d have to be pretty motivated. She obviously was.
“Listen here, you lousy sons of bitches,” Didi said, fearlessly getting up in the guys’ faces like an angry Jack Russell Terrier. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but you have exactly three seconds to get the fuck out of here before I call the cops.”
The men barely seemed to hear her. They just brushed her aside and left without another word.
“What the hell was that all about?” Didi has asked me.
“I have no idea,” I replied, fuming at the broken lock on the bathroom door. “And frankly, I don’t want to know.”
Of course, at that time, I had no idea how right I was. Lying there tied to a bed with sweat all sticky and pooling on the plastic beneath me, surrounded by a variety of extremely bad men, I wanted to know even less.
4.
“Look,” I said with whatever voice I could muster. “I don’t know anything about any money. That girl, she just came and left when those two guys showed up. That’s all I know.”
“Start at the beginning,” the boss said, lighting up a cigarette. “Tell me everything she told you.”
“She didn’t tell me anything,” I said.
“She must have said something,” the boss replied. “What did she want? Not work, obviously.”
Why was that obvious? I had thought she was looking for work when I first saw her. I had no idea how much
this asshole knew about what had happened in my office. Was he really in the dark or just looking for me to confirm his suspicions?
“She wanted to get in touch with one of my models,” I told him. “Said they were friends as kids.”
“She wanted to catch up?” the boss asked. “Reminisce about old times?”
I shrugged or tried to. It came out kind of funny with my arms tied out to either side.
The boss nodded, contemplating the smoke from the end of his cigarette. Then he brought the cigarette to his lips and took a deep drag. When he exhaled, two words came out with the smoke.
“Which model?”
I closed my eyes. Zandora was hardly my best friend. She was a shallow bimbo with more designer sunglasses than sense, but she sure as hell didn’t deserve to have this guy after her. The last thing I wanted to do was to drag her or anyone else into this ugly mess. I told myself to hold out, hanging on to the idea that I was protecting Zandora. I needed to at least try and be tough, because I didn’t want to think of myself as the sort of person that rolled over after two punches.
“You’re thinking about being brave,” the boss said, taking another deep drag off his cigarette. “Don’t.”
“Angel, please,” Sam said, his eyes bright and desperate.
“Shut up,” the rhino said again and shot another curt hook at Sam’s temple.
I said nothing. I squinted up at the boss and put what I hoped was a tough expression on my face. He sighed like a disappointed teacher and handed his cigarette to Jesse.
Jesse cracked a huge grin and parked the cigarette in one corner of his mouth. Then he climbed up onto the bed, straddling my hips and putting his left hand around my throat. His hands were big. I felt his thumb and forefinger pressing into the soft spots beneath my ears while the wide palm leaned down on my windpipe, cutting off my air. His face was inches from mine, pretty blue eyes gazing intently into mine like a romance novel hero as he took the cigarette from his lips with his other hand.
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