“No Naughty Teens,” Malloy said, rifling through the box as I checked us in with cash and tried to avoid looking at the desk clerk’s manic rictus of gray, rotten teeth. He bobbed and twitched nonstop behind the desk, like a puppet made out of beef jerky.
“Yeah well,” the clerk replied. “If you don’t see one you like, there’s Le Sex Shoppe over on Van Nuys. Tell ’em Reno from the Palm sent you and you’ll get a discount.”
“Great,” I said, feeling like I needed to wash my brain.
“Let’s go,” Malloy said.
Although I’d driven right past Le Sex Shoppe a billion times, I’d never actually been inside. I could get pretty much any dirty DVD I wanted for free since I used to write reviews for AVN and I got free toys from Doc Johnson because I used their stuff exclusively on our Web site. There’d never really been a reason for me to go to a place like Le Sex Shoppe. Until now.
A lot of people are surprised that these kinds of places are still booming, considering the fact that everything is available on the Internet. The truth is, there are still plenty of guys who share computers with their wives, guys who don’t own computers, or guys who just prefer to pay cash for their smut. Places like that also feature video booths so guys with too much feminine supervision at home can rub out a quick one on their lunch hour.
“Here,” Malloy said, indicating a row of similarly packaged DVDs in the amateur section. Sure enough, it was Naughty Teens.
Seeing them all side by side like that, I was suddenly hit with the sheer number of girls involved in this nasty business. There were twenty-one DVDs in a tidy row. Each DVD contained four or five scenes. Sure, there were a few repeats but still, that meant there had been nearly a hundred girls involved in this sex slave racket. It must cost a pretty penny to buy, house, feed and most importantly keep secret, such a large group of illegal foreign women. I couldn’t imagine the meager sales of these DVDs alone provided enough income to make something like that profitable enough to be worth the risk.
I shared my thoughts with Malloy.
“It just seems odd to me that they don’t bother to really shoot the hell out of each girl,” I said. “A busy actress can shoot twenty-five scenes a month even without a gun to her head. These girls only do one or two scenes each. Why not get the maximum value out of their investments?”
“Lia said she’d been forced into prostitution, not just porno,” Malloy said. He examined the DVD cover featuring “Kimberly” and Jesse Black. “My guess is these DVDs are just video catalogs thrown together to show off the available merchandise. The prostitution is probably where they make the real money.”
“Jesus,” I said softly.
“So,” Malloy said. “Let’s get that 2257 information.”
Back at the Palmview, we settled into the dumpy room. It sucked, but at least no one was trying to shoot us.
The first thing I did was lock myself in the bathroom and unwind my binders. I was moist and sour from adrenaline and fear sweat and I felt like I would die if I didn’t rinse off. There was no soap and the rusty, lukewarm water dribbled out of the showerhead like blood from the wrist of a reluctant suicide. Still, it was better than nothing.
When I got out of the shower, I dried myself gingerly with the bathroom’s single rough, sort-of-white towel and then paused. There was a long skinny mirror on the back of the bathroom door, offering up a slightly warped view of my naked body from the knees up. Naked, it was impossible to pretend to be someone else.
I touched my scalp. My chin. My belly. The bruises had faded to the point where you could almost pretend they were shadows. I took out the red lipstick I had stolen from Tabby and put some on. It sounds so weird now, but looking in the mirror at myself with those shiny red lips made me feel alive. Sexy. Real. They made me feel like me again. I decided in that moment that I would wear lipstick when I killed the bastard who set me up.
Malloy knocked softly on the door and I jumped, quickly wiping my lips on the back of my hand.
“Just a second,” I said, putting the lipstick back in the pocket of my duffel bag that used to hold the gun.
I put on the clean t-shirt that wasn’t the Lakers shirt. It was red and plain. Long, like a dress, like Lia’s had been. I couldn’t face the ace bandages again just yet so I gave my tits a break and let them be.
Malloy went silently into the bathroom after I came out. While he washed up, I called Roxette’s cell again. It still went straight to voicemail. No one picked up at her house either. After that, I spent way too long battling the plastic wrap and all the security stickers holding the Naughty Teens 17 DVD case shut. I was inches from flinging the damn thing out the window when Malloy came out of the bathroom, water beaded on his silver buzzcut and the crusted blood gone from beneath his ear. I handed the case over. He calmly slit the wrapping with a small pocketknife and extracted the disk.
He put in the DVD and I sat back on the bed. A red FBI warning came up, then the 2257 information.
This motion picture “NAUGHTY TEENS 17” was produced on July 12th 2006. The records required by U.S.C. Sec 2257 and 28 C.R.F. Part 25 for this motion picture and on any related materials to which this notice is affixed are kept at the offices of the manufacturer, PDM Productions, located at 13505 Cielo Street, Chatsworth CA 91311 by the custodian of records, B. Handerlan. All persons who appear in this video are over 18 years of age. For adult viewing only. Exercise your rights as an adult American citizen and enjoy all of the fine XXX videos available from PDM Productions.
There was no way to pause it, since there was no remote, but Malloy didn’t seem to need to. He just wrote the address down. While he was writing, the menu came up. A large still of a brunette who wasn’t Lia, looking more bewildered than sexy, filled the right side of the screen. The title was beneath her and a large square to the left framed a repeating trailer cobbled together from clips from the various scenes. One of the scenes was Lia with Jesse. Just seeing him made me feel physically sick. Malloy stood and hit stop. The screen went gray, but it didn’t make me feel better.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’ll be better when he’s dead,” I replied.
22.
The PDM offices were just what I had been expecting. I’d never been there but I might as well have. The Valley was riddled with hundreds of places exactly like this. A warren of mildewy, over-airconditioned rooms up front and a huge hollow warehouse space in the back. A couple of indentured editors lurking lemur-eyed and unshaven in rooms lit only by images of grinding flesh. Mexican and Salvadoran ladies slipping slick printed covers into thousands of plastic DVD clamshells. Fulfillment girls and a forklift driver and some poor sod on QC, watching hour after mindless hour of smut in a never-ending hunt for digital glitches. A busy little beehive all working tirelessly, day in and day out, so that you can look at naughty movies in the comfort of your own home.
The ‘B’ in B. Handerlan turned out to stand for Barbara. She was blonde, plain and mushroom pale with the same expression of weary, put-upon exasperation worn by employees at the DMV. She acted as though the enormous effort involved in getting up out of her spavined chair and walking over to the file cabinet to find the records Malloy had requested was almost more than she could bear.
“We appreciate your assistance, Ms. Handerlan,” Malloy told her.
“No problem,” she said, making it clear that it was, in fact, a major problem. “What was the title again?”
“Naughty Teens,” Malloy replied. “Seventeen.”
“Right,” the woman said.
While she searched noisily through the files, I let my eyes wander over her desk. She had a photo of two chubby boys in a frame that said “Mommy’s Angels.” A few more years and they’d be sneaking peeks at Naughty Teens themselves.
“Okay,” she said. “Naughty Teens 17.”
Malloy met her halfway and snatched the slim file from her hand.
“Thanks,” he said, laying the file open on the desk and thumbing efficiently th
rough the contents.
In seconds he had sorted through the model releases and found one for “Kimberly.” The model release and attached drivers license scan said her name was not Kimberly or Lia, but Amanda Rose Temmens, age 19.
Malloy jotted down the number on the license and was about to snap the file shut when he paused. He frowned slightly and jotted something else down.
The woman had just made it back to the desk and was about to lower herself back down into her chair.
“Thank you, Ms. Handerlan,” he said again. “One other thing.”
Ms. Handerlan halted her descent toward the chair, scowling at the prospect of one more thing.
“What?” she asked.
“Do you have contact information for the person who actually shot this video?” Malloy asked.
“What?” she said again. “You mean the director?”
“Yes,” Malloy said.
“Well...” she replied. “It should be on the release.”
“I saw that,” Malloy said. “But the address is a just a PO box. Don’t you have another address or maybe a phone number?”
“If we did,” Ms. Handerlan said, “it would be on the release.”
“Well,” Malloy said. “What if something goes wrong with the film and you need to contact someone?”
She shrugged. “If it’s not on the release, I can’t help you. You’ll have to talk to the owner.”
“Okay,” Malloy said. “Can I talk to the owner now?”
“He’s not here,” she said. “He’s out of town.”
Malloy seemed to realize that he had gotten all he was going to get out of her.
“Right,” he said. “Thank you for your assistance.”
The woman did not reply. Malloy shot me a look and gestured toward the door with his chin.
In the parking lot PDM shared with a chrome plating facility, a weight loss supplement company and a mysterious business whose sign read “J-Toc Fabrication,” Malloy lit a cigarette and spoke low.
“Got a license on Jesse Black,” he said.
Why hadn’t I thought of that? Of course Jesse’s release would have to be there too. Now that we had his real name and address, it would be a cinch to find him. The thought of it made me feel giddy—and a little nauseous.
“So now what?” I asked.
“I want to see what I can dig up on Amanda Rose Temmens,” Malloy said. “I’ve got an old friend on the job who owes me, but you can’t come. You’ll need to stay at the motel.”
I nodded, not really listening. I was still thinking about Jesse.
23.
I must have fallen asleep in the dim, musty cave of our room at the Palmview because it seemed like I’d only closed my eyes for a minute and Malloy was back. He brought Thai food, water and cigarettes.
“So?” I said. “Tell me.”
“Eat first,” Malloy said, offering me a takeout box and a plastic fork. “You haven’t eaten all day.”
I had been feeling kind of hungry right before the whole crazy shootout business and when I opened the little white box the fragrant, spicy steam brought it back in spades. I didn’t even know what I was eating, but I wolfed it down.
Malloy ate too, slow and silent. His shoulders were hunched, eyes narrow and distant, looking at nothing while he chewed. I thought maybe there was something on his mind, something that wouldn’t leave him alone, but it was so damn hard to tell with him.
“Well,” I finally said. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“Okay,” he said, setting down his paper box of noodles and wiping his lips with a crumpled napkin. “For starters, the license for Lia is phony. Amanda Rose Temmens died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome at the age of five months.”
“No shit,” I said. “So does this mean we can blow the whistle on the guys who made the video?”
“We could,” Malloy said. “But I’m guessing the boss of this racket is way too sheltered to get popped. PDM would go down for distributing, maybe take a fall guy or two with ’em, but the D.A. would never get close to the boss.”
“Okay,” I said. “What else?”
“Well, my buddy who ran the license recognized the photo of Lia.” Malloy said. “Apparently a Jane Doe came in after getting hit by a city bus on Vanowen and Vesper. The driver and several witnesses claim that she threw herself in front of the bus deliberately.”
“He’s sure it was Lia?” I asked, incredulous.
“The incident occurred half a block from your office less than five minutes after you say she went out your bathroom window. It’s gotta be her. Her face was smashed up pretty bad, but they had a sketch done based on her bone structure and get this: They put the sketch out to see if anyone could ID her and a guy came forward. This guy, Jaime Martinez, claims he met her the night before she came to your office. Picked her up in a bar. She told him her name was Brittany.”
I snorted and shook my head.
“Anyway,” Malloy continued. “This Martinez guy took her back to his place. He said she acted real nervous and didn’t have a car. When he left for work the next morning, he told her she could stay for a few days if she wanted to. She was gone when he came home.”
“So,” I said, trying to piece together what had happened, “she’s with this Vukasin, the guy in the organization who she got to ‘like her like a girlfriend,’ when she steals the briefcase and bugs out. She can’t get far with no car, so she ducks into a bar and picks up a guy with wheels. Gets him to take her to his place.”
“When he goes to work the next day,” Malloy said, “she starts snooping around, trying to come up with a plan. Maybe she finds the guy’s porn stash and recognizes Zandora. Maybe she calls around and gets your name. There’s a whole lot of maybes there, but somehow she finds her way to your office. Then those guys show up. Maybe someone she talked to tipped them off or maybe she took a taxi and they found her through the cab company. Either way she’s fucked. She sees them coming, stashes the case and tries to make a run for it. When she realizes she can’t get away...”
“Jesus,” I said softly.
I tried to imagine how desperate she must have been to throw herself in front of a bus instead of allowing those bastards to get her back. How she must have been hoping with everything she had left in the last seconds of her life that her message had gotten through. That a childhood friend she hadn’t seen for more than ten years would somehow find a way to help her kid sister. She could never have guessed how the events she set in motion would take down everyone around her.
I grabbed a bottle of water and twisted it open, taking a long drink.
“There’s more,” Malloy said, taking out a pack of cigarettes from an open carton. He lit one and put the pack in his pocket. “It’s bad.”
“Bad?” I asked, frowning. “Bad how?”
“I ran into Erlichman,” he said. “He told me they confiscated your computer and sent it off to some company that searches around for hidden or deleted stuff. I don’t really know exactly how it works but that’s not the point. The point is, they found some photos. Young girls, Angel. Real young.”
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered. I set the water bottle down hard, and stood, feeling like I’d taken a stiff kick to the chest.
My life was over. Period. Daring Angels and everything I’d worked for was dead as dog shit, as dead as I was supposed to be. Drugs, domestic violence, even murder, they were manageable offenses, but you didn’t come back from a kiddie porn investigation. Not in this business. That bland-faced son of a bitch had done me good. He hadn’t just tried to have me killed, he’d driven a stake through my livelihood and salted the earth for good measure. A cold choking fury was bubbling up again, stronger than ever. I wanted to break shit.
“They say you and Sam had a little kiddie porn thing going on the side,” Malloy was saying. “They figure you decided to take Sam out of the loop. A business deal that went south.”
I suddenly noticed how intently Malloy was looking at me. Squinting agai
nst the smoke from his cigarette, gauging my reaction.
“What?” I said, anger dangerously close to boiling over. “You don’t seriously believe...”
“You were the one defending those teen girl movies,” Malloy said. “You tell me.”
I didn’t even realize I was going to take a swing until I already had. Malloy was fast, but not quite fast enough and I grazed his stubbled chin with the tips of my knuckles. The cigarette flew out of his mouth and bounced off the carpet. I have no idea what I thought I was going to do, but I flung myself at him, throwing wild haymakers with everything I had behind them. He just grabbed me and spun me around so that my back was to his belly, holding me tight with my arms pinned to my sides. I flailed and kicked, furious and silent except for the harsh sound of my angry breath. I got him a couple of times pretty good on the shins and knees, but he was like a wall, patiently waiting out my tantrum. Eventually I got winded and started to feel stupid.
“You done?” Malloy asked.
“Fuck you,” I spat.
“Look, Angel—”
“Fuck you for even thinking that about me,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had to know.”
He let me go and I staggered away. I turned to face him and then sat down hard on the bed, elbows on my knees as I fought to catch my breath. Malloy sat back down in the chair and rubbed his left shin.
“Look,” Malloy said. “I’m not a nice guy. I’ve done things I’m not proud of in my life but there’s a line, you understand. Anything with kids, little girls like that, that’s over the line. You want to kill a couple of guys who fucked you over, I’ll help you, no questions asked. But I needed to know you wouldn’t cross that line. It’s important to me, Angel.”
“Now you know,” I said, looking up at him with narrowed eyes.
He held my gaze for a long time before he answered.
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