by K. T. Tomb
The waitress left and the older black lady immediately leveled her stare at me. The intensity of her gaze made me shift a little in my seat. The beauty in her face, eyes, and in her unassuming strength is easy to see. It is important that I find some beauty. It doesn’t have to be a lot of beauty. Just enough to help me through the night.
“So when can we talk about sex?” she asked me.
“Later,” I explain and returned her gaze. “There is always later.”
“Do you think I’m pretty?”
“Yes.”
She looked away, frowning, eyes watering. “You’re paid to say that.”
I reached out and did what I always did in those situations. I reached across our small, intimate table and took her weathered, black hand in my own. I could feel the roughness of her dry skin. In pursuit of a career, she neglected her body, her appearance, and I was paid very well to make up for lost opportunities. She looked down at my hand, holding her own and she seemed to catch her breath a little. When she looked back up to me, the intensity in her eyes had been replaced with something childlike. Something sweet and lost and innocent. I stroke the back of her hand with my thumb, and gripped her fingers in my palm. There was no hesitation on my part. I looked directly into her eyes.
“But I am not paid to do this,” I said, looking down at our interlocked hands. She looked down, too, catching her breath. “I do this because I see your beauty.”
“But I am just an old woman. You are so young, so handsome. You can have any woman in this restaurant.” She’s stammered. Her poise was gone. She reverted to an insecure girl.
I did what most men have not learned to do: I ignored her statement completely and moved the conversation to other areas. “How many times have you been told you have beautiful eyes?” It was true. They are coffee colored, rare.
She shrugged, ducking her narrow chin down inside her white blouse. “Once or twice. I am told they are my best attribute.”
“I am inclined to agree.”
She squeezed my hand once and then released her grip, tucking both hands in her lap below the table, perhaps embarrassed by our public intimacy. She looked at me a moment longer, amusement in her pretty eyes, then laughed nervously. “You are a sweet talker and a flirt, and I cannot forget that you are a professional escort and that I am told you are very good at what you do. But bless you for making an old woman feel good about herself, even for an evening.”
I said nothing. Suddenly, amazingly, I was a little embarrassed.
It was at this inopportune moment that a good friend of mine appeared in the restaurant. Mark was tall and balding, a good-looking guy and a hell of an athlete. He’s also a private investigator and as been my best friend for the past twenty years. I saw him talking animatedly to the hostess, who blocked his path, and then he looked over her head and spotted me. He slipped around her and marches through the crowd and stopped at my table.
My guest looked up in alarm. I was alarmed, too. Mark knew better than this.
“I am terribly sorry to interrupt,” he said to my guest. His face was flushed red, either through embarrassment or something else. He then looked at me. “Jupe, I need to speak with you. In private.”
I leveled my glare at him. He knows what he has done. He knows that he has effectively ruined my evening, and much worse. Perhaps, even, my reputation. But his eyes did not waver. Something was wrong.
I looked back at my distinguished guest. “I will return momentarily. Please excuse me.”
She looked flabbergasted and alarmed. Our date was supposed to be anonymous. She has worked on presidential commissions and with state legislatures. No one was supposed to find out she hired a male escort. Now that we've been interrupted she had to be worried about exposure. I reached out and held her hand and said, “It will be okay, I promise you. He is a close friend.”
She nodded once, her eyes were wet. My biggest concern was that she may not be there when I return. Mark apologized again. I grabbed my dinner jacket and he led me outside at a brisk pace. I matched him stride for stride, my suit jacket flapping as I buttoned it. Winter in Southern California can be chilly and tonight was no exception. Outside, with our breaths frosting before us, I followed him to his Ford Taurus parked at the far end of the parking lot.
He opened the door and pointed. In the muted half-light of the car’s interior bulb, slouched in the front seat, restrained by the seat belt, was a strikingly beautiful woman. She was also quite dead, if the gunshot wound between her eyes was any indication. Blood spilled down the bridge of her nose, and down over the left side of her face. Her eyes were closed, her head was turned toward us. She was dressed in an evening gown. Blood had dripped on her bosom and shoulders.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. For the first time, I realized Mark sounded drunk. “I found her like this in my car.”
Rigor mortis had not set in. Her skin looked soft and pale.
I shut the door and faced Mark.
“Why not go to the police?” I asked. “Why come here?”
He was pacing in the space between his Jag and the other car. When Mark drinks, he becomes hostile. And maybe finding dead girls in his car added to the hostility.
“I’m sorry for fucking disturbing your dinner date, Mr. Gigolo, but I have a dead woman in my car.” He spoke in a biting whisper. He continued pacing, swiping his hand through his thinning hair and over his brow, which was sweating, despite the coolness of the night. “You can’t just show up to the police with a dead body, especially after the night I had.”
“What kind of night do you have?”
“The kind where I find a dead woman in my car. You need to help me, Jupe. Please.”
I looked at my best friend and then looked at the dead girl through his driver’s side window. I flicked my gaze to the restaurant where a very concerned client was waiting for me, wondering if her reputation was shot.
“Wait here,” I said. What am I going to do now? I can’t just abandon my date. She was a referral. But I can’t abandon Mark either. A dead chick shows up in his car?
I walked back into the restaurant to my date and sat back down, but did not take off my jacket.
“I’m terribly sorry about that,” I said to the woman across the table.
“Listen, it’s okay,” she said. “This is a bad idea anyway.”
My job was mostly sales. Honestly. My job was to give women the night they always wanted. They had a need; I filled that need. They were mostly afraid, embarrassed, so I had to overcome that objection up front. Make them feel like this was normal. Just like any sales person, the key is referrals. I don’t normally take call-ins. If you’re looking for my service, you have to get my name from someone I trust. The fact that this woman put in that type of work finding me, says a lot about what she was looking for. So if I screwed this night up, that would hurt me because not only would she go back to a long-time client and tell her that she had a bad experience, but she wouldn’t talk about her experience later. Not that I expected her, with her status, to talk about tonight with anyone anyway. But I had to try. I can’t have bad reviews out there. Even if they might not ever get out.
“No,” I said. “It isn’t a bad idea at all. I was enjoying myself until my friend showed up with a serious emergency. So here’s what I suggest, because this truly is an emergency that can’t wait. I suggest that we reschedule, at no charge. For the time and for anything else you may want.” And I winked. Cheesy, yes. But she had a need.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I still think this is a bad idea… I don’t know what I was thinking.”
She wanted to be reassured, and I knew that. But I had to hurry. Mark needed my help too. And I had a feeling that tonight was going to be a long, long night.
“You are beautiful,” I said. I was surprised to find that I meant it. “I would love to spend an evening with you. And I hope you feel like you would like to spend a night with me, as well. So you have my num
ber. Don’t be shy; call me.”
With that, I left. When I first started in this business, I was told to always leave them wanting more. More of you, more of the feeling you give them, just leave them wanting more of what you have to offer. It’s important, and it’s important to be who they needed you to be. It helped that, more often than not, they had no idea what they wanted, and if you gave them something they didn’t know they wanted, that’s even better.
I walked out to the parking lot where Mark was waiting for me.
“Alright man. You better have some ideas. I have no idea what to do from here. And you’re the P.I.”
“I have no fucking clue what to do,” Mark hissed. “There is a dead chick in the front seat of my car.”
Like I said, Mark becomes hostile when he’s drunk. “How much have you had tonight, Mark?”
“What kind of a question is that? There is a dead person in my car.”
And apparently, redundant when he drank, too. I certainly had no idea where to begin.
“Alright,” I said to Mark. “Pretend this is a case someone called you with. Maybe the girl’s roommate or her parents or whatever. Where would you start?”
Mark gave me that baleful, I’m not an idiot look. And then followed up with, “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“No, Mark, I don’t. But I can’t really say ‘let’s sleep on this and regroup in the morning’ either. We have to do something. And we have to do something now, before someone finds out that we have a body in your car.”
I'll be honest; I was terrified. But something I learned through the years in an industry where I had to be able to read people was that panic only bred panic. I couln’t show Mark how scared I was.
“Is there anyone you can call? Can you call in any favors? There has to be someone out there who owes you a favor or something, right?”
“I… I… I don’t know,” Mark said, trying to think on the fly. He was a cop before he was a P.I. and had gotten into the private sector after a really difficult murder case that pushed him so far away from his wife and kids, they almost hadn’t reconciled. Part of their agreement when he finally moved back home was that he had to retire. I should know. The guy had slept on my couch for a couple months. And he hadn’t even managed to close the case. It was still open. The guy who took over for Mark had none of his skill or insight. Toward the end, Mark had become paranoid. Who knows how much—or rather how little—he passed to the new guy. That’s why Mark went to the private investigator sector.
“Come on, Mark. Think. We have to do something. And in case you haven’t noticed, time is wasting away while we sit here in the parking lot.”
“Alright, alright. Let’s go for a ride. Follow me. I know someone who might help us out.”
“Okay, fine, lead on. Let’s just get this… uh… young lady… outta here.” I say ‘young lady.’ I don’t want to say ‘body’ again. Especially with the late dinner crowd starting to leave.
I followed Mark out of the parking lot. His old beat-up Ford Taurus was that horrible early-2000s red. The thing barely ran. I thought he was in better financial shape than that. It seemed like he was the last time we really sat down and talked. We got on highway five and headed west. I don’t know where we were going, and I don’t much care. We had to get rid of that body. At least until we could figure out how it got in the car. And who put it there.
Chapter Two
We were on the highway about forty-five minutes when Mark finally exited the highway. I followed him for a short amount of time. After about twenty minutes, we pulled into the parking lot of a low, square building. I pulled into a parking stall right next to Mark and rolled down my window. It felt like I should whisper.
“Mark,” I said softly. “What are we doing here?”
“Just… wait…” Mark said. “If a light goes on, we might be okay.”
I couldn’t complain. At least we had some kind of plan, at least for the time being. I started looking more closely at where we were. It seemed like some kind of office building. It had those Plexiglas windows that made you think of a doctor’s office. Mark had his headlights off, so I turned mine off too. Almost as soon as I turned my lights off, a light turned on in the lower level of the building. I saw the soft blue-white glow of Marks cell phone as he received a text.
“C’mon Jupe. Let’s see if we’re gonna have some help with this or not. This is our last stop. If not here, we’re going to have to store this… lady… in my basement. I don’t think Ginny would take too kindly to that.”
I knew that to be a fact. After some of the crap Mark pulled back when he was losing it over the Mendes case, I’m sure Ginny wouldn’t take kindly to Mark bringing home any woman in any condition. Mark stalked to the front door, moving in and out of the shadows like a hunter stalking a deer. The door opened, and I saw white tile and a long hallway with every other light bulb off. So either the person on the inside did not turn on all the lights, or they didn’t work. I was a skeptic. My money was on them not working.
It was cold in the hallway and it smelled sterile. I looked back out the door at our cars. Stupid me—we came in through the back door. No wonder I had no idea where we were. I shouldn’t say no idea. I had a guess. A the youngish looking brunette walked down the hall to meet us. I was a pretty good judge of women when it concerned their looks. I put her age somewhere between thirty-seven and forty-one. Long dark-brown hair, slim waist, still looked perky despite the scrubs.
“Alright, Mark. You got me outta bed because it sounded urgent. What is going on?”
Mark tried to schmooze her with some chit-chat. I only partly listen. Apparently, this woman had been a big help back when Mark was working the Mendes case. She worked with the then-medical examiner. Apparently, she had found Mark a couple of very good leads.
“Get to the point, Mark. I’m exhausted.”
“Okay, okay. I’ve got a bit of a… situation,” he said. I snort, understatement of the year. Mark shot me a look that told me to shut up. I held up a placating hand.
“What kind of a situation can’t wait till morning?” the young lady asked.
“Well, Alex, it’s like this… I was at the bar, having a few drinks.” Alex looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “It’s not like that anymore,” Mark said. “I go out once a week, meet up with some guys from the force. Anyway, I went to the bar like I normally do. I come back out to the parking lot and I found… a situation.”
“Mark, be honest about it and just cut to the chase,” I say.
“Okay, fine,” Mark said. “I came out of the bar and found a young lady. In the front seat of my car. With a bullet through her head.” Mark stopped right there. Alex looked at him. Then at me. Then back at Mark.
“What?” she asked softly. It seemed to me that she was trying to ignore what Mark just said and looked at me again.
“Don’t look at me,” I replied. “He’s not lying. He interrupted me in the middle of a business transaction that cost me a lot of money,” I said.
“So,” she said, pausing a moment to think. “You go out to the car, and there’s a dead woman in your car? Shot through the head. And in your front seat?” she aske.
“That’s pretty much it,” Mark nodded.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“So what do you want from me?” Alex asked.
“I need two things,” Mark started to say. “I need somewhere to put this body on ice for a while. I gotta figure out what’s going on.” Alex’s eyebrow climbed even higher up her forehead. “And,” Mark finished, “I need you to look that body over until you find me something to go on.”
“Oh, is that all? Why don’t you just go to the police?” Alex asked.
“Yeah, Mark, why don’t we go to the police?”
“Because,” Mark said, “my gun is missing.”
“Jesus,” Alex breathed. “What the hell is going on Mark?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, “But I will find out. I just need to buy us,” he indicate
d me, “some time to figure it out.”
“What is my boss going to say when he gets in? I can lose my job over this. Not to mention go to jail.” She emphasized the last bit. I had the distinct feeling that she didn’t really care about the job. Maybe it was a stop-gap measure; something to keep her busy while she waited for the next break in her career.
“Listen,” Mark said. “I know I’m asking a lot. I know that. But if you can’t do this for me, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t store her at home. I need someone who knows this kind of stuff to help me figure out what is going on and who I am dealing with. And I can’t do this alone,” he finished. It was a genuine plea for help. I knew right then that I would not abandon Mark to face this alone. Regardless of what we were going up against.
“I… I… okay. Fine. I’ll help you out,” Alex said in a dejected tone. “I really owe you for helping me catch that cheating bastard of an ex-husband of mine.”
“I don’t think I ever heard that story,” I interjected, all of a sudden relieved beyond belief that we had someone else in our corner. “What exactly did Mark do?”
“Well,” Alex looked at Mark, with admiration in her eyes, “Mark followed my ex around for a couple of weeks. Got enough pictures, recorded phone calls and even some video footage of that bastard I was married to fooling around behind my back. All the work Mark did on my behalf guaranteed me custody of my kids, and the alimony and child support has been one of the few reasons the kids and I are still on our feet. Financially at least. So I really owe him. And Mark wouldn’t even take a payment.”
Mark was almost blushing at this point. “Look, it wasn’t a big deal. And if you’re seriously going to help us out, then I will owe you big time. Even after we’re square.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Alex said. “I’ll help. You didn’t touch the body, right?”
