Discretion

by Allison Leotta

  “Testing what?”

  “Women,” Anna said. “Most of the high-end escort agencies are run by white women, unlike your typical street pimp. The madams hire the escorts, but they can’t really sample their own product, right? So they’ll often have a man they trust ‘test’ a woman before she’s hired. The tester tells the madam about the escort’s performance and attitude—is she attractive, enthusiastic, sane? If not, the madam won’t hire her. If the tester likes her, he’ll write a good review, which can launch a career. Testers have a closer relationship with the escort agency than other johns. BigBoy doesn’t get the expensive escorts unless he’s with a Discretion escort. I’ll bet he gets them at a steep discount, maybe even free, in exchange for providing his stamp of approval here on TrickAdviser. He might know a lot about Discretion.”

  “How quickly can we get BigBoy’s real name?” Jack asked.

  The last time Anna had tracked down an anonymous guy from a website like this, it had taken two weeks to get compliance from all of the companies involved. “If I push it,” she said, “I could probably have this guy’s name and address by next week.”

  “I can have that before lunch,” said Samantha.

  “Really?” Anna was skeptical.

  Sam laughed. “You’ve never worked with the FBI, have you?”

  Jack’s BlackBerry buzzed, and he answered it. Anna only heard his part of the conversation.

  “Hello—yeah, I saw it—I wish he hadn’t mentioned me—there’s nothing to do about it—fine, I’ll be right there.” Jack reattached the BlackBerry to his belt. “I’m going to see Marty.”

  Marty was the acting U.S. Attorney, the temporary boss who would serve until a permanent U.S. Attorney was appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The last U.S. Attorney had left a few weeks earlier to take a lucrative job at a law firm.

  “What’s it about?” Anna asked.

  “Nothing important.”

  Anna raised her eyebrows. It sounded important. She wondered if it had to do with Youngblood’s press conference and his announcement that Jack should be U.S. Attorney. It put the case in a strange position. Perhaps the front office was concerned.

  “When I get back, I expect you’ll have magically found BigBoy,” Jack said.

  “I’m on it,” Sam said.

  “We’re on it,” Anna said.

  Jack nodded and walked out.

  Anna and Sam set up their laptops on opposite corners of the table in the war room. Anna relaxed a little when Jack left—she no longer had to keep strict tabs on her body language to make sure she was hiding their relationship. She could just concentrate on the investigation.

  She banged out a raft of subpoenas. The team of FBI and MPD agents working the case would serve the warrants. Sam tapped away on her computer. They didn’t speak to each other.

  The silence was interrupted by the phone ringing in the middle of the table. Anna and Sam reached for the green speakerphone button at the same time.

  “Hello?” they answered in unison.

  “McGee here.” The detective’s deep voice boomed from the speaker. “The techs are going to finish up a few things in the hideaway, but I’m wrapping up.”

  “What’d you find?” Anna asked.

  “No blood, no semen, no signs of a struggle.”

  “Anything?”

  “You’ll like this. I found an engagement ring on the balcony.”

  “A real engagement ring?”

  “It ain’t a hologram.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Like a ring. With a diamond on top.”

  “How big’s the rock?”

  “Normal size, I guess.”

  “You’re no jewelry connoisseur, are you?”

  “My two ex-wives could tell you that.”

  Anna looked at Samantha, and they laughed.

  “I think the ladies need to take a look at that ring,” Anna said.

  “I’ll bring it by tonight, after I log in all the evidence.”

  “One more thing,” Anna said. “We got Caroline’s address from her mother—see what you can find.” She gave him the information. “And try to find Caroline’s roommate, Nicole Palowski. We need to talk to her, probably put her right into the grand jury.”

  “Sure.”

  Anna expected that Nicole would have important information. But there was something more. The roommate was likely involved in this dangerous business. Anna had been too late to save Caroline. But maybe she could still help Nicole.

  13

  Nicole opened her eyes and blinked against the pitiless sunshine lasering through cracks in the curtains. She was sprawled on top of her covers, still in her little black dress, cheek resting on the long string of pearls. Last night’s events came crashing back. She moaned and wished she could slip back into unconsciousness.

  The only part of her body that moved was her eyes, taking in the room. God, what a mess. Designer clothes and stilettos thrown everywhere. Her dresser was crammed with wadded-up tissues, makeup, a flatiron, and hairbrushes of varying sizes and purposes. The room smelled dank and musky.

  She closed her eyes. She couldn’t face the day, not after last night. She couldn’t hang around this apartment, sitting on Caroline’s couch, eating Caroline’s food, knowing Caroline was lying in a morgue.

  But she needed a hit.

  Nicole sat up slowly, then wished she hadn’t. The room swayed back and forth, and for a moment she thought she’d vomit. She lifted a hand to her face. She could feel the indentations the necklace had pressed into her cheek. The nausea passed, but her whole body ached, and she felt as if a layer of needles was implanted below the surface of her skin, painful and itchy at once.

  She looked to her nightstand. A crumpled cellophane wrapper sat on top, next to an empty Ambien bottle. In better days, she could’ve opened the drawer and found a buffet of coke, Special K, MDMA, the occasional baggie of mushrooms, and prescriptions like Ambien, Valium, and Oxycontin. But as her cash had dried up, so had her supply. After running home empty-handed last night, she’d freebased the last of her coke. The searing smoke had burned away her worries in a euphoric surge; it was like great sex, a good-hair day, and Godiva chocolate all rolled into one lip-numbing rush. When the high had worn off, she’d taken her last three Ambiens and fell into a tortured sleep.

  Now her nightstand was empty.

  Panic began to set in. She picked up the cellophane wrapper, which had a faint white residue. She ran her finger over it, accumulated a sliver of white powder, and rubbed it onto her gums. It gave her a tiny shimmer of relief, but she needed more. Soon.

  She picked up her cell phone. Maybe she’d call T-Rex.

  On second thought, maybe not. She owed her dealer over ten thousand dollars, and he’d been seriously on her case lately. He wouldn’t even give her a little product in return for sex anymore. He could get laid, he said—what he needed from her was money. In his last voice message, he said he’d “peel her wig” if she didn’t pay him soon. She didn’t know what that meant, and she didn’t want to find out. She tossed the phone onto the nightstand.

  She stood and caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror. She was a wreck. Hair a rat’s nest, mascara smudged on her cheeks, rumpled dress, a couple of chips in her red nails. It took a lot of grooming to keep yourself up to standard. She still had the essentials—slim body, nice face, perky little tits. But lately she’d been slipping. She was getting a bit too bony, and her long brown hair was overprocessed. She’d recently gotten her highlights done at a random bargain place, and the streaks looked more cheap brass than rich gold. Her eyebrows were also wrong, overplucked and a bit crooked. It was amazing the difference good eyebrows could make. She hadn’t realized that until she skipped her usual hundred-dollar-a-brow waxing specialist and tried doing it herself.

  She would get herself together, she vowed. Earn a few hundred dollars tonight, go back to Christophe Salon, get everything done right. Then she could hi
re out again for the kind of cash she’d need to pay back T-Rex. Having a plan made her feel better.

  She dragged herself to the kitchen, purposely ignoring Caroline’s neat, empty bedroom. The drugs canceled out hunger most of the time, but she might feel better if she could force herself to eat something. As she passed through the apartment’s living room, she glanced out the window, which was six stories up and had a fabulous view of the National Cathedral across the street. A flash of blue and red down on Massachusetts Avenue caught her eye. She peered out.

  A police cruiser and an unmarked Crown Vic pulled into her building’s circular drive and parked illegally. Two uniformed cops got out of the squad car, while a huge black man in a ridiculous light blue suit and fedora emerged from the unmarked Crown Vic. They strode up the walk to her apartment building.

  Holy shit. She couldn’t be here.

  Nicole ran into her bedroom and threw on brown cowboy boots and a denim jacket, hoping to make her tiny black dress look like street clothes. The rush of movement made her head feel like it would explode. She forced herself to think through the pain. What do you need to do?

  She yanked open her nightstand drawer. There was little left to hide. The cellophane wrapper and a few empty zips went down the toilet. Her glass pipe went into her oversize Hermès bag. What else? The Vaio laptop, her most essential asset. It was the only way she could keep her business going. She stuffed it into the carrying case. She would’ve raided Caroline’s room for money, but Caroline had stopped leaving cash around the apartment.

  She slung the bag over her shoulder and rushed into the hallway. As she closed the door behind her, the elevator dinged. She bolted in the other direction. Pushing through the stairwell door, she glanced back. The big guy in the fedora strode toward her apartment with the building manager, the uniforms behind them.

  Nicole flew down the concrete steps and emerged into the tony Cathedral Heights neighborhood. She flagged down a passing cab and threw herself into the backseat. As the taxi took off, she rested her head on the seat back.

  “Where to, sweetheart?”

  She raised her head and opened her mouth, but no words came out. She hadn’t spoken to her mother in years, not since their blowup about Larry. Her friends had dwindled recently, too, as she’d burned through their goodwill. Caroline was pretty much the only friend she had left—and look what she’d done to her. Nicole choked back a sob.

  The driver looked at her in the rearview mirror as they cruised past the Cathedral. When the silence stretched to the breaking point, she gave him an address. She shouldn’t go there—it was just asking for trouble. But it was the only place she could think of.

  14

  You’re right,” Sam explained into the phone for the third time that day. “A faxed subpoena isn’t valid service. You don’t have to respond to it. Technically, I should send a pair of armed FBI agents to serve you in person. At your place of business, in front of your customers and neighbors. And then you’ll have to respond in person in front of a D.C. grand jury next Monday. It should only take six or seven hours of your day. But let me make a suggestion. How about we skip the formalities and you e-mail me the information now?”

  Anna’s attention was split between her computer and listening to Samantha. The agent was getting results.

  “Sure, I’ll hold.” A few seconds later, Sam jotted something down on a legal pad. “I agree, that’s a wise choice. Thank you very much for your cooperation.” She hung up and grinned at Anna. “Trick-Adviser captures its users’ IP addresses, probably sells them to other sex sites. That information might be more valuable than the yearly subscriptions.”

  Sam’s fingers flew over her computer, then she made some friendly phone calls to her ISP contacts. When she hung up, Sam looked at Anna triumphantly. “BigBoy89 is Brian Stringer. He posted his most recent reviews from 1312 L Street, Northwest.”

  “Great!” Anna was impressed that the agent had been able to find him this quickly. “You want me to draft an affidavit for a warrant to seize the computer and we can interview him together?”

  “I don’t need a chaperone. You do the lawyering, I’ll do the interviewing.”

  “Interviewing witnesses is lawyering. It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Anna lied. She remembered Sam’s musing at the Capitol about whether to arrest the congressional staffers as material witnesses. This FBI agent played a lot more aggressively than Anna would, and Anna didn’t want to have vital parts of her case suppressed on account of mistakes. “But whatever this guy’s story is, I’ll want to hear it myself. There’s no time for you to do the interview, write it up in a 302, then drag the guy in here for me to interview him again. I usually go with my officers to interview witnesses.”

  “Look, maybe it’s important for you to babysit the MPD, but I’m an FBI agent. I went to law school. I know how to build my case.”

  “I’m sure you do. But when we’re in court, it’s my case. I’ll have to defend how we did things. I’m coming on the interviews.”

  Sam didn’t respond, just started typing. Anna finished up her subpoenas, then logged on to Facebook. For a prosecutor, social-networking sites were a treasure trove of information. There were a bunch of Caroline McBrides on Facebook, but one showed a profile picture of the woman at the center of this case. Anna clicked on it. Caroline’s privacy settings were more restricted than the public setting, so Anna couldn’t see much. She’d subpoena Facebook to get the information. For now she sent friend requests to a bunch of Caroline’s friends. One of them accepted within a few minutes, allowing Anna to see much of Caroline’s profile, apparently set to the friends-of-friends privacy setting.

  Caroline had a typical college-student profile: 354 friends, she liked American Idol and Lady Gaga, she had posted some pictures of herself and friends at a bar. Anna scrolled through Caroline’s daily posts. Campus activities, inside jokes, happy birthdays. Then something more relevant. Three months ago, Caroline had written: “Signing up for StrikeBack self-defense class. Anyone want to join me?” Many people liked that post, and a few responded that they couldn’t come. It was the same self-defense class that Anna was taking upstairs with Eva Youngblood.

  “Hard at work on FarmVille?” Sam smirked behind her.

  “It’s Caroline.” Anna pointed to the profile. “She took Eva Young-blood’s self-defense course.”

  “And she still got killed? That’s not much of a class.”

  “I’m taking it now. Seems pretty good, actually.”

  “Buy a dog. That’s the best self-defense.”

  “We should interview Eva and see if Caroline said why she was taking the class.”

  “Eventually,” Sam said. “There are a hundred other things that take priority.”

  “This could be important. A lot of students take a class like that after a traumatic incident—and a lot of them share that at the first class.”

  “Okay, Sherlock. We’ll get to it. First this.” Sam tossed down the affidavit supporting a search-warrant application for BigBoy’s computer. Every search warrant request in D.C. had to have a prosecutor’s signature before it could be presented to a judge. Anna picked up a pen and read the papers. She typically edited these heavily—officers tended to be action guys, not word guys. But Sam’s affidavit was perfect. Anna didn’t have to use her pen except to initial the bottom.

  The warrant described how the computer’s owner was engaged in the crime of soliciting for a lewd and indecent purpose. Then it described the premises in which the computer was located and how Sam had obtained the location. It said that 1312 L Street was a historic landmark registered to an all-men’s organization called the Hunt Club.

  Anna looked up. “What’s the Hunt Club?”

  “Once I get this signed by the duty judge,” Sam said, “we’ll go find out.”

  15

  Nicole tried to suppress her envy as she walked up the steps to Belinda’s townhouse on O Street. The tree-lined street was just two blocks from the high-en
d shops and restaurants on M Street, prime Georgetown real estate. Three stories on this cobblestone stretch probably cost over five thousand dollars a month, but Belinda lived here by herself. It was a sign of how well she was doing.

  Nicole rang the bell, waited a moment, then rang it two more times. Finally, Belinda opened the door. The beautiful Asian woman never left the house without a full-body armor of couture. Now Belinda wore a T-shirt and boxers, and her long black hair radiated a cloud of static electricity. Nicole had obviously woken her up. Belinda greeted her with naked fury. “What the hell, Nicole?”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “Yeah, you are! I heard you fell on hard times, but I gave you a chance. And what do you do? Walk out in the middle of a service! Right as the guy was about to pop! I’ve heard of bad sessions, but that sets a new record.”

  “Did someone finish him off?”

  “Oh yeah, that’s a true girlfriend experience. ‘Sorry that chick just flipped out, but let me administer the last few strokes to get you there.’ Do you have any idea how pissed Bill was? He was one of my best clients. I ended up giving him the whole night for free, and I still had to pay the other girls. I lost two thousand dollars from that booking.”

  “Caroline died last night.”

  “What?”

  “She’s the one who fell at the Capitol.”

  “Oh my God.” Belinda put her hand to her mouth and stared. Finally, she opened the door and stepped back, allowing Nicole in. Belinda led her to the living room, a modern space with shiny wood floors and lavender walls. She sat on the white couch and gestured for Nicole to sit in the zebra-skin chair.

  “What happened?” Belinda asked.

  “I have no idea,” Nicole lied. “She was going to meet a client at the Capitol. Next thing I know, she ends up dead.”

  “Oh, Nicole, I’m so sorry. I know how close you two were.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “Does Madeleine know?”

  “I haven’t talked to her in a while. Have you?”