Wild Dirty Secret(24)

“You want massage? Why you come here if you don’t want massage?”

“We do, we do.”

The quieter one stepped forward, not willing to lose his shot at a happy ending over his dumbfounded friend.

“We just were wondering… I mean, when you say massage… Because we heard…”

Jade glared at them, her irritation almost palpable. This place was full-service, but everyone knew not to talk about options or anything sexual outside the room. It was part of the way they protected themselves from narcs, but it was obvious these two boneheads weren’t undercover; they were just stupid.

“Massage only,” she said flatly. “Very relaxing. You like. No refunds.”

Flustered, they dug around in their pockets to come up with the right amount, thirty-minute sessions for each of them. Watching their reluctance as they handed over the cash, I wondered if they had even kept any back to pay for extras. And yeah, they’d be shitty tippers.

After Jade led them to the back, she motioned me upstairs into her office, which was arranged more like a regular sitting room. Out of courtesy, I accepted her offer of a drink and received a very small glass of flat soda. Here, alone, her accent dwindled to a lilt, her tone still sharp but less abrasive.

“So, you in trouble. It was going to happen. Just matter of time with that one.”

“With…” Henri?

“You know Jenny? Pretty girl. Stoner.”

The girl at the party, the one we’d left behind in the hotel room. The reporter had made no mention of a dead hooker, which was certainly newsworthy if only for the salacious appeal. She had probably bailed shortly after we did, I assured myself. “Is she okay?” I asked.

Jade snorted. “How should I know? Maybe, maybe not. Henri knows it was you, and she makes him money, so why would he hurt her?”

“Great,” I said faintly.

“She start maybe three years before you.”

“Jenny? I guess. She was pretty far in when I started, but she isn’t the type to pull rank.”

She seemed not to hear me. “Her mother was a nurse, gone during the day. Jenny started getting high, so her mom kicked her out. Tough love, they say. Jenny quit school and moved in with her boyfriend. A common story.”

“Mmm-hmm.” It was a common story. The kind that made Jade’s business possible. So I wasn’t sure why Jade was telling me this, but conversations with her were often circuitous. Once she had talked for fifteen minutes about her kidney stones before segueing into telling me about Marguerite and the women’s shelter she ran, concluding they were both a pain in her side. At least this seemed more relevant.

Jade flipped through a Vogue magazine and pulled out a yellowed newspaper clipping. She slid it across the glass coffee table toward me. It appeared to be a small inner-page article titled “Dead End in Drug-Related Shooting.” The piece explained that a twenty-three-year-old male had been found shot dead in his apartment. Due to his previous history of dealing charges and the circumstances of the break-in, police assumed the hit was drug related. Rumors indicated that the victim had poached the territory of a well-known dealer in the city, Henri Denikin, but there was insufficient evidence to link him to the shooting. A chill ran through me.

The last paragraph remarked that the only possible witness, the victim’s seventeen-year-old live-in girlfriend, had been missing since the shooting. Her name was Jennifer Ponds. There was a grainy black-and-white photograph of a girl who looked about nine years old, dressed up for her school picture. A younger, happier version of the Jenny I knew, one who couldn’t imagine the indignities that would be visited on her body.

Beneath the photo was a number for the missing-persons hotline. With a jerky motion, I threw the clipping back on the coffee table, but it caught on the air and floated to my feet. My fingers had black smudges left from the ink.

“What is this?” I asked. “What does this have to do with me?”

Jade shrugged. “Maybe nothing.”

Unaccountably, I felt angry. “This is from the original paper, not a printout. So you knew about this at the time. Did you call this number? Did Jenny even have a chance?”

“Call them?” she asked scornfully. “What for, call them?”

I shook my head, throat tight. Her words replayed in my head: “What for, call them?” That wasn’t how this worked; I knew that. Every one of these girls had a story. Every one of us had a story, and it didn’t matter. I had a story. Don’t think about it. What for?

“Hey,” Jade chastised. “Did the rich bastard fuck you so hard your brains are broken, huh? You want to save your skin, or the girl you have, then pay attention.”