someone blew his brains out two nights ago after he met with you?’
‘He was cute and sad and a totally great guy.’
I thought about that. ‘I’m not cute or great, but I’m sad sometimes. One out of three, though, that’s three-thirty-three, and if the Padres could—’
‘I hate people like you.’
I shrugged but didn’t take my eyes off her because I figured she might make a break for it.
‘Look, Carrie,’ I said. ‘Or Ellen or Marilyn or Julie – I don’t care what your name is. I don’t care how you make a living, though I hope you get health care and a decent retirement plan.’
She sighed, pulled her little suede bag around and unzipped it. ‘Your judgment means nothing to me. I do the same thing your wife does but I get paid cash up-front and I can say no anytime I want.’
‘Oh, man, do I have to respond to that?’
Her lips began a smile.
‘Help me out here,’ I said. ‘Help Garrett.’
‘Okay, o-fucking-kay. Just get me out of this fog and buy me drink, will you? I’m freezing. And to tell you the truth, maybe I need to talk to a cop.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m really kinda scared, Robbie.’
She pulled a pack of smokes from her little bag, offered one to me. I shook my head.
‘Light?’ she asked.
‘Sorry.’
‘Men were better in old movies.’
‘Our stock is down.’
‘Then, here. Learn something useful.’ She pulled a lighter from her bag and held it out to me.
I smiled but didn’t move.
‘What?’ she asked. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Okay, whoever you are. I’ll learn something useful.’
I walked to her slowly but grabbed her wrist fast and gave it enough of a turn to smart.
She yelped.
The lighter fell to the wooden beams of the pier and I watched it roll to a stop. She watched it too.
I picked it up and she didn’t try to kick me and run. Sure enough, it was a lighter. But the other end was a pepper sprayer. I’d heard about them from some of the Vice officers.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get that drink. I’ll drive.’
She flexed her wrist. ‘I wasn’t going to use that on you. Swear to God, man—’
‘I think you were.’
‘Give it back.’
‘I’ll give it back later.’
‘Garrett would have lit my cigarette.’
‘Maybe that’s why he’s dead.’
At the Beachside she drank Irish coffees and I had a beer. I asked her what her name was and she said Carrie Ann Martier worked just fine. She said she grew up in San Diego, rich family, though her father was a bastard and her mother was kind but insane.
‘Schizophrenia, with a paranoid subtype,’ she said. ‘Not a good combo when you’re married to a sneak like him.’
She told me Steven Stiles, an aide to Ninth District Councilman Anthony Rood, had punched her in the body twice and stiffed her because he couldn’t get it up. This was back in February. Two bruised ribs – he really laid into her. His wedding band had scraped her skin, which she found ‘highly ironic,’ along with the fact that it was the day before Valentine’s Day. She leaned toward me and waited until I leaned toward her.
‘And, Mr Brownlaw,’ she whispered, ‘nobody treats Carrie Ann Martier like that.’
She said that after getting hit, her ribs had tensed with pain every time she breathed or talked. Laughing was worse, but sneezing and coughing took the cake. She missed two weeks of work. She told me she’d gone to Garrett because Garrett wasn’t a cop and she knew he’d be interested in city employees and contractors buying girls. She wasn’t about to go to the police and she still was not willing to file a criminal complaint, though her ribs still hurt every time someone told her a good joke, which wasn’t often.
She said she’d made the discs for Garrett with a video cam hidden in her flop. She used a room at the Coronado Oceana Hotel, had ‘good relationships’ with security out there. Two girlfriends had similar recording setups, not because Stiles had beat them too, but because they were ‘pissed off at Jordan’ and thought they should be able to show a solid connection between Jordan’s phone calls, which they’d recorded on the sly, with actual men paying for actual sex.
‘Tell me about Jordan,’ I said.
‘You don’t know anything, do you?’
I shook my head. Actually, I knew a little. Vice had been working up a case against Jordan Sheehan for months.
Jordan was the ‘Squeaky Clean Madam,’ said Carrie. She got the name because years ago she actually started a maid service called that. She had made some good money, gotten popped for illegals, labor violations, and back taxes. She did her time, and when she got out she discovered that sex paid more than custodial skills and she didn’t even have to buy mops and vacuums if her girls were pretty enough. Now she ran fifty or sixty girls, more for conventions and special events like the Super Bowl. She had some kind of investment-counseling business as a cover, some fakey name like Sheehan & Associates or something. She had associates, all right. Jordan’s girls dressed like corporate receptionists, they looked like the girl next door, they had to have good manners and pretty smiles, and they cost a lot. Hotels couldn’t even spot them if they rotated right. Pure class and plenty of rules, she said – nothing kinky, nothing rough, no toys, no drugs, no pain or threesomes. Never in a car. They were not allowed to wear risqué clothing. No ‘CFM shoes’ and no pierced body parts except the ears. No swearing, no smoking. No girls over thirty. Every girl had a pager. You never talked to Jordan because the madam was like the top of a pyramid and beneath her were the ‘spot callers’ who told you when and who the John was. Jordan lined them up by the dozen. She had this way about her, pure and simple. Jordan owned men. Jordan could turn a priest into a paying customer in five minutes. The girls did their own marketing, too; they didn’t just wait around for the pager to go off. Jordan told them to drive VW Cabriolet convertibles so the guys could get a look at them. The fleet manager at Mission Center VW was a friend of Jordan’s and would make them deals on the Cabriolets. It was just automobile advertising, like for pizza or exterminators, only for women. Jordan got the idea from Ida Bailey, the old madam in the Gaslamp who used to parade her girls around in carriages so the guys could see the choices and pick. So you got fifty total foxes zooming around San Diego, and guess what happens when you whistle or wave, man, they pull right over and make you a deal. An hour later you’re a grand poorer but you’ve been Squeaky Cleaned. Jordan got four hundred per contact, the ‘meet
