Except here in Vegas a workingwoman could get stoned on the job in a whole different way than in a fundamentalist Muslim country.
And in Nevada, the authorities policed these “chicken ranches.” The women were healthy, protected, and drug-and disease-free. Elsewhere in Las Vegas, the roulette wheel was in fine fettle and you pays your money and you takes your chances, as the carnival barkers say.
She had set aside the troubling question of Aldo’s dead significant other and was regarding the young women gathered around, all mostly under thirty or nearing forty at the outside, with a teacher’s fond expectations.
Temple understood that they had been primed to perform.
“The first thing we need to establish,” Temple said in a slow, serious tone, “is who the dead girl upstairs is. You know that the police will have to be called. When they are, they’ll come here in force, along with a lot of forensics staff.
“It won’t be as gory or glamorous as CSI: Las Vegas, but it will sure disrupt everybody’s lives. The more information we can dig up now so you can give it confidently and truthfully to the police, the better off everyone will be.”
“Except that dead girl.”
The first to talk back was a skinny black woman.
“True,” Temple said. “I’d better get your names.”
“They’re simple. We use the alphabet so our clients can remember to ask for us again.”
“Alphabet pseudonyms?” Temple asked doubtfully.
“We even sit in alphabetical order.”
“So the clients know where to spot you the second or twelfth time around?”
“Right. On the far left of the first sofa is Angela, then Ba-bette, Crystal, Deedee, Fifi, Gigi, Heather, Inez, Jazz, Kiki, Lili, Niki, and I’m Zazu.”
There were a lot more blondes of every shade among the residents than among the bridesmaids, curled, or tousled, or spiky. It made the girls harder to tell apart.
“So everyone who’s here is someone who should be here?” Temple asked.
There was a pause, almost as if a moment of mental communion occurred, then all the bedheads nodded.
“Then who is she?” Temple got up to show the dead woman’s cell phone image to everyone in reverse alphabetical order, studying their reactions.
“Nobody we recognize for sure,” said the first one, Zazu, who wore a blue peignoir over skimpy French underwear. At least Temple assumed it was French, since she had never seen the like, even online.
The others agreed in turn, in different words, but just as definitely.
“That hairdo is way too long and loose for one of us.”
“Men like piled and teased hair that’s easy to disarrange.”
“That there’s a receptionist pageboy. No guy would ask her for anything but directions.”
Their instant summations were unnerving. Temple realized that their world was one of appearances and snap judgments. So they were judged by the customers, and so they judged everyone.
Like Kit, Temple found the house girls amazingly open and even chatty once the ice had been broken. They reminded her of teenagers at a pajama party. Theirs was an all-female society. Of course men came into it every night, and then they performed their agreed-upon sexual pas de deux with whoever paid.
But the real culture of the Sapphire Slipper wasn’t the hordes of men who arrived and departed, but the ongoing daily gossip, pampering, laughing, interaction of the women. Temple had sensed the same sort of high school camaraderie in the dressing room of a strip club she had once visited undercover.
These women had never gotten past the trauma of their families, the casual bonding of girls in passage, the sharing of fripperies and laughs, the bored, knowing, eyebrow-raising worldliness of girls who’d had to grow up faster than was good for them.
In a strange, warped way, they were convinced that anyone who subscribed to a monogamous, straight way of life was either deluded or a liar.
To answer the famous song line, “Is that all there is?” they were sure that this, their commercially intimate lives, was all that there was.
It was only in going over her notes of their names and descriptions later that she noticed the E and M girls were missing before the string jumped to Zazu at the end.
Happy Hooker?
Temple adjourned to the bar off the parlor with a sense of relief, probably false. She felt on common ground here, however bizarre the situation.
A sober group of men surrounded several of the round tables, sitting on leather club chairs.
The liquor labels fronting the mirrored back of the bar were all high-end. Heavy crystal ashtrays suitable for cigars centered every polished tiger-maple tabletop.
Temple would have to say that if she were a resident sizing up the night’s customers, she’d be one happy hooker. Matt’s Polish-blond hair stood out among the dark Italian ones like a headlight, but not one guy here was shabby, including Uncle Mario, whose teeth were as snow-white as his silk tie against a black shirt. The man’s old-style gangster look made portly into muscle and balding into moneyed.
The younger Fontanas were hipper in every respect, but still radiated a slightly Old World air of elaborate courtesy that won over women everywhere.
Van von Rhine was the other blonde in the room, and Temple had missed seeing her at first. She was perched on a navy leather barstool and had faded into the faceted glitter of the mirrored bottles behind her.
After Temple had surveyed the scene, Van waved her over. “How’s it going?”
“I’m learning a lot about hordes of strangers.” Temple joined Van at the bar, deciding that an elevated seat would command more attention from this armada of men.
She skillfully hopped up via the crossbar, which anyone who is five feet tall masters early. She felt like a judge at a bench, which was just the inner buttressing she needed to play the authority card here.
“You seem one short.”
They frowned, straightening their ties and their postures.
“Not short in height, in number.”
Emilio dashed around the archway. “Sorry, I just heard from, er, Fifi, that it was the guys’ turn for grilling.”
“Who’s guarding the murder room door?” Nicky asked as their uncle nodded with grave disapproval.
“Um, three of the girls. That way they watch one another. I’ll get back up there as soon as Miss Temple lets me go.”
And she bet that he was a lot more eager to pass the time with three courtesans than here.
Smiling at the tables, she said, “I’ll need to use you guys as a sounding board. First, I’d like your impression of how the abduction was managed, and what you all did, and where, when you arrived here.”
There was the expected universal, awkward silence.
“Did any of you suspect something was wrong before you arrived here?”
Dark heads shook.
“The right limo was gassed up and idling for us. We hopped in,” Aldo said.
“Like lambs to the slaughter,” Macho Mario growled dolefully.
Imagining him as a lamb was quite the funny-bone tickler. Temple bit her lip and caught Matt’s eye, who gave his answer. “I didn’t know what normal was for these events, so it all seemed uneventful to me.”
“There was one surprise,” Aldo noted.
“What was that?” half-a-dozen basso voices wondered.
“Your cat,” he told Temple, “hitched a ride in my groomsmen-mobile. I didn’t recall anyone inviting Midnight Louie to be a ring bearer.”
“Have you seen him since you all were ushered inside?” She hadn’t yet encountered him in the living fur, which was odd.
“No, ma’am,” Emilio said smartly. “He must have run off and hid at all the strangers and commotion.”
That didn’t sound like Louie, who had a habit of running toward strangers and commotion. Where was the big lug now?