“This is good, therapy by proxy,” I said. “Anything else you found out about me?”
“Yes. Your desire to find Annika is a way of wishing someone had rescued you at that age. When you were on your own in a big city, falling for bad men. This wish is unconscious. Consciously, you thought you were having a good time.”
I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t everyone live like that at nineteen?
The rest of the way to San Pedro we talked about Lauren Rodriguez. And Britta and the pill that connected her to Annika, pills Rico was apparently handing out right and left.
“Sounds like he was exporting this to Germany,” Joey said. “But the international drug trade-there are syndicates to go through. You don’t just hang out a shingle and take orders.”
No. You signed on with Vladimir Tcheiko and went global. Little Fish must’ve recruited Rico when he visited the set. Maybe Rico was eager to show some initiative, putting together his own team in preparation for the big merger.
“Joey,” I said, “if someone on the show is into drugs, would you know?”
Joey glanced in the rearview mirror. “Depends on what you mean by ‘into.’ I’ve done everything that doesn’t involve needles or aerosol cans, but I’ve never sold, even when I needed money. Little kink in my moral code. Other people deal them but don’t use. On B.C. I don’t know; I’m the producer, people don’t let their hair down around me. Production sucks.”
Joey circled the block so Fredreeq could precede us into the Au Pairs par Excellence lot. We parked too, and went into the Laundromat next to the agency, positioning ourselves near the window. If any coin-op customers found it odd that we’d come in to enjoy the view, they didn’t mention it.
Fredreeq got out of her Volvo, looked around, then approached a boxy orange vehicle next to her and slowly walked the length of it, touching it. “What’s she doing?” I whispered.
“Drawing a line with Wite-Out,” Joey whispered.
Fredreeq returned the Wite-Out to her purse and hurried into the agency, emerging seconds later with the secretary-receptionist we’d met the previous week. Joey and I slipped out of the Laundromat and into the empty agency.
File boxes were everywhere, as they’d been the week before. If anything, they’d reproduced. I checked under Marty Otis’s metal desk. Even there, boxes. “Joey?” I said.
“Go for it.”
“What about you?”
Before she could respond, we heard Fredreeq’s voice outside, unnaturally loud. I crawled under the desk, amid boxes, and pulled the desk chair in after me. I was as cramped as I’ve ever been, but I was hidden. I heard the door swing open and Fredreeq’s voice amplify.
“-didn’t want you thinking it was me. People so damn irresponsible, no accountability- Where’s the phone?” She made a call to her husband, Francis, asking about stores that carried car paint. I wondered where Joey was hiding and told myself not to worry, that she was a toothpick, that her hair took up more space than her body.
Fredreeq sounded prepared to talk indefinitely, but the receptionist eventually told her she had to close up. Thank God. Fredreeq said good-bye, drawers opened and closed, a window cranked shut, a phone machine message changed, and, finally, a key turned in a door.
Uh-oh.
I waited for Joey’s faint “Wollie?” before I crawled out from under the desk. It took me a full minute to stand. Was this what arthritis felt like? I looked around and said, “Joey?”
A muffled sound came from a file cabinet. It was a vertical job not much more than four feet tall, moved out from the wall about fifteen inches, due to a fortuitously placed pipe. It rattled and from the back Joey emerged, looking like I felt, hair disheveled and body parts unfolding with difficulty.
“How did you fit back there?” I asked.
“Squatting and bent over. I may have to spend the night at a chiropractor’s.”
“We may have to spend the night here.” I went to the glass front door for a closer look. “What if we need a key to get out? I didn’t think about that. Did you?”
“It crossed my mind, but that’s not what worries me. It’ll be Christmas before we get through these boxes. This is insane. I can’t believe I’m asking, but is it worth it?”
“It’s worth it. I’m telling you, Marie-Thérèse knows about Annika. If I had a problem, who would I tell? You. This girl is the Joey Rafferty of Annika’s life, and in one of these boxes is her address and a phone number.”
There were over a hundred boxes. Had these people been in business since World War II? The au pair program hadn’t been around nearly that long. I picked one at random, and looked at my watch. In less than seven hours we had to be in Beverly Hills for B.C. “Do we leave things tidy?” I asked. “Are we trying to cover our tracks?”
“We could turn a leaf blower loose in here and no one would notice. I say we just start in. Maybe put a check mark on the boxes we’ve looked at.”
It was 5:22 P.M. At 6:49 we turned on the radio to liven things up, and listened to the latest report of volcanic activity on the Big Island of Hawaii. At 8:03 we stopped the au pair search and began a food search. “Protein bars. Oyster crackers. That’s what normal people keep in an office,” Joey said. “I bet this place is a front for something.”
“I found Sweet ’n Low,” I said, rummaging through the receptionist’s desk.
“Is that the edible stuff?”
“No, the blue’s edible,” I said. “This is the pink, cheaper but toxic tasting.”
“It’s my first breaking and entering. Next time I’ll bring snacks.”
By eight-thirty, in addition to countless au pair applications, we’d found tax receipts for Marty Otis, yearbooks from Millard High in Wisconsin, and old issues of Playboy and Hustler.
At nine-fifteen, Joey said, “Eureka.”
“You found her?”
“No, I found Polaroids.”
I crawled across the icky tan carpet to her. She passed me pictures. People smiled-or not-into the camera, dressed in swimsuits, leotards, or skimpy loungewear. One man in knee socks and boxer shorts wore some sort of harness that reminded me of Margaret, a ferret I’d once known. Not quite pornographic, but not au pair photo collages. The subjects ranged in age from teens to seniors, all body types, races, and genders, and were rated with one, two, or three stars, drawn in the upper corner with a felt pen. Each photo was numbered. “Look at this three-star guy in the Speedo. I think he’s worth another half star. You know-” Joey crawled across the carpet. “I bet these numbers correspond to files-I saw a box of files somewhere-”
I didn’t stop her. This wasn’t getting us closer to Marie-Thérèse, but she was happier now than she’d been in three hours.
“Aha!” she said, moments later. “Quite the entrepreneur. Let’s check out this Web site.” She seated herself at Marty Otis’s desk. “Good. Bills. His address. We’ll keep that.”
“What’s the story?” I asked.
“Wait a second. Let me figure out how this computer-please, God, don’t let there be a password-” She logged on to the Internet, still mumbling to herself. “I bet he charges a huge fee on that end and pays chicken feed on this end. Yes! Speedo, on the home page. Hello, Speedo. Mind-boggling what people will do for a few thousand bucks.”
“No kidding,” I said, thinking about Biological Clock. I was glad not to be on camera tonight. Espionage is less stressful than trying to look beautiful, act charming, and keep viewers from changing channels. Of course, if we got stuck in San Pedro and missed the shoot, that would be more stressful. The FBI probably frowned on calling in sick, and calling Simon at all would entail telling him some form of the truth, which-
And then, there it was. The name I’d been seeking so long that once I found it I almost missed it. Small, rounded printing. Marie-Thérèse. Last name DuCroq. Twenty years old. Staying with a family called the Johannessens in Minnesota. Arrived early January.