“Is there something I can do for you, Tony?”
“I need help. I lost my password.” He had this curious lockjawed way of speaking. His mouth didn’t open much when he talked.
“What password?”
“I know you gals have rules, but I didn’t give it to someone. I didn’t sell it. I lost it. I think I wrote it on the back of one of my scripts and it got thrown out. I’ve got so many goddamned sign-in names and passwords. Who can remember all that stuff? You know what I mean?”
I was beginning to. Flight attendants… Boston…secret passwords. He thought I was one of Angel’s “gals.” Cool.
“Anyway, how can I get it? Or get another one. Or whatever it is you gals do in a situation like this. I’ll pay the charge. I just really need it soon, you know what I mean? If I can’t sign in, I can’t get laid, and if I can’t get laid, you gals don’t get paid.”
That was almost too much information to deal with in one blast. I had to break it down. “I can get that process started for you, Tony, but I have to ask some questions first. This isn’t how we usually do things.”
“Absolutely. Anything. Can’t be too careful, right?”
He took a step back and inhaled deeply while staring at a spot on the ground. Some kind of acting exercise, no doubt. While he did that, I worked on my Perrier and tried to plot a course that would get me the most information for the least amount of suspicion. The key would be to get him talking. So far, that hadn’t been much of a challenge.
He looked up at me with a quick nod. “Go ahead.”
“How long have you been a client?”
He peered up into a palm tree. “About…five months. First part of the summer. I was doing a location shoot.”
“In Boston?”
“Yeah. I was flying every week, back and forth. LA-Boston. Boston-LA. I gotta tell you, it was killing me. But I had to be back here for some redubbing. Meanwhile, back in Boston, they keep cutting my lines. My agent is all the time telling me, ‘Tony, stop kvetching. At least you got work.’ It was a bad time for me. A lot of pressure. You girls saved my life.”
“How did you hear about us?”
“From a friend of mine in New Hampshire who knows one of the girls. She got him started, and he told me about it.”
“What’s her name?”
“I don’t know her name. She was one of the pool girls.”
Pool girls?
“Why would you want to know that?”
Uh…“Because we give bonuses to women who recruit new clients. It sounds as if she deserves one. Besides, she obviously has a pitch that works. I’d like to hear it.”
“Listen, you don’t need much of a pitch to sell this thing. I wish I had a piece of it. You must be raking it in.”
“We do all right.”
“I’ll bet you do. I can’t wait to get back in the saddle, if you know what I’m saying. This password thing has got me crazy. In fact”-he stepped back and looked me up and down, as if it had just occurred to him to see who he was talking to-“are you available tonight, hon? Are you on the clock?”
He reached out and covered my left breast with his right hand. My belly button snapped back against my spine, and I was sure he would notice my eyes nearly bugging out of my head. He’d grabbed me with the hand that had been holding his drink. It was cold and clammy, and it was disgusting to have him touch me that way and beyond offensive that he would presume to do it-and I was working undercover trying to be exactly the person he thought I was.
“You’re not my usual type,” he said, moving his body up against mine. “But for something quick to take the edge off, I’d take a free taste from you.”
Now, this was getting tricky. How to continue to extract information without kicking him in the balls? I smiled, calmly took him by the wrist, and gently removed his hand. “Sweetie, I’m fully booked tonight, and why in the world would I give you anything for free?”
“To keep me from switching. Aren’t you here for the countermeasures?”
Countermeasures. He must have played a soldier in his last role.
“I just thought you girls from Boston might want to throw a counteroffer on the table. Like the airlines do it. Instead of triple miles, I get triple pussy. You know what I’m saying? Or those phone companies. Each one offering better and better deals, trying to get my business. I love being the prize.”
He was a prize, all right, and what was he talking about? “I need to know what I’m competing against. What kind of deal are they offering?”
“Two freebies with any girl of my choice in any city I choose, even in LA. They don’t have that rule about not doing it at home. I get more if I can get my friends to switch.”
Doing it at home…even in LA…which must have meant…ahhhh…
“Switch from Boston to LA?”
“Didn’t I just say that?”
Tristan had been right about a new group starting in LA, only it wasn’t Angel. It was a competing group and they were going after her business.
“Do you want to make me an offer, hon? I’ve got a few minutes.”
“In Boston, Tony, we believe the quality of our service should be enough to keep you in the fold. With us, you know what you’re getting. Besides…” This time, I made the move. I took his drink to free his hands, then pressed my body against his, making sure to touch all the right spots. “If you leave now, you’ll never know what sort of countermeasures we came up with.”
He put his hands on my back. I felt his chest-and other parts-expand as he breathed through his nose, which was mashed against my throat. Then I squeezed my hand up between us, stepped back, and handed him his drink. “But if you want to switch, I understand completely, and I’ll hold off on getting that password.”
“No.” He wiped the moisture from his forehead. “Don’t hold off. I haven’t signed up with them yet. I’ll take the password. What do I need to do?”
“Just answer a few more questions for me.”
Chapter 11
MY FIRST STOP AFTER TONY WAS THE BAR, where I knocked back not one but two postfondling margaritas on the rocks. No salt. It was just something, as Tony had suggested, to “take the edge off.” I could still feel his cold, grubby fingers grasping at me. I felt like dousing the area with alcohol to disinfect. Gin would have done nicely for that purpose.
So, Angel had some competition. That certainly thickened the stew. According to Tony, there was a group at the party from Boston, sent out to protect the business interests of Angel’s East Coast operation. He’d also said the LA women had controlled the guest list and stacked it with clients of the Boston ring, mostly using names brought in by defectors from Angel’s group. This wasn’t an introduction party; it was a mass conversion effort. I wondered briefly how the Boston crew had gotten in, then realized how easy it had been for me to get the password.
I took my third margarita with me and started wandering, being invisible and eavesdropping on conversations. At one point, I walked past the front entrance and the massive foyer where the bouncer-greeter remained steadfastly at his post, even though the incoming crowd had dwindled to nothing. He looked bored. In fact, was that…I circled around to get a better look at his computer monitor. Yes, he was playing solitaire. As I watched him, an idea formed somewhere in my fast-pickling brain. I had to wait a few moments for it to float to the surface so I could pull it out and check it over and see if it made sense. It seemed to.
I should steal the guest list.
If the attendees at this party were, indeed, members of the high-roller, Hollywood target market with bulging frequent flier accounts, money to burn, and an enduring interest in extracurricular activity on the road, then a list of their names and addresses was a list Angel would want, especially if they were clients being targeted for conversion away from her group. The names of hooker recruiters and potential recruitees from either coast certainly would be of interest.