At least the client was a woman. She was a sexist about this, no other word. But in her experience, cuckolded men tended toward violence against others, and she didn't want that on her conscience. Women were masochists, dangers to themselves. Usually. Tess looked at this it way: Four thousand years after the Greeks, Medea would still be front-page news, while feckless Jason wouldn't even rate a question in Cosmo's Agony column.
Not that women's cases weren't lose-lose propositions in their own way. If you didn't get the goods on hubby, some women didn't want to pay for the time put in, they didn't get that a job had been done, even if it had yielded no results. These were the kind of women who tipped poorly in restaurants, on the theory that they provided food service all the time without compensation.
But if you did turn over a discreet set of photographs of hubby leaving, say, a motor court on Route 40, a redhead giantess in tow, the kill-the-messenger syndrome kicked in-literally. One cheated-on wife had aimed her neat little Papagallo pump at Tess's shin. Tess had counted to ten, left the suburban palace that was about to loom large in the divorce case, and discreetly let all the air out of the tires on the woman's Jeep Cherokee.
So she charged more now. She told would-be clients it was because surveillance work was a bore, which was true, but it was really the aftermath she hated, the moment of truth, which was anything but boring. "Excuse me, ma'am, while you're weeping and thinking about the implications of this information for your twenty-year marriage and your two children, could I trouble you to write me a check?" Tess had started taking much bigger retainers and sending refunds. Easier on everyone.
Unfortunately, this particular wastrel-husband had eaten through the retainer in the first week, without actually doing anything. A nervous type, he cruised the city's best-known prostitution strips, window-shopping, beginning negotiations, then breaking them off at the last minute. Tess had taken a few photographs of women bent toward his car on long, skinny legs, but such photos paid no premiums in divorce court. He could always claim to be asking for directions.
Today, however, he had finally settled on a tall redhead with a towering beehive and the knotted calf muscles that come from years of wearing spike heels. A real Amazon, even alongside Tess's Amazonian proportions. He probably thought a hooker with some meat on her bones was less likely to be a junkie. Or maybe he went in for kinkier stuff, which required a woman with those cut biceps and triceps.
They had gone in about five minutes ago. Because she had followed Mr. Nervous at a particularly careful distance, Tess hadn't been able to take a photo of the happy couple on their way into the honeymoon suite, and she didn't do in flagrante-that was just too gross. But she'd get them on the way out. Which would be-she checked her watch-ten, fifteen minutes at the most? He didn't look like the kind who would set any records for stamina. He had been saving up for this too long to draw it out.
Still, Tess was unprepared when the door was flung open at what her datebook notes would later establish was the seven-minute mark. As she fumbled for her camera, she saw a flash of red-the hooker's hair-followed by a gray blur, Mr. Nervous, who threw himself on top of the fake hair as if it were a fumbled football in the end zone.
The hooker stalked out, still fully attired, in a tight red leather-look dress and matching shoes. The real hair was short and wispy, a dark brown color only a shade deeper than Tess's. It wasn't a bad cut, but something about it struck Tess as not quite right. No, it probably just looked funny because it was matted down with sweat.
"You better give that back to me," the hooker told Mr. Nervous.
"When you give me my money back, you freak," he said, scrambling to his feet and running toward his car, trying to hold onto the wig even as he dug for his keys.
The hooker was fast. With a few quick strides, she had crossed the patch of gravel parking lot and leaped on the man's back, teeth sinking into his ear as if it were a pastry. He screamed, falling to the ground, where the two began rolling back and forth like two kids scuffling on the playground. Tess felt as if she had seen this before. She had. It was the great ladies room fight from The Valley of the Dolls, only this time hairless Helen Lawson was kicking Neely O'Hara's big, flabby butt.
"You'll pay for my wig, too, see if you don't," the hooker said, still perched on his back, frisking the john's pockets as he twisted beneath her. One of her high heels fell off and became an impromptu weapon, perfect for jabbing into the small of his back. Moaning, Mr. Nervous clutched the wig to his chest with both hands and curled up in a tight ball. In his gray suit, rolling back and forth, he reminded Tess of the potato bugs she had tortured in her youth.
"That wig cost more than the trick," the hooker screamed. She must have been telling the truth, for she seemed reluctant to grab it and end up in a tug-of war with the man. Instead she just kept swinging her red high heel at his back and head.
"Fuckin' freak," Mr. Nervous rasped out. "Give me back my forty dollars and I'll give you your wig."
"Hey, I earned that forty dollars," the hooker replied. She had crawled away from him and seemed to be looking for an opportunity to land a quick kick in his crotch but the man stayed curled up in his potato bug position.
"Don't remind me! Don't remind me!" He was hysterical, his voice a high-pitched scream.
Just as Tess was beginning to wonder if she was obligated to intervene-she was still a little fuzzy on the ethics of private investigation, if any-the manager of the motor court ran out and threw a small bucket of ice at the two, as if they were dogs in heat. The man gasped and relaxed his grip just long enough for the hooker to grab the wig.
"This is a respectable place," the manager said. "You got the wrong end of Route 40, you wanna be carrying on like this."
"I wanted a woman," her client's husband moaned, facedown in the leaves, covering his head, although the blows had stopped. "All I wanted was a woman. Is that so much to ask?"
The prostitute stood, extending one leg and then the other to check the fishnet stockings for runs, assuming a flamingo posture to slip the literal stiletto heel back on, then pulling the wig over her-no, his-wispy brown hair.
"In that case, honey, you should've picked someone without an Adam's apple," the rechristened redhead said, pulling up his dress to show off black lace panties, the sleek line disturbed by a kind of asymmetry never seen in a Victoria's Secret catalog.
Another Kodak moment. Tess clicked away, hoping her body wasn't shaking so hard from suppressed laughter that the photos would end up out of focus. The Valley of the Dolls meets The Crying Game in the parking lot of the Enchanted Castle Motor Court.
She put her car into gear and headed back into the city, still thinking about blueberry pie. A little farther up Route 40, she considered stopping at the Double-T Diner, but she realized the pie she wanted was somewhere else. Back at the motor court, almost fourteen years in the past, and forever out of reach.
"No more adultery patrol," she said, sitting across from Tyner Gray, the lawyer who had pushed and prodded her into this line of work, then took credit for every good thing that had happened to her as a result. Time for him to start shouldering a little blame as well. "It's too demeaning. I'd rather go through someone's garbage."
"Don't be hyperbolic, Tess," Tyner said, writing out a check in his large, fancy script. Technically, all of Tess's clients worked through Tyner, assuring them confidentiality. But this particular wronged spouse had been the daughter of his college roommate, so Tyner was going to break the news, play show-and-tell with the photos. There was some small comfort in that.
"You forget I've really gone through garbage, looking for those telltale credit card receipts. I was Dumpster diving just last weekend, on a fraud case. Remember, the pierogi dispute in Highlandtown? A little spoiled food, some coffee grounds, but it's not so bad if you wear good rubber gloves. It's better than watching some stupid john wrestling with a tranvestite hooker."