As we turned off the freeway, Eye Candy’s huge, sprawling complex shimmered, mirage-like up ahead, a pink neon oasis of LIVE NUDE GIRLS in the midst of dusty industrial nothing. It was astounding, a self-contained multi-level biosphere of calculated titillation and shameless indulgence, open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Once the marks were in, they basically never needed to leave. In addition to the massive main stage and six smaller go-go stages, there were also eight private VIP champagne lounges and six special fantasy rooms. There was a restaurant where you could be served overpriced steaks by beautiful girls in tiny cowgirl outfits. A sports bar where you could be served overpriced beer by beautiful girls in tiny bikinis. A cigar room where you could be sold overpriced cigars by beautiful girls in tiny g-strings. The only thing you couldn’t do there was sleep. Or actually get laid.
Personally, I never understood the appeal of places like that. Eye Candy was a well-oiled machine that existed, like everything else in Vegas, for one reason only. To empty wallets. And once those wallets were empty there were three convenient cash machines to help fill them up again. Eye Candy didn’t sell pussy. It sold the dream of pussy. It was an endless glittering tease, all fantasy with no real payoff. It seemed like a big waste of time and money better spent on an actual hooker, but hey, my girls cleaned up when they featured there so I couldn’t really complain.
Malloy didn’t want to valet park, so he drove right past the guy in the gold vest and around to the self-park area off to one side.
“Wait here,” he said, just like he had said at the Burger King. I was getting tired of waiting, but I was also deeply grateful not to have to interact with anyone.
I watched Malloy walk over to the door of the club. As he went, I was amazed to see his usual wary body language loosen and open up. His hard, thuggish face went all soft and friendly, split wide by a big dopey grin. By the time he hit the door to the club, he had become every guy in every strip club in history.
A neckless lug in a tight tux patted Malloy down while he held his arms up in an affable sort of gee-whiz posture. He was then greeted by a leggy brunette in tiny peppermint-striped booty shorts and a pink Eye Candy baby doll t-shirt. She took his money and stamped his hand and as I watched her smile at Malloy and count out his change, I felt a swift spike of jealousy that took me completely by surprise. There was absolutely nothing between me and Malloy, but I still hated that girl in that moment. Not for her tan, aerobicized abs or her tight, muscular ass or any of a million other reasons women hate each other in this cutthroat Cosmo world we live in. I hated her for her pretty, perfect face. Her smooth lips and her straight nose and wide, bright eyes. My fingers went up to the swollen contours of my bruised and battered mug and I suddenly wanted to go rampaging through the club with a baseball bat, smashing every pretty face in the place.
I didn’t. I waited.
Cars came and went. Men went in and out, both in groups and alone. Time passed and even though Malloy had chosen a shady parking spot, it still got real hot inside the car. I had all the windows down but there was no breeze at all. I peeled off the damp pink cardigan and fanned myself with a California roadmap.
About a hundred years later, Malloy came out. There was a fuchsia smear of lipstick on his unshaven cheek.
“Got it,” he said, handing me a sheet of paper, tossing the baseball cap into the back seat and starting up the engine. “Know anyone who can read Romanian?”
I looked down at the paper. It was a faxed copy of Lia’s handwritten note.
“How’d you get them to give this to you?”
“I didn’t,” Malloy replied as he pulled out of the lot. “I got lucky. While I was waiting in the office for the manager to show up and talk to me, I scrolled through the memory on the fax machine. Looks like they haven’t erased it in ages. They probably don’t even know how. Anyway, the fax from your office was still in there so I just reprinted it.”
“What did you tell the manager when you saw him?” I asked. “When the cops find out that Zandora is dead, won’t you be in trouble for asking about her?”
Malloy shook his head.
“Nah,” he said, turning onto the freeway. “I just asked if Zandora was there. I said I wanted to talk to your models about you, that I was investigating your disappearance. The manager said Zandora wasn’t in till the night shift and told me to come back later. I thanked him and left. Anybody see you?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Hope you’re right,” Malloy replied. “I got a bad feeling this is gonna get pretty ugly.”
11.
“Do you trust Didi?” Malloy asked me, pulling off the freeway and into the quiet streets of Burbank.
I had been asleep for most of the ride back from Vegas. Well, maybe asleep wasn’t the right word. Dazed, out of it, shell-shocked and incapable of processing everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. I hadn’t noticed the sun going down and felt disoriented to wake and find it fully dark outside. Malloy had gotten another cheap suit jacket out of the gym bag back in Vegas and at some point during the ride he must have taken it off and used it to cover me. It was warm and smelled like him, cigarettes and supermarket aftershave. I pulled it tighter around myself, bunching it up under my chin.
“Of course I trust Didi,” I said. “I’d trust her with my life.”
He nodded and took the turn into the car rental place across from the Burbank Airport. I huddled inside his big jacket as I waited outside the office. When he pulled around front in his own SUV, he got out, walked around to the passenger side and opened the door for me.
“Thanks,” I said.
He punched some buttons on his cell phone, slipping on a hands-free rig as he pulled out of the rental place.
“Didi?” he said into the mike. “Malloy.” He paused. “Yeah I know.” He looked at me and then back at the road. “It’s terrible. Listen, Didi, I’d like to talk to you about the case. Tonight. Get a pen.”
He gave Didi his address just as we turned the corner onto his block.
“Twenty minutes,” he said and ended the call.
Malloy’s place was one of those little rundown fifties-era bungalow complexes in a so-so neighborhood, just off Hollywood Way. He drove past twice to make sure there was no surveillance before he pulled into the alley behind the complex and let me out, leaving the engine running.
“Go on,” Malloy said, unlocking the door to his apartment and ushering me inside with one hand on the small of my back. “I’m gonna go park the car.”
Inside his place it was immaculate and generic, like an IKEA showroom or a midrange hotel. No personal photos. No funny magnets on the fridge. No clutter of mail or books or DVDs. There was a sturdy gray couch and a black leather chair. A modest television in the corner and a blond wood coffee table with nothing on it. The kitchen was to the left through a doorless arch. It was narrow and yellow and very clean. At the far end, beneath the window, was a small aluminum table with a clean glass ashtray and a single chair. There were two closed doors, probably leading to the bedroom and bathroom.
It felt strange standing there alone in someone else’s apartment. It made me miss my own little house.
Malloy returned a few minutes later.
“Make yourself at home,” he said, setting his gun and shoulder rig on the coffee table. “But stay away from the windows.”
“Okay,” I said, but I didn’t sit down. I just pulled Malloy’s jacket tighter around myself.
There was a moment of awkward silence. I wondered suddenly who the last woman he’d brought to this apartment might have been.