“It’s just...” He shrugged.
“You got something to say,” I told him. “Say it.”
“Well, look at this girl here.” He pointed to a skinny blonde on the cover of a DVD titled Goodbye Seventeen. “She’s still got braces on her teeth, for chrissake.”
“A lot of the amateur girls get braces,” I said. “It’s a better investment than implants and the guys love it.”
“That’s sick,” Malloy muttered, clicking away swarming pop-ups with lurid headlines like TEEN TWATS WANT YOUR SPUNK NOW!!! and SEE WHITE TRASH TEEN TRAMPS TAKE ON THE TEAM! “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for dirty movies, but this... I don’t know. I know it’s legal, but I just don’t think it’s right for a man my age to be looking at girls that seem so young. Christ, half these girls look younger than my daughter.”
“I never knew you had a daughter,” Didi said.
“Yeah,” Malloy said. “Her name’s Paloma. She was eighteen back in April.”
He took a drag off his cigarette and looked away from the images on the screen. He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a posed school photo and handed it to Didi. I peered over Didi’s shoulder. The girl in the photo was plain and a little heavy and looked way too much like Malloy to be considered particularly attractive, but she had a crooked smart-ass grin that I liked. She looked like she wouldn’t take any shit from anyone. I wondered why Malloy had never mentioned her.
“She looks like a real smart kid,” Didi said, handing the photo back to Malloy.
“She lives with her mom out in Santa Fe,” Malloy said, looking at the photo for a second and then putting it back in the drawer, face down. “We’re not all that close.” He looked back up at the screen. “But I sure as hell wouldn’t want a bunch of dirty old men jacking off over her on the Internet.” He closed the drawer. “You think these girls don’t have fathers too?”
I frowned and stood up.
“Yeah, well, these girls are all legal, consenting adults,” I said, taking Malloy’s jacket off and tossing it on the bed beside me. “Whether their daddies like it or not.”
“You can’t tell me something called Teenage Nympho Cheerleaders isn’t meant to get older guys off on the idea of nailing underage high school girls,” Malloy said. “It’s like one step away from statutory rape.”
“It’s a hell of a step,” I said. I was really angry now. “It’s just a fantasy. What are you, the thought police?”
“Come on, now,” Malloy started to say but I cut him off.
“Besides, who the hell are you to be getting all high and mighty about what’s right and wrong after...”
I had to stop myself before I said another word or things were really going to get out of hand. I turned away and tried to get a handle on my anger. I wished that I could stop being so defensive about all this. Malloy was probably right that some of the teen videos went a little too far. It’s not like he was criticizing me personally. But I was feeling fragile and ugly and couldn’t seem to help taking Malloy’s distaste as a personal attack. Plus, my own father broke my jaw when he found out about my videos, so my sympathy for fathers who don’t approve of their daughters doing porn is basically nonexistent.
“Listen...” he started to say, but Didi could see it was getting ugly and quickly cut him off.
“Enough, already,” she said. “Knock it off, Mr. Fucking Sensitive and just read off the damn titles. You want to find that blonde or don’t you?”
Malloy was silent for a handful of seconds and so was I. I looked down at the back of Malloy’s flushed neck and I realized abruptly that this little spat was the most Malloy had revealed about himself since I’d known him. I think he knew it too and was regretting it.
“Right,” he said and started reading off the list of titles on the screen.
Listening to Malloy read off titles like Teen Cum Dumpsters or Pop My Tight Teen Poop Chute in his gravelly, deadpan voice was suddenly way funnier than it had any right to be. I had been sulky and pissed off just seconds before and now I was fighting to repress a fit of crazy giggles. I was afraid to start laughing. I might never stop.
“There,” Didi said, getting to her feet and putting a hand on Malloy’s shoulder. “Click on Dirty Teens.”
Turned out there were only three DVDs in the Dirty Teens series. Didi was pretty sure the DVD she’d seen the blonde in had a high number.
“Try Naughty Teens,” Didi said.
There were twenty-one DVDs in that series and the box covers were cheap and inept, all bad Photoshop and tacky yellow titles. I didn’t recognize any of the girls but they were all very similar. Wan, pale and sickly. Probably junkies. All natural and all very young looking. Each one had a bland, unimaginative GND name like Beth or Tracy or Heather. No last names.
“There she is,” Didi cried triumphantly when Malloy clicked on number seventeen.
She was right. The blonde who had called herself “Lia” and wriggled out my bathroom window was prominently featured on the cover of Naughty Teens 17. She was billed as “Kimberly” and she had a male friend posing with her in the photo. A very close friend, apparently. The friend’s head was blocked by the ‘g’ in Naughty but I didn’t need to see his head to recognize him instantly. I felt a sick flush of anger.
“Jesse Black,” Didi said. “Motherfucker.”
12.
“Okay, ladies,” Malloy said. “We need a plan of action.”
“We need to find Jesse fucking Black and cut his goddamn nuts off,” Didi said. “How’s that for a plan of action?”
“As satisfying as that might be,” Malloy said. “I advise we start by figuring out what the hell is really going on here. We’ll get to Jesse eventually, but I don’t want anybody going off half cocked.”
There was some kind of a dirty joke in there somewhere, but I was too exhausted to make the reach.
“What about the note?” I said instead. “We need to get someone who can translate Lia’s note.”
“Someone who can keep quiet about it,” Malloy added.
“Wanda Curtis?” Didi suggested.
“I think she’s Hungarian, not Romanian” I said. “What about Honey Westlake?”
Didi snorted.
“The only time Honey Westlake is quiet is when she has a dick in her mouth,” she said. “Might as well put it on the six o’clock news.”
“Tabitha Moore,” I said. “She’s Romanian, right?”
“Right,” Didi agreed. “Tabby’s a decent kid.”
“There’s really that many Romanian chicks in porn?” Malloy asked.
“Romanian, Czech, Hungarian,” Didi replied, “It’s like these Eastern European girls are taking over the industry. They look like supermodels and they’ll do double anal with no condom for five bucks. Makes it nearly impossible to get decent treatment for American girls.”
“No shit,” Malloy said.
“Come on,” I said. “Not all Eastern European girls are like that. I mean, look at Zandora...”
I bit my lower lip. Nobody said anything. The screen of Malloy’s computer kept flashing lurid, fleshy images.
“What do you know about the guys who put out Naughty Teens?” Malloy asked, gently changing the subject. He squinted and read off the screen “PDM Productions.”
“PDM’s one of those companies that buys amateur content from independent producers,” Didi said. “You know, guys in Idaho shooting their girlfriend and her gal pals making out after too many diet beers. PDM buys the raw footage, edits it down, and sells it as Heartland Hos 23.”