“I’m sure.”
She shook her head. “That bastard Filko.”
“Lombard, too,” Frost said.
“I don’t care about Lombard. That was Trent. For me, it was all about taking down Martin Filko. I meet some sleazy characters in my line of work, but Filko is in a category by himself. The bro culture in San Francisco and Silicon Valley is so disgusting. People have no idea. But I’m going to make Filko pay. Count on it. I’m bringing him down whatever it takes.”
Her anger was like a fire shooting sparks from her small body. She had an intensity about her that was both attractive and a little unstable. Where her sister was cool, Fawn was hot.
“Maybe you should go back to the beginning,” Frost said. “Tell me what happened.”
Fawn sat on the bed. She stared at the silent television and then switched it off. She looked at Frost. “Do you know about Naomi?”
“She was an escort who was killed.”
Fawn nodded. “Naomi and I were close. She was a couple years older than me, and she’d been in the business longer than I had. Her advice saved me more than once when I was starting out. Three years ago, I was at a Zelyx party with Prisha, and I bumped into Naomi there. She was working. And by working, I mean she was with Filko. I knew something was wrong. I could see it in her face. We had a few minutes alone while he was making his remarks to the team, and she told me what was going on. The things he did to her. She’d had enough, and she was going to expose him. That was big. Believe me, if you’re in my business, you don’t come to that decision lightly. For Naomi, it meant she’d never work again, but she was willing to go that far to make sure people knew the kind of man Filko is. Only she never got the chance.”
“The overdose,” Frost said.
Fawn’s lip curled with contempt. “It was murder, pure and simple. Naomi never took drugs. Never. I knew what had happened. Filko found out she was planning to expose him, and he had her killed.”
“So what did you do?” Frost asked, although he knew exactly what she’d done.
“I talked to a vice cop I knew. Alan Detlowe. Alan was a good guy. I mean, no offense, but some cops are pigs and want a quid pro quo for keeping quiet, if you know what I mean. Alan was more concerned with us being safe and whether we were being treated right. He kept an eye on the escort scene to make sure organized crime wasn’t moving in, but otherwise, he didn’t hassle us. I told Alan what was going on and what I suspected about Naomi and Filko. He said he’d look into it, and he obviously did, because the next week, they killed him, too.”
Frost nodded. “That’s how you met Trent?”
“Yes. He found out that I’d been talking to Alan, and he wanted to know what it was about.”
“You told him?”
“Oh yeah. I told him everything.”
“Trent kept it quiet,” Frost said. “Nothing went into his reports.”
“That’s because we already knew there was something between the two of us. We liked each other. We began dating. It wasn’t quite the Montagues and Capulets, but it was close. Cops don’t date hookers, and hookers don’t date cops. We had to be really careful. And we were worried about what might happen to us. Naomi and Alan both got killed. So Trent kept his whole investigation under wraps. He told me what he’d found out about Lombard and the snakes, but I was the only person he trusted with it. He didn’t want anyone else to know.”
“Keeping it quiet meant you couldn’t do anything about Filko.”
“I know. I hated it, but I was falling in love with Trent, and that was more important. I was willing to put Filko on the back burner for him.”
“So what changed?” Frost asked.
“Last summer, I met Filko myself,” Fawn said, and he could hear the contempt in her voice.
“Was that on the cruise with Greg Howell?”
“Yes.” She looked surprised that he knew that. “Belinda Drake set it up for me. I didn’t know who the client was going to be. She just said he was ‘difficult’ and she needed someone who could handle him. I don’t intimidate easily. Then it turned out to be Filko. Being with him, knowing what he’d done, brought it all back for me. Every second I was with him, I kept thinking about Naomi. When I got back, I told Trent that we had to do something. We had to get him, no matter what the risks were. And that was when he came up with the plan.”
“A sting,” Frost said.
Fawn nodded fiercely. “Yes, exactly. Trent said if we found the right opportunity, we could set a trap to get both of them. Filko and Lombard. So I told Belinda Drake that I was willing to see Filko again when he was in town. Believe me, most girls were one-and-out when it came to him. I knew she’d call me in, and she did. It was going to be on Denny Clark’s boat again. Late night. Small party. Trent put the screws on Denny to install cameras so we’d have proof of what the son of a bitch did to me. And he came up with the idea of faking my death. He figured if Filko was face-to-face with a disaster like that, he’d have to call in Lombard to fix it like he did with Alan. And then Trent would be able to expose the whole operation.”
“So what really happened on Tuesday?” Frost asked.
“At first, it went off just like we planned. When I saw the mayor with Filko, I couldn’t believe our luck. This was big. There was no way they wouldn’t call for Lombard’s help when I disappeared. So I did my thing with the two of them all evening, and when Filko and I were alone, I knew the cameras were getting everything. It would ruin him when it came out.”
“How bad was it?”
“Bad. I deal with my share of freaks, but I knew why Naomi was so desperate to take him down. Even so, I didn’t care. When Filko finally passed out, I slipped up top to find Denny on the bridge, and he took me below deck. We’d arranged it all in advance. Everyone else was asleep. He hid me in the engine room, and after that, he sounded the alarm that I’d gone overboard. As far as the others were concerned, I was dead in the ocean.”
“And when the boat came back in?” Frost asked.
“Trent was in the harbor waiting for us. He’d given me and Denny special phones. As soon as the trouble was starting, we could speed-dial Trent and get him in there with the whole damn cavalry. We could nail Lombard. We could nail Filko. But it didn’t work that way. Nobody got hurt. Belinda handed out cash to keep everyone quiet. And the cleanup crew found the cameras, so that meant we had nothing on Filko. The whole thing was a bust. We couldn’t prove a thing.”
“Except Lombard wasn’t done,” Frost said.
“Yeah. Trent was afraid of that. That’s why he hid me here for a few days while we waited to see what happened next.”
“Why didn’t he watch the witnesses? He had to know they were in danger.”
“He didn’t want to scare off Lombard. They didn’t know Trent, they knew Denny. He was their contact. Trent told Denny to make sure everybody kept their eyes open and to call if they noticed anything weird. Nobody did. Except once Lombard went into action, he moved as fast as a snake. Trent didn’t know anything was going on until Denny called him on Friday night, and by then, it was too late to stop it. I’ve been lying low ever since, until Trent could figure out what to do. As long as I was still dead, I was safe.”
Frost shook his head. “Trent should have told me the truth.”
“He wasn’t sure if he could trust you.”
“And I didn’t trust him, because I knew he was keeping things from me,” Frost said. “Instead, we all got played by Lombard.”
Fawn got up from the bed and came over to him. “It’s time for me to come back to life. I can blow the lid off the whole thing. I can tell everyone what happened on the boat, and we can tie it to Trent, Denny, Chester, Carla, Mr. Jin, all of them. The only way for Lombard to fix it was to eliminate every witness. Well, he missed one. Me.”