Monks saw now how striking she was physically. Her body was strong and yet graceful, waist and hips forming a perfect hourglass, legs long and tapering. Her not-yet-augmented breasts were pear-shaped, not large, and like most women's, a little uneven – lovely by his standards, but not the symmetrical jutting orbs that many men worshiped. But the bar to real beauty was the way her face looked from certain angles – nose somewhat thick at the bridge, and cheekbones protuberant, giving the impression of coarseness. It had probably not helped her acting career.
"Seen enough?"
Monks nodded. Larrabee clicked the video off and lifted the shades on his third-story windows. They were many-paned, old enough for the glass to have rippled from settling, and etched with grimy salt from the storms that blew in from the Bay they overlooked.
Neither man spoke for a moment. There was a sort of guilty weight in the room. Monks had no objection to seeing attractive women unclothed, nor to the occasional glimpse of pornography. But watching someone who had just died in his hands had a ghoulishness to it.
"She was a rising star, huh?" Larrabee said. He was burly, forty-five, with a mustache and roosterlike shock of dark hair.
"That's what her fiancé said."
"What was your take on him?"
"Some kind of small-time operator."
"Pimp?"
"On that edge."
Monks leaned his shoulder against a window jamb and stared out toward the Bay. Larrabee's immediate neighborhood was a holdover from industrial days, when this part of the city had belonged to factories and shipping. But a few blocks south, gentrification had come in big-time, with expensive high-rise apartment buildings and fancy plazas. Sunlight flashed off the glass and metal of the cars crowding the Embarcadero. Flocks of pedestrians were drifting toward the afternoon Giants game at Pac Bell Park, with the masts of the China Basin yacht fleet spiking the skyline behind it.
"Lots of creepy people in that porn world," Larrabee said. "You remember Iris?"
"Sure." Iris had been a girlfriend of Larrabee's a few years ago, a stripper at the North Beach clubs. She had some things in common with Eden Hale, Monks realized: physical beauty, breast surgery, and a stage name – Secret.
"There were always guys after her to make porn loops," Larrabee said. 'They create a fan club. Seems that men get a lot more interested in watching a girl dance if they've seen her horizontal. She draws bigger crowds and higher pay."
Monks knew that Iris had left San Francisco, and Larrabee, for Las Vegas and a better career. He decided not to ask whether porn loops had figured in.
The Internet references Larrabee had found showed that Eden Hale had had several roles as a mainstream actress, bit parts in soaps and sitcoms. She had also made a few adult films. Someone had seized on the connection as a marketing ploy – the thrill of watching a legitimate actress, even a comparative unknown, having sex. A search of her name brought up several items along the lines of: watch eden hale get a facial… A credit-card number and a few clicks of the mouse would then deliver action like they had just seen, with the star billed in the film credits as Eve Eden.
'This girl must have had money, huh?" Larrabee said. "Maybe her family?"
"I don't know. Why?"
"Because that guy D' Anton doesn't take on anybody who doesn't. But if she was rich, why would she do the porn? For kicks?"
Monks had not thought about that, obvious though it was. "I don't know anything more about her."
"I'm sure there's more to her story," Larrabee said. "I can keep looking, if you want."
"I don't think so, Stover. It's not like it matters. Just me being sappy."
"Well, let me know if there's anything else." Monks said thanks and left. There wasn't anything else, but to wait – for Roman Kasmarek's appraisal, for the medical examiner's autopsy, and to find out if the beating Monks had taken over the past hours was going to continue.
Chapter 7
Afternoon sunlight filtered through the tall windows of Julia D' Anton's studio, illuminating slowly drifting particles of limestone that settled onto the dusty old hardwood floor. Her strong fingers worked at the stone with a wooden mallet and the hand-forged iron chisels she had brought back from Tuscany more than twenty years ago.
The block was one-quarter life size. Julia had started by sketching a live model, then roughing out the sculpture in clay. Now the model was back, to lend living nuance to the flow of the stone. Her name was Anna somebody, a softly pretty and somewhat sulky girl in her late teens, full-bodied and large-breasted. In the past, Julia had preferred working with marble, and women with lean, well-defined musculatures, but now she did not want to look at either – maybe ever again.
She had been shaping the face with small tooth chisels, trying to render expression from the blank oval. It was not going well. Her hands were getting tired. When that happened, they started to tremble and lose control. Anna was posed nude, sitting up, with her legs curled beside her. Her face was turned in profile and down, as if she were contemplating a flower in the garden where the sculpture would probably end up. She looked like she was almost asleep.
Julia gave the chisel a delicate tap along the bridge of the nose. A hairline crack appeared, a tiny fault in the stone that she had not seen. She pressed a fingertip over it, but she knew already that it could not be repaired. She thrust the clawed chisel in and gouged out a chip the size of a small nailhead. It would mean a restructuring of the entire face. Hands shaking now with anger, she slammed down the tools on the workbench.
Anna's body jerked with the sound, her eyes flicking open.
"Is something wrong?" she said.
"It's all wrong. All this work I've gone to, and it's just getting worse. You are wrong. Your bones might be all right, but everything from there out is impossible."
The girl's mouth twisted in a little grimace of resentment.
"Is there anything I can do?"
"Try to look a little less bovine."
Anna's face turned suspicious. "I don't know what that means."
"Like a cow, darling."
Anna's mouth opened, then her eyes went teary. "You have – no right," she blurted out. She stood, grasping for her robe and flinging it around her shoulders, trying to look dignified but without the necessary presence.
"It's no use going knock-kneed trying to hide your bush," Julia said coldly. "It only makes your thighs look fatter."
Anna turned away with a flounce and started toward the studio's changing room.
"I didn't say the session was over," Julia said.
"You can't keep me if I don't want-"
"If you leave here without my permission, you will never come back. Do you understand?"
Their gazes met, but only for a second. This was no contest of wills. Slowly, Anna took her seat again.
"The robe," Julia said.
Eyes downcast, she shrugged it back off her shoulders and laid it aside.
Julia walked to stand behind her. She caressed Anna's neck lightly, feeling her shiver in response. Julia's fingers moved on in slow exploration, feeling the lack of tone in the deltoid muscle, tracing the flaccid triceps down the back of the arm, then moving across the smooth padded rib cage and up, to cup one full soft breast. She squeezed the nipple gently, tugging it erect. The girl relaxed a little, settling back against Julia's thighs.
Then, suddenly, Julia pinched hard with her nails. Anna flinched and gasped, tried to rise, but Julia's other hand on her shoulder held her where she was. Julia could feel her panting. She held the pressure of her fingernails steady, just short of drawing blood.
"Did I say cow?" Julia said softly. "I meant sow." She released her grip and gave the breast a contemptuous slap. "Get out."