4th of July

Chapter 66

THE PLAYMATE PEN WAS an ugly place lit by harsh overhead lights and flashing neon. To my left were racks of party toys: dildos and ticklers in garish colors and molded body parts in lifelike plastic. To my right were soda and snack machines—refreshment for all those film lovers trapped inside tiny video booths with their brains hooked into their fantasies, hands firmly on their joysticks.

I felt eyes tracking me as I walked the narrow aisles lined with videos. I was the only female wandering loose in the place, and I guess I stood out more in my slacks and blazer than if I’d been stark naked.

I was about to approach the clerk in front when I felt a dark presence at my elbow.

“Lindsay?”

I started—but Dennis Agnew looked thrilled to see me.

“To what do I owe the honor, Lieutenant?”

I was caught in a maze of stacks and racks of chicks-and-dicks, but like a steer in the chute of a slaughterhouse, I could see that the only way out was straight ahead.

Agnew’s office was a brightly lit, windowless cubicle. He took the chair behind a wood-grain Formica desk and indicated where I should sit—a black leather sofa that had seen better days.

“I’ll stand. This isn’t going to take long,” I said, but as I stood there in the doorway, I had to look around the room.

Every wall was hung with framed photos signed to “Randy Long” from G-stringed lovelies, porn film publicity stills of overheated couplings featuring Randy Long and his partners. I also saw a few flashbulb snapshots of Agnew posing with grinning guys in suits.

Bells started clanging as I matched the mugs of young up-and-coming wiseguys to the mobsters they’d later become. At least two of the suits were now dead.

It took me another couple of seconds to realize that Dennis Agnew and the younger, long-haired Randy Long in the photos were one and the same. Agnew had been a freaking porn star.