Chasing the Dime

6

Pierce awoke at dawn, the sun rescuing him from the dream of running from a man whose face he could not see. He had no curtains in the apartment yet and the light streamed through the windows and burned through his eyelids. He crawled out of the sleeping bag, looked at the photo of Lilly he had left on the floor and went into the shower. When he was finished he had to dry off with two T-shirts he'd dug out of one of the clothing boxes. He'd forgotten to buy towels.

He walked over to Main Street to get coffee, a citrus smoothie and the newspaper. He read and drank slowly, almost feeling guilty about it. Most Saturdays he was in the lab by dawn.

When he was finished with the paper it was almost nine. He walked back to the Sands and got into his car, but he didn't go to the lab as usual.

Fifteen minutes before ten o'clock Pierce got to the Hollywood address he had written down for L.A. Darlings. The location was a multi-level office complex that looked as legitimate as a McDonald's. L.A. Darlings was located in Suite 310. On the glazed glass door the largest lettering read ENTREPRENEURIAL CONCEPTS UNLIMITED.

Beneath this was a listing in smaller letters of ten different websites, including L.A.

Darlings, that apparently fell under the Entrepreneurial Concepts umbrella. Pierce could tell by the titling of the site addresses that they were all sexually oriented and part of the Internet's dark universe of adult entertainment.

The door was locked but Pierce was a few minutes early. He decided to use the time by taking a walk and thinking about what he was going to say and how he was going to play this.

"Here, I'll open it."

He turned as a woman approached the door with a key. She was about twenty-five and had crazy blonde hair that seemed to point in all directions. She wore cutoff jeans and sandals and a short shirt that exposed her pierced navel. She had looped over her shoulder a purse that looked big enough to hold a pack of cigarettes but not the matches. And she looked as though ten o'clock was definitely too early for her.

"You're early," she said.

"I know," Pierce said. "I came from the Westside and I thought there'd be more traffic."

He followed her in. There was a waiting area with a raised reception counter in front of a partition that guarded an entrance to a rear hallway. To the right and unguarded was a closed door with the word PRIVATE on it. Pierce watched as the woman walked behind the counter and threw her purse into a drawer.

"You'll have to wait a couple minutes until I get set up. I'm the only one here today."

"Slow on Saturdays?"

"Most of the time."

"Well, who is watching the machines if you're the only one here?"

"Oh, well, there's always somebody back there. I just meant I'm by myself up front today."

She slid into a chair behind the counter. The silver ring protruding from her stomach caught Pierce's eye and reminded him of Nicole. She had worked at Amedeo for more than a year before he happened upon her in a coffee shop on Main Street on a Sunday afternoon. She had just come from a workout and was dressed in gray sweatpants and a sports bra, exposing a gold ring piercing her navel. It was like discovering a secret about someone of longtime acquaintance. She had always been a beautifully attractive woman in his eyes but everything changed after that moment in the coffee shop. Nicole became erotic to him and he went after her, wanting to check for hidden tattoos and to know all of her secrets.

Pierce wandered around the confines of the waiting room while the woman behind the counter did whatever it was she had to do to get set up. He heard a computer start booting up and some drawers opening and closing. He noticed on one wall an arrangement of logos of various websites operated through Entrepreneurial Concepts. He saw L.A.

Darlings and several others. Most of them were pornography sites, where a $19.95-amonth subscription bought access to thousands of downloadable photos of your favorite sex acts and fetishes. It was all presented on the wall in complete, unashamed legitimacy.

The PinkMink.com banner could have been the same as an advertisement for acne ointment.

Next to the wall of banners was the door marked PRIVATE. Pierce glanced back at the woman behind the counter and saw that she was preoccupied with something on her computer screen. He turned back and tried the doorknob. It was unlocked and he opened the door. It led to an unlit hallway with three sets of double doors spaced twenty feet apart on the left side.

"Um, excuse me," the woman said from behind him. "You can't go in there."

Signs hanging on thin chains from the ceiling in front of the doors marked them as studio A, studio B and studio C.

Pierce backed out and closed the door. He returned to the counter. He saw that she was now wearing a pin with her name on it.

"I thought it was the rest rooms. What is that back there?"

"Those are the photo studios. We don't have public facilities here. They're down in the building's lobby."

"I can wait."

"What can I do for you?"

He leaned his elbows on the counter.

"I've sort of got a problem, Wendy. One of the advertisers with a page on L.A. Darlings dot com has my phone number. Calls that should be going to her are going to me instead.

And I think if I were to show up at somebody's hotel room door, there'd be some disappointment involved."

He smiled but she apparently didn't appreciate his attempt at humor.

"A misprint?" she said. "I can fix that."

"It's not exactly a misprint."

He told his story of getting a new phone number, only to learn that it was the same line on the web page ad for the woman named Lilly.

She was sitting behind the counter. She looked up at him with suspicious eyes.

"If you just got the number, why don't you just get another?"

"Because I didn't realize I had this problem and I already had change-of-address cards with the number on it printed and mailed out. It would be very expensive and timeconsuming to do that all over again with a new number. I'm sure if you told me how to contact this woman, she'd agree to alter her page. I mean, she's not getting any business off it if all her calls are going to me anyway, right?"

Wendy shook her head like his explanation and reasoning were beyond her.

"All right, let me see something."

She turned to the computer and went to the L.A. Darlings site and into the Brunette escorts list. She clicked on the picture of Lilly and then scrolled down to the phone number.

"You're saying this is your number, not hers, but it used to be hers."

"Exactly."

"Then if she changed her number, why wouldn't she change it with us, too?"

"I don't know. That's why I'm here. Would you have another way of contacting her?"

"Not that I can give you. Our client information is confidential."

Pierce nodded. He had expected that.

"That's fine. But can you see if there is another contact number and then you could call her and tell her about this problem?"

"What about this cell number?"

"I tried it. It takes voice mail. I've left three messages for her explaining all of this but she hasn't called back. I don't think she's getting the messages."

Wendy scrolled up and looked at the photo of Lilly.

"She's hot," she said. "I bet you're getting a lot of calls."

"I've only had the phone a day and it's driving me nuts."

Wendy pushed her chair back and stood up.

"I'm going to check something. I'll be right back."

She went around the partition behind the counter and disappeared into the back hallway, the slapping sound of her sandals receding as she went. Pierce waited a moment and then leaned over the counter and scanned all surfaces. His guess was that Wendy was not the only one who worked at the counter. It was probably a job shared by two or three minimum-wage employees. Employees who might need help remembering passwords to the system.

He looked for Post-its on the computer and the back of the counter's facade but saw nothing. He reached down and lifted the blotter but there was nothing under it but a dollar bill. He dug his finger around in a dish of paper clips but found nothing. He reached further across the counter to see if there was a pencil drawer. There wasn't.

Just as he thought of something, he heard the sound of her sandals. She was coming back.

He quickly reached into his pocket, found a dollar and then reached back over the counter. He lifted the blotter, put down the dollar and grabbed the one that was there. He put it in his pocket without looking at it. His hand was still there when she came around the partition, holding a thin file, and sat down.

"Well, I figured out one part of the problem," she said.

"What's that?"

"This girl stopped paying her bill."

"When was that?"

"In June she paid up through August. Then she didn't pay for September."

"Then why's her page still on the site?"

"Because sometimes it takes a while to clean out the deadbeats. Especially when they look like this chick."

She gestured to the computer screen with the file and then put it down on the counter.

"I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Wentz wanted to keep her on there even though she didn't pay. Guys see girls like that on the site and they'll keep coming back."

Pierce nodded.

"And the number of hits on the site is how they determine the rates for the ads, right?"

"You got it."

Pierce looked at the screen. In a way, Lilly was still working. If not for herself, then for Entrepreneurial Concepts Unlimited. He looked back at Wendy.

"Is Mr. Wentz back there? I'd like to speak to him."

"No, it's Saturday. You'd be lucky even to catch him here during the week, but I've never seen him on a Saturday."

"Well, what can be done about this? My phone's ringing off the hook."

"Well, I can take notes and then maybe on Monday somebody could -"

"Look, Wendy, I don't want to wait until Monday. I have a problem now. If Mr. Wentz isn't here, then go get the guy baby-sitting the servers. There has to be somebody who can go into the server and take her page down. It's a simple process."

"There's one guy back there but I don't think he's authorized to do anything. Besides, he was sort of asleep when I looked in there."

Pierce leaned over the counter and put a forceful tone into his voice.

"Lilly -I mean, Wendy, listen to me. I insist that you go back there and wake him up and bring him out here. You have to understand something here. You are in a legally precarious position. I have informed you that your website has my phone number on it.

Because of this error I am repeatedly receiving phone calls of what I consider to be an offensive and embarrassing nature. So much so that I was here at your place of business this morning before you even opened. I want this fixed. If you put it off until Monday, then I am going to sue you, this company, Mr. Wentz and anybody else I can find associated with this place. Do you understand?"

"You can't sue me. I just work here."

"Wendy, you can sue anybody you want to in this world."

She stood up, an angry look in her eyes, and pirouetted around the partition without a word. Pierce didn't care if she was angry. What he cared about was that she had left the file on the counter. As soon as the sound of her sandals was gone he bent over and flipped open the file. There was a copy of the photo of Lilly, along with a printout of her ad copy and an advertiser's information form. This was what Pierce wanted. He felt a surge of adrenaline zing through him as he read the sheet and tried to commit everything to memory.

Her name was Lilly Quinlan. Her contact number was the same cell phone number she had put on her web page. On the address line she had put a Santa Monica address and apartment number. Pierce quickly read it silently three times and then put everything back in the file just as he heard the sandals and another pair of shoes approaching from the other side of the partition.