First Class Killing

Chapter 28

ANGEL SLAMMED HER CELL PHONE CLOSED and flung it into her gym bag. Then she picked up the bag and flung it into the corner, nearly knocking the smoothie right out of its tall, soda-shop glass.

“What’s the matter?”

“I just lost another one,” she snapped.

“Another what?”

“One of my gals just got her transfer to LA. They’re like cattle thieves, picking them off one by one. Picking me clean is what they’re doing. I should brand their butts.”

We had settled in the Sports Club juice bar at a table isolated in one of the corners. It was called a juice bar, and it did serve juice. It also served baked cod with pineapple salsa-not your usual juice bar fare.

“That’s where we need to start. What do you call the women who work for you?”

“Grubbing, griping, greedy bitches.”

I looked at her. She looked right back. She was steaming.

“Why don’t we call them your assets?”

“Asses?”

“Assets. In your business more than most, your people are your assets. When they walk, they take their clients with them, and the clients take their revenue stream.”

“I can replace both. It’s just a goddamn pain in the ass, is what it is.”

“It’s more than that. You might be able to replace the business, but you can’t do anything about what it does for your competitor. That’s business they don’t have to develop on their own. You might as well stuff a bunch of bags with hundred-dollar bills and send them over.”

She put her elbow on the table and leaned her head against her palm. It mussed her hair, which was loose around her face. It made her look like a young girl. “I hate this already.”

“Tell me why they’re leaving.”

“Because they’re stupid. They think they’re going to be instant zillionaires with merchandising deals and their own Web sites and starring in their own videos. ‘Sell your lace panties, and make a million bucks.’ It all sounds really sexy, and it’s allvery LA, but it won’t work.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“Our thing works for one reason and one reason only. It’s low-profile. You cannot have your face or your tits or anything else plastered all over the Internet. Someone will find out; then the airline will find out; then you will lose your job.”

“If I’m making enough on the side, why would I care about my low-paying flight attendant wages?”

“The job is the key to the whole deal. We have builtin access to customers who sit in first class, the ones who think a little tail on the road is part of their executive privilege and have the expense accounts to make it happen. My clients don’t troll porno sites on the Internet. They want exclusive and discreet, and they’re willing to pay for it. That’s my thing, and it works. Plus, it helps to be able to fly around for free.”

She sat back and sipped her smoothie through a straw. She was still dressed in a way that displayed her own best assets. But when she talked about her business, the extracurricular posing and flaunting fell away, leaving a calmer, more focused version. She sounded like the head of any small business, which was a place where we could relate to each other in some way besides predator and prey.

“You have to find a way to make them care about your business in the same way you do.”

“They don’t care about anything except collecting their fees. The ones making the most want more. The ones making the least want more. The gals in the pool are jealous of the ones who aren’t. The ones who aren’t in the pool don’t like having to change their schedules at all, and why are you smiling?”

“Was I?” I knew I was smiling inside. “What’s the pool?”

“When they first start out and don’t have any clients, I put them in the pool. All that means is they have to be on call and go where I tell them and be with whoever I tell them to be with. For the clients, mostly the new ones, it’s like a well drink in a bar. They get whoever I send them.”

Which meant Tony the Actor had not been referring to a cabana girl, after all. His “just a pool girl” was a woman drawn from Angel’s hooker pool. He hadn’t bothered to learn her name. Mystery solved.

“What about the other clients? Who do they get?”

“Regular clients get to know who they want to see, and I try to give them who they ask for, or at least something close. When a gal gets enough regulars requesting her, she climbs out of the pool and has more say in things.”

“Does that mean the new girls would end up doing most of the schedule swapping?”

“Hell, yes, it does. Part of the privilege of being in this game a while is being able to plan your schedule more. I can pick and choose. So can some of my top gals.”

Another big reason to smile. This explained the results of Harvey ’s analysis. He had picked up the pool girls in his top swapper net. More senior hookers didn’t have to swap so much. I couldn’t wait to tell him.

“How do you keep track of all this? Who’s in the pool and who’s not, who earns what? This sounds complicated. Not to mention all the scheduling requirements and constraints.”

“You don’t have to worry about any of that. I’ve got all that under control.”

“It must be a hell of a system. Do you have a guy?”

“I have it under control. Next question?”

At least I got two out of three. “What about fees? Do girls make more money once they’ve advanced outside the pool?”

“Usually. It depends on what I think they’re worth.”

“Do the women in the pool ever get any feedback on how they’re doing? How close they are to climbing out?”

“Doll baby, all they need to know is where to go and who to fuck. The less they know, the better for me.”

No wonder her women were griping. She had a classic human resources problem. I dug a pen out of my bag and used a napkin to make some notes. If I was going to be her consultant, I might as well give her her money’s worth.

“You need a performance measurement system that gives people an idea of where they are in the organization, how they’re doing, and where they’re going. You need to lay out performance objectives. Then you need a hierarchy with different levels the women can achieve by meeting those objectives.”

She finished off her smoothie with a loud pull on her straw. “You mean, like, if you recruit ten new clients in a month, you can climb out of the pool? Like that?”

“Exactly. It’s a career path. Employees want to know they have a future and that you care about whether they achieve it, which leads to the most important part.” I pointed my pen at her for extra emphasis, because this was the most important part for me. “Once we build the system, we have to communicate it.”

“Communicate it? What should I do, sugar, call a town meeting? Maybe we can have us a conference call. I know. We’ll invite everyone over for a potluck supper. We’ll fire up the grill and tap a keg.”

“How do you communicate with them now?”

“By e-mail.”

“Well, there you are.” I put my pen down and waved the problem away. “We’ll come up with a plan and communicate it via e-mail. I can write that stuff for you. Your Web master can send it out.”

She tipped her head back and went all cagey. “My what?”

“Your Web master. Your guy. You have a Web site, so I assume you have someone who keeps track of all that for you. If your guy is any good, he’ll know ways of sending messages so they can’t be traced back to you. Either that, or give me an address list, and I’ll do it.”

“Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here.”

“All right.” She wasn’t going to make this easy for me. “We can stop there for now.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me? Communicate more? What about that program you were touting? When do I get to hear about that?”

“Next time. I wanted to get a sense of your business so I could customize it for you.” I took my napkin notes and pushed them down into my backpack. “What I have in mind will make your providers want to stay. You might even get some of them to come back.”

“Don’t want them back.”

“Why not?”

“They’re dead to me.” Interesting choice of words. “Do you want to hear my idea for keeping the gals from leaving home?”

I didn’t need to ask. She couldn’t wait to tell me.

“I was thinking I would send some people I know to find one of those little sluts, take her out behind the woodshed, and slash her face. The message will get out real loud and real clear that they best not be leaving a good thing.”

That was about ten miles beyond what we could tolerate as an undercover investigation. If she were intent on assaulting someone, we would have to shut her down. It was possible we should do that anyway based on the threat. But I had serious doubts about whether we had enough to shut her down.

“Back to Pimping 101,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t reach over and clock me.

“I told you-”

“What could possibly draw more attention to what you’re doing than a brutal attack like that?”

“It would never get back to me. I’m covered on that front. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“Covered how? You can’t get arrested? You can’t get prosecuted? What?”

“You don’t need to know.” She leaned back and looked at me with luscious satisfaction. She was very pleased with herself.

“If that’s true, you don’t need me. Use your secret mojo to take out the LA crowd. Save yourself some money and me the trouble.”

She dismissed that notion with a toss of her hair. “They’re not worth it. What I have is like a nuclear bomb”-only she pronounced it “nucular,” like any good Texan-“and I don’t want to have to go and use it unless there is no other way. But I will use it to save my business. I will do anything to save my business.”

I looked around to make sure no one had edged close enough to overhear. Not to worry. There wasn’t a person in this trendiest of hangouts who wasn’t more interested in him-or herself than anyone else in the room.

“If you want to do something short of slashing faces and detonating nuclear bombs, I’m with you. But I’m not up for hurting anyone.”

She turned and found something interesting to look at on one of the three big-screen TVs.

“What’s it going to be, Angel?”

The quickest way to walk home from Angel’s neighborhood was across the Common and through the Public Garden. The second I was out of her range, I called Harvey.

“I saw Angel,” I told him when he picked up. “I just left her.”

“You just left? It’s almost eight o’clock.”

“She insisted that we go to dinner.”

“What did you learn?”

“I learned why your top swapper list excludes the senior women.”

I explained Angel’s organization and the concept of pool girls to him, occasionally checking around to see if anyone nearby was listening to me. My side of the conversation would have made for some bizarre eavesdropping. Harvey liked the explanation because it made perfect sense. I was more interested in how to fill the gap in our investigation.

“We definitely have to get to the Web master,” I said. “If Felix can’t get in through the back door, then I need to get to him through Angel.”

“How would you do that?”

“I tried to get her to talk about him, but she wouldn’t bite. She gets how important he is. We’ve set up another meeting tomorrow to talk about the frequent fucker program.”

“Another workout?”

“No. She wants me to come up to her house in New Hampshire.”

As I passed the tennis courts, I was delighted to hear that my favorite busker was out, even at this hour. The accordion player was on his customary stoop under a big oak, spinning sweet songs in minor keys and making a crosswalk in the middle of a Boston park feel like an outdoor café in Paris. He smiled and nodded as I dug out a dollar and dropped it in his case. I sat on a nearby bench to listen while I finished my conversation with Harvey.

“There’s something else,” I said. “Angel has no fear at all of getting caught and going to jail. None. She acts as if she has some kind of get-out-of-jail-for-free card.”

“What could that be?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a rabbi. Someone to watch out for her. From the sound of it, it would have to be someone pretty powerful. She calls it her nuclear bomb. Whatever it is, it gives me some concern.”

“How so?”

“Let’s say we build a case against Angel. Will she be able to pull out this hole card and use it to beat us? Would it be something that keeps the airline from firing her?”

“It is not our job to guarantee her termination. Only to give the client what he has asked for.” Harvey was veering into lecture territory, which meant it was time to change the subject.

“I finally got Monica’s address. I’m heading over to her apartment as soon as I change. I want to try to get over there before it gets too late.”

“Do you think she will be there?”

“Not a chance. But I would feel pretty stupid if she’s there watching Oprah and not answering the phone and I never even went by and knocked on her door.”

The accordion player finished “ La Vie En Rose” and put down his instrument to take a break.

“Alex, are you there?”

“I’m here.” I had been thinking abut Angel’s threat to have someone slashed. I was thinking mostly about how perfectly capable she was of doing it.

“There’s one more thing, Harvey. Have you had any more conversation with the retired detective in Omaha?”

“No. Should I?”

“I think so. We need to look more closely at this Robin Sevitch murder.”