Guilty Minds

11

What happened to Mandy?” she said. She was wearing no makeup and was young enough that she looked beautiful without it. Her skin was nearly translucent. I noticed purplish circles, like bruises, under her gray-blue eyes. Her eyes were pretty, but they were red-rimmed.

“It’s just me,” I said.

“I don’t get it. Who are you? Besides Nick whoever? I mean, a lawyer, a reporter, what?” She had a fairly thick southern accent.

“I’m a private investigator. I’ve been hired by Slander Sheet to verify your story.”

She kept her handbag on her lap. It was a Chanel. I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling by the way she clutched it that it might not be counterfeit. “An investigator?” She narrowed her eyes in suspicion.

“They’re really going out on a limb on this story, so they want to make sure it’s solid.” I was lying, sure, but I justified it to myself on the grounds that she was, too. “They want to make sure they don’t get stuck with a bad story the way Rolling Stone magazine was, with that UVA story.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s not important.”

She looked around the coffee shop. “So Mandy’s not coming?”

“Right.” She seemed anxious.

I’d known a few call girls, and I recognized the basic profile. They tend to be materialistic. They like their Chanel bags and their Jimmy Choos. They like to dress well because they know they look good. Call girls and escorts, unlike ordinary prostitutes, have a certain self-regard. Men pay good money to be with them, and not just for sex. It’s like having a mistress without the inevitable obligations. From the girls’ standpoint, they go to nice restaurants and black tie events and get to see a life they’d otherwise never see. In some ways it’s not a bad gig.

“And how do I know you’re for real?” she demanded.

“Here’s my business card.” That didn’t answer her question, but she took the card and glanced at it quickly. I’d written my cell number on it.

“Are you even licensed? I want to see your license.”

I was impressed. You’d be surprised at how few people ask to see my license. I took out my wallet and removed my Commonwealth of Massachusetts private investigator license. She glanced at it.

“That doesn’t do you any good. That’s a Massachusetts license. You have to be licensed in every state you work in, and we’re not in Massachusetts.”

I couldn’t help smiling. Smart girl. She was right. I fished around in my wallet and found my DC license, which I’d kept up to date since my days of working in the district. The picture showed a younger Nick Heller. Also a less jaded one. Back when I started, I didn’t know much about how the world worked. I’d learned a lot since then.

I handed it to her. She looked at it, shook her head. “We’re in Virginia. Not DC.”

I didn’t have that one with me, though I had a Virginia license, and a Maryland one, somewhere back in Boston.

“Kayla, I need to ask you a few questions about the chief justice.”

“I already told Mandy everything.”

“I know. I just need to go over your answers. Sort of kick the tires. Make sure everything’s rock solid.”

She shrugged. Warily, she said: “What do you want to know?”

“How’d you first meet him?”

“How? I mean, they told me to go to the Monroe, room such-and-such, and all that. I thought, fancy hotel, that’s a relief, that means the client’s probably not some sleazeball.”

“ ‘They’ is...?”

“My boss. My manager.”

The hooker booker, I thought. The person who handles incoming calls and assigns girls to clients.

“And... you knew right away he was the chief justice of the Supreme Court?”

She shrugged.

“You watch a lot of news, Kayla? You a big C-SPAN junkie? Not a lot of people would recognize the chief justice. You went to his hotel room and you went, ‘Hot damn, the chief justice of the Supreme Court’?”

“Of course not. He was just some guy.” Her eyes kept roaming the coffee shop, looking for something, for someone. She turned around and looked some more.

“Yet you somehow figured out who he was.”

She took a breath. “After my second date with him I was watching TV and I saw something about the Supreme Court and they showed video of him and I knew that was the guy from the Monroe. I thought, huh, that’s cool.”

“So you saw his picture on TV.”

“Once, when he was in the bathroom, I looked in his wallet.”

I nodded. A good answer. If she’d claimed she recognized a Supreme Court justice at first sight, I’d know she was lying. So either she was telling the truth — a remote possibility — or she’d rehearsed her answer. The breath, the pause, the way she replied all told me she was probably recalling something she’d been coached to say.

“Did he request you?”

“It... it wasn’t like that, far as I know. I see this guy Tom Wyden sometimes when he’s in Washington. He always asks for me.”

“Wyden, the casino guy?”

She nodded. “I guess he wanted to gift me to the guy.”

“Gift you?”

“He paid my fee in advance. As, like, a present to his friend.”

“And you know this how?”

“Cindy, my manager, told me. She said we got a special request. Why do I have to go over all this again?”

“Slander Sheet is insisting on it. I’m just doing my job. So tell me, what’s your usual fee?”

She shifted in her chair, clutched her Chanel bag. “Four to six thousand, depending.”

“On what?”

“On how much time, and is it travel or not, and what they expect.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

She shrugged, looked uncomfortable. Under her breath she said, “So maybe I’m worth it.”

“How much of that do you keep?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“It’s all part of the fact-checking. To make sure there’s no problems later on. You’re going to be asked questions like this. Probably a lot more intrusive ones.”

“Usually I get fifteen hundred out of every four thousand.”

“And how do you normally get paid?”

“Cash, most of the time. I give them the take, and they give me my cut. But the judge was prepaid. I got my cut later.”

“Fifteen hundred each time?”

“Right.”

“Now, I’m going to ask you some fairly explicit questions.”

She shrugged. Like, I don’t care, I’m unshockable. “Go for it.”

“Claflin a kinky guy?”

She hesitated, just a beat. Looked around again.

“Plain vanilla. Mostly mish.”

She meant the missionary position.

“Bareback?”

“Covered full service.”

Coitus with a condom. She was either a pro, or a well-trained actress. Both, I decided. She was comfortable with the language of the professional escort, but she was at the same time highly anxious. I could read it in her facial expressions, in her vocal instrument. She was being pressured into telling this story, I was increasingly certain.

“So is he cut or uncut?” It wasn’t a comfortable subject, but it had to be asked.

She shook her head, rolled her eyes, sighed exasperatedly.

“Fifty percent chance of guessing right,” I said.

She wasn’t going to answer. She didn’t know whether Claflin was circumcised or not.

Then she snapped, “Screw you, Uncle Pervy. I know I’m one to talk, but how about we leave the guy his last shred of dignity?”

I liked that. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” I told her.

She blinked a few times. “Do what?”

“You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”

She smiled uncomfortably. One of her front teeth was snaggled, cutely.

“Maybe I can help.”

Her smile faded. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” It was a halfhearted protest.

“Someone’s putting the squeeze on you, and they’ve got you scared. I want you to know that I can help.”

“Screw you.”

“You know, sometimes you’ve got to trust someone in life. You think you’re being clever by being mistrustful, but that’s not the answer. You probably think you’re alone in this. But you don’t have to be.”

For a moment she looked as if she was affected, as if maybe I’d gotten through to her.

I probed a little deeper. “Someone’s paying you to lie, that’s pretty clear. But you’re not just doing it for the money. They’ve also got you scared, right?”

Her red-rimmed eyes glistened with tears.

“Whoever they are, I can protect you,” I said. “You don’t have to be alone in this.”

A look of anxiety suddenly came over her face. Her eyes swept the room once again. “You’re not with Slander Sheet! You’re a goddamned liar!”

“Kayla, hold on, listen to me.”

She leaped up from the table. “Get the hell away from me!” She grabbed her handbag and threaded her way between the tables.

I got up and went after her. She was racing through the Starbucks. People were looking up from their conversations, craning their heads, staring back at me. It looked like a quarrel, or just a bad date.

Then I noticed someone loping out after her: a large man of about thirty, entirely bald, dressed in a navy suit and tie. I did a mental rewind, recalled him entering the Starbucks half a minute or so after Kayla. He hadn’t drawn my attention, because he looked like any other businessman, though maybe bulkier than average.

By the time I got to the door of the coffee shop, Kayla was most of the way down the block. The bulky bald man was now bounding in her direction. I considered chasing after her but decided it wasn’t worth it. I’d gotten from her what I needed. And besides, the guy was clearly her guard, a watcher, a minder. At the end of the block she scrambled into a car, a VW, and it pulled away from the curb before the bald guy could catch up with her.

She was fast.

The bald guy pulled out a phone.

I decided to introduce myself.