212: A Novel Part 25

2:45 A.M.

"Niiicccce."

The meathead in a black leather blazer and too much Polo cologne eyed Ellie's chest as she approached the club's entrance. Apparently in her sleep-deprived state, she had not tugged sufficiently at the zipper of the hoodie she had pulled on as she ran out of her apartment.

"You're not doing so bad yourself," she said, poking one of the man's flabby pecs. "Where's my brother? Jess Hatcher. About your height but eighty pounds lighter."

"As smart-a.s.sed as you but a h.e.l.l of a lot less cute?"

"That's the one."

"Saw him go in the back office with one of the girls about ten minutes ago. Knowing your brother, you might want to knock first."

Against all her better instincts, Jess managed about once a month to persuade her to drop by this place for one reason or another. Given that he'd started working here in March, she guessed this was her seventh trip to Vibrations. For years, Jess had been that guy who couldn't hold down a long-term job. He managed to hang in for three months as a short-order cook at a Garment District diner one time, but only out of guilt, since Ellie had been the one to find him the gig. His average was a few weeks.

But for reasons she might never understand, this cheesy, neon-lit, 1980s hair-band-blasting strip club on the West Side Highway had brought out the best in her brother. Vibrations was the kind of upside-down, backward, bizarro universe where Jess was the sensible adult and the packs of lawyers and money managers whooping it up for a bachelor party were the raging idiots.

Ellie's periodic pop-ins were usually preceded by some promise from Jess of the most amazing display of carnal creativity ever witnessed. Ping pong b.a.l.l.s were commonly involved.

But this time Jess had promised her more than entertainment. She found him on a couch in the office, the woman perched beside him eyeing Ellie with skepticism.

"Is that her?"

"Yeah. My sister. Ellie Hatcher. She'll take care of you, Jasmine."

Jasmine's look matched the name. She had dark brown hair with caramel streaks that fell well past her shoulder blades. She had teased and sprayed it just enough to replicate pillow-tousled s.e.x hair. She threw Jess a pout that managed to be simultaneously angry and s.e.xy. No doubt she scored big tips with that pout.

"Your brother has a way of talking people into stuff they really don't want to do."

"Tell me about it. He says you know something about Prestige Parties?"

CHAPTER FORTY.

9:30 A.M.

It turned out that Jasmine was her actual, legal name. Jasmine Anne Harris, twenty-six years old. Her only appearances in the NYPD's data system were ancient history: listed as a witness to a domestic a.s.sault against her mother when she was ten; as the complainant in a Rape II when she was thirteen by an a.s.sailant who shared the last name Harris; and then four runaway juvenile reports over the next two years. Jasmine's home life had not been a happy one.

But she had managed to keep her own criminal record clean, even as she admitted to Max and Ellie that she'd been on and off drugs for the last eight years-from pot to c.o.ke to heroin to meth-periodically turning tricks as she needed to support first her habit and now her three-year-old son.

Currently she sat in a conference room of the district attorney's office, wearing the Columbia Law School sweatshirt that Max had offered her when she'd arrived this morning in a low-cut spaghetti-strap top to detail everything she knew about Prestige Parties.

According to Jasmine, the head of the operation was an older man she knew only as Uncle Dave. According to the articles of incorporation that Prestige Parties had filed with the attorney general's office, the company's CEO and sole shareholder was named David Taylor. Jasmine knew only a little more about the two sisters who helped Dave find girls and book dates. Their names were Corliss and Cadence LaMarche.

Jasmine suspected she wasn't supposed to know their last names, but Corliss had let it slip once. She'd asked Jasmine if that was her real name, and Jasmine had confirmed that it was and then asked Corliss the same. "Yep. Corliss, Cadence, and our brother Caleb. I guess our mom figured that with the last name LaMarche we may as well double down on trying to sound like royalty."

"She only mentioned it the once," Jasmine said, "but I remember because I kept repeating it to myself. Corliss LaMarche. Really cla.s.sy. A lot better than Jasmine Harris, you know?"

Jasmine paused intermittently to wonder aloud whether she was "shooting herself in the hip." That was a phrase that Jasmine seemed to favor.

This time when she invoked the saying, it was after she took a big sip from the bottle of Mountain Dew that Ellie had fetched for her from the DA's vending machine. "You know, I keep thinking that I'm shooting myself in the hip." She let out a tiny burp of carbonation from the soda and then covered her mouth and giggled. "Even giving Prestige half the cash, I've been taking home between seven and twelve hundred bucks a night when I work for them. They only use me every couple of weeks, but combined with what I'm making at Vibrations, I've been doing pretty good. I can't go back to hundred-dollar dates with the p.r.i.c.ks I meet at the club."

Someone at Prestige Parties had managed to persuade Jasmine that she had earned her way into that elite category of high-cla.s.s, high-price call girls. They had sold her on the idea of a fantasy world in which smart, beautiful women earned financial independence and a kind of feminist empowerment by taking money from weak but adoring men for something as easy as s.e.xual contact.

But working decoy operations on patrol, Ellie had gotten to know the girls on the corners, the ones with the callused feet, hardened eyes, and faded bruises. And she knew that the line that divided them from the Prestige Party girls of the world was nonexistent. Just as a lawyer could use his skills to move from job to job and industry to industry-defending gas companies and then drug makers and then the latest indicted politician-s.e.x workers moved from stripping to p.o.r.n to dominatrix dungeons to street corners to three-thousand-dollar-a-night hotel penthouses.

"You'll land on your feet," Ellie a.s.sured her. "Think about it this way, Jasmine. Are you any prettier now than you were when you were getting a hundred dollars a date?"

"h.e.l.l, no," she said, smiling. "I'm only getting older, and thanks to my kid, I've got stretch marks on my belly."

"And are you doing anything drastically different for these men now that they're paying a thousand dollars a night compared to what you were doing before?"

She shook her head. "No pervs. I strictly cover the basics."

"So if you're the same attractive woman, doing the same exact thing, why do you think these men are paying more?"

"Beats the s.h.i.t out of me."

"Because they've been told you're worth it. Tell a guy that you're worth a hundred bucks, and that's how he's going to treat you. But force them to pony up a couple grand, they're already convinced you're the most beautiful girl they've ever seen. They truly believe you have secret skills to rock their tedious worlds. When Prestige Parties is over and done with, all you'll have to do is look the next guy in the eye and tell him what it costs, and that's what you're going to get."

Jasmine took another sip of her soda. "d.a.m.n f.u.c.king straight I'm worth it. A thousand bucks a night isn't even that much in the city. I've heard of girls who make as much as ten." Her eyes gleamed at the thought.

"Now tell us again about the women who book the dates."

The truth was, despite Ellie's a.s.surances that Jasmine would find some way to make the money up, she honestly didn't care. Persuading Jasmine to cooperate was a necessary step to bringing down Prestige Parties, which was a necessary step to finding Katie Battle's murderer. If Jasmine wound up broke and desperate again, it wouldn't be because of Ellie.

It took Jasmine another hour to tell them everything she knew. Uncle Dave. The two sisters, Corliss and Cadence. Six dates in the last three and a half months, all involving s.e.x for money. And now she was in the district attorney's fifteenth-floor conference room, eating a package of Hostess Cupcakes from yet another trip to the vending machine, while they conferred in the hallway.

"It's still not enough," Max announced.

"How is that possible?" Ellie asked. "That girl, despite all the old drugs and recent refined sugar flowing through her veins, has one of the best memories I've come across in a witness. She's willing to let us use her name. She's got no criminal history and no apparent motive to lie. Her word, plus what we already got from Stacy Schecter, has to be enough."

"It's the same problem you always have with these agencies. The entire purpose of an escort service is to look legit. She knows this guy as Uncle Dave, which is about as creepy a name as I can think of for a pimp. But on paper, according to the AG's office, he's David Taylor, the CEO and sole shareholder of a legitimate corporation that provides legal and luxurious entertainment. They dot their i's and cross their t's. They're lawfully incorporated. They had Jasmine fill out a W-4 to pay taxes on that income. I'm sure he pays the LaMarche sisters with reported funds, too, as well as paying taxes on all the company's earnings. These people aren't stupid."

"No, but they are guilty of promoting prost.i.tution in the third degree. We get the arrest warrant, hook them up on the felony charge, seize all their a.s.sets, and then use the money and the criminal case against them to get some answers about Katie Battle and Tanya Abbott."

"The problem is they've covered their a.s.ses. You heard Jasmine. They told her not to engage in s.e.x with the client. They even had her sign a piece of paper acknowledging that any s.e.xual contact with the client was automatic grounds for dismissal."

"And she also said she knew when she signed that doc.u.ment that it was just for show. When Corliss first approached her at Vibrations, she even asked her if she ever dated."

"You and I know that dating is code, but Uncle Dave will argue it means innocent companionship."

"We don't need a conviction. I just want the leverage. I want some answers."

They heard the creak of the conference room door. Like most of the doors in any building with a Centre Street address, it could use some WD-40.

"Um, is everything okay?"

"Just fine, Jasmine. If you can wait a few more minutes, we can explain what we're going to do next."

"It sounds like you guys are fighting." Jasmine looked at her with the worried eyes of a child, and Ellie realized that some part of Jasmine's personality would always be frozen in adolescence, suspended in time at that first knock on her bedroom door, the knock that had finally led to the police report when she was thirteen years old.

Ellie a.s.sured her once more and waited for the conference room door to close before speaking again in a quieter voice.

"Let's take it to Judge Bandon. He'll do anything for us right now. He'll sign the warrant."

Max shook his head. "That's not right, Ellie, and you know it. We need more evidence."

This wasn't the first time Ellie had b.u.t.ted heads with a prosecutor. Prosecutors were always worried about trying their cases before a jury, having every thread of every last detail knotted and tucked away to create a smooth, impenetrable layer of proof. Police needed enough evidence to know in their gut they had the right guy.

Usually, though, when Ellie didn't see eye to eye with a prosecutor, the prosecutor wasn't a man who shared her bed a couple times a week. That tiny little distinction had Ellie on better behavior than she otherwise might have been.

But she still wanted her answers.

"I'm sorry, Max, but I'll go to Bandon for the warrant myself if you don't have some other suggestion."

Max swallowed and shook his head. She held his stare defiantly but felt one corner of her mouth move upward.

"d.a.m.n, you're s.e.xy," he said.

"I'm also right. We can't be this close and just stop."

He stepped toward her. She felt his breath whisper across her forehead. "You know I never stop when we're close. I just might need to take a little detour."

His body was so close to her now that she felt his hand move near his hip. She closed her eyes. Just when she thought he was reaching for her, she heard the creak of a door, followed by Max's voice from the threshold of the conference room.

"Jasmine, sweetheart, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you for one more thing."

Ellie pushed past him through the doorway. "You're a tease."

"You said you wanted a suggestion."

The phone rang three times before a woman answered in a professional tone. "Prestige."

"Hi, is this Corliss?"

"I'm sorry. Who's speaking, please?"

Ellie gave an encouraging nod to Jasmine, who was clutching the handset of the conference room telephone so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. Ellie listened to the conversation through a headset plugged into a digital recorder, which was in turn attached to the base of the phone.

"It's Jasmine Harris."

"Oh, hey there, Jasmine." The woman's businesslike demeanor melted into the voice of a girlfriend. "We haven't forgotten aboutcha. I'll give ya a call as soon as we've got some work for ya."

"It's actually that, well, I guess I have work. Or at least a chance to work. One of my dates from last month saw me at Vibrations last night and wants an appointment for tomorrow. Guess his wife is visiting her sister or something."

"Well, I haven't gotten any calls asking for you, babe. Sorry."

"No, I mean, he's just planning to come by the club tomorrow to meet me. I wasn't thinking about it last night, but then it dawned on me that might not be cool with you guys. I don't want to mess up what I've got going with you just for one trick, you know?"

"You mean an appointment, Jasmine."

"Right, an appointment. Sorry."

"It's good you called. The models are definitely not allowed to date Prestige clients except through the company. Every once in a while, we'll have a client get really close to one of the girls and want to see her on a regular basis, but we expect a buyout in exchange for making that initial introduction. Do you think it's that kind of a situation?"

"Nah, he just happened to come in with some of his buddies. Who knows whether he'll even show up tomorrow. If he does, I'll tell him he's got to talk to you guys."

"It's for the best, Jasmine. Uncle Dave's a real stickler about that. If he finds out the models are booking privately, they're gone. He puts the word out to other agencies, too."

Ellie knew that last part was a bluff.

"No big loss," Jasmine said. "Dude was kind of a freak anyway. It was the guy from Labor Day weekend. Kept trying to take the rubber off during oral. I was trying to go down on him and kept winding up with his little d.i.c.k and his stubby fingers in my mouth. I couldn't tell what was what."

They'd rehea.r.s.ed the line with Jasmine at least six times before placing the call, but she still managed to deliver it with that silly giggle of hers. It worked, because Corliss laughed and dropped her guard. "I'll look up the name and make a note of it. We tell everyone to keep it safe, but some of the girls still accept bareback on oral. And, don't forget, watch it on the phone, Jasmine, okay?"

"Yeah, sorry."

"No problem. And I'll try to find something for you this week to make up for tonight, all right?"

"Thanks, Corliss."

Jasmine hung up the phone and worked the kinks out of her knuckles. "Was that okay?"

Ellie couldn't help but grab the girl's hands across the table. "That, Ms. Harris, was unbelievable."

But it wasn't Ellie's approval that Jasmine yearned for. She looked up with wide eyes toward Max, who was sitting with one hip against the conference table. "Was that good? Did it sound good?"

"You were perfect, Jasmine."

She removed her hands from Ellie's and used them to pull Max's sweatshirt up over her chin. Ellie knew that sweatshirt would smell good, like a blend of truffles and cedar and lavender and coffee. Like Max. Like home. It was the kind of smell that made a woman feel safe.

For a second, Jasmine looked happy.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE.