"Then get the fuck out of here."
She quickly stood up and walked toward the door.
"Robin, don't open that door. If you don't talk to me, then you'll talk to the cops. That's my next move."
She turned around.
"The cops won't give a shit."
But she didn't open the door. She just stood there, angry and waiting, one hand on the knob.
"Maybe not now but they'll care if I go to them."
"Why, who are you?"
"I have some juice," he lied. "That's all you have to know. If I go to them, they'll come to you. They won't be as nice as me… and they won't pay you four hundred dollars for your time."
He put the money down on the couch where she had been sitting. He watched her eyes go to it.
"Just information, that's all I want. It goes no further than me."
He waited and after a long moment of silence she came back over to the couch and grabbed the money. She somehow found space for it in her tiny shorts. She folded her arms and remained standing.
"What information? I hardly knew her."
"You know something. You talk about her in the past tense."
"I don't know anything. All I know is that she's gone. She just… disappeared."
"When was that?"
"More than a month ago. Suddenly she was just gone."
"Why do you still have her name on your page if she's been gone that long?"
"You saw her picture. She brings in customers. Sometimes they settle for just me."
"Okay, how do you know her disappearance was so sudden? Maybe she just packed up and left."
"I know because one minute we were talking on the phone and the next minute she didn't show up, that's why."
"Show up for what?"
"We had a gig. A double. She set it up and called me. She told me the time and then she didn't show up. I was there and then the client showed up and he wasn't happy. First of all, there was no place to park and then she wasn't there and I had to scramble around to get another girl to come back over here to my place -and there are no other girls like Lilly, and he really wanted Lilly. It was a fucking fiasco, that's what it was."
"Where was this?"
"Her place. Her gig pad. She didn't work anywhere else. No outcall. Not even to here. I always had to go to her. Even if they were my clients wanting the double, we had to go to her pad, or it didn't happen."
"Did you have a key to her place?"
"No. Look, you've gotten your four hundred's worth. It would have been easier just to fuck and forget you. That's it."
Pierce angrily reached into his pocket and pulled out the rest of his cash. It was $230.
He'd counted it in the car. He held it out to her.
"Then take this, because I'm not done. Something happened to her and I'm going to find out what."
She grabbed the money and it disappeared without her counting it.
"Why do you care?"
"Maybe because nobody else does. Now if you didn't have a key to her place, how do you know she didn't show up that night?"
"Because I knocked for fifteen fucking minutes and then me and the guy waited for another twenty. I'm telling you, she wasn't in there."
"Do you know if she had something set up before the gig with you?"
Robin thought for a little bit before answering.
"She said she had something to do but I don't know if she was with a client. Because I wanted to do it earlier but she said she was busy with something at the time I wanted. So we set the time she wanted, and so she should have been there but wasn't."
Pierce tried to imagine what questions a cop would ask her but couldn't guess how the police would approach this. He thought about it as if it were a problem at work, with his usual rigorous approach to problem solving and theory building.
"So before she was to meet with you she had to do something," he said. "That something could have been meeting a client. And since you say she worked nowhere else but the apartment, she had to have met this client at the apartment. Nowhere else, right?"
"Right."
"So when you got there and knocked on the door, she could've been inside with or without this other client but just not answering."
"I guess so, but she should've been done by then and she would have answered. It was all set up. So maybe it wasn't a client."
"Or maybe she was not allowed to answer. Maybe she couldn't answer."
This seemed to give Robin pause, as though she realized how close she might have come to whatever fate befell Lilly.
"Where is this place? Her apartment."
"It's over in Venice. Off Speedway."
"What's the exact address?"
"I don't remember. I just know how to get there."
Pierce nodded. He thought about what else he needed to ask her. He had the feeling he had one shot with her. No second chances.
"How'd you two get together for these, uh, gigs?"
"We linked on the website. If people wanted us both, they'd ask and we'd set it up if we were both available."
"I mean, how did you two meet in order to have the link? How did you meet in the first place?"
"We met at a shoot and sort of hit it off. It went from there."
"A shoot? What do you mean?"
"Modeling. It was a girl-girl scene and we met at the studio."
"You mean, for a magazine?"
"No, a website."
Pierce thought of the doorway he had opened at Entrepreneurial Concepts.
"Was it for one of the websites Entrepreneurial Concepts operates?"
"Look, it doesn't matter what -"
"What was the name of the site?"
"It was called something like fetish castle dot something or other. I don't know. I don't have a computer. What does it matter?"
"Where was the shoot, at Entrepreneurial Concepts?"
"Yeah. At the studios."
"So you got the job through L.A. Darlings and Mr. Wentz, right?"
He saw her eyes flare at the mention of the name but she didn't respond.
"What's his first name?"
"I'm not talking to you about him. You can't tell him you got any information from me, you understand?"
He thought he now saw a flash of fear in her eyes.
"I told you, everything you tell me here is private. I promise you that. What's his name?"
"Look, he's got connections and people who work for him who are very mean. He's mean. I don't want to talk about him."
"Just tell me his name and I'll leave it at that, okay?"
"It's Billy. Billy Wentz. Most people call him Billy Wince because he hurts people, okay?"
"Thank you."
He stood up and looked around the apartment. He walked over to the corner of the living room and looked into a hallway that he guessed led to the bedroom. He was surprised to learn there were two bedrooms with a bathroom in between.
"Why do you have two bedrooms?"
"I share the place with another girl. We each have our own."
"From the website?"
"Yes."
"What's her name?"
"Cleo."
"Billy Wentz put you with her, too."
"No. Grady did."
"Who is Grady?"
"He works with Billy. He really runs the place."
"So why don't you do doubles with Cleo? It'd be more convenient."
"I probably will. But I told you, I was getting a lot of business with Lilly. There aren't many girls that look like her."
Pierce nodded.
"You don't live here, do you?"
"No. I work here."
"Where do you live?"
"I'm not telling you that."
"You keep any clothes here?"
"What do you mean?"
"You have any clothes besides those? And where are your shoes?"
He gestured to what she was wearing.
"Yes, I changed when I got here. I don't go out like this."
"Good. Change back and let's go."
"What are you talking about? Where?"
"I want you to show me where Lilly's place is. Or was."
"Uh-uh, man. You got your information, that's it."
Pierce looked at his watch.
"Look, you said four hundred an hour. I've been here twenty minutes, tops. That means I get forty more minutes, or you give me two-thirds of my cash back."
"That's not how it works."
"That's how it works today."