Immediately, the picture changed.
“Aurora Johnson and Cedric Williams had a falling-out six months ago. She tried to steal some money and he canned her.”
“He canned his best prostitute?”
“Where’d you get that?”
“I heard she was his ‘bottom girl.’”
“She was one of his prostitutes a long time ago, but she wasn’t any good. He was friends and business partners with her brother so he hired her to work in their shop.”
“Shop?”
“High Fidelity Audio Systems. SISTMZ on the license plate of his Jaguar XJL. He has a few legitimate businesses—the shop she worked in installed audio systems in cars. High end stuff. She had a head for numbers so she worked the books. Unfortunately, she also had a head for drugs. He tried her as one of his girls, because face it, she had looks to die for, but she just didn’t have the right stuff.”
She launched into how he kept his prostitutes in line.
“These guys, they use the carrot and the stick. Shit, they’d use an iron on you if you didn’t please them. Cords, whips, chains, you wouldn’t believe it. Slavery, pure and simple. These girls may look like a million dollars, they may act like they came out of charm school, they drive Mercedes and dress in designer clothes, but they’re slaves nonetheless. It’s all about control. Build ‘em up, knock ‘em down. Manipulation. They’re just like any other commodity, but I gotta tell you, you need a real cruel streak to be a pimp in this town. The more sadistic, the better, as far as they’re concerned. Cedric brands his girls with a bullet tat on the inside of their forearms.”
Laura thought: like Aurora had.
“Williams is particularly vicious, but he knew with her that just cutting her loose was gonna be worse than any beating or slicing he could do to her. From what I hear, she was needy. Beautiful—an absolute knockout a couple of years ago—but she went downhill fast. He knew that treating her like he didn’t want her would hurt her more than anything else. Demoting her to accountant. No more fancy cars, no more glamorous nightlife or shopping sprees at Nordstrom. She was the lowest of the low—she couldn’t cut it, and whatever friends she had probably dissed her to her face. My feeling is, if she latched on to another guy and took off, he wouldn’t cry himself a river. He’d already destroyed her in every other way.
“You want to talk to him?”
“We do.”
Cedric Williams A.K.A. WMD looked pretty much the way she thought he’d look. There was the shaved head, the earring, the mustache and the hennaed goatee—two thin lines of fire ants trickling down either side of his mouth, looping down to net his jaw. Very GQ. His suit was a cross between tan and buff in color, his shirt cream-colored. The kerchief folded to a perfect triangle in his suit pocket was pastel salmon. Diamond-encrusted rings, a watch that had to cost in the tens of thousands. Yet it was understated enough not to be ostentatious.
He led them down a short hallway past a supply room that looked as ugly as any auto supply room—fluorescent lighting, rows and rows of parts, the smell of rubber and grease. They reached a closed door at the end of the hallway. He slid a card in the door alarm and they stepped into a wonderland. The first thing Laura noticed was a fountain in the center of the room. The place looked a little like Caesar’s Palace if Caesar’s Palace had a low ceiling. There were statues and palm trees growing in pots, and a desk that you could command the Starship Enterprise from.
“Plush,” Anthony said. Laura knew he was seeing a stage set for one of his screenplays.
Cedric Williams sat down behind his desk and nodded for them to sit. The chairs were gorgeous like the rest of the place, and comfortable besides.
“You want to know about Aurora?” He picked up a gold letter opener and ran it around in his fingers. His manicure was perfect. Laura didn’t bother with manicures, but she knew it was perfect anyway.
“That girl is a sad case. I told her she had a problem, but she didn’t listen to me.” He shook his head, his face a monument to regret. “But she couldn’t kick it.”
“She did your books?”
“She had the title, but I kept her around mostly because she was hot. People come here, they like something good to look at.” He smoothed his goatee, looked thoughtful. Laura suspected he did this a lot. “Where you find her?”
“In Arizona.”
“Arizona? Went to see Delmar, then, that it?”
“Delmar?”
“She had herself what you’d call a hot and heavy relationship. Before she came out here. That was a long time ago.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Five, six maybe? I bet she got homesick. How she doing?”
“She’s dead.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” His smile turned upside down. Laura could tell it was just for show. Aurora didn’t mean anything to him, and he was letting her know that. He added, “Now that’s a shame.”
“Aren’t you curious what happened to her?”
He shrugged, and Laura couldn’t help but be impressed by the cut of the shoulders on that suit. “I would guess she came to a bad end.”
“She did.”
He sat back in his expensive leather chair, tapping the tip of the letter opener against the expensive wood of his desk. He looked thoughtful. “How did she shuffle off this mortal coil?” he asked.
“Violently.”
His eyes widened, but his face remained immobile. “Someone killed her?”
“You think someone wanted to kill her?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. Girl could get under your skin. I bet you know the kind. Who was she with again?”
“I didn’t say she was with anybody.”
“I bet I know. It was that white guy, am I right?”
“White guy?”
“After she quit here, I ran into her on the Strip—she was with this white guy, looked like a pussy faggot to me, you know what I mean? She said he was an accountant.” Shook his head sadly. “Man, what a suckup. He wanted to impress me. Maybe she told him stories about some of the good times. Looked to me like he was comparing shoe sizes, right there. You know what I’m sayin’?” His smile suddenly went away, and his face was hard. “She messed up, that’s all you need to know. An’ now look where she’s at. Six feet under.”
Laura called Detective Greg Wyland in Winslow. “Do you know of anyone named Delmar, last name unknown. He might have been a friend of Aurora Johnson’s—the reason she went to Winslow.”
“That name sounds familiar. Let me check my records and get back to you.”
It didn’t take long. “Delmar Jones was a small-time drug dealer who got himself killed eight months ago.”
“How did he die? Was it a drug deal?”
“Nope. It was an accidental death. He was drunk and on a ton of drugs and walked right into the path of a train coming through.”
“You’re sure it was an accident?”
“The guy who investigated is pretty damn sure.”
Good enough for her.
From Cedric’s palatial office they plied the other side of the street—Sean Perrin’s place of work. He was an accountant for a swimming pool supply company. He had nothing to do with the casinos.