“Mobilize an immediate response.”
“What would this response look like?” She edged a little closer. All I could figure was this was her effort to get the upper hand by distracting me. I focused on her eyes.
“I’d find out why my women were so willing to walk, and I would give them more reason to stay than to leave. That would be my first step. Next, I would find out which clients are leaving or thinking of leaving.”
I pulled the diskette from the pocket of my robe and held it up between us. “That’s why you need this.”
She didn’t even look at it. She kept her eyes on me. “I hate computers.”
“This disk contains the guest list from the recruiting party the other night in LA. There are two hundred names with contact numbers, mostly men.”
The left corner of her mouth tweaked up. “How did you happen to come by this list?”
“I stole it.”
She let out a little whoop and nudged my shoulder with hers. “Aren’t you the little spitfire?” Without the slightest hesitation, she snapped up the disk, and it disappeared into her own pocket, the one without the crystal she’d already swiped. “I can put that to good use.”
“That’s not all there is,” I said. “I have a master list from the same computer with another thirteen hundred names. It shows which of your clients are being targeted and which have already left you. It also includes the client list and the target list for your LA rivals.”
“Names with contacts?”
“Business e-mail addresses.”
She pushed her robe open a little more, leaned back, and brushed the towel across the swell of her breasts. “That is interesting.”
“I also have a strategy that will help you crush LA before they ever get off the ground. It’s a program that will help you keep your women from leaving and retain your clients. I think we can get all your clients back with this program.”
“What’s the program?”
“That’s what I’m selling. That and the rest of the names. Hire me, and you get the whole package.”
“Hire you as what?”
“Your management consultant.”
Another whooping cry. “You must have heard all the talk about me, about how I’m nothing but poor, dumb white trash from the wrong side of the trailer park. Is that it? Miss Dairy Queen?”
“If I thought you were dumb, I wouldn’t have approached you first.”
“What do you mean by first?”
“I just told you how I would put you out of business. Hire me, and I’ll tell you how to do it to them.”
She grabbed her lower lip with a couple of front teeth and considered that. “You were right about something, what you said the other night. I have checked you out. You were one straight arrow at Majestic. A big superstar flying up the corporate ladder, working your ass off, always spouting the party line. A company gal, that’s what you were. How the mighty have fallen.”
“I was a company gal…right up until the day they fired me. Now I can’t get work anywhere else, my income is a fraction of what it used to be, I’m schlepping drinks at thirty-five thousand feet and hawking stolen names of married men to you to make a living. I’m through doing the right thing.”
“Now you’re broke and bitter, and you want to run with the bad girls to prove what a bad-ass you are.”
“Right. I’m a real bad-ass.”
She sat back against the armrest and checked me out. She seemed to be taking my physical inventory. “You say you won’t do the nasty, right? Isn’t that what you told me? You’re not in the trade, and you don’t want to be.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not for me.”
“Yet you figure on making money off all the girls who are, including me. You want to have your cake and eat it, too. Or have my cake without letting anybody eat yours. That just ain’t gonna fly, sweetie. Not in my world.”
“Why not?” Here was the stickiest wicket of all, one I wasn’t sure I could get past. “You must have business arrangements with people who are not prostitutes. Accountants and programmers. Other support types.”
“I chose them. Not the other way around.”
“If you don’t trust me, trust my motive.”
“Which is?”
“Money. Don’t have enough. Need more.”
“That’s not good enough, sweet pea. I never work with anyone who won’t get her hands as dirty as me, and here’s a little secret.” She leaned toward me, probably to whisper, but I didn’t want her tongue in my ear again, so this time I pulled away. That seemed to amuse her. “I’m not dumb. I know, for instance, that you being my business consultant would mean me showing you my business. The who, what, where, why, and therefore of things.”
“The more I know, the more I can help you.”
“The more you know, the more you can hurt me. But I tell you what. I will buy those lists from you. Name your price, we’ll haggle a bit, then we’ll come to an arrangement, and we can go on about our separate business.”
“It’s a package deal, Angel. If you want the lists of names, you take me with them.”
She retreated to the armrest again to think that over. “How about this? How about you spend the next couple of months getting to know and understand up close and personal the kinds of services we offer? Then maybe we can talk turkey.”
“You don’t have a couple of months, and I’m not interested.”
The door opened, and one of the pink coats stepped in. “Good morning, Miss Velesco. We’re ready for you in massage room three.”
“I’ll be right there, darlin’.”
“Of course. Take your time. You know the way back. Miss Shanahan, someone will be out for you shortly.”
After the pink coat left, Angel dropped her legs down and found her slippers on the floor. “I do give you credit, doll. You can play the game.”
I felt her slipping away. I felt my chance slipping away. “So can you,” I said. “You’ve built something of value, Angel. I don’t know if you fully appreciate how difficult that is. I can help you keep it. You don’t need me to turn tricks to prove it.”
“If I’ve learned one thing about the world of business, it’s this,” she said. “You can’t get ahead without being willing to spread your legs every now and then for the right person or the right reasons. In my business, it just happens to be for real.”
“Thirteen hundred client names, Angel. Going once…going twice…” She watched me closely. It was a standoff, and I knew one thing about negotiating. You had to be willing to lose. “Gone.” I drank down the rest of my lemon water and got up. “Keep the disk with my compliments. Thank you for your time.”
“I plan to keep it.” I was halfway out the door when she called me back. “You know what you need, sugar? You need some lessons from me. Life lessons.”
This was interesting. I came back in and leaned against the back of a chair. “I don’t want life lessons. I want cash.”
“You can have that, too.”
“I don’t want to be a hooker.”
“Could you say that one more time? I don’t think I got it yet. I’m talking about life lessons, sweetie. I want to teach you how the world works.”
“What do you care what I know about the world?”
She raised her arms to stretch and folded them over her head, a move that pulled her robe open and thrust her chest out, revealing almost everything she had to see from the waist up. “For every lesson you give me, I’ll give you one in return. I like the sound of that. It has a certain…what do you call that when it’s all balanced out perfectly?”
“Symmetry.”
“Right. That’s a good word, and that’s my counteroffer. What do you think of that?”
I didn’t like the fact that she was always coming up with the last word, the one final thing I had to do to get what I wanted. But she actually seemed vulnerable in her own brittle, cocky, self-serving way, as if she really, really wanted the chance to strut her stuff. Herother stuff. That was probably a good position to have her in-showing off.