"Why did Diana want you to write on them?" "To freak them out," Kirstin said. " ' mark him afterward." She said marking made them embarrassed to go to the cops and kept them busy thinking how to hide the writing from their wives."
Janek glanced at Sue. She nodded back, her acknowledgment that Stiegel, mediocre as he was, seemed at least to have gotten that right.
"What's Diana like?" Sue asked. The bitter laugh again. "Not a nice person."
"Why don't you tell us a little about her?" Kirstin shrugged. "Sure, why not?"
Janek sat back.
"She started the business. She used to go after marks herself-in Texas, Houston, places like that. She was good at it, she told us.
Really cleaned up. ' ' all clean down there." She invested her money.
''m rich, girls. You will be, too, if you stick close." She told us there were good livings to be made by girls who knew how to interest men, then put them to sleep. No one got hurt. No one got AIDS. No violence. Everything neat and clean. Oh, she could go on and on about what a neat, clean game it was." Kirstin paused. "Another thing she used to say: ''t give me any excuses. I've been there. I know every wrinkle."
Like anyone would dare give her an excuse! We were all afraid of her.
Terrified."
Listening to her, not just to what she was saying but to the way she was saying it, Janek was struck by an idea. It was nothing he could justify, and he knew that if he brought it up and was wrong, he risked losing Kirstin's confidence. But he also knew that if he was right, he might be able to create a bond.
"Diana was the one who cut you, wasn't she?" he asked softly.
Kirstin's eyes glowed. "How did-!" She brought her fist up to her mouth.
"I never said that. I-" Then she began to cry.
Janek nodded to Sue, who moved closer, offered her a handkerchief.
"Take it easy," Sue said. "We're not going to hurt you. No one's going to hurt you now."
Sue looked up at Janek. He stood and moved over to a window. He wanted to release the shade, flood the dreary little room with light.
But he knew that Kirstin wouldn't like that, that she'd pulled down the shades while they'd been waiting at the door. It was all right, he understood, if they saw her scars, just so long as they didn't see them very well.
After Kirstin recovered she was ready to open up. The information tumbled out.
She spoke with wistful nostalgia of her days as one of Diana's girls.
Nothing, it seemed, was too good for her then. Great clothes. Shopping expeditions to designer boutiques. Haircuts at the top salons. The finest shoes and accessories.
"Catch a cold, Diana had this fancy doctor, Feldstein, to look after you. Get in trouble, she had this smart lawyer, Thatcher, to get you out of it. "
There were cultural-improvement trips to museums and evenings at the ballet, parties, too, usually small corporate gatherings arranged by company publicists. After such affairs there was no requirement to, as she put it, put out. Sex was optional; if a girl was attracted to a man, she was free to date him, and if she wasn't, she could reject his advances. Diana demanded many things, but she never forced her girls to sleep with men for money. Their function at these parties was to glow and decorate. If there was payment for their presence, Kirstin didn't know about it.
When Janek asked how the girls put marks to sleep, Kirstin happily explained. Each one carried what she called a "KO kit" consisting of three small bottles containing triazolam diluted in white wine, vodka and Coke. This made it possible to dose a beverage no matter what the mark might choose to drink.
Janek was impressed by Diana's system of financial control. Kirstin explained how it worked. Each night, the girls would be collected at prearranged points by Diana's lover and chauffeur, a Korean girl named Kim. Kim would take the girls back to Diana's apartment, where they would pool the evening's take. Diana would take 50 percent off the top.
The other 50 percent would be divided equally among the girls, regardless of how much or how little each one happened to bring in.
As for the watches, rings and other jewelry, each item was carefully logged in on a computer. After sale to Diana's fence, the girls would again be handed equal shares of 50 percent.
The purpose behind this equitable division of the spoils was to build camaraderie. It was also an acknowledgment that the gross take from any given hotel-bar encounter had much to do with luck. Some marks were loaded, some were not. Since each girl knew she would receive an equal share, an unsuccessful evening would not have a depressive effect.
Diana insisted she was running a business. "In the end it evens out," she'd say.
But there were exceptions. If a girl's contributions were consistently low, Diana might decide she was a poor producer and cut her loose. Or, if she decided the girl was cheating by holding back on gross receipts, she might order collective punishment. The idea was that if you held back, you weren't cheating just Diana, you were cheating your co-workers, too. Punishment consisted of being slapped around by the group, confiscation of all clothes, jewelry and accessories, and permanent banishment. In her time with Diana, Kirstin saw two girls cashiered out that way.
"Is that why she cut you?" Janek asked, remembering how degraded he'd felt being shoved and kicked by the Seguridad guards.
Kirstin nodded.
"What happened?" Sue asked softly.
Kirstin took a deep breath. "I got lucky. It was at the Hyatt. The mark seemed fairly ordinary at first. I figured him for a businessman sporting a fancy watch. Diana always told us to go for the watch. If it was expensive, like a Rolex, it meant the mark probably liked to flash his cash.
We were supposed to stay clear of credit-card freaks, guys with fifteen different cards and just a pair of twenties in their pockets. We never stole plastic. ''re not in the forgery business,' Diana said."
Janek knew Kirstin was stalling, putting off telling what had happened.
She seemed to realize she'd digressed, for she took another deep breath and went on:
"So anyway, I went upstairs with this guy, put out his lights, then started going through his stuff. Nothing too interesting till I got to the closet. There was a locked briefcase on the upper rack. Earlier I had found a key on a chain around his neck. The key fit the briefcase.
Soon as I opened it up-ta-da! Lotsa cash."
Kirstin's large blue eyes lit up. She can still make herself high, Janek thought, recalling the memory of all that loot.
"Maybe he was a dealer. There must've been thirty or forty grand. He was what Diana called Mr. Bucks. She always told us that's what the business was about-hitting up on a hundred marks, waiting for Mr. Bucks to show.
' won't recognize him,' she'd tell us. ' you find him, it'll be a surprise. But he's out there,' she assured us.
"Catching him's the high." She was right. When I saw all that money, I felt… great. And the next thought through my head was: '! I'm not sharing this with anyone!"
Kirstin glanced quickly at Janek, perhaps embarrassed about admitting to her greed.
"I checked my watch, I was running late. I had less than twenty minutes before my pickup. I grabbed the briefcase, strode down to the lobby, then scooted through this tunnel that connects to Grand Central.
I stashed the briefcase in the baggage claim, then ran back to my pickup point. I got there just as Kim drove up."
"How did Diana find out?" Sue asked.
"I was stupid. I had to tell someone. I picked the wrong person, that's all. I hinted I'd lucked into something big to a girl I thought was my friend. She was jealous, she told Diana and when Diana heard she decided to make an example of me."
Janek glanced at Sue; she was rapt. Even as he felt revulsion, he was fascinated, too.