intended victim at all.
Finally June and Eddy came down the street and got into the car, a little tipsy and in very good spirits.
“Hey Pam, thanks for the nice evening. Too bad you couldn’t join us,” said June, pushing me into the passenger’s seat. “Can we take you home? Looks like you could use a hot bath. Your teeth are chattering.”
“Very funny. Well, did you see them?”
Eddy got in on the other side of me and attempted to bring my fingers back to life. “Hawaiian Shirt and Mr. Bald, yes indeed. Drinking tequila and having a great old time up at the bar.”
“Were they with anybody?”
“Hard to tell. Your friends are popular guys, know a lot of people. They were already there when we came in, so we didn’t see them walk in with anybody. They looked like they aimed to stay a while too.”
“Sorry we couldn’t stay longer,” said June, starting the car. “Eddy and me, we got jobs to go to tomorrow, unlike some private investigators we know,”
“Were there any women with them, any girls?”
“You mean Trish? Nope. Just a nice mix of professionals and regular old guys, everybody getting happily soused.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Particularly the bald guy. He had his own bottle, looked like.”
“There was one thing, though,” said Eddy. “At one point your friend Wayne said he wanted to make a toast: ‘To a successful business deal.’ Somebody who didn’t seem to know him all that well asked if he’d sold a painting, and a lot of others laughed.”
“You want my opinion, he’s a dope dealer,” said June on the way up to Capitol Hill. “And cocaine’s the name of the game, the way he looks. Hawaiian shirts at the beginning of January. He obviously doesn’t feel the cold—his snow is hot, not freezing.”
I was less interested in linking Wayne and Karl to dope than to prostitution. In fact, all I really wanted to know was what they’d done with Trish and if one of them had killed Rosalie.
“I went and talked to Wayne earlier in the evening,” I told June and Eddy. “He seemed so friendly and casual.”
“That’s the worst kind, honey,” said June. “You never know where you are with them until it’s too late.”
18
I WENT BACK TO SEE BETH LINDA the next evening after work. The drop-in center was just as crowded as before; it was like fighting my way through a teenage party to get to her office.
“Well, you’ve certainly made the rounds,” she said in her comforting deep voice, when she’d heard my stories of meeting Rob and Melanie, Wayne and Karl. “What do you think now?”
We were sitting in her tiny back office, surrounded by the bulging file cabinets and mountains of papers on the desk and chairs. Beth was wearing a turquoise and red tunic over black pants and a huge squash blossom necklace today. There was something both commanding and gentle about her presence, and it wasn’t just her size. It was the sense you had looking at her, at her slightly weathered freckled face and calm green eyes, that (aside from the Carltons) she had learned to tame her devils.
“I guess I’d like to know more about what Trish has been doing for the past couple of years.”
“I thought you might be back, so I got out Trish’s files. I looked for something on Rosalie too, but either she never came in, or she used a different name. That happens pretty frequently.” Beth put on glasses and warned me, “This is confidential stuff, so I’m not going to let you read it; I’ll just give you the main outline.
“She was first arrested over a year ago as a runaway. Loitering. The cops don’t always pick up new kids for prostitution, especially if they’ve never seen them before. They give them what they call a talking to and what the kids call harassment and take them to the detention center where their parents or guardians pick them up. This happened twice with Trish—the detention center is a great place, by the way, to make new friends and learn the ropes. They bond
Finally June and Eddy came down the street and got into the car, a little tipsy and in very good spirits.
“Hey Pam, thanks for the nice evening. Too bad you couldn’t join us,” said June, pushing me into the passenger’s seat. “Can we take you home? Looks like you could use a hot bath. Your teeth are chattering.”
“Very funny. Well, did you see them?”
Eddy got in on the other side of me and attempted to bring my fingers back to life. “Hawaiian Shirt and Mr. Bald, yes indeed. Drinking tequila and having a great old time up at the bar.”
“Were they with anybody?”
“Hard to tell. Your friends are popular guys, know a lot of people. They were already there when we came in, so we didn’t see them walk in with anybody. They looked like they aimed to stay a while too.”
“Sorry we couldn’t stay longer,” said June, starting the car. “Eddy and me, we got jobs to go to tomorrow, unlike some private investigators we know,”
“Were there any women with them, any girls?”
“You mean Trish? Nope. Just a nice mix of professionals and regular old guys, everybody getting happily soused.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Particularly the bald guy. He had his own bottle, looked like.”
“There was one thing, though,” said Eddy. “At one point your friend Wayne said he wanted to make a toast: ‘To a successful business deal.’ Somebody who didn’t seem to know him all that well asked if he’d sold a painting, and a lot of others laughed.”
“You want my opinion, he’s a dope dealer,” said June on the way up to Capitol Hill. “And cocaine’s the name of the game, the way he looks. Hawaiian shirts at the beginning of January. He obviously doesn’t feel the cold—his snow is hot, not freezing.”
I was less interested in linking Wayne and Karl to dope than to prostitution. In fact, all I really wanted to know was what they’d done with Trish and if one of them had killed Rosalie.
“I went and talked to Wayne earlier in the evening,” I told June and Eddy. “He seemed so friendly and casual.”
“That’s the worst kind, honey,” said June. “You never know where you are with them until it’s too late.”
18
I WENT BACK TO SEE BETH LINDA the next evening after work. The drop-in center was just as crowded as before; it was like fighting my way through a teenage party to get to her office.
“Well, you’ve certainly made the rounds,” she said in her comforting deep voice, when she’d heard my stories of meeting Rob and Melanie, Wayne and Karl. “What do you think now?”
We were sitting in her tiny back office, surrounded by the bulging file cabinets and mountains of papers on the desk and chairs. Beth was wearing a turquoise and red tunic over black pants and a huge squash blossom necklace today. There was something both commanding and gentle about her presence, and it wasn’t just her size. It was the sense you had looking at her, at her slightly weathered freckled face and calm green eyes, that (aside from the Carltons) she had learned to tame her devils.
“I guess I’d like to know more about what Trish has been doing for the past couple of years.”
“I thought you might be back, so I got out Trish’s files. I looked for something on Rosalie too, but either she never came in, or she used a different name. That happens pretty frequently.” Beth put on glasses and warned me, “This is confidential stuff, so I’m not going to let you read it; I’ll just give you the main outline.
“She was first arrested over a year ago as a runaway. Loitering. The cops don’t always pick up new kids for prostitution, especially if they’ve never seen them before. They give them what they call a talking to and what the kids call harassment and take them to the detention center where their parents or guardians pick them up. This happened twice with Trish—the detention center is a great place, by the way, to make new friends and learn the ropes. They bond
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