Marilu, however, didn’t appear to share that perspective. She was standing in a circle of ladies, all appearing to harken from the old-money clan, with Beau hovering behind her as though he were there to hold an invisible train. Stella couldn’t make out her words, but it was clear she was the center of the conversation, talking and laughing and occasionally touching the arm of her handsome escort in a decidedly proprietary way.
“What we need to do,” she said thoughtfully to Chrissy, “is we need to separate those two.”
“You want to git the judge off by herself?” Chrissy asked, piling a plate high with mini quiches and darling little deep-fried puffs of something glistening and golden. “Can I just have me a snack first? I ain’t really had a lot of sustenance yet today.”
Stella helped herself to a puff: cheesy, and spiced up with little chive bits. “Put some in your purse for later,” she advised. “I don’t think we want to wait—you know how these things are, folks start drifting off when all the good stuff is gone, and nobody really wants to stick around to watch them open up their baby gifts.”
“Oh, yeah, I hate that,” Chrissy said. “Every fuckin’ baby shower I go to? First they make you play all them stupid diaper-pin games and then you got to sit there and watch ’em and it’s like, get over it, it’s another damn bib and you know the kid’s just going to puke all over it.”
“That’s a terrible attitude—and you a mother yourself,” Stella clucked, shaking her head. “What do you want ’em to do, show porn movies? Set up a poker game?”
“Just sayin’.”
“Okay, Little Miss Sunshine, I’ll take lover boy. Give me ten minutes or so, and then get the judge off somewhere you two can talk.”
“Whyn’t
I
take him, and you deal with Marilu?”
Stella rolled her eyes. “Right. I know you can’t leave a piece of man candy alone for thirty seconds without taking a bite. Besides, we got to give that gal a reason to crack.”
“Oh, so you’re fixing to beat him up?”
“Come on, now, you don’t want me to take all the surprise out of it, do you?”
Stella popped one last cheese ball in her mouth and wiped her fingers on a paper cocktail napkin—light blue, so maybe the tyke truly was a boy after all. She made her way through the crowd of folks, scoring a glance at the guest of honor, a wrinkled, homely little thing being passed among a thicket of starchy older ladies with ponderous handbags who appeared to be examining him for defects. Stella couldn’t help noticing that the old gals from the other side of the family seemed to be having a lot more fun; they’d set up camp in a cluster of upholstered chairs in a corner, a trio of champagne bottles in the center of the table, and several had taken their shoes off and a few had their wigs askew and their lipstick a little sloppy. One had brought, in lieu of a purse, a recycle bag from Green Foods, the kind you were supposed to carry around so they didn’t waste a paper bag on you; on the side was emblazoned
BECAUSE WE CARE
, and its owner was tipping an entire tray of mini sandwiches into it.
My people,
Stella thought warmly.
She circled Marilu’s cluster of acquaintances, easing behind a balloon-festooned column and listening carefully.
“… conversational Mandarin,” Marilu was saying. “Isn’t that right, Beau?”
“Um, yeah.” Beau nodded and flashed his megawatt smile.
“I imagine that’s very helpful in your business,” one of the ladies said, appearing drawn toward him like a magnet.
Another gal, one who bore a striking resemblance to Marilu herself, but lacking the expensive polish, made a harrumphing sound. “And what exactly was your business?” she demanded. “I don’t recall.”
Marilu shot her a look that could freeze lava. “Beau works in futures,” she said frostily. “Really, Dorcas, I doubt we want to bore anyone with the details.”
Stella slipped from behind the column and tapped Beau on the arm. “Sir,” she murmured, “you have a call from Tokyo. I’m sorry to bother you, but he insisted it was most urgent.”
Beau’s eyebrows shot up with surprise. “Me? I didn’t—”
“The gentleman explained that you had given strict orders not to be disturbed,” Stella said hastily, aware of the ladies’ sudden and keen attention. She shifted slightly so her back was turned to Marilu. “He was terribly sorry, but said to mention there is a crisis in the, uh, London office that requires your immediate attention.”
For a moment Beau glanced around, openmouthed, as though looking for guidance. Stella gave his sleeve a little tug, but he seemed rooted to the spot. Not an improviser, she observed, and perhaps not all that bright after all.
“Go, sweetie,” Marilu said, the first to regain her composure. Stella chanced a quick look and found that the judge’s eyes were narrowed with great interest as she examined her. “That sounds important.”
“Oh. Okay. I. Um.”
Stella tugged more firmly and led him away from the group. She dragged him down the hall and into an alcove, where a bank of pay phones lined up in lonesome neglect, keeping up a steady stream of chatter about the party and the hotel, and maneuvered him easily into a corner out of view from passersby.
Then she slipped her little handgun from her purse and pressed it to the front of his pants.
Chapter Eighteen
“Hey!” he yelped. “What the fuck!”
Stella jabbed a little harder, getting a grunt in response. “Don’t move, and keep your voice down. Put your hands together behind your back. Easy now.”
He did as she asked, very slowly, while his face displayed three kinds of wonderment and confusion. “I think you might have me confused with someone else,” he finally said.
“Don’t think so. Beau your real name?”
He managed to look hurt. “Yes. I mean, I use a professional last name, Mandrake— Hey, did Priss sic you on me?”
Stella tried to keep the surprise out of her face. What a fascinating development. “We’ll save that conversation for upstairs. How much cash you got?”
“How much … you want my
cash
?”
“
I
don’t want it, no. But the nice lady at the front desk is going to want it when we march over there and get us a room.”
“You want to get a room? Christ, lady, you could of just
said
so. I mean you didn’t have to go threatenin’ me this way. Only, it’s not going to help my performance much if you plan to keep that gun on me the whole time.”
“Hold on, bucko, that ain’t what I got in mind. You’re not my type.”
He gave her a world-weary eye-roll. “Trust me, I’m your type. I’m
everyone’s
type. I mean I don’t mean to brag or anything, but there’s a reason I’m the second-most-requested guy in the company.”
“Yeah, well, not today.” Stella explained what she had in mind and tucked the gun into her purse, and then they walked companionably to the lobby, avoiding the party, her arm looped through Beau’s. He paid in cash and managed to stay remarkably calm. When the desk clerk insisted on seeing a credit card, Stella squinted at it and read
BEAU FAHRQUARDT.
Mandrake,
indeed.
“So, all you rental fellas use made-up names?” she asked as they rode the elevator to the fourth floor.
“I don’t believe I like your tone,” he said, blushing, and they stayed silent the rest of the way to the room, where Beau slipped the key card into the lock and held the door for her. She had to admit that his manners were very nice.
Inside, she motioned him to the bed farthest from the door, and sat on the other bed and kicked off her shoes, which were rubbing across her instep painfully.
“I
knew
it,” he exclaimed, a look of resignation taking over his features. “So
now
we get down to it. You must a got something awful nasty in mind if you couldn’t even find anyone to
pay
to do it.”
“I told you I ain’t interested in your professional skills,” Stella snapped.
Beau’s whispered “dyke” was quiet indeed, but not so quiet that Stella didn’t catch it.
Figures,
she thought stonily,
tell a man you aren’t interested and suddenly you’re gay.
Maybe Noelle was on to something after all—at least if she hooked up with another gal, she wouldn’t have to put up with this kind of nonsense.
“I got a few questions for you, and I ain’t real interested in the long version, so you might as well get right to the point. First. Why’d you think Priss sent me? How do you know her?”
Beau’s neatly groomed eyebrows took another trip north. “Huh?”
“I said—” Stella repeated herself, slowly and with great care.
“I. Work. For Her,” Beau said, replying with an identical spacing and emphasis of words, looking at Stella as though she might be slow. “She. Is. My. Boss.”
“I
get
that, fucktard, but what is it you do for her? You, um, service her or what?”
Beau’s eyes narrowed and he looked at her with great suspicion. “She owns the business.”
“What, the landscaping business?”
“What the—? No, she owns Elegant Company. You know, the whole thing. Eighteen employees. Well, seventeen, now she killed Keller.”
“Now that she … slow down. What’s Elegant Company?”
Beau gave her a look of incredulity. “The escort service! Are you sure you know what you’re doing? ’Cause you sure don’t seem to know much—”
Stella slapped him medium hard with the side of the gun barrel. “Shut up and let me think. Priss Porter runs an escort service. Not a landscape business, not a, a,
legitimate
business of any sort?”
“Yeah.”
“And you think she
killed
one of her employees? Another escort?”
“Yes, Keller McManus. A couple days ago, she sent us all an e-mail saying—well, it’s not like she came out and admitted she killed him, ’cause you can’t go writing that kind of stuff in an e-mail, but she said he’d been disposed of and shouldn’t none of the rest of us be asking questions unless we wanted to worry about our own futures. Mighty threatening, you ask me. ”
“What’d he look like, anyway?”
Beau touched his hands to his hair, which maintained its sassy razor-cut fullness despite the rigors of having been kidnapped at gunpoint. “Well,
good,
of course. Kind of a Matthew McConaughey build. Probably around a forty-two long. Circumcised—”
“Blond or brown? Facial hair?” Stella couldn’t add much about the rest of his features, since they’d been, well,
dead,
and grayish and unfresh and quite possibly swollen. “Wearing a brown leather coat?
“Oh, yeah, he got that at Macy’s—looks just like the Armani. Cost him three hundred bucks, forty percent off.”
Stella thought for a moment. “What did she kill him for, anyway?”
Beau scowled fiercely. “As a warning.”
“A warning about
what
? You boys not showing up for work on time? Coming to work soused? Raiding each others’ clients?”
“Organizing. You know, labor. It’s, like, union-busting. It’s complicated.”
“Now hold on a blessed minute,” Stella said, growing more confused by the moment. “There ain’t any kind of prostitution union in this state I’m aware of, and it would take a whole lot more than just a couple dozen of y’all to start one, so unless you’re all in cahoots with the, ah, brotherhood, all your colleagues and shit, that doesn’t make a lick of sense.”
Beau shrugged, and Stella considered how often men tended to dig in harder the more their dumb-assed views were challenged. “You’d have to know the whole history, I guess. Like I said, it’s
complicated.
”
“Uh-huh. And your, um,
client
down there, the judge, she fits into this how?”
“She doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Beau said, shaking his head as though it was working on his patience to have to explain a simple concept to her. “She doesn’t care about the details as long as I’m keeping her satisfied. See, it’s all part of the arrangement. It’s a whole experience we provide, a mystique. We shield the client from the business aspects, so she can focus on living the fantasy.”
“That sounds like you memorized it off a brochure or something,” Stella said, and by Beau’s hurt expression, she could see that she’d made a lucky guess. “So you’re sticking to your story, that Judge Carstairs down there is nothing but a satisfied customer who has no ax to grind with your boss.”
“If that’s how you want to put it.”
“One last question for you—what do you know about a flash drive Priss might have had, that might have been worth something to someone?”
Beau’s expression of vacant confusion was convincing. “Nothing.”
Stella thought about the lack of records anywhere in the apartment, about the locked folder on the laptop. “Maybe she keeps a separate set of books? I mean, she must have a legitimate-looking set for reporting, and another for her own use.…” Stella thought it through as she talked.
Beau shrugged. “I don’t know anything about that. Priss does it all. We give her the checks from our clients, but we keep our tips in cash. And then she cuts us checks every two weeks. And, you know, sometimes … well, depending on what the client wants, the tips are like way more than the paycheck, you know?”
“Wait, so a lady can hire one of you pretty boys for nothing but, what, a date to the movies? No hanky-panky?”
“Sure, I guess. Only that would be pretty steep. We start at eighty-five bucks an hour and that’s with. You know. No extras.”
Stella started to ask another question about the cash flow situation and realized she was getting way off track, as fascinating as it was. She was here to figure out why Judge Marilu Carstairs had hired a pair of thugs to go rooting around in Priss Porter’s life, not to do a study of the male escort service business model.
“Okay, well, I’m gonna call your client now,” Stella said. She flipped open her phone with her free hand. Before hitting Chrissy’s speed dial, she had a thought. “Look here. I know you’re close to the judge and all, but this can go a lot quicker and easier if you do things my way.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I do this—” She jabbed the Bersa in his direction, toward the vicinity of his trim abs. “—you pick up that pillow and holler into it. Sound scared, not mad. No—sound like I’m hurtin’ you real bad, ’cause that’s what I’ll do if you don’t cooperate.”