Even worse, her appearance ratings went down. As she lost weight, her breasts shrank from a C cup to an A, a definite liability in the industry. And clients began to comment that her skin was bad. Acne, one client called it. Sores, declared another—the same guy who’d given her the 4 in performance. Even if it was just your skin’s reaction to the toxicity of drugs, a word like “sores” could kill your career.
That review killed hers.
When Madeleine let her go, two months ago, the madam had been all business. No shouting or lecturing. No second chances, either. She’d called Nicole to her home in Kalorama and said their business relationship was terminated. Madeleine instructed Nicole to return the white-gold name necklace—the one all Discretion girls wore as part of what Madeleine called their “branding.” Nicole had stomped out, refusing to give back the necklace. She wouldn’t just hand over her status as a Discretion escort.
But it was over. Necklace or no, Nicole was on her own.
She was lucky that Madeleine hadn’t sent an enforcer to collect the necklace. Yet.
Without Discretion’s backing, and with her declining ratings, Nicole wasn’t getting any more two-thousand-dollar-a-night bookings. She was lucky when she got bookings in the three-hundred-dollar range. She’d tried advertising under a different name, one that didn’t have “sores” in the track record, but that was worse. Few men wanted to take a chance on a new girl, and no one would pay high prices for an untested product.
She’d posted a few fake reviews of herself with better numbers
and prose, hoping to bury the last few bad ones. Her avatars didn’t have a track record on TrickAdviser, so they didn’t hold much sway. At least her profile didn’t look so disgusting at first glance now.
Tonight she’d try to book as many three-hundred-dollar calls as she could as “Bethany.” They’d have to be outcalls—Belinda obviously wasn’t going to let her bring incalls to her home. Maybe Nicole could do four or five outcalls if the hotels were near each other. It was physically possible—she’d done it a few times lately—but grueling. It would barely put a dent in what she owed T-Rex, but she’d invest the money in some grooming and build herself up again.
Belinda handed her a mug of coffee and peered over her shoulder at the laptop. “Backpage, huh?”
“Yeah.” It was shameful.
“I’m there, too,” Belinda said. Nicole looked at her in surprise. “You have to start somewhere. I haven’t built up enough word of mouth yet. And after last night . . .”
“I really am sorry.”
“I know. Come on, I’ll show you the guest room.”
After Nicole was settled into the pretty little guest room, Belinda went to take a shower in the master bathroom. Nicole used the opportunity to rifle through the medicine in the linen closet. Belinda didn’t use except when she was working, but luckily, she kept her old prescriptions. Nicole found a half-full bottle of Vicodin, some generic codeine, and a bunch of expired Valium. She popped one of each, then stashed the bottles in her bag. She sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the cocktail to take effect. She was scared and tired, but at least she was in a nice house where the cops couldn’t find her. For the next few days, anyway.
Despite herself, she thought about Caroline, and the last time they’d seen each other—was it just last night? Caroline, all happy and excited for her appointment with the Congressman; Nicole, knowing the setup her best friend was walking into and giving her no warning. Watching Caroline head out of the apartment in her gorgeous suit and heels like some kind of goddamn princess—and smirking at her back.
Jesus. She was a monster.
The pharmaceuticals began to kick in. Nicole sank back onto the pillows, grateful for the expanding chemical haze that blurred out her thoughts. She just wanted it to obliterate the train wreck that was her life and her self.
16
S
am drove an unmarked black Dodge Durango with windows so deeply tinted that the outside world looked like it was undergoing an eclipse. Anna watched Judiciary Square slip by in darkness, although the afternoon sun was shining brightly. The heavy tinting was necessary for an agent like Sam—a white woman driving through certain neighborhoods in D.C. would scream “law enforcement.” The tint was so heavy, it was impossible to see the driver from the outside. Sam’s big SUV had been seized from a drug case and repurposed for law enforcement. It fit into the neighborhoods she often drove through.
Sam pulled onto New York Avenue, then swung into an alleyway and parked right under a no-parking sign. This was the alley behind Sergio’s, a popular Italian restaurant. Not the Hunt Club.
“Why the detour?” Anna asked. She was anxious to interview BigBoy89.
“You can’t work on an empty stomach.” Sam got out of the car.
It was past one o’clock, and Anna realized she hadn’t eaten since Olivia’s baloney concoction this morning. She
was
hungry. But she didn’t want to waste time on a sit-down restaurant. “Let’s get it to go,” Anna said, climbing out.
“This’ll be as ‘to go’ as it gets.”
Anna followed the agent through the back door into the restaurant and was surprised that it deposited them in the kitchen. Cooks and waitstaff bustled around steaming pots of pasta and sauces. The scent of garlic, fresh-baked bread, and tomato sauce made her mouth water. A slight gray-haired man in a white apron slid a pizza into a woodburning oven with a wooden pole. Sam kissed his cheek.
“Hey, Sammie girl!” The man beamed at her as he rotated another pizza. “Got a roasted chicken for you, right out of the oven.”
“Thanks, Dad. Where’s Ma?”
“Out front.”
“Just tell her I stopped by, okay? I have to run.”
A stout woman in a navy dress came through the swinging doors from the dining room, where every table was packed with customers. She made a beeline for Samantha. “Sammie!” she said, throwing her arms around the FBI agent. She had to pull down Sam’s head to kiss her. The embrace left a dark red lipstick print on the agent’s temple.
“Hi, Ma. I’m just grabbing something to go.”
“That’s no way to eat! You gotta sit down, take a breath. And you can’t just eat plain roasted chicken every day. Get some meat on those bones! You want chicken? I have some nice cutlets. You’ll have chicken Parmesan. At a table. There’s someone I want you to meet out front anyway. Nice Italian boy, works at the Commerce Department.” Sam’s mother picked up a white napkin and wiped her lipstick mark off Sam’s face.
“I’m on the job, Ma.” Sam ducked away and headed to the stainless-steel counter. “I gotta go.”
“Always on the job! You’ll come by for supper tonight, then.”
“Not tonight.”
“You gotta eat. And you didn’t come last night. You trying to kill your poor father?”
“Fine. I’ll swing by and pick up dinner.”
“You’ll sit down and have a real meal.”
“Okay, okay.” Sam sighed and started carving the roast chicken on the counter.
Anna couldn’t hide her smile as she watched the bossy FBI agent getting bossed. Sam glared at her. Her mother followed the glare to Anna.
“Hello! Are you a friend of Sammie’s?”
“She’s a prosecutor,” Sam called out. “She wants to learn how to interview a witness.”
Sam’s mother was already putting her arm around Anna, giving her a warm hug. “Nice to meet you! You like chicken Parmesan?”
“Love it.”
“To go, Mom. To go.”
Sam threw together a roast-chicken sandwich while her mother
prepared a chicken Parmesan sub bubbling with melted cheese and covered with red sauce. There was probably a five-hundred-calorie difference between the two sandwiches.
“A prosecutor, huh?” A tall man stood next to Anna, holding a tray of small round patties. He looked like a male version of Samantha, with dark curly hair and great bone structure. He smiled at Anna with big brown eyes, causing her instinctively to raise a hand to smooth her hair. “You keeping my sister out of trouble?”
“Sorry,” Anna said, “my job is to get people in more trouble.”
“That, she doesn’t need.” The man laughed. “I’m Tony. Here, try this. Tell me if it needs more salt.” He held out his tray.
Anna took one of the brownish-purple patties and bit into it. “Oh my God,” she said. “That’s amazing. What is it?”
“Eggplant patty.”
“Can I have the recipe, or is it a family secret?”
“Maybe we can work something out.”
Sam strode over, holding a bulging brown paper bag. “Enough sampling the merchandise,” she said to Anna. “Let’s go.”
“Don’t you need to change into a cape or something?” Tony asked his sister as she walked out the door. The entire Randazzo family waved at Anna as she exited.
“Goodbye—thank you!” Anna called. She and Sam got into the car. “Nice family.”
“In small doses.”
If Anna had a family like that, she would appreciate them. Her mother had died in a car accident when Anna was in college, and she hadn’t seen her father since she was twelve. The only family she had was her sister, Jody, who was back home in Michigan. They called each other all the time but only saw each other in person two or three times a year. The idea of having this close-knit family so near brought a sharp stab of envy.
Sam handed Anna a foil-wrapped sub. Anna peeled back the foil, took a bite, and almost groaned at how good the chicken Parmesan was. As Sam unwrapped her own sandwich, the agent’s BlackBerry buzzed. Sam unclipped the little phone from her belt, checked it, and frowned at the text message. “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
“What?”
“Tony wants your number.”
“Oh. Um . . .” He was just her type; a year ago Anna would have been delighted. Now she needed an excuse. “I’m not really on the market now.”
“You have a boyfriend?”
“Not . . . really. It’s, um—”
“No need to explain.” Sam threw the Durango into reverse and screeched back into the alleyway. “It’s my fault. I never should have brought you in there.” She navigated the city streets with speed and in silence.
The Hunt Club
might have been a bucolic English riding club at some point in its existence, but was now completely surrounded by modern city life. The building was a small replica of a nineteenth-century castle, sandwiched between modern concrete and glass office buildings in the business district. With stone walls, stained-glass windows, and multiple round turrets, the Hunt Club looked like a fussy old man squashed between two plus-size supermodels. All of the castle’s windows were covered with thick curtains. Although there was significant foot traffic on the sidewalk—office workers heading to coffee breaks or afternoon meetings—no one outside could see what was happening behind those walls.
Anna had Googled the Hunt Club before they left. It was one of the city’s most exclusive private social clubs. Anna couldn’t find a list of its current members, but in the past century it had reportedly included Presidents, Generals, Supreme Court Justices, and other distinguished men. Never a woman.
Sam pulled the Durango to the curb in front of the club. A black Taurus and a blue Grand Prix pulled up behind them. Six FBI agents got out of the cars.
“I’ll call you after we secure the place,” Samantha told Anna. The agent twisted around and grabbed a Kevlar vest from the backseat. She pulled it over her torso, fastened the velcro straps, and put an
FBI Windbreaker on top of it. Then she rolled the windows down. The sweltering August heat immediately invaded the car. “This might take a while, so I’ll leave the windows down for you.”
“What am I, a Labrador Retriever?”
“Of course not. A Lab would be way more useful in securing a building.” Samantha hopped out of the Durango and started to walk up to the front door, then stopped and returned to Anna. “Actually, there is something you can do that would be useful.”
“Great. What?”
“Don’t let the meter maids give me a ticket.” Samantha tossed her car keys in through the open window.
Sam joined a group of male agents on the sidewalk and walked up to the door of the Hunt Club. The agents wore matching navy Windbreakers with
FBI
in large yellow letters across the front and back; Sam’s long curly hair covered the upper portion of the letters on the back of her jacket. The Windbreakers made the agents’ body armor less conspicuous, and the big letters were supposed to prevent people from mistaking them for intruders and shooting.
There were professional risks to being a lawyer, Anna thought, but they didn’t usually include being shot. She sent up a quick prayer for the agents.
As she waited alone, she reconsidered her decision to attend every key interview. Jack had said he didn’t want to come; he was happy to let the agents do the legwork and to read their 302s later. It was a more efficient use of a lawyer’s time. As Homicide chief, he had twenty lawyers to supervise, maybe three hundred cases to keep tabs on. The most sensitive cases, he would handle himself. He didn’t have time to be supervisor, lawyer, and agent. By contrast, Anna had twenty-five other cases on her docket at different stages of investigation or litigation. They could stand to be put on hold for a bit while she focused on this one, which was by far her most important. The case was the most significant of her career. And the truth was, she didn’t really trust Samantha to do it right.
Sam scanned the
scenery as she walked up to the Hunt Club: no immediate threats. She knew the other agents were doing the same. Five agents and a Computer Analysis Response Team, or CART, examiner would accompany her into the building. Agent Steve Quisen-berry would be at her side, taking notes as she asked questions. He was the best agent on the Violent Crime squad. Besides Sam, of course. If there was trouble, they could handle it.
Sam could have let Anna come in with them. She didn’t expect any real danger at this old social club. But Sam didn’t feel like watching two backs instead of just her own.
She’d been at the Bureau for nine years, since she graduated from law school, and she’d seen her share of young prosecutors come and go. Some remained AUSAs for years, and some left to cash in their credentials at private law firms. They all had one thing in common—they wanted to tell Samantha how to handle her cases. Whether they were right or wrong, they always slowed her down. Samantha wasn’t interested in holding the hand of a junior prosecutor climbing up a steep learning curve. Anna wasn’t all bad. She was smart and had good ideas. But she interfered. Samantha just wanted to investigate and be left alone.