For more than two years, she succeeded brilliantly. The men were usually nice, often terribly lonely, some wanted only to talk, and all were willing to use protection. Not one beat her up or even made her feel creepy. Once a month, she had herself tested for STDs and was always clean. That checkup report would ensure top dollar. She gathered regular clients and her discretion gained referrals. Thanks to her patrons, she stayed at the best hotels and resorts in the area. A few times, men paid her to be with them on more lavish adventures.
“Did she do kink?” I interrupted. “Bondage?”
“No,” he said. “That doesn’t sound like her at all.”
I wondered how much he really knew her, but shut up and let him continue.
The money she earned was awesome. The Great Recession didn’t hurt her profits. This sure beat taking on more student debt. She set up small accounts at banks around town, depositing cash as if it were her tips as a waitress. Over time, she consolidated them into a smaller number of bigger accounts. She took out loans from her father and paid them back, telling him that she had a job helping a woman stage condos and houses for sale. Her father’s checks were clean to deposit. It was a crude way to launder money, but it was good enough.
The only thing Grace Hunter hadn’t assessed for her business plan was the competition. And one night she was kidnapped, beaten, and raped by America’s Finest Pimp. He told her that he ran the hotel girls in America’s Finest City. He would control her liaisons and take seventy percent of her gross earnings. If she held out on him, he promised, he would beat her to death and take her body out on his boat, feeding her remains to the sharks. For the next three months, she lived in constant fear.
Then she saw Tim again.
He took off the icepack and shook his head. “We thought we’d be safe in O.B. She had money saved. Then she got pregnant and the baby came along. We were happy. She just got a job at Qualcomm and I was going to be a stay-at-home dad when I graduated. I guess she decided to leave me. But I can’t understand how she could leave our baby.”
Lindsey’s face again, whose eyes were such a deep blue that in certain light and certain mood they appeared violet. I thought about the new life I had held in my hands, minutes after gripping the potential death of the Colt Python in the same hands. It was a corny thought, to be sure. But Lindsey’s voice burned like acid on my face: You did this!
Focus, Mapstone. “Why didn’t AFP get her addicted? That’s the usual M.O. for a pimp.”