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I frowned. “You were my pleasure,” I grinned.
Connie shook her head. “No, I mean thank you for not turning what we just shared into some gaudy scene from one of your films. I appreciate the fact that you made love to me – not just tried to use me for sex.”
The smile stayed on my face but the emotion behind it became more serious and deeper. “You’re a very easy lady to love like that,” I said.
Then – as if on cue – Connie’s cell phone began to trill from the living room… sounding like an alarm.
Chapter 26.
Connie flung herself from the bed and dashed on shaky legs and naked down the hallway. I dressed slowly, taking my time. I could hear snatches of Connie’s response to the caller.
“What?” I heard her say in a stunned, shocked voice and then after a brief pause she said, “I thought I had more time.”
When I could delay no longer I wandered into the living room. I had Connie’s blouse and skirt in my hand. I held them out to her but she ignored me. She was standing, leaning against the wall with one arm folded across her chest, phone pressed hard against her ear, and she was facing away from me so that I could clearly see the raised little knuckles of her spine, and the seductive and very feminine flare of her waist and hips.
“Jesus!” Connie spat. She slapped a hand across her forehead and then shook her head as though everything in the world had gone horribly wrong.
I heard her mutter a soft, “thank you,” that sounded like she didn’t mean it, and then she ended the call.
She turned to me, her face was pale, her eyes wide and stricken. There was some appalling tension in her expression. Her mouth fell open as though there were words seized somewhere deep in her chest.
“What’s wrong?” I went to her. I put my hands on her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “Tell me what’s the matter, Connie.”
It was like she forgot to breathe – or couldn’t. She just stood there, darkness behind her eyes for long seconds, and then everything that had been locked up inside her escaped in a sudden ragged rush.
“The favor,” she gasped. “Rick, I need your help, and I need it now.”
I frowned. “Right now?”
Connie nodded her head vehemently. “Now, or I’m afraid it will be too late,” she said and her voice was laced with dread.
I nodded. “Alright,” I said. “What do you need me to do?”
Connie forced herself to snatch three settling breaths, the last one sounding like a forlorn sigh. “I need you to come with me. No questions asked,” she said. “I just need you to trust me – and we need to go now.”
Chapter 27.
I drove quickly, heading down in the hum of the city through a gauze of fumes, smog, and traffic noise. Connie had her phone in her hand, barking directions from a little map that displayed on the screen. It was late enough to have missed the early morning traffic jams, and too early for the crush of lunch break congestion, so we made good time racing between sets of traffic lights.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Turn left,” Connie stabbed a finger at the windshield. I took the next turn and a flash of morning sunlight filled the car from a gap through the buildings that towered high on either side of the road.
“Where are we going?” I asked again. I stole a glance at Connie. She was frowning with complete concentration, clutching the phone in her hand like it was a precious missing fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“San Fernando.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Not until we get there,” she said it in a tone that was ominous. “Take the next left.”
I followed her directions and swung the car across traffic, heading deeper into the bowl of the valley.
“Then at least tell me why we are going where you can’t tell me we are going.”
That little piece of gibberish made her glance at me sharply. Her face was pinched and drawn with tight apprehension. Her eyes flicked back to the screen and she must of decided that she had time to spare before barking out the next direction. She sighed heavily. “My daughter,” she said, like that explained everything.
I was shocked. “You have a daughter?”
Connie nodded. She glanced back down at the screen then across to me once more. “She’s nineteen,” Connie said. “She shares a house with a girlfriend of hers.”
“And we’re going to her house?”
“No,” Connie shook her head but said no more. She peered through the windshield for several seconds and then her face registered some kind of recognition. “You need to change lanes,” she said. “We have to turn right at the next set of lights.”
I dutifully followed her instructions. The lights turned to red and I braked in a snarl of traffic.
“Then where are we going?”
“A place in the valley,” Connie said. “That’s where my daughter is.”
Talking to Connie like this was like pulling teeth during interrogation. I felt like I was working her over the way cops do when they are prying information from a shady suspect. “Is your daughter in trouble?”
Connie nodded. “I think so.”
The lights changed to green. “My daughter’s name is Roxy,” Connie said softly. “Her and I don’t get along,” she shrugged her shoulders as if to tell me that she didn’t know why that was. “She moved out of home about eighteen months ago, and she has been living with a girlfriend in the valley ever since.”
“What does she do? I mean, what does she do for a living?”
Connie grunted like she had been punched in the chest. “She is about to appear in her first porn film.”
Aaah…
I said nothing, but behind my eyes everything was beginning to fall into place. I had a sudden sense of motivation behind Connie’s vehement objection to the industry when she had first arrived for the interview.
“About a month ago, Roxy met a guy who said he was a modeling agent who happened to be scouting local nightclubs looking for girls who had the potential to be a star,” Connie said in a flat voice. Then she turned her head to me and there was a weak watery smile on her lips. “Sound familiar?”
I nodded – but I said nothing, and with my silence I encouraged Connie to continue.
“This guy – he told Roxy that she could make a lot of money performing in adult movies. He told her he auditioned several girls a week and that she was someone special.”
I grunted. I felt my fingers tightening on the wheel. “How do you know all this?”
Connie’s wan smile faded away. “The girl she lives with,” Connie explained. “She’s the one who phoned me back at your house to tell me that Roxy’s audition was happening today. We have been in touch over the past few weeks because her friend is as concerned as I am.”
“She’s a good friend indeed.”
“I think so,” Connie said and then lapsed into worried silence.
We were heading into a rundown decrepit part of the city. The high glimmering skyscrapers and vibrant bustle of the city began to give way to older derelict neighborhoods filled with abandoned buildings splashed in graffiti colors. The traffic thinned, and I stomped my foot down on the gas pedal.
“Second left,” Connie said. For some inexplicable reason, she felt the need to point and curl her fingers at the same time as though maybe I wasn’t sure which way left was.
“What do you expect from me?” I asked.
