“It’s simple, hit search, type in stripper and bingo,” Cass said, we were in a cyber coffee shop called Java Enabler down in the Haight district. It was once the epicenter of the flower power explosion, full of hippies and junkies and free love. Now it was just another quaint gentrified neighborhood. Gone are the runaways whose lives were forever changed by that long cool summer. Gone, the valiant peaceniks who faced the riot police with flowers against batons and mace only to see their dreams crushed under the wheels of the coming corporate dream of a Coca-cola USA forever world. Gone, the hippies who tuned in and dropped out then discovered heroin and died… all reduced to a footnote in the cable-car-tour-bus ride, come see where it all happened, come see it from the comfort of your air-conditioned Trail-ways seat.
The kid behind the counter at Java Enabler told me that before the bottom dropped out of the dot com stocks, this place used to be packed twenty-four seven. A flick of the eyes and I saw the small shop was near empty. Along one wall, it had a row of iMacs with overstuffed chairs in front of them. While Cass started to bang away in a blur of meaningless clicks and clacks on the keyboard, I ordered her a latte and a black house coffee for me, say what you will about yuppie scum they have improved the quality of coffee for all of us and for that I bless them. Cass found 157,263 sites listing the key word “Stripper”. I had her add the word “Live” and that got us down to 42,637. She started clicking on addresses and a flurry of porn sites flashed on. I was flooded with embarrassment to be looking at these pictures in broad daylight with Cass at my side. It wasn’t like this was anything we hadn’t seen before. Hell, I reminded myself, her last place of employment was a brothel. Still it felt odd. After an hour of mind-numbing bad porn I had her add the word “Crystal” to the search. The top web site listed was called Hot-horny-strippers.com. When she clicked on the address I nearly spit out my coffee. There on the welcome page was a picture of Kelly. She was naked, on her hands and knees, ass to the camera. Her face stared back at me over her shoulder, it was animated so she winked at me. On her left butt cheek I noticed a tattoo of Tinkerbell or some other fairy who’s name I didn’t know. Fact is, all fairies look alike to me. It had never occurred to me that Kelly would have a tattoo, not that she should or shouldn’t have had one. It was just that I didn’t know she did. It was one more in the growing list of things I hadn’t known about Kelly. And there she was kneeling on the screen forming her crude, “come fuck me” wink.
“That bastard,” Cass said more to herself than me. We both stared at the picture for a long moment, as if we could make her real if we watched long enough. “Give me a credit card number.”
“Do I look like the kind of guy they give credit cards to?” Fact was I had one hidden in my car, but it was clean in John Stahl’s name and needed it to stay that way. It was my get out of jail, I’ll be in Paris ‘cause there are too many dead bodies in this room to cover up, security card.
“We need one to see more,” she said.
“I don’t need to see more, I need to see where this is coming from.” Looking around, the shop was now empty. The clerk was sitting at one of the iMacs tapping away on the keys. I decided to take a wild shot in the dark. I caught Cass’ attention and then looked over at the clerk. She smiled, this was her area of expertise. In the few steps it took for her to reach him she completely transformed herself. She stood up a hardened woman but by the time she reached him she was the girl next door. Meryl Streep had nothing on this girl.
She slid into a chair next to him and flashed the kind of smile that made you forget your troubles, your wife, even your car keys. Caught in her crosshairs he never had a chance.
“Hi,” she said.
“How’s it going,” he mumbled, unable to keep eye contact he looked down, then found himself staring at her breasts. He gulped and quickly looked up, a slight rosy tint forming on his cheeks. “You need something?”
“You’re good with computers, I can tell by the way you whip around the keyboard.” She let her fingertips brush against his hand resting on the keys.
“I know a thing or two,” he said with false modesty, still glowing from her briefest of touches. Yeah, she was that good.
“My uncle and I were trying to trace a web site.” She nodded at me. “It was pictures, bad pictures of his daughter, he wants to know how to find the server it’s on. I love computers but I’m in way over my head on this one. Could you, no I don’t want to bother you.”
“It’s no big deal, piece of cake really.” The clerk smiled, this was his turf, his moment to shine.
“Really?” She looked like she was in awe of his prowess.
“If you have the IP address, I can find out where the data is hosted.”
“IP address?” Unconsciously she ran her thumb over her lower lip acting confused.
“Sorry, do you know the site’s name?”
“This is embarrassing.” She said pursing her lips into a heart shape and looking down. In her flower print day dress she looked like an innocent college student. “I don’t know how Betty got into this, she was always a bit wild but after her mom died she just went crazy. It’s tearing Uncle Travis up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I just want to help him. The site is called, um,” she stammered, ashamed to say it out loud, she whispered, “Hot-horny-strippers.com.”
The clerk looked down at the keyboard and typed in the address. He paused for a moment, embarrassed by the picture in front of him. Cass studied the floor. “Damn, she could be your twin, except the hair, yours is, you know…”
“Blonde,” Cass said eyes still downcast. “Please turn it off.”
“Sorry, I, um, just, you know, need the address.” He tore his eyes from the naked picture and quickly wrote down a series of numbers, then clicked out of the site. “Every IP address has five numbers, they give the country, region, municipality, city block and real world address.” He was relieved to be back on a subject he was strong in. Cass rewarded his returning confidence with another brilliant smile. “The phone company keeps records of all the addresses. Their firewalls are some of the weakest on the net, I wrote a program to hack them.”
“You’re amazing. Where did you learn all this?” Cass said with admiration.
“I’ve been messing with computers since before I could walk,” he said proudly. He slipped in a disk and typed in several commands. Numbers and letters flashed across the screen in rapid succession. “This is going to take a couple of minutes, you want another latte?”
“That would be nice.” As they moved to the counter, Cass moved close beside him, giving him a comfortable sense of familiarity. He was a small boy, I don’t think he was ever chosen first for stick ball, but next to Cass’ petite body, he looked almost full size. Looking down at her, he beamed with pride. I’m sure at that moment he wished someone he knew would come in and see just how cool he was.
I couldn’t hear what they said but they seemed to chat happily. Watching them was like seeing an alternate path Cass could have taken. A nice girl on a date with a nice boy her own age. He could walk her home to a house where a good mother and father waited. Maybe he’d take her to the movies and get up the courage to slip an arm onto her shoulder. I knew it was all an act, but if I was her Uncle Travis, it’s the life I would want for her.
Back at the computer, she sipped a fresh latte while they watched the blinking screen. “And we are in,” the clerk said proudly. He typed in the IP address and then scribbled something down. “It’s down in Palo Alto, not one of the big servers, may even be a private home,” he said handing her the paper.
“You are fantastic.” She kissed him on the cheek. We left him glowing, at least for a moment he was somebody cool. On the street, her happy smile dropped instantly and she transformed back into her twenty going on forty year old self.
“Nice kid,” I said.
“I guess, if you like nice.” She gave me a look that told me she didn’t, she liked bad men like me.
“Come on, he seemed like a good kid.” We were walking down the steep street, leaning back for balance.
“A real saint. Did you see the way he was drooling over Kelly’s picture? He was easy to play, I liked that about him.” We walked on in silence. At the bottom of the hill she turned to me, suddenly serious. “I did good right?”
“Yeah you did swell.”
“And you couldn’t have done it without me?”
“Not without spilling some of that kid’s coffee and or blood. And I hate to waste good coffee. Who’s Uncle Travis? He the one?”
“He’s from that movie, you know, the old time one about the guy who drives the taxi?” she said searching for the title.
“Taxi Driver?”
“Yeah, that’s the one, sometimes you remind me of him.” For her it was a compliment. And oddly enough that’s how I took it.
“With or without the mohawk?” I said with a grin.
“With, most definitely. You’re whacko, straight up crazy. But in a good way,” she said as we climbed into the Crown Vic. The address was down the bay in Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley. We took the 101 out of the city, out of the fog and out past Candlestick Park, or at least that’s what it was called for forever until some corporate bandits bought the rights to name it after their crap. Everything is for sale in America, you just have to know the price. It was a forty minute drive, traffic was light, the sun was on the bay, seagulls circled in the air and everything was right with the world except for all the parts that were fucked up. Like mob assassins trying to whack you for no good reason, and little girls posing naked on their hands and knees when they should be going to junior college and dating Biff the track star. I wondered what else I would have to find out about Kelly. With every step I took, I knew her less and less. Or maybe I knew her better. But she wasn’t the girl I had cared so deeply for. She had been an actress playing a part that should have been her life. That guileless country girl I shared Chinese food with, the girl who loved her puppy and went to the dog park, that’s who she should have been. Who she could have been if the world had kept its hands to itself and let her grow up.
“Was it your father?” I asked Cass.
“Was who my father?” she said, looking out the window.
“Who put the scars on you two. Was it your father?”
“Oh you think you have it all figured out, do you? You think you know me? Forget it,” she said, her voice turning cold. “Keep your mind on who killed Kelly, ok?”
“What ever you say.” I let it lay. I didn’t really need the details, the names changed but the facts remained. Girls of the sex trade all came from the same mold, shaped by a world that sexualized them at a young age. They all yearned for the good daddy, but looked for him in bad men. They searched to master what they couldn’t control as children. I had spent my adult life in their world and only seen a handful make it out. The rest put scars on scar tissue and kept moving on, getting colder and colder. In the end cynicism replaced hope and they lived their lives in rigid resignation.
We got off the freeway at University Avenue. It was a broad street canopied by deep-rooted trees. The homes were large yet still cozy, with eight mile long unfenced front lawns stretching to the curb. Palo Alto was a rich man’s small town USA. Kids played on lawns with a Frisbee, others rode bikes and skateboards. If Dennis the Menace ran out chased by Mr. Wilson, I wouldn’t have been surprised one bit. It was just that freaking quaint a town and it made my palms sweat just to be there.
The address we had turned out to be a two-story Tudor on Hamilton Avenue, a quiet residential neighborhood that stunk of both old money and new dot com cash. It was early evening so I cruised past the house, in the driveway was a late model Volvo station wagon and a BMW sedan five series. With something like ninety plus grand in rolling stock, and a mil plus house, whoever lived there was doing ok, I kept going.
On University, I found a fifties style diner. The place looked about a week old but everything had been pre-aged so it had the feeling of a real greasy spoon, in a creepy Disney-land sort of way. This was a town that had real history, which they tore out and replaced with fake history, just because they could. As we walked in, four Stanford boys craned their necks to watch Cass walk by. They looked at me and I could hear the laughter at some joke being told. I moved us to the counter with our backs to the boys, I knew if I had to look at them it would get ugly and that wasn’t why I was here. If Cass noticed any of it she didn’t say, it seemed she’d become immune years ago to the bullshit her looks brought out in men, unless she was using it for a purpose, then she knew how to turn it on like a light switch. We ordered and Cass powered down two double burgers and an order of chili fries. I still had no idea where she put it, but watching her eat I forgot about the college boys and beating the crap out of them and I laughed.
Drinking some of the best diner coffee I’d ever had from a to-go cup I watched the house. At around ten the lights upstairs went dark. “Let’s do it,” I said to Cass. At the door I leaned out of sight against the wall, my.45 hung in my hand. Cass rang the bell, we could hear it echoing into the house followed by footsteps. An iron port in the door swung open spilling a square of light onto Cass.
“Sorry to bother you, but my car died, well it didn’t die, it ran out of gas and I left my cell phone at home, and well… I wonder if I could use your phone to call my husband?” she said.
“Sure, just a minute.” a male voice said. I heard the deadbolt click and the door opened. I moved into the light, aiming the pistol at his chest. He was a tall skinny man of about thirty, he had gold rimmed glasses and a ponytail. “What the hell?” he squeaked.
“Shhh, why don’t you invite us in,” I said, clicking the hammer back on the.45.
“No, my wife and kids….” he blurted out.
“…Will wake up when they hear me shoot you if you don’t do what I say.” I pushed him into the house. Cass closed the door behind us.
“I don’t have any cash,” he stammered.
“And I don’t want any. Play this straight and an hour from now we’ll just be a bad memory. Fuck with me and you better hope your life insurance is paid up. Got it?”
“No… what do you want?”
“Hot Horny Stripper, you prick. Does your little wifey know where you get your cash?” Cass said.
“Who sent you?” he asked.
“Unimportant. Fact is we are here now and we want answers,” I said. From upstairs a woman’s voice called out.
“Jerry, is everything ok?”
“Fine honey, go back to bed.” At gunpoint, he led us out the back door, through the backyard, past his kids’ redwood jungle gym and into a detached garage. The garage had been converted into a triple insulated, windowless, high-tech bunker. The door closed with a swoosh behind us and all sound from the outside world disappeared, replaced by the low hum of computer fans. The room was climate controlled to a chilly sixty five degrees and clean of all particles of dust, every surface was shiny white, even the floor. A row of computers flashed and blinked into the night. Cass wanted to know which server held the porno site. He pointed to a terminal, she sat down and started typing.
“Where is Gino?” I asked him.
“I don’t know who you are talking about.” I whipped the barrel of the automatic down across his cheek, he stumbled back holding his face. I could see a slight smear of blood where the front sight had cut him.
“Let’s be clear, porn-boy. I don’t like you one bit, so splattering you will be a pleasure. Your only value is what you know.” I smacked him again and he started to cry, his face growing pale. The reality of his situation was sinking in.
“Stop, please, I’m just a provider, it was Gino’s idea. He came to me. I didn’t want to do it but when Apple laid me off I had to do something,” he said through his tears.
“How did he find you?” I wanted to smack him for crying, tell him to be a man.
“I met him at a club in the city,” he sniveled.
“Barbary Coast?”
“Yes,” he said, looking down.
“Moses.” Cass was trembling and pointing at the computer screen. Moving to her side I looked and saw Kelly on the screen, she was being held by an anonymous fist. His fingers were laced into her curly hair, he was forcing her to give him head. The faceless figure pulled her mouth off his cock. He struck several hard slaps across her face, a trickle of blood ran down from her nose. He forced her bloody lips back down onto his erection. Her eyes were wild, like a trapped animal. I felt my stomach clench, bile backed up into my throat. Blood pounding in my brain, I grabbed the monitor ripping it off the desk and hurled it at the skinny man. It caught him in the chest and he tumbled back into the wall. Cracking the plasterboard with his back he fell to the floor. I let out a pain filled cry and jumped on him, with my knees on his chest I shoved the barrel of the pistol into his forehead. I had to fight not to pull the trigger and rid the planet of this weasel.
“Did you film this?” I hissed through clenched teeth.
“Yes…but I didn’t know what he was going to do. He just lost it.”
“Gino?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone else involved?”
“No… He went crazy on her.”
“And you kept filming. ‘Cause you lost your job and all?”
“Yes.” He was gasping for air as I bore down on his chest.
“Kill him.” Cass stood over us. Her jaw set, her eyes devoid of life.
“Not yet, baby girl,” I said, then turned back to his tear and blood stained face. “Where is Gino? No bullshit or I’ll give her the gun and leave the room.”
“I don’t know, we always met in different restaurants … Every week I’d give him his cut… He hasn’t called in several months… I don’t know where he is, really I don’t, I swear I’d tell you if I knew.” He was telling the truth, he didn’t have the balls to lie to me. Standing up, I handed the gun to Cass.
“No! What are you doing, I told you all I know!” he cried out. I turned and walked out of the garage. Cass had paid dear for this moment. In the backyard I found a box of sports equipment. In it was just what I was looking for, a Louisville slugger, America’s favorite solid oak baseball bat. When I reentered the garage the ponytail boy was curled up in a ball, I could smell the rank odor of urine. A yellow stain spilled out onto the white linoleum beneath him. Blood flowed from several fresh cuts on his face, she must have given him a pistol whipping. If that was all he got that night he would be a luckier son of a bitch than me. Cass looked down at him in disgust. I put a firm hand on her shoulder and spoke quietly.
“He isn’t worth it,” I said.
“No he’s not…” she said turning away from the crumpled waste of a man. Swinging the bat I let all my rage out on the computer towers. The plastic and metal exploded across the room. I broke them to pieces and then broke the pieces into pieces. Wires and circuit boards scattered across the floor. I handed the bat to Cass and let her go wild on the monitors. Glass shattered with a pop, she screamed, her face contorting with the fury she felt. She was ugly and marvelous, clear for the moment of the guise of beauty she wore so well. She screamed and kept swinging. While she vented on the equipment I searched a tall file cabinet, it was mostly tax information, receipts for computer gear, warranties we had just voided. In the back I found an envelope with four small cassettes, DV videotape. Each was labeled as Girl One through Four. I slipped the tapes into my pocket. Cass stood, panting over the wreckage. The punk was sniveling in the corner. I leaned down, rolling his limp body onto his back so he could see me.
“One day I’ll be back. You will pay for what you have done. You won’t know when, you won’t see it coming, but you will pay the price.” We left him there and walked down the driveway out onto the peaceful street. A street full of happy families, all sleeping comfortably, all unaware of the pain merchant in their midst.
I got on the 101 and headed south. It was time to go home, back where I had the connections to find out what the hell was going on. “How did you know I wouldn’t shoot him?” Cass asked.
“I didn’t, but I figured it was your choice to make.”
“I could have.”
“I know.”
“Thank you,” she said. In San Jose I pulled off and bought a bottle of whiskey and one of ginger ale. This time Cass drank with me. It was the first time since I met her I’d seen her drink anything harder than diet coke. Purring over the 152 past Casa de Fruitas we rolled into the mountains. Billowing clouds drifted past the moon, casting huge moving shadows across the landscape, obscuring and illuminating the steep hills that climbed around us. Sharp rocks stabbed up out of the smooth brown grass and a grove of oak trees dotting the mountainside looked like monstrous skeletons reaching out their many arms to grab wandering strangers.
“You’re a good man, Moses,” Cass slurred after her second drink. “Really, you are a good man…fuck ‘em all that’s what I say… She was just a sweet little girl, why’d they do that to her?”
“I don’t know, baby girl, I don’t know.”
“Fuck all men… All but you, Moses, you’re a good man.”
“Ok.”
“I mean it Moses, you are a good man…” Cass was out cold by the time we reached the 5, she fell asleep curled up in the seat with her head on my lap. I had tenderly stroked her hair until she had finally let go and drifted off. I wished she hadn’t had to see her sister like that, I wished I could protect her from all the ugliness in the world. But the best I could do was hold her head and let her sleep.
Highway 5 stretched out before us, a long dark ribbon that ran in a straight line to the horizon. All around us was an endless expanse of nothing, flat dirt broken up by small scrub brush and then more dirt. Few cars were traveling at this late hour. I blew past a tractor trailer pulling a load of onions, the scarecrow driving the rig shot me a thumbs up. My guess is he was glad to find out the Crown Vic wasn’t a cop car. Then I was out on this lonely stretch of hell, I saw no lights for over an hour. I was left by myself, just me and my dark thoughts. Whoever killed Kelly was out there somewhere, by now they would have figured out what I did in the desert. Could they be hunting me at this moment? In the rear view mirror a pair of low-slung headlights flew up out of the horizon. I was doing a clean eighty but they were quickly closing the gap. I eased the hammer down and let the beast roar. The speedo’ read 120 mph, but the headlights kept coming on, burning up the miles between us. I left my guns in the trunk out of fear that we might get stopped by the cherry tops. But now I would have gladly dealt with a cop just to have my trusty.45. I could start to make out the silhouette of my pursuer, it was a sports car, either an Audi TT or Porsche. I pushed it up to a buck forty, but couldn’t gain any ground on them, it had to be a Porsche. White light engulfed the interior of the Crown Vic, I flicked the mirror up to keep from being blinded. In a rush of wind a deep purple Porsche whipped past me. As they passed I looked over expecting to see the barrel of a shotgun, what I got was a glimpse of a salt and pepper haired man with his bimbo girlfriend. They were both laughing and bouncing along to what ever music they had ripping on their stereo, they didn’t even look over. I wasn’t a blip on their radar. Dropping back down to a less cop attracting speed, I noticed my knuckles were white as they gripped the steering-wheel like it was a life preserver and I was drowning. Maybe I was, and I was just too simple to know it. Just because some old fuck in a purple Porsche made me paranoid didn’t mean I wasn’t being hunted.
After a pit stop in a rest area, to piss and make myself a fresh cocktail, I rejoined the road. My pulse was back down to its normal speed driven thump. I slipped Joshua Tree into the CD player and let The Edge’s guitar licks take me away. Bono sang about how he had climbed mountains and ran through fields and still had not found what he was looking for. I knew the feeling only too well.
At the end of the central valley the highway snaked suddenly up the Grape Vine into the steep mountains. In only a couple of miles the road gains two thousand feet in elevation, the incline forces lesser cars and trucks with trailers to slow to a crawl. The Crown Vic purred up the incline at a steady 80 mph. If only I could trust the woman I was rolling with like I trusted this car.