But he knew that Kirstin wouldn't like that, that she'd pulled down the shades while they'd been waiting at the door. It was all right, he understood, if they saw her scars, just so long as they didn't see them very well.
After Kirstin recovered she was ready to open up. The information tumbled out.
She spoke with wistful nostalgia of her days as one of Diana's girls.
Nothing, it seemed, was too good for her then. Great clothes. Shopping expeditions to designer boutiques. Haircuts at the top salons. The finest shoes and accessories.
"Catch a cold, Diana had this fancy doctor, Feldstein, to look after you. Get in trouble, she had this smart lawyer, Thatcher, to get you out of it. "
There were cultural-improvement trips to museums and evenings at the ballet, parties, too, usually small corporate gatherings arranged by company publicists. After such affairs there was no requirement to, as she put it, put out. Sex was optional; if a girl was attracted to a man, she was free to date him, and if she wasn't, she could reject his advances. Diana demanded many things, but she never forced her girls to sleep with men for money. Their function at these parties was to glow and decorate. If there was payment for their presence, Kirstin didn't know about it.
When Janek asked how the girls put marks to sleep, Kirstin happily explained. Each one carried what she called a "KO kit" consisting of three small bottles containing triazolam diluted in white wine, vodka and Coke. This made it possible to dose a beverage no matter what the mark might choose to drink.
Janek was impressed by Diana's system of financial control. Kirstin explained how it worked. Each night, the girls would be collected at prearranged points by Diana's lover and chauffeur, a Korean girl named Kim. Kim would take the girls back to Diana's apartment, where they would pool the evening's take. Diana would take 50 percent off the top.
The other 50 percent would be divided equally among the girls, regardless of how much or how little each one happened to bring in.
As for the watches, rings and other jewelry, each item was carefully logged in on a computer. After sale to Diana's fence, the girls would again be handed equal shares of 50 percent.
The purpose behind this equitable division of the spoils was to build camaraderie. It was also an acknowledgment that the gross take from any given hotel-bar encounter had much to do with luck. Some marks were loaded, some were not. Since each girl knew she would receive an equal share, an unsuccessful evening would not have a depressive effect.
Diana insisted she was running a business. "In the end it evens out," she'd say.
But there were exceptions. If a girl's contributions were consistently low, Diana might decide she was a poor producer and cut her loose. Or, if she decided the girl was cheating by holding back on gross receipts, she might order collective punishment. The idea was that if you held back, you weren't cheating just Diana, you were cheating your co-workers, too. Punishment consisted of being slapped around by the group, confiscation of all clothes, jewelry and accessories, and permanent banishment. In her time with Diana, Kirstin saw two girls cashiered out that way.
"Is that why she cut you?" Janek asked, remembering how degraded he'd felt being shoved and kicked by the Seguridad guards.
Kirstin nodded.
"What happened?" Sue asked softly.
Kirstin took a deep breath. "I got lucky. It was at the Hyatt. The mark seemed fairly ordinary at first. I figured him for a businessman sporting a fancy watch. Diana always told us to go for the watch. If it was expensive, like a Rolex, it meant the mark probably liked to flash his cash.
We were supposed to stay clear of credit-card freaks, guys with fifteen different cards and just a pair of twenties in their pockets. We never stole plastic. ''re not in the forgery business,' Diana said."
Janek knew Kirstin was stalling, putting off telling what had happened.
She seemed to realize she'd digressed, for she took another deep breath and went on:
"So anyway, I went upstairs with this guy, put out his lights, then started going through his stuff. Nothing too interesting till I got to the closet. There was a locked briefcase on the upper rack. Earlier I had found a key on a chain around his neck. The key fit the briefcase.
Soon as I opened it up-ta-da! Lotsa cash."
Kirstin's large blue eyes lit up. She can still make herself high, Janek thought, recalling the memory of all that loot.
"Maybe he was a dealer. There must've been thirty or forty grand. He was what Diana called Mr. Bucks. She always told us that's what the business was about-hitting up on a hundred marks, waiting for Mr. Bucks to show.
' won't recognize him,' she'd tell us. ' you find him, it'll be a surprise. But he's out there,' she assured us.
"Catching him's the high." She was right. When I saw all that money, I felt… great. And the next thought through my head was: '! I'm not sharing this with anyone!"
Kirstin glanced quickly at Janek, perhaps embarrassed about admitting to her greed.
"I checked my watch, I was running late. I had less than twenty minutes before my pickup. I grabbed the briefcase, strode down to the lobby, then scooted through this tunnel that connects to Grand Central.
I stashed the briefcase in the baggage claim, then ran back to my pickup point. I got there just as Kim drove up."
"How did Diana find out?" Sue asked.
"I was stupid. I had to tell someone. I picked the wrong person, that's all. I hinted I'd lucked into something big to a girl I thought was my friend. She was jealous, she told Diana and when Diana heard she decided to make an example of me."
Janek glanced at Sue; she was rapt. Even as he felt revulsion, he was fascinated, too.
"First thing, she forced me to turn over my money, not just the briefcase either. She made me tell her where I kept my savings from two years on the job. Lucky for me I kept some of it hidden in this couch.
That's all I was left with. I've been living on it ever since. Basically she cleaned me out, kept half for herself and divided the rest among the others. Then she had them hold me down while she took a knife and… "
Kirstin brought her hands to her cheeks. Tears formed in her eyes.
"She cut me. She said it was to teach me a lesson. ' won't be picking up too many guys now." I think she liked doing it. She grinned when I screamed. Nobody said a word. Maybe I would have kept quiet, too, if I'd been one of them. Thanks to her, they all got rich, didn't they'."'
Kirstin wiped away her tears. "Maybe she was right. I knew the rules. I broke them. I deserved what I got." The tears began to flow again. "I just didn't think she'd go that far, that's all. I would never have done it if I'd known she'd cut me up… "
Janek was appalled, perhaps less by Kirstin's story than by her notion that somehow she had gotten what she deserved. It was a familiar paradox, the psychology of the masochist, the basis of most relationships between hookers and pimps. It never ceased to sicken him whenever he heard it expressed, especially by a victim to justify abuse by a tormentor on account of "infractions" of some phony "code of honor" devised by a psychopath to control underlings.
Sue seemed to have trouble imagining the scene. "The others helped by holding you down?"
"Two of them did. The other three turned away."
"What about the one who turned you in?"
"She held me the tightest," Kirstin said.
Sue's face was filled with indignation. "We're going to have to find Diana and put her away. What's her full name? Where does she live?"
As soon as Janek heard Sue speak, he knew she'd made a mistake. Her tone was wrong-abrupt, harsh, accusatory, when she should have been focusing on Kirstin's tragedy. Sue seemed to recognize her error; she reached out for one of Kirstin's hands. But she was too late. The dynamics had changed. Kirstin pulled her hand into her lap. It was as if she'd drawn a curtain.
"Okay," Janek said, " we don't want to tire you. You've helped us." No response. "There's just one thing." He picked up the sketch of the redhead, turned it right side up and placed it in front of Kirstin again. "I know you know her. It's okay." He studied Kirstin's eyes, detected a trace of liveliness. "We're not going to do anything to her.
But we need to talk to her. A man's been killed. She may be able to tell us how or why."
Kirstin stared down at the sketch. "We were pretty good friends."
"Can you tell us her name?"
Kirstin nodded. "Gelsey. I never knew where she lived. None of us did.