Chasing the Dime by Michael Connelly Read Free Book Online Page B

here?’
    â€˜Oh, well, there’s always somebody back there. I just meant I’m by myself up front today.’
    She slid into a chair behind the counter. The silver ring protruding from her stomach caught Pierce’s eye and reminded him of Nicole. She had worked at Amedeo for more than a year before he happened upon her in a coffee shop on Main Street on a Sunday afternoon. She had just come from a workout and was dressed in gray sweatpants and a sports bra, exposing a gold ring piercing her navel. It was like discovering a secret about someone of longtime acquaintance. She had always been a beautifully attractive woman in his eyes but everything changed after that moment in the coffee shop. Nicole became erotic to him and he went after her, wanting to check for hidden tattoos and to know all of her secrets.
    Pierce wandered around the confines of the waiting room while the woman behind the counter did whatever it was she had to do to get set up. He heard a computer start booting up and some drawers opening and closing. He noticed on one wall an arrangement of logos of various websites operated through Entrepreneurial Concepts. He saw L.A. Darlings and several others. Most of them were pornography sites, where a $I9.95-a-month subscription bought access to thousands of downloadable photos of your favorite sex acts and fetishes. It was all presented on the wall in complete, unashamed legitimacy. The Pink-Mink. com banner could have been the same as an advertisement for acne ointment.
    Next to the wall of banners was the door marked private. Pierce glanced back at the woman behind the counter and saw that she was preoccupied with something on her computer screen. He turned back and tried the doorknob. It was unlocked and he opened the door. It led to an unlit hallway with three sets of double doors spaced twenty feet apart on the left side.
    â€˜Um, excuse me,’ the woman said from behind him. ‘You can’t go in there.’
    Signs hanging on thin chains from the ceiling in front of the doors marked them as studio A, studio B and studio C.
    Pierce backed out and closed the door. He returned to the counter. He saw that she was now wearing a pin with her name on it.
    â€˜I thought it was the rest rooms. What is that back there?’
    â€˜Those are the photo studios. We don’t have public facilities here. They’re down in the building’s lobby.’
    â€˜I can wait.’
    â€˜What can I do for you?’
    He leaned his elbows on the counter.
    â€˜I’ve sort of got a problem, Wendy. One of the advertisers with a page on L.A. Darlings dot com has my phone number. Calls that should be going to her are going to me instead. And I think if I were to show up at somebody’s hotel room door, there’d be some disappointment involved.’
    He smiled but she apparently didn’t appreciate his attempt at humor.
    â€˜A misprint?’ she said. ‘I can fix that.’
    â€˜It’s not exactly a misprint.’
    He told his story of getting a new phone number, only to learn that it was the same line on the web page ad for the woman named Lilly.
    She was sitting behind the counter. She looked up at him with suspicious eyes.
    â€˜If you just got the number, why don’t you just get another?’
    â€˜Because I didn’t realize I had this problem and I already had change-of-address cards with the number on it printed and mailed out. It would be very expensive and time-consuming to do that all over again with a new number. I’m sure if you told me how to contact this woman, she’d agree to alter her page. I mean, she’s not getting any business off it if all her calls are going to me anyway, right?’
    Wendy shook her head like his explanation and reasoning were beyond her.
    â€˜All right, let me see something.’
    She turned to the computer and went to the L.A. Darlings site and into the Brunette Escorts list. She clicked on the picture