The Closers by Michael Connelly Read Free Book Online Page A

her shoulder a purse that looked big enough to hold a pack of cigarettes but not the matches. And she looked as though ten o'clock was definitely too early for her.
    "You're early," she said.
    "I know," Pierce said. "I came from the Westside and I thought there'd be more traffic."
    He followed her in. There was a waiting area with a raised reception counter in front of a partition that guarded an entrance to a rear hallway. To the right and unguarded was a closed door with the word private on it. Pierce watched as the woman walked behind the counter and threw her purse into a drawer.
    "You'll have to wait a couple minutes until I get set up. I'm the only one here today."
    "Slow on Saturdays?"
    "Most of the time."
    "Well, who is watching the machines if you're the only one here?"
    "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 Con
    t.q cepts. He saw L.A. Darlings and several others. Most of them were pornography sites, where a $19.95-a-month subscription bought access to thousands of down loadable photos of your favorite sex acts and fetishes. It was all presented on the wall in complete, unashamed legitimacy. The PinkMink.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.
    "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.
    "I thought it was the rest rooms. What is that back there?"
    "Those are the photo studios. We don't have public facilities here. They're down in the building's lobby."
    "I can wait."
    "What can I do for you?"
    He leaned his elbows on the counter.
    "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.
    "A misprint?" she said. "I can fix that."
    "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.
    "If you just got the number, why don't you just get another?" "Because I didn't realize I had this problem and I already had change-of-address