The Night Detectives by Jon Talton Read Free Book Online Page A

studying theater and she was a business major. She had wanted to be in theater, too, but her father demanded that she declare a more practical major. Specifically, business. If she wanted money, he said, she could start her own business the same way he had done. Grace moved in with Tim. They were poor and not happy, working part-time at restaurants, already facing big student loans. They broke up. It was a big campus, so he didn’t see her often. He dated some other girls but kept wishing he could get back with Grace.
    Three years later, he saw her at Comic Con, the huge comic-book gathering at the convention center downtown. But she wasn’t dressed like a nerd. She was in a tight but very expensive-looking mini-dress and on the arm of a guy in a suit who was old enough to be her father. He later learned that the man was a producer in Hollywood. She smiled and waved at Tim, and a week later she emailed him to get together.
    Tim learned how much had changed in the time they had been apart.
    Grace Hunter’s entrepreneurial inspiration had come soon after their breakup. One night she went out and got drunk. An older man hit on her, she went back to his hotel room with him, and spent the night. When she woke up, he was gone but on the bedside table was a thousand dollars cash. Whatever weeks or hours of moral wrestling she did with herself, she realized that San Diego was full of male tourists and businessmen, almost all of them dreaming of a night with a California girl. And they would pay quite well.
    She drew up a formal business plan on her laptop: her market was affluent, older married men, the startup costs consisted of the right clothes—bikini for the strand, nice dress or suit for a hotel—and her competitive advantage was that she didn’t look like a call girl. The tax exposure was zero. Her brand was Scarlett.
    For more than two years, she succeeded brilliantly. The men were usually nice, often terribly lonely, some wanted only to talk, and all were willing to use protection. Not one beat her up or even made her feel creepy. Once a month, she had herself tested for STDs and was always clean. That checkup report would ensure top dollar. She gathered regular clients and her discretion gained referrals. Thanks to her patrons, she stayed at the best hotels and resorts in the area. A few times, men paid her to be with them on more lavish adventures.
    â€œDid she do kink?” I interrupted. “Bondage?”
    â€œNo,” he said. “That doesn’t sound like her at all.”
    I wondered how much he really knew her, but shut up and let him continue.
    The money she earned was awesome. The Great Recession didn’t hurt her profits. This sure beat taking on more student debt. She set up small accounts at banks around town, depositing cash as if it were her tips as a waitress. Over time, she consolidated them into a smaller number of bigger accounts. She took out loans from her father and paid them back, telling him that she had a job helping a woman stage condos and houses for sale. Her father’s checks were clean to deposit. It was a crude way to launder money, but it was good enough.
    The only thing Grace Hunter hadn’t assessed for her business plan was the competition. And one night she was kidnapped, beaten, and raped by America’s Finest Pimp. He told her that he ran the hotel girls in America’s Finest City. He would control her liaisons and take seventy percent of her gross earnings. If she held out on him, he promised, he would beat her to death and take her body out on his boat, feeding her remains to the sharks. For the next three months, she lived in constant fear.
    Then she saw Tim again.
    He took off the icepack and shook his head. “We thought we’d be safe in O.B. She had money saved. Then she got pregnant and the baby came along. We were happy. She just got a job at Qualcomm and I was going to be a stay-at-home dad when I graduated. I guess she