Stocks & Blondes
25
Follow the money
IT APPEARS MY MONEY is making a trip without me. I intend to find out where it’s going.
The last time I was in Vegas, I tailed Dag for two days and then had to reveal myself at the SpyCon trade show. He had a heart attack after dinner and hired me the next day. So much has happened since then. I still have a hard time admitting he’s gone and has left me swimming in water so far over my head I can only hope I don’t touch bottom.
Vegas, baby
I pulled out the Riley Finn identity. I’d be working the red wig and slinky dresses in Vegas. I flew in as Deb Riley in my conservative brown bob. As soon as I’d collected my bags, I ran to a restroom and emerged as Riley Finn. I never thought traveling as myself was traveling incognito. But no one would remember seeing Deb Riley. They couldn’t miss Riley Finn. The big differences are hair color and a propensity for more makeup and bigger sunglasses. Combine that with a slinky short dress and ridiculously high heels. Unless I ran into a member of the committee, no one would recognize me as having ever been in Seattle. You wouldn’t believe the number of stares I got as I was headed for the taxi line. Two guys actually gave up their place in line for me to go ahead of them. Yeah, I could tell what they were checking out.
Cinnamon and I had a long chat last night after she took me to the hotel and I got out of Peg Chester. The one thing I want more than anything else is for her to be safe. She was determined to go back to the house and finish the packing. I don’t trust anyone there, though. Deon might be in Las Vegas, but who knows where Rick is? We know Susan is home watching for us. Any of the other women could be there as well. I hope I convinced her that I needed her in the office. I have the house cameras playing on the big screen in my office and I’ve shown her how to switch from channel to channel to see things that aren’t being broadcast to the public.
It would be too conspicuous for the two of us to show up in Vegas together. We’ve got to assume that anyone involved would recognize her as Peg Chester’s companion. Seeing the companion with a different woman would bring that woman under scrutiny, which is exactly what I wanted to avoid. I’d be wearing a wire wherever I could and even had that little button camera I wore last year. As long as I didn’t go into a casino, everything would be fine and Cinnamon would be able to see and hear almost everything I did. She’d also be able to help me and to run searches in real time. She’s got experience and knowledge that I have to fake.
I was appalled at the rate I was going to be charged at The Venetian, but when I showed up to check in, they were practically falling over themselves to be helpful. They upgraded me to a nice suite at no extra charge and offered the services of a concierge to help me get around. I told them flat out that I didn’t want any attention drawn to me—a statement obviously made false by my appearance, which was drawing stares from everyone I passed—and they nodded and practically bowed. Who do they think I am?
PIE
By evening, I figured out who they thought I was, thanks to Cinnamon’s whispering in my ear. They think I’m a porn star, traveling incognito. Everyone is awaiting the big reveal. Sorry, honey, but you’ve seen all you are going to. It seems I stepped into Vegas right at the start of the Porn Industry Expo, or PIE. I chose the right get-up for my alias. In my slinky skirt and with a couple extra buttons open, I was downright conservatively dressed when I walked into the Sands Convention Center. I insisted to the hotel that I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, but the fans of porn here pounced on me. Random guys were coming up to get their picture taken with me. I kept declining to give autographs. Finally, a hotel security dude stepped up beside me and just told guys that ‘Miss Finn is late for her next appointment.’ He escorted me until I was ready to go inside the show.
In the meantime, Cinnamon was on top of things in my ear. “Oh, my God! You’re at a porn show. You need credentials to get in. I’ve just registered you for the show. Just at the left end of the lobby as you walk into convention center, there’s a VIP registration desk. They have your registration info. I’ve registered you as a producer. I figured you’d prefer that to ‘talent.’ Did you remember to put in your green contacts?” I left the body guard at the door and he gave me instructions to call him when I was ready to leave.
“Cinnamon, you’ve got to not talk about everything in my ear. I need to listen to what people are saying around me. Give me the play-by-play but don’t add any color, okay?”
“Okay. Sorry, Sugar. Try to give me a signal if you need me. I’ll control my squee response.”
“You’re a doll. Producer you say? This should be good.” I stepped up to the registration desk and gave them my name.
“Oh yes, Miss Finn. Your assistant called and took care of everything. Here is your badge if you happen to be challenged, but beautiful women go pretty much anywhere they want to here. You can use our private entrance here.”
“That’s all?”
“Oh. This ribbon if displayed on your dress will identify you as a producer. You can take it off if you are mobbed by starlets. I’d stay out of the gay section. You don’t want to be mistaken for a drag queen.” If she only knew. It was actually a good potential cover. Give them the old Victor Victoria routine and be a woman playing a man in drag.
I stepped through the black drapes behind the registration desk and into a Fantasyland. I definitely wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
PIE covers a huge range of different activities and industries. Technically, this was an industry show and most fans wouldn’t show up until Saturday when attendance would be measured in the tens of thousands. With the show aisles filled with people, it was hard to imagine that this was a light attendance day. So, many of the booths were indistinguishable from what you would find at about any trade show. The industry types were more or less grouped together on the vast show floor. More than a dozen, for example, were internet commerce companies. These companies would do everything from storing and distributing your digital property to verifying ages and providing shopping carts for your content and other merchandise. Of course, anyplace computers were used attracts computer manufacturers and vendors. Then there were the adult toy displays, jammed with adult store owners seeking out the latest in vibrators, dildos, bondage equipment, costumes, and vinyl for resale. What I found on display went way beyond anything I’d found in Georgia’s drawers and closet. And the demo dollies went beyond being scantily clad. This was a great place for a performer to be hired. One booth had a woman demonstrating how to wear nipple clamps. She then turned around and began talking about her well implanted butt plug. I learned more in ten minutes than I had in three weeks of research.
I discovered there were seven different categories for pornography. The granddaddy of all was the written word. I guess it’s true that every new technology is adopted and exploited by the porn industry before any other. From the first development of the printing press to camera obscura, to photography, to moving pictures, to talkies, to video, to digital. The porn industry has always been an early adopter. So, it came as no great surprise that pornography writers were among the first to adopt web distribution and the eBook. Photography is a second and nearly as big a medium. Not only are pictures ranging from the mildly suggestive French postcard to explicit closeups of sex acts, but they also range in the subject matter by age and gender. Next are forums where people can meet, talk to each other, arrange things, and satisfy each other’s desires. A quick step from there is the chatroom. These are distinguished by having a single performer—usually female—on camera where she is the only voice that is heard while her clients type in messages to her, either privately or where everyone can see what she is responding to. I recognized the name of a couple of these services from Georgia’s bookmarks. One was a booth where girls each had a laptop computer and were chatting with their customers online while they also reached out to those who were passersby.
“God, you’re beautiful,” one called out to me. I paused. “I’d love to make love to you. Do you want to shoot a scene with me this week?”
“Um— I’m uh— not doing any scenes this week. Bad timing. You know? Kinda messy.”
“Oh, too bad. You could make a fortune doing scenes this week. I only got here this morning and have one booked for as soon as I finish my shift here. I hope you’ll think of me next time.”
Of course, I’d be remiss if I failed to mention video. It came in two varieties: Online streaming and DVD. Many of the girls in chatrooms also had stores of their video content available for customers to purchase and download. It seemed there was a special province for the name stars who were in productions recorded and distributed on DVD. These women—and a few men—stood in front of huge posters of themselves taking one guy at a time to their side while he either took a selfie or had a friend snap his photo. Money almost always exchanged hands in this transaction and I had a feeling that the amount influenced how chummy the model was with the client. There were more than a few hands guided to plump full breasts or bare ass cheeks.
Finally, a newer technology was being exploited: Virtual reality. Special glasses were used to turn a projected image into three-D. You could be right in the same room with the model and she would interact with you. You could tell her what you wanted and she would comply. It was a bit disconcerting to see a row of fully dressed men in reclining chairs humping their hips forward as a model simulated giving them a blowjob.
There was as much high tech gear being used for this as you’d find at any computer tradeshow. State of the art cameras to high powered servers. There was a RAID array for hard drive backup. I knew in my industry, I’d eventually need to get some of this equipment, but where our vault had terabytes of storage, these guys were talking petabytes. That’s 10 to the 15th power. High definition video is memory intensive and they were offering quadrillions of bytes of storage. I wondered now Georgia had managed the amount of data she generated because it wasn’t all stored on her hard drive.
Georgia was using a setup that kept video cameras running around the clock without putting too much strain on any individual computer. Georgia Central was responsible for uploading selected files each day. Nobody needs 22 hours of an empty room being stored to get to two hours of action. A manufacturer sold software that would automatically edit out the static time on the file and upload the net result.
The tech certainly has applications for any kind of video surveillance and I could see us needing it in the near future. I was about to ask a question when there was a small pop in my ear and I heard Cinnamon’s voice.
“I see your subject at 10:00. Look up.” She had seen, through my button camera, Deon hanging around outside a seminar room.
“My God! They teach each other here,” I said quietly. I read the sign outside the room. “How to go the extra mile by producing live and recorded content.” I walked up to the door and Deon, with no more than a glance at my producer ribbon, stood aside to let me in. “I’m in,” I said. Let’s see what we can learn.”
The first thing I learned was the speaker was none other than my landlord, Rick Thomas of Rick Thomas Productions.
“Ladies and gentlemen, before we get started, we want to repeat the credo you will hear at nearly every seminar at this year’s convention. Nothing you hear during this seminar is intended to be taken as advice, either legal or financial. While we will explore a theoretical business model that can be used without legal or financial repercussion, your experience could be different. Nothing we say here today should be construed as exposure of our specific business practices. You should seek legal counsel in your jurisdiction before implementing any of these programs. Now, I’d like to take a moment to remember the woman known to all of us as Miss Peaches. Peaches would have been your presenter today but passed from this world to the next on Christmas Day. We miss you, Peaches.”
Wow. You couldn’t get a better disclaimer excusing you of any wrongdoing if you had a lawyer write one. Speaking of which, why hadn’t we found Georgia’s lawyer or accountant? “You’d better record this,” I whispered to Cinnamon. “And see if there is anything in that box of papers we brought to the office that has the name of a lawyer or accountant in it.”
“I’m on it, Sugar,” Cinnamon responded.
And with that, Rick started explaining exactly how their business works. I’d figured most of it out but he filled in a couple of gaps. He showed on-screen clips from Georgia’s archives. I wondered how he got access to those. There she was in all her naked glory. When I left the seminar room after the presentation, Deon was handing out invitations to a private party sponsored by one of Georgia’s web servers. I noticed he handed the invitations mostly to older women but I snatched one right from his hand. I was going to need more—or at least different—clothes this week than I had planned. I left the seminar and called my escort to take me to the resort fashion shops along the Grand Canal. He didn’t seem to mind watching over me while I selected a couple of new outfits.
“Are you busy this evening, Shamir? I find I’ll need an escort.”
“Miss Finn, I’m happy to provide service to you as a bodyguard but I’m a happily married man and don’t even watch porn.”
“I didn’t mean anything else,” I said, a bit embarrassed. Why did I use the word escort? “I’d just like to get to the party and back safely. I don’t drink or do drugs, so I won’t need to be carried.” He grinned.
“I’ll be ready when you are, Miss Finn.”
I might be crazy but I’m going to that party tonight. I’m going to tag Shamir with a tracker so Cinnamon can keep tabs on him if necessary. She’s already called up an image of the private club the party will be in and it’s vast. I asked her to track down all entrances and exits so I could station Shamir near one or could move him to another. Here goes.
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