Stocks & Blondes
26
The Tao of dangerous living
WHEN YOU PUT YOUR FOOT upon the path, you are not assured of arriving at your destination. But that you will never arrive is assured if you do not put your foot upon the path.
The depths of depravity
The suite the hotel upgraded for me was a nice perk. When I got back to change clothes, the bed was turned back and there was not just a mint on my pillow, there was a heart-shaped box of chocolates. Cinnamon was absolutely moaning as I paraded around the room showing her all they had done with the VIP package through the micro camera in my button.
“I just don’t know why they upgraded me to this suite,” I said at one point. Cinnamon cleared her throat before she responded.
“I may have mentioned you were a big producer,” she said guiltily.
“When?” I asked. I’d made my own reservations.
“I sort of found out about the trade show when I was scanning things to be sure I knew as much as I could about what was going on there. You were on the plane and I knew you’d need a cover story, so I called the Venetian, pretending to be your assistant.”
“You are my assistant,” I said.
“I’m Deb Riley’s assistant, but technically not Riley Finn’s. I said I’d been on vacation and found out you’d made your own reservations and you’d be so mad at me when you found out what you got and would they please save my little ass and upgrade your room and not let you know I was responsible.”
“And then you registered me for the convention and pretended to be surprised. You are evil, Cinnamon.”
“Anything for you, Sugar.”
There was a knock at my door and it was time to leave for the party. I glanced at the clock, confirming it was nine-thirty. Right on time. It seems that none of the fun stuff here starts before then.
“So, how did you become a security guard, Shamir?” I asked my body guard as we walked away from my room.
He glanced sheepishly at himself. He’s a hunk. “I was a lousy engineer,” he said. “One night I came in here to play cards and a guy at the table got pretty drunk and rowdy. I can usually tolerate that but he assaulted a woman at the table. I picked him up and threw him out of the casino. I had security all over me, but the woman went straight to the management and demanded they release her hero or she’d sue the casino for lack of protection of their patrons. The dealer and the pit boss both backed her up. So, they offered me a job instead—on condition that I don’t play cards here again.”
“Well, it seems to have worked out well for you,” I said.
“Oh, better than that,” he answered grinning. “I married the woman.”
“Good for you!” We arrived where there was a line waiting to get into the club, but Shamir bypassed it and went to a VIP line as I gripped his arm intensely. “Listen, Shamir. I might come off as in control, but I’m pretty new at this. I’d appreciate it if you stayed near the club in case I get overwhelmed and have to escape.”
“I don’t know what you are planning,” he said, “but your assistant already gave me detailed instructions. I’m not allowed inside the club during the party, but I’ll not leave the area. You have my card and your assistant has my number.” Shamir quickly sketched out a plan of the club and the available exits for me—most of which I recognized from Cinnamon’s briefing. The guy was good but my assistant was stellar.
“You don’t have casino business that will call you away, do you?” I asked. “I got off at two o’clock this afternoon,” he said. “I’ve been on your clock since then. Your assistant made the arrangements.”
“Bless you, Cinnamon. Bless you,” I said.
“My pleasure,” said the voice in my ear. “He wasn’t supposed to blab all that. I think he’s whipped.”
I left Shamir at the entrance and was escorted into the party by one of the doormen. He told me to enjoy myself and the doors to the private party would open in an hour. Even at a quarter till ten I was an early arrival! The woman who greeted guests from behind a big tub with rose petals floating on the water appeared to be wearing nothing but a couple of strategically placed petals. I ignored the food and drinks that were offered by every passing waiter. Instead I went to the bar and ordered a bottle of Perrier. I watched the bartender pop the top and took it from his hand. I carried it away with me with my thumb over the opening. I’ve learned my lesson about even harmless drinks in public places. I was seated and food simply arrived at my table. Apparently, the normal cost of getting into this party included dinner.
I had thought Rick, Deon, and their five women were pretty sleazy, but here in the club it was them multiplied by a hundred. Maybe by a thousand. The restaurant portion was huge. Everyplace I turned, people were lounging in little booths chatting with each other while stripping. I saw a man and woman dancing on a table drop their clothes as they danced to the incredibly loud music and the cheers of the men and women sitting around them. They both ended up in g-strings and she had pasties that barely covered her nipples. I was amazed it didn’t draw a bigger crowd to her table, but in the next row of booths, I’m pretty sure no one was wearing anything.
After eating some surprisingly good food and fending off a dozen men interested in ‘dancing’ with me, I headed toward the entrance to the private party where people were showing their invitations before being let inside. I snatched a straw from the next bar I passed and dropped it into my Perrier. I took a long refreshing sip of the sparkling water and deposited the bottle on a topless waitperson’s tray. I honestly didn’t notice whether the top was male or female.
Private suite
Tao is amazing. Three floors of lustful corners and coves, the top of which was the private party. I showed my invitation and was allowed into the nightclub. It was a little quieter here and less crowded. But the tables were occupied predominantly by men in suits. The women circulated among the tables in ever less clothing. There were professional sex workers of every variety. Some performed on stage, some on film, and some in any bed where there was money. The biggest porn producers were surrounded by sycophants—both male and female. You could tell they wielded big bucks because they were the only ones in their booth or at their table who spoke. Everyone else laughed on cue, cuddled on cue, stripped on cue. By midnight, I imagined, the party would be one large drunken orgy.
I was swept up in an eddy of people that swirled me around a guy Cinnamon identified as Jeremy somebody who had been a porn sensation. Now he was an old and kind of ugly guy who seemed to have a pair of hands on every girl he could reach. Cinnamon chirped in with a comment about someone or to caution me about getting to close to someone, but most of the time she was respectfully silent and watchful. I’d hung the fake button on a chain around my neck and it was picking up most of what I saw with its infrared capture.
Where the restaurant seemed to revolve around a huge dance floor and loud music, the night club opened out onto a rooftop pool area with a giant Buddha hovering over the water at one end. There were tall palms open to the chilly night air. The skies were crystal clear and despite the forty-degree weather, the heat lamps spaced around the area kept people warm and comfortable. A few people were generating their own heat. There were beds all around the pool. They called them cabanas, but under the little heated tent, there was just one big bed on which everyone piled. I heard a familiar voice and drifted toward one of the cabanas.
I just walked by the first time. The bed was packed. Deon was there along with three other younger studs and Rick. Piled onto the bed with them were nearly a dozen naked or nearly naked ladies, all drinking champagne that another waitress kept pouring as if from a never-ending fountain. It took me the second time past to realize what I was seeing. It wasn’t so much an orgy as a revival. Rick was talking, occasionally joined by the mellifluous tones of Deon’s voice taking over. The women weren’t the youngest in the club. They were all older. One or two a lot older. Some a little overweight. Some were middle-aged housewife types, still lounging around nude.
I’d done enough research on Georgia’s porn over the past two weeks to know what I was seeing. These were the one-time porn queens—the women who survived as starlets only to find that there was no money and no good life unless they kept working. And the pay went lower as they aged as the sex acts grew more grotesque. These were women who wore too much makeup both on and off camera. They were proud to have all their own teeth and not to be on the streets. They had wardrobes full of clothes meant for much younger women, most of which were a size or two too small for them.
“So, my hundred-year-old uncle said he didn’t need a hundred-year-old woman. He’d gladly take two fifties!” Everybody laughed. Rick paused and Deon took over the pitch.
“Look at yourselves, ladies. You’re beautiful. These so-called producers who tell you you’re not worth as much now or you gotta do a triple penetration if you want a job—they’re out of touch. They’ve got their market but they’re ignoring the most lucrative market in the world. It’s guys who are fifty to God knows what—a hundred years old—who can’t look at a twenty-year-old without thinking of their daughters or granddaughters. When they look at a mature woman, they breathe a sigh of relief thinking how lucky they are to find a woman who knows who the Beatles were.”
“Most men more than sixty years old will wilt when presented with a twenty-year-old girl,” Rick jumped back in. “They’re intimidated. You need only look at the escort ads to notice how many sweet young things are saying they prefer a mature man who knows how to treat a lady. What they’re really saying is they want a guy with enough money to make the humiliation of being with him worth it. Guys that age are easy for girls. With luck they won’t even have to do anything and they’ll still get paid. But these dudes are rock hard when a woman who knows what she’s doing gets hold of them. And it’s not just the Viagra talking. You ladies turn them on.”
“So, we just want to help you capitalize on your market,” Deon picked up the pitch. I wondered how often the two of them practiced this together. “There are a lot of guys out there for whom you are ideal. They want someone like their wives but who is actually interested in sex. It’s never too late to start.” I’d heard enough. It was time to start antagonizing some people.
“Of course, they are going to want to kill you,” I said. “They don’t want to waste a young beauty on a snuff film. They want someone who is fully used up. Then they can get an even older woman to pretend she’s the wife and cut your throat while they come in your ass.”
“This is a private cabana, girlie,” Deon said. “Run along and play with your little toys.”
“What really happened to Miss Peaches?” I asked. Deon and two of the guys were already standing and moving toward me. “Did you broadcast her being strangled to death?” Now Rick jumped up, too.
“Somebody call security. We’ve got a reporter in here.” The waitress pulled a walkie talkie out of her ass and started talking into it urgently. I was almost to the pool now. No place to back up to. But I really felt I was about to make a breakthrough.
“Did you really think no one would connect you to her murder?” I pressed. Then I added quietly, “Cinnamon, I need Shamir.”
Deon moved first. I expected that. He couldn’t hang back and let others take care of his work. That was Rick’s role. He closed and I dropped out of his grip, right to the pool deck. A flick of my foot against his left knee and he crumpled into the pool. I swung to my left and caught the next guy square in the ass as he went over the top of me into the pool. The third guy came at me more carefully and I could see he was trained in martial arts. He made a couple of test punches toward me and I blocked one and avoided the other. By this time, people had rushed out of all the cabanas to see what the splashing was about. They got an eyeful of me dropping to one knee and hooking his legs out from under him. He fell toward me, but a straight jab and he was diverted into the pool. People all around the pool started holding fake fights and one after another, the pool gained swimmers. I turned to see Rick nearly on me.
“I don’t know who you are but you’ve chosen to fuck with the wrong man, little girl. I’ll chew you up and spit you out.”
“Maybe I could choke you until you come,” I said. “Maybe I wouldn’t stop then.” Rick took a step forward but stopped short. I could see security coming through the main pool door from the club. I spun away from him just in time to see two of his older ladies rush up to him and drag him into the pool with them. I was guessing none of them were coherent enough to understand what I’d been saying in the first place. I headed around the end of the pool and Cinnamon started chirping instructions in my ear.
“There’s an employee entrance behind the towel stand,” she said. “Shamir is on his way to meet you there.”
I pulled ‘the way of harmonious being’ around me and became one with the night and the stars. I could see Rick looking frantically around as he tried to describe me to the security guards. I backed out of the employee entrance and practically into the arms of my bodyguard, Shamir.
“Come this way, Miss Finn.” He led me to a service elevator and we were plunging downward in seconds. “You are being searched for. It isn’t safe to go to your room at the moment. Come. My car is this way.” Shamir led me through the employee parking area to a black Ford Escape. Appropriate name. I jumped in the passenger side and ducked down as he drove the vehicle out of the ramp. In minutes, we were headed south on Paradise Road. “Neeti will know what to do,” Shamir said. “Neeti always knows.”
This guy was obviously loyal as hell, but I wasn’t wondering why he didn’t make a good engineer. Competent. Honest. Brave. Not the brainiest in the world. Inside fifteen minutes we were pulling up beside a perfect little suburban house in Henderson.
When we walked through the door, I held back behind Shamir as he told his wife everything he could think of. She looked me over pretty thoroughly. Then she pointed at me. “Go sit in the kitchen. Stay there. There’s a bathroom door beside the refrigerator if you need one. Give me your room key and don’t move until I get back.” There was something about her tone that let me know this was no longer in my control. I went into the kitchen the direction she pointed and saw her push her husband the other direction. “Go sit with Rashi. I will handle this.” I expected her to come into the kitchen and pound me with a barrage of questions, but she walked straight through and opened the connecting garage door. She turned once and—as if she were giving a command to a dog—said, “Stay.” Then she was gone.
I carried on a running dialog with Cinnamon the whole time Neeti was gone. If Shamir ever came out of Rashi’s room, he certainly didn’t come near me. Two hours later, the garage door opened and Neeti came in carrying my suitcase and computer bag. She motioned me to follow her and led me to a guest room.
“You can stay here tonight. Make arrangements to leave town as early as you can get out tomorrow. I’d use a different disguise if I were you. I don’t know who you are, but it’s obvious you were here to raise hell with the industry and that elevates you a little in my book. I already know you aren’t who you say you are but no one else needs to know that. I just need you out of here before Shamir’s bosses call him tomorrow.” She paused and turned to smile at me. It was the first sign of warmth I’d seen in her. “I hear they are still fishing porn stars out of the pool. Nice job.”
I didn’t see Shamir again. I dressed as Deb Riley and a cab picked me up at ten in the morning. I sat at the airport for two hours after I got through security trying to figure out what happened. My phone chirped and Tom asked if I could meet him for a late dinner. Why not? I was no more than off the phone when it rang again and Cinnamon was on the line.
“Different last name,” she said.
“What?”
“Neeti doesn’t have the same last name as Shamir, so it took me a while to track down who she is.”
“And?”
“She’s head of security analysis for a casino consulting firm. Big time. Shamir is a hammer. She is a carpenter. No, better make that an architect. Bet she’s got an open file on every identity you carried.” Shit.
I got back and took a cab to my apartment. I took Maizie out to play in the park. It’s as warm here as it was in Vegas last night. Or should I say as cold?
Now I’m all dressed up and pretty. I’m ready to go meet my sweetie for a late dinner. Wish I could tell him about my big adventure.
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