don’t care what you may think; I didn’t marry Chin for his money.”
“Okay, okay,” Cone says, “I’ll take your word for it. Did you tell him any of your past history before you married him?”
“No.”
“Did he ever ask?”
“Once. I made up some stuff about teaching school in Ohio.”
“Sounds like a happy ending to me,” the Wall Street dick says. “So what am I doing here listening to your soap opera? What’s your problem?”
She sighs and opens an alligator handbag that probably cost more than Cone makes in a week. She pulls out an envelope and hands it over.
“I got this in the mail last Friday,” she says. “Take a look.”
He inspects the long white envelope. Addressed to Mrs. Claire Lee at their Fifth Avenue apartment. No return address. Postmarked New York. Cone looks at her. “You sure you want me to read this?”
“That’s why I’m here,” she says determinedly.
It’s a single sheet of white paper folded in thirds. Two lines of typewriting: “Remember the Pleasure Dome? We have the photographs.”
Cone reads it again and looks up at her.
“Blackmail?” she asks.
“Sounds like. What photographs do they mean?”
“No porn, if that’s what you’re thinking. But on the Chinese New Year we always had a big party at the Pleasure Dome. Free food and booze for our best clients. All of us girls would be there. Fully clothed, of course. Maybe our gowns would be low-cut or very short, but all our bits and pieces were covered. It was just a big, noisy party, and pictures would be taken as souvenirs for the clients. Those were the only photographs taken in the Pleasure Dome as far as I can recall.”
Timothy stares at her. “You may have learned the hard way, as you say, but I wonder if you learned enough. When you had a scene with a customer at the Pleasure Dome, where did you take him?”
“Upstairs. To one of the bedrooms. They were beautifully decorated and furnished.”
“I’ll bet. Mirrors on the walls?”
“Of course.”
He gives her a cold smile. She returns his stare, her face becoming as white and stiff as her hat. “Jesus!” she gasps. “You don’t think they took photos through the mirrors, do you?”
Cone shrugs. “It’s been done before. It’s a smart move for any guy who runs a kip. First of all, it helps keep his girls in line. Second, he can always sell the photographs or videotapes to jerks who get their jollies from that kind of stuff. And third, the possibility of blackmail is always there. So he shoots the action through a two-way mirror and builds up a nice file that his girls and clients don’t know about. He can lean on them anytime he wants.”
“Oh, my God,” Claire Lee says despairingly, “what am I going to do?”
“Right now? Nothing. This is just the opening move. A blackmailer wants the victim to sweat a little first, lose sleep, think of nothing but what it’s going to cost to keep the secret hidden. Have you been sleeping since you got the letter?”
“With pills.”
“There you are. You’re getting nervous already, anxious enough to tell me about it, and you don’t even know what the blackmailer’s got and what he wants for it. You’ll get another letter, Mrs. Lee, with maybe a sample photograph attached. Then you’ll get more letters, spelling out exactly what you’ll have to pay. You have any idea who might be pulling this?”
“No. Not the slightest. Isn’t there anything you can do to stop it?”
“Nope. This first letter is completely innocent. Take it to the cops and they’ll laugh. You haven’t been threatened-yet. This is only the opening move in a dirty game. You’ll just have to play it out. Mrs. Lee, why don’t you let me keep this letter.”
“Why do you want it if you can’t do anything?”
“So you don’t keep reading it and driving yourself nuts. How many times have you looked at it already? A dozen? A hundred? A thousand times?”
“At least,” she says with a wan smile. “All right, you take it.”
“Let me know when the second letter arrives,” Cone says. “Because you’re going to get another; I guarantee it.”
She finishes her drink. “You know, Mr. Cone,” she says, “I feel better just telling you about it. I guess confession really is good for the soul.”
“Is it?” he says. “I wouldn’t know.”
He drains his vodka and stands up. “Keep in touch,” he says, trying to keep it light. “And thanks for the drink.”
He walks slowly toward the outside door and pauses to pull on his cap. He glances back. Carlos, the waiter, is already at her side. The two are talking earnestly, their heads so close together that the guy is practically standing under her broad-brimmed hat.
He’s back in the loft before five o’clock, nods at Cleo, and immediately gets on the horn to Johnnie Wong at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asks.
“Hey, old buddy,” Wong says, “that’s the best bribe I’ve had all day. Where?”
“How about my place?”
“Sounds good. How do I find it?”
Cone laughs. “If you’ve got my unlisted phone number, you’ve got to have my address. If you can get here before six, the downstairs door will be open and the elevator will be working. I’m on the top floor, a loft.”
“I’ll find you.”
Cone gives Cleo fresh water, half a can of human-type tuna, and sits back to review that wacky conversation with Claire Lee.
He can’t for the life of him think of any reason why she would make up a history like that. And after all, it wasn’t so unusual that it couldn’t be true. But what was her motive for telling Cone, practically a stranger, all the squalid details of her past when, according to her, she hadn’t even told her husband?
Cone decides he’ll buy her story. The lady is terrified-or at least badly spooked. She can’t ask help from Chin or Edward Lee, and apparently has no close friends she can consult. So she picks the only guy in the law enforcement business she knows. Looking at it from that angle, her confession makes a crazy kind of sense.
He pulls the letter from his pocket and reads it again. “Remember the Pleasure Dome? We have the photographs.” That tells him exactly nothing, unless Claire’s horror was feigned when he told her about a camera clicking away through a two-way mirror. Maybe she had willingly posed for centerfolds with men, women, donkeys, and dalmatians. That would account for her fear of a letter that apparently said zip.
He is still trying to puzzle out what’s going on in that beautiful head, and wondering about the extent of her chicanery or absence thereof, when there’s a sharp rapping on the door. He moves to one side of the jamb.
“Yeah?” he calls. “Who is it?”
“Johnnie Wong.”
Cone unchains, unbolts, unlocks the door. The FBI man comes in, flashing his toothy grin. He takes a look around the place.
“Holy Christ!” he says. “You live here? If I were you, I’d sleep in the office. What’s that thing under the bathtub?”
“Cleo, my cat,” Cone says. “Listen, this joint’s not so bad. It was neat and clean when I moved in, but I grunged it up a little to make it livable.”
“You call this livable? It’s the biggest Roach Motel I’ve ever seen. Where’s that drink you promised me?”
They sit on opposite sides of the table. Wong has a beer. “No, thanks,” he says when Cone offers a jelly jar. “I’ll drink it right out of the can. That way the worst thing that can happen to me is a cut lip.” He takes a gulp, then looks at the Wall Street dick thoughtfully. “Okay, you didn’t ask me up to admire the interior decoration. What do you want?”
