Money Shot

“First off,” Malloy said. “We need a cover story so I can talk to people without raising too much suspicion. I want you to tell everyone you hired me as a private investigator to find out what happened to Angel. I’ll need you to write me a check for my services. I’ll cash it and then give you the money back but I want a solid paper trail between us. That’ll explain this visit for your buddies in the Caprice.” He lit his own cigarette. “Also, people will be more likely to talk to me if they think I’m asking on your behalf.”

“If you find the fuckers who did this, you can keep the money,” she said. “What about Angel?”

“What about me?” I asked.

“She needs to keep a low profile,” Malloy said. “As soon as the guy that got away in Vegas reports back to his boss, then the boss is gonna know Angel isn’t dead. He’ll be looking for her too.”

“Jesus,” Didi said softly. “Jesus, this is bad.”

The three of us were silent for a stretch, all contemplating how bad it really was.

“Didi,” Malloy said, breaking the silence finally, “can you tell me everything you remember about the blonde with the briefcase?”

“You know, it’s funny,” Didi said. “After I left the office, I started thinking about her. I was pretty sure I recognized her. I’m sure she’s done videos, but I can’t remember the name she went by or the name of the series I saw her in. It was some super-low-budget amateur line. Mostly girl/girl and solo toy stuff but I’m pretty sure the one I saw her in was a boy/girl scene. It think it had ‘teen’ in the title.”

“Great,” I said, “That narrows it down to about seven billion.”

“It was a real boring title,” Didi said. “Very generic.”

“Teen Pleasures?” I suggested. “Teen Tryouts? Teen Cream? Teen Beaver?”

“No.” She shook her head. “It was more like Horny Teens or Dirty Teens.” She turned to Malloy. “You got Internet access in this joint?”

He nodded and gestured with his chin toward one of the two closed doors.

“In there,” he said. “But I don’t know if I want to go surfing a bunch of teen smut on my PC. Won’t I get logged by the FBI or something?”

“‘Teen’ just means girls with no implants and an amateur look,” I said. “There’s nothing illegal about adult videos featuring girls that are over eighteen and besides, most of those girls are older than they look. I was twenty-one when I did Teen Temptations.”

Malloy shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Me, I like real women. You know, grownups.”

Didi flashed him a smile and stood, smoothing her tight skirt.

“Well,” she said. “We’ll discuss that later, honey.” She winked and took my hand. “Come on.”

Inside Malloy’s predictably spartan bedroom was a small metal and glass desk with an inexpensive laptop sitting beside a jar of pens, a small printer and a cordless telephone. There was just the one chair so Didi and I sat on the bed behind Malloy like backseat drivers.

A Google search for the word “Teen” plus “Adult” and “DVD” gave us a staggering 20,000,000 hits.

“Forget that shit,” Didi said. “Try slutfinder.com.”

Malloy shook his head as he typed.

“Right,” Didi said. “Pick the ‘amateur’ category and then put ‘teen’ in the title field.”

“Jesus,” he said as his screen filled with flashing photos of teen beaver. I could see the muscles in his jaw bunch up as he watched the screen.

“What?” I asked.

“This,” he said, gesturing with his chin. “I don’t know about this shit.”

“What’s not to know?” I said. “It’s just pussy. It won’t bite you.”

Malloy didn’t respond and I felt myself starting to get hot and defensive. The last thing I needed just then was some moralistic argument about the evils of smut.

“You’re not getting squeamish on us, are you Lalo?” Didi asked.

“It’s just...” He shrugged.

“You got something to say,” I told him. “Say it.”

“Well, look at this girl here.” He pointed to a skinny blonde on the cover of a DVD titled Goodbye Seventeen. “She’s still got braces on her teeth, for chrissake.”

“A lot of the amateur girls get braces,” I said. “It’s a better investment than implants and the guys love it.”

“That’s sick,” Malloy muttered, clicking away swarming pop-ups with lurid headlines like TEEN TWATS WANT YOUR SPUNK NOW!!! and SEE WHITE TRASH TEEN TRAMPS TAKE ON THE TEAM! “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for dirty movies, but this... I don’t know. I know it’s legal, but I just don’t think it’s right for a man my age to be looking at girls that seem so young. Christ, half these girls look younger than my daughter.”

“I never knew you had a daughter,” Didi said.

“Yeah,” Malloy said. “Her name’s Paloma. She was eighteen back in April.”

He took a drag off his cigarette and looked away from the images on the screen. He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a posed school photo and handed it to Didi. I peered over Didi’s shoulder. The girl in the photo was plain and a little heavy and looked way too much like Malloy to be considered particularly attractive, but she had a crooked smart-ass grin that I liked. She looked like she wouldn’t take any shit from anyone. I wondered why Malloy had never mentioned her.

“She looks like a real smart kid,” Didi said, handing the photo back to Malloy.

“She lives with her mom out in Santa Fe,” Malloy said, looking at the photo for a second and then putting it back in the drawer, face down. “We’re not all that close.” He looked back up at the screen. “But I sure as hell wouldn’t want a bunch of dirty old men jacking off over her on the Internet.” He closed the drawer. “You think these girls don’t have fathers too?”

I frowned and stood up.

“Yeah, well, these girls are all legal, consenting adults,” I said, taking Malloy’s jacket off and tossing it on the bed beside me. “Whether their daddies like it or not.”

“You can’t tell me something called Teenage Nympho Cheerleaders isn’t meant to get older guys off on the idea of nailing underage high school girls,” Malloy said. “It’s like one step away from statutory rape.”

“It’s a hell of a step,” I said. I was really angry now. “It’s just a fantasy. What are you, the thought police?”

“Come on, now,” Malloy started to say but I cut him off.

“Besides, who the hell are you to be getting all high and mighty about what’s right and wrong after...”

I had to stop myself before I said another word or things were really going to get out of hand. I turned away and tried to get a handle on my anger. I wished that I could stop being so defensive about all this. Malloy was probably right that some of the teen videos went a little too far. It’s not like he was criticizing me personally. But I was feeling fragile and ugly and couldn’t seem to help taking Malloy’s distaste as a personal attack. Plus, my own father broke my jaw when he found out about my videos, so my sympathy for fathers who don’t approve of their daughters doing porn is basically nonexistent.

“Listen...” he started to say, but Didi could see it was getting ugly and quickly cut him off.

“Enough, already,” she said. “Knock it off, Mr. Fucking Sensitive and just read off the damn titles. You want to find that blonde or don’t you?”

Malloy was silent for a handful of seconds and so was I. I looked down at the back of Malloy’s flushed neck and I realized abruptly that this little spat was the most Malloy had revealed about himself since I’d known him. I think he knew it too and was regretting it.

“Right,” he said and started reading off the list of titles on the screen.

Listening to Malloy read off titles like Teen Cum Dumpsters or Pop My Tight Teen Poop Chute in his gravelly, deadpan voice was suddenly way funnier than it had any right to be. I had been sulky and pissed off just seconds before and now I was fighting to repress a fit of crazy giggles. I was afraid to start laughing. I might never stop.

“There,” Didi said, getting to her feet and putting a hand on Malloy’s shoulder. “Click on Dirty Teens.”