pushed it repeatedly to no avail. The car went right past the lobby. It was as if someone else was in control of the elevator.
P1 was the first level of parking below the street. That floor lighted above the door, but still the elevator continued its descent. It ran past P2 as well, but then began to slow. At P3, the lowest level in the building, the elevator came to a halt. The car was quiet until the doors began to heave themselves open with a mechanical rumble. Casey stabbed at the lobby button once again. The light went on, but as soon as she removed her finger, it went dead dark. She stabbed at it frantically, over and over, while at the same time pounding repeatedly on the Close Door button. Then everything went black.
Casey could hear the dying whine of the elevator motor somewhere below her in the pit of the shaft. Terrified, she pressed herself into the corner of the darkened car and peered out into the yawning gloom of the subterranean garage.
CHAPTER 25
Not far away, in a hip bar on Sixth Street, James Unger was whispering something lewd into a young woman's ear. He took a drink in the face for his efforts. He wasn't angry. He got what he deserved. He was way out of his league, a worn-out government employee, not the slick young law enforcement agent he once was. That was how he'd begun his career, full of hope and grand ideas. Back then he had even fantasized about being the director. But that was then, this was now. He took off his glasses and wiped his face on the sleeve of his golf shirt. After cleaning his glasses, he finished off his vodka tonic. The girl was gone now, and the incredible din of the music made it seem as if the little incident had happened to him in another place and time.
Unger sighed heavily and turned to find his friend. Dean Johnson was standing in front of the band, swaying to the rhythm that wailed from the two massive speakers on either side of the stage. He looked like a fool. A paunch hung down over the front of his belt. The back of his balding head, his thin, sunburned arms, and his big, bulbous nose made Unger look like a catch. In front of the car dealer was the band's lead singer, a raven-headed girl dressed up like a Native American, right down to her beads and moccasins. She had a wicked body that somewhat offset the nastiness of her face, and to the amusement of all the young people watching, she sang her suggestive lyrics right at Dean.
Unger grabbed his friend by the arm and tugged him outside, where the relative quiet of the street rang in their ears.
'What the fuck!' Johnson howled drunkenly. 'She wanted me! Did you hear that girl's voice? She wanted me.'
Unger only shook his head impatiently. 'Let's go home.'
His words came out in a long, slow slur.
Johnson looked at his friend in a daze before suddenly grinning and saying, 'Not yet. I got a surprise for you.'
'What's that?'
'Hookers,' Johnson told him, his eyes agleam.
'You're kidding,' Unger said. That wasn't his style, but he knew from the last few days that his friend liked to spend every cent of the money he made at his dealership on living well. That meant champagne at dinner, cigars with expensive brandy, and now women. Unger wasn't opposed to it on ethical grounds; it was just something he'd never indulged in before.
'I'm not kidding,' Johnson mumbled and began staggering up a side street that intersected Sixth.
'I don't do that stuff,' Unger said, trailing him.
'My treat,' Johnson muttered. Even though he was from Cleveland, he had adopted a southern drawl, and Unger was suddenly aware of it as acutely as if he were hearing it for the first time. 'You ain't gonna go back home without experiencing some of the finest trim Texas has to offer. I'm not talking about a twenty-dollar blow job. I'm talking around the world, my friend. Around the big blue world with a pro in a first-rate establishment.'
Unger grabbed his friend gently by the arm and said, 'Aw, come on, Dean, you don't really want to go to a whorehouse…'
Johnson's face lit up with a smile. He leaned close to his old friend, and with the alcohol riding hard on his breath, he whispered, 'This ain't a whorehouse, my friend. This is the Roman Empire…'
Unger gave him a puzzled look as his brain did a fast rewind. That was a name that he'd just heard, and it had something to do with something important.
'What did you say?' he said. 'What did you call that place?'
'The Roman Empire, my friend,' Johnson leered. 'There's nothing quite like it.'
'The Roman Empire,' Unger muttered, and then it hit him. It was the name that Bolinger had mentioned when he filled him in on the Lipton investigation. That was about a dozen martinis ago, but Unger was certain of it now.
'Is this the kind of place where you could have pictures taken and stored on a computer disk, digital pictures?' he asked.
Johnson slapped him roughly on the back and cried out, 'That's the spirit!'
'Is it something they do?' he asked impatiently.
'It's a high-tech place,' Johnson said. 'I never did it, but if any place could do it, this would be the one.'
'Take me there,' Unger said.
They got into Johnson's red Mercedes coupe and drove uphill toward the downtown area, then down another side street into what looked like a nice neighborhood.
Except for the wind whipping random drops of rain down at them, it was a quiet street on the border of the area where the office buildings began and the hip new urban condos surrounding Sixth Street ended. The few cars parked against the curb were strikingly lavish, and they gleamed like museum pieces under the streetlights. They got out of the candy-apple car and Johnson started up a set of steps, then looked around before backing down and proceeding to the next flight.
'Don't you know where you're going?' Unger asked impatiently.
'I know. I know.'
They mounted the next set of steps and Johnson opened the door, gallantly waving his friend into the inconspicuous entryway. A single camera hanging from the corner of the ceiling watched over the doors of a shiny brass elevator. Johnson took a gold card from his wallet and held it up close to the camera.
'You gotta belong to the club,' he told Unger happily.
After a minute the elevator doors opened abruptly, and Johnson chuckled.
'After you,' he said, motioning Unger inside.
The elevator stopped and deposited them in a large white marble reception area whose chrome fixtures and black leather furniture gave it the look of a funky, well-heeled business office. Johnson introduced Unger to the buxom redheaded woman behind the desk as his old friend from Atlanta. The woman, who wore a low-cut black dress and enough makeup to cover a manhole, showed no interest and only asked them how they would be paying. Johnson dramatically removed the gold card from his wallet again. He shot his friend an accusatory look as the woman ran the card through her machine and asked him to sign off on the one-thousand-dollar charge to Roman Empire Ltd.
With the transaction complete, the woman studied a screen behind the desk in a detached way before showing them down the hall to an empty room. It was a small, private lounge with a black couch, two big, low leather chairs, and silver-framed copies of Paul Klee paintings on the walls that Unger couldn't name but recognized enough to remark that it was certainly a classy joint. On the glass coffee table were two well-worn laptop PCs whose cables trailed off into the wall.
'Can I get you a drink while you make your selections?' the redhead asked. She was polite but distant, and the insect-green contact lenses in her eyes gave her an otherworldly appearance.
Johnson asked for a beer. Unger wanted straight vodka, cold. The woman disappeared for their drinks. Johnson, bubbling with excitement, sat down on the edge of the couch.
'It's all in this computer,' he said, going to work with the mouse. 'Just like buying a car. Here's all the girls, but look what you can do: options. See? I pick this little number, now I can change what she's wearing. Look, I'll put her in this red lace thing. Look, I can change the color of her hair…'
He selected an option, and the girl on the screen, a brunette, disappeared for a second only to come back as a blond.
'Now look at this stuff,' Johnson said, his cherry red cheeks and nose shining like a fire truck under their sheen of sweat. 'It's like options on a sedan. I can choose the room I want her in, the backdrop, the music, everything!
'You like chains?' he asked with a snicker. 'This is what she looks like in chains. You want to see a sample of her getting it on? Look at this! I hit this and I get a video of her on top, or her on the bottom, however I want to see her getting it on. Is this a place or what? It's total high tech.'
Unger involuntarily moistened his lips and nodded that it was. He reached for his own mouse on the tabletop as the redhead returned with their drinks.
'You gentlemen need any help?' she asked.
'No, we know what we want,' Johnson said, sipping his beer with a knowing grin.
'Uh,' Unger began taking a deep breath, 'does anyone ever have you take pictures, digital pictures, I mean, the kind you could put on a computer?'
The redhead stared at him imperiously for a moment before saying, 'Is that what you want?'
'I…' Unger stumbled. 'It's not for me. I just wanted to know.'
'If it's not for you,' she said icily, 'then you don't need to know, do you?'
Unger said nothing. He was intimidated by the woman's direct, confident stare. He looked at his friend. Johnson was too elated with his selection of hookers to even notice the interchange. Unger felt totally out of place. He shouldn't have come.
'But you could do it if I wanted you to do it?' he asked weakly.
'If you want pictures,' she said, 'you let me know.'
When she was gone, Johnson told Unger, 'When you decide what you want, you just hit this select button right here in the corner.'
'Then what?'
'Then they come get you after a few minutes and voila! They take you off to your room, and you've got everything you want, just the way you ordered it up. It's living, James. It's living big.'
Unger nodded. He was there because he thought it could be something, but his mind was too muddled to know what. He wanted to ask the redhead about Lipton, break her down, interrogate her. But he really had no idea of how to begin. He was out of his league here. Maybe the best thing would be to go along with the whole thing and just see what happened. Maybe one of the girls would know something. Maybe she would be nicer. He really didn't have any intention of doing anything with a
