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trying to take the rubber off during oral. I was trying to go down on him and kept winding up with his little dick and his stubby fingers in my mouth. I couldn’t tell what was what.”

They’d rehearsed the line with Jasmine at least six times before placing the call, but she still managed to deliver it with that silly giggle of hers. It worked, because Corliss laughed and dropped her guard. “I’ll look up the name and make a note of it. We tell everyone to keep it safe, but some of the girls still accept bareback on oral. And, don’t forget, watch it on the phone, Jasmine, okay?”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“No problem. And I’ll try to find something for you this week to make up for tonight, all right?”

“Thanks, Corliss.”

Jasmine hung up the phone and worked the kinks out of her knuckles. “Was that okay?”

Ellie couldn’t help but grab the girl’s hands across the table. “That, Ms. Harris, was unbelievable.”

But it wasn’t Ellie’s approval that Jasmine yearned for. She looked up with wide eyes toward Max, who was sitting with one hip against the conference table. “Was that good? Did it sound good?”

“You were perfect, Jasmine.”

She removed her hands from Ellie’s and used them to pull Max’s sweatshirt up over her chin. Ellie knew that sweatshirt would smell good, like a blend of truffles and cedar and lavender and coffee. Like Max. Like home. It was the kind of smell that made a woman feel safe.

For a second, Jasmine looked happy.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

12:35 P.M.

“Idon’t know how many times I need to explain this to you, Detectives. I’m a business owner.” David Taylor tugged at the lapels of his navy sports jacket as if the attire spoke for itself. “I spent what seemed like a lifetime owning a bar on the Upper East Side in the nineties. Check it out. No marks on my license. A good relationship with the boys in the Nineteenth. Call Ed Devlin up there. He might be retired by now, but he’ll tell you, I’m good people.”

Ellie had been pacing behind Taylor in the interrogation room as he repeated his mantra that he was a legitimate businessman. Now she leaned one hip against the table in front of him. “You don’t own a bar anymore, Uncle Dave, and the boys in the Nineteenth don’t know bupkes about Prestige Parties. Or, if they do, they’re not exactly going to tell me, now are they?”

“The bar”—Taylor pronounced it “Bah,” with a northeast accent—“closed down almost ten years ago. Made a mistake not buying the building when I had the chance. Couldn’t keep up with the rents, you know. Turned out okay, though. All those hours keeping bar, I saw how things work. Hardworking men with a lot of money but not a lot of time just want someone pretty to spend an evening with. Classy, smart, attractive girls.”

“Prostitutes,” Ellie said. “And you’re their pimp.”

“No way, ma’am. I know better than that. I want no part of such a thing. I’m a Catholic, for God’s sake. Pretty sure the pope frowns on pimping. I even had a lawyer draw up documents for the girls to sign, just in case they got the wrong idea. No sex allowed. No way, no how, or they’re out the door.”

She’d had Taylor in this room for twenty minutes now, and his story wasn’t budging. Rogan was down the hall in another interrogation room with Corliss LaMarche. The last Ellie had heard, Cadence was rock solid, so Rogan had moved her to a holding cell so he could work on the weaker sister alone.

“We’ve got your employee Corliss on tape, Taylor.” She hit the play button on the digital recorder and heard Jasmine’s voice as clearly as if she were sitting in the room with them.

“Just for one trick, you know?” Taylor smiled with satisfaction as Corliss corrected her: “You mean an appointment, Jasmine.”

His face fell slightly when Corliss explained the buyout requirement for private dates. “Uncle Dave’s a real stickler about that.”

“Oh, wait,” Ellie said, “here comes my favorite part.” She caught a slight chuckle in Taylor’s breath as Jasmine described performing oral sex as her date attempted to remove the condom.

“We tell everyone to keep it safe, but some of the girls still accept bareback on oral. And, don’t forget, watch it on the phone, Jasmine, okay?”

Ellie hit the stop button, and Taylor shook his head. “I can’t believe Corliss would stand for such a thing. If she and some of the girls have been engaged in this kind of conduct, it was certainly not with my knowledge. I’ve been absolutely clear—”

“I know, I know,” Ellie said. “No sex. They signed the papers.”

“Exactly.”

She heard a knock on the door and cracked it open to find Rogan.

“Wait a second,” Taylor said. “Don’t tell me. This is the part where someone comes in and tells me that that airhead Corliss dimed me up as the big bad boss in charge of the whole operation. Well, guess what, Detectives? I’ve seen every single episode of Law and Order, and I’m not falling for it. Corliss did this on her own. I’m a legitimate businessman, and if you don’t believe me, you can talk to my lawyer.”

Rogan opened the door ajar. “Actually, Mr. Taylor, I wasn’t here to speak with you at all. You have a guest here to see you.”

Behind Rogan stood a house of a woman, nearly six feet tall, an easy two hundred pounds, with bright orange hair and green eye-shadow that managed to clash with her multicolored floral silk shirt and thick gold cuff necklace. “God damn it, Dave. What the hell have you dragged my daughters into?”

“This is Mr. Taylor’s sister, Karen LaMarche. She’s Corliss and Cadence’s mother. She’d like to have a word with her brother.”

Apparently Uncle Dave was literally Uncle Dave.

Fifteen minutes after they left Karen LaMarche alone in the interrogation room with her brother, they heard a tap against the one-way window. Taylor wasn’t lying when he said he’d watched a lot of Law and Order.

By the time they opened the door, Taylor’s sister was already pressing her way past Ellie. “My son of a bitch brother will tell you whatever you need to hear,” she said. “But my girls, my daughters, they get a deal. They walk.”

Ellie had already called Max as she’d eavesdropped on the conversation between Taylor and his sister. He was prepared to grant immunity to Corliss and Cadence as long as they cooperated.

“Only if Dave here agrees,” Ellie said. “No deal for him. Just the girls. We need full access to every piece of information Prestige Parties has. All clients. All dates.”

“But Corliss and Cadence get a full walk, right?” Taylor asked. “No one can even know I got them into this. Their names can’t be on any single piece of paper. Nothing.”

“No problem.”

“Okay, then, yeah, whatever. I got all of it in the computer. Go to town on it.”

“Where?” Ellie asked.

“At home, whaddaya think? But welcome to the twenty-first century, sweetheart. Some tech dweeb—one of those guys who tells you his name is John but you know it’s really Sanji—hooked me up so me and the girls could all access the appointments whenever we wanted. Get me online and I can tell you what you need to know. Let’s get this over with, for my nieces’ sake.”

Karen LaMarche gave Ellie a satisfied smile.

“What got into him?” Ellie asked as the woman turned to walk away.

“Would you believe me if I said an uncle’s love for his family?”

“Nope.”