morning, all involving a woman whose name always invites some kind of
media attention.
This line of thought got me through another half a mile or so. I was
passing the Fred Meyer parking lot, about a mile from my house, when I
noticed the car: a brown Toyota Tercel at the back of the lot, close to
Broadway, far beyond where a shopper needed to park at this time of
night. It was too dark to make out the face of the person inside, but
I could see the ember of a cigarette burning near the steering wheel.
It could be anyone. Maybe Fred Meyer made employees park at the back
of the lot. Or maybe the guy was waiting for his wife to get off work.
Or he could be sneaking out of the house to get a few drags of nicotine
in his car. Then there was the possibility that the guy I saw at the
zoo was out to finish me off, having already trashed my house, kicked
my dog, and knocked me out.
I couldn't make out the license plate. I thought about running through
the lot to get a closer look, but I couldn't think of any way for just
my eyes to cross the street while my body stayed a safe distance
away.
So I kept running and tried not to be obvious as I looked up and down
Broadway to make sure I wasn't being followed. When I was a couple
hundred yards past the lot, I saw the car pull out onto Broadway in my
direction. When it stopped for a red light, I ducked into a
convenience store on the corner and pretended to peruse the tabloid
headlines until I saw the car go through the green light and disappear
into the other traffic down Broadway.
I eventually got up the nerve to run home. Well, not that much nerve.
I took a route that involved running an extra couple of miles and
jumping over my back fence.
After locking myself inside my house and setting the alarm, I went
straight to my handbag to find the license plate number I'd scribbled
down at the zoo. I looked on both sides of all the bills, but I
couldn't find it. I must have spent it.
Given the turnaround of cash in a register, the likelihood of it still
being wherever I'd spent it was next to nil. Orchid Garden was most
recent, so I gave it a try.
The employees were closing the place down for the night. They looked
alarmed when I started banging on the door to get their attention, but
after I flashed my DA badge, a pimply bespectacled girl let me in. I
pled my case to an eighteen-year-old kid who wore a tie with his
striped shirt to denote his authority as the night-shift manager, and
he finally let me fish through their singles.
After all that work it wasn't there.
'I told you so,' the tie guy reminded me. 'I told you, when we take
your money, it goes in the top of the drawer, so it's the first one
paid out.'
Like I needed him to explain that to me. I thanked him anyway and went
home angry at myself. Now I had no idea if the brown Tercel had
anything to do with any of this.
I managed to fall asleep, but my pager woke me up shortly after the wee
hours had kicked in. I recognized the number as Garcia's cell, so I
returned the call. He could tell from my voice that he'd woken me and
apologized.
'I wasn't sure whether to call you, but I'm down here at juvie with
Haley Jameson. She got popped for loitering to solicit.'
Portland's loitering-to-solicit ordinance was enacted just last year
after the city ran into problems proving prostitution cases under the
state statute. In practice, the only way to prove an agreement to
exchange sex for money was to conduct sting missions using undercover
officers posing as either prostitutes or Johns. It was an expensive
and time-consuming process, and the sting missions had gotten out of
hand. To avoid the stings, the regulars all started insisting on free
samples before they'd negotiate the date: 'Let me touch your cock so I
know you're not a cop.' What real John's going to turn that down? For
obvious reasons, though, the bureau prohibited officers from engaging
in sexual contact with suspects.
The beginning of the end for sting missions was when an officer decided
to get clever, put a nine-inch rubber replica in his pants, and whipped
it out on an unwitting prostitution suspect. Actually logged it into
evidence after the bust. PPB didn't like it, so they started hiring
non-police informants to conduct the stings. When the weekly scandal
rag disclosed that Portland's finest were paying losers to get hand
jobs, the entire vice unit almost got shut down. The result,
fortunately, was the adoption of a loitering-to-solicit ordinance.
Everyone wins: Police get to stop the street-level prostitution that no
one wants in their neighborhoods without having to conduct stings, and
the Johns and prostitutes take a lesser punishment from a city
ordinance instead of a state statute.
As Tommy described it, Haley's loitering pop was pretty typical. Time
of day, red-light neighborhood, flagging down cars with men in them. It
was usually enough.
'She saying anything?' I asked.
