Part 10 (1/2)
Like the mob that had ruled Vegas once, vice had gone corporate. Judith Rothenberg had an ”office” as well as an agenda.
Molina was not impressed, but this time she was backed into a corner of her own making. If Matt Devine got painted into it by any unhappy conjunction of events, her career was history, like neon. And maybe in as blazing an inferno as the Mirage volcano.
NEW WOMAN, was the name above the door and window. Molina snorted. There was nothing new about the world's oldest profession but PR spin.
She gritted her teeth and went in, prepared to play the politician she loved to hate on most working days.
A young, anxious receptionist took her name. Molina did not give rank.
”It's been kinda ... rough around here lately,” the girl confessed. A phone line on her machine blinked. ”New Woman. Miss Rothenberg's not in. I'm sure she'd be happy to speak to you. May I take a message?”
She grimaced at Molina as she hung up, apologizing to a witness of an obvious lie, ”You're here about-?”
”The death.”
”Oh. From the media. I'm afraid you'll have to wait for Miss Rothenberg to get back to you-”
”From the Metropolitan Las Vegas Police,” Molina was forced to admit. She had wanted to stay as low-profile as Rothenberg went for the high-profile.
”Oh! I'd better ... talk to her on this one. Just a minute.”
She leaped up, revealing a skirt that suffered from an awesome fabric shortage, and skittered behind the bland door that led to an inner office.
A minute pa.s.sed, then two. When the girl emerged, she a.s.sumed an air of authority that went badly with her be-ringed facial features and deep teal metallic fingernail polish. In Molina's observation, the more piercings, the lower the self-esteem.
She thought of her daughter Mariah's pierced ears and hoped it would stop there, but there was no guarantee of restraint for the twelve-year-old aching to go on thirty-two, and physical p.u.b.erty hadn't even hit yet.
”She'll see you now.”
Molina forbore comment and went into the office.
Madams certainly weren't what they used to be.
Judith Rothenberg looked more like a New Age guru, with her mane of coa.r.s.e, grayed long hair, makeup-free skin, frank sun-wrinkles, and Southwestern-style turquoise jewelry.
Molina showed her s.h.i.+eld.
”A lieutenant. I'm impressed. I expected the usual tag team of male detectives. They always love to visit my shop.”
Molina was well aware of the male fascination with ladies of the evening, which was why she'd come here instead. That, and the terrible fix she was in over Matt Devine.
”This a priority case,” Molina said, not underestimating the habitual expression of skepticism Rothenberg employed with police officers of any rank or gender.
”One dead s.e.x-industry worker? Who would care? I'm grateful for the pull of your corporate masters, the hotels.”
”You should be. You and your girls make a h.e.l.l of a lot of money off the hotel trade.”
”We call them women.”
”Whatever you call them, they're call girls. I am not working vice here. I am not interested in your cynicism. I am not interested in the s.h.i.+ning career path of the victim. I'm interested in her death, and how it happened. Any insight?”
”Va.s.sar wasn't accident-p.r.o.ne, or suicidal.”
”How do you know?”
”I know my employees. That's the point of them working for me instead of a pimp.”
”So what was Va.s.sar's personal background?”
”It was all in her working handle. She was a Va.s.sar graduate who decided to freelance instead of struggling up a ladder with a gla.s.s ceiling in some corporation run by greedy white men.”
”Hooking was an improvement?”
”When you work for me it is.”
”What about her family? Where was she born?”
”I don't know any of that, and I don't keep records on my employees. It only provides ammunition for the police and the moral vigilantes.”
”And you say you 'know' your employees?”
”Enough to do business. Their pasts are their property. I know their present state of mind. That's enough. I don't take on women with abuse or control issues.”
”Aren't those the women who could most use a compa.s.sionate pimp?”
”I am not a pimp. I'm an office manager. My point is that ordinary, well-balanced, well-educated women should be free to pursue whatever line of work they find most rewarding. That corporate ladder-climber often finds she has to sleep her way up a rung anyway. For nothing.”
”Somehow I thought you operated more like a dorm mother.”
”No. We are all involved in a business enterprise. A business that should be legitimatized.”
”Never happen in Las Vegas and the rest of the real world. A few Nevada counties that okay operating 'chicken ranches' don't make a trend.”
”That doesn't mean I can't keep working at it. My employees are never coerced, they are drug- and diseasefree-that I make sure of-and they're not alcoholics. They are working women in the s.e.x industry. I pay them well, and it would be even more if I didn't have to maintain a legal fund to defend them from hara.s.sment by the puritanical authorities. Are you puritanical, Lieutenant?”
”Probably. By your standards.” Molina couldn't help smiling. ”You enjoy cop-baiting, don't you?”
”I enjoy hara.s.sing back a society that hara.s.ses women from the git-go, yes.”
”I've read the print interviews with you. I know your position. Prost.i.tution should be legal, regulated, and an upstanding profession. Prost.i.tutes should either be free agents, or represented by a 'manager' like yourself, who provides a 'support system.' How you are not a parasite like any street pimp, I don't know.”
”First, I'm the same gender as my workers. There's no male domination involved. Second, I do pay and protect my employees. To the wall.”
”I know you've done jail time in support of your 'principles.' ”
”Principles with quotes around them, Lieutenant? Your bias is showing.”