“Hey, ya think?” She smiled.
“Now you know why I have to pay for sex.”
“Intimacy,” she said.
“Yes.”
“A choice,” she said.
“It is,” I said. “Or should be.”
She nodded slightly, as if confirming some private thought. Then she took off her clothes and helped me with mine. Then she did the things Janet used to do to me all those years ago, things she was surely doing to Ken Chapman every night for free.
Lauren held me afterward and kissed my cheek.
“Just for the sake of argument,” she said, “how much would you have paid?”
“I see you had better luck finding me this time,” Joseph DeMeo said, flashing a grin I knew to be insincere. It was Saturday, and we were in the George Washington section of Hollywood Hills Cemetery near Griffth Park. DeMeo stood on the landing above the sidewalk next to the flagstone wall that shaded Buster Keaton’s grave. He wore a black suit and a lavender silk shirt, buttoned all the way up, with no tie. DeMeo was flanked on either side by two dead-eyed thugs whose ill-fitting suits could barely contain their musculature.
“Your pets look uncomfortable,” I said. “I hope they didn’t squeeze into their prom suits just for me.”
“No need to taunt,” DeMeo said. “We’re all friends here.”
“That right?” I said to the goons. We all looked at each other a minute, trying to decide who could take whom, if it came down to it, and how best to do it. I didn’t know these particular guys but I knew their type. Violence leaked out of them like stink on a wino.
Joseph DeMeo chuckled and walked down the steps toward me. “Walk with me,” he said and passed me without shaking hands. I stood my ground. I wasn’t comfortable walking with him if it meant turning my back on his goons. DeMeo chuckled again and said, “Don’t worry about them. They’ll follow at a respectful distance. Same as your giant,” he added.
His comment rattled me. Quinn was my only backup, which meant he and I were as good as dead. Unless I could convince DeMeo I had another backup. In the meantime I had to display confidence.
“Big as he is,” I said, “not many people can make Quinn. What’d he do, fall asleep?”
“I have the advantage that comes with setting the location,” DeMeo said.
“Speaking of which,” I said, “what’s this fascination you have with cemeteries? Two years ago, it was Inglewood Park, James Jeffries’ grave. This time it’s Hollywood Hills, Buster Keaton.”
“I meet people where it is fitting to do so. If you were an artist, I’d meet you at a gallery or art museum.”
