Sunday
2:21 pm
I learned early on to approach my cases differently from
the way the cops approach theirs. I have
fewer resources than they do, but I also have fewer rules. Besides, there’s no point in retracing their
footsteps. I jotted down some notes and
ideas about the case. Who knew the victim? Who were her friends, lovers, family, and
co-workers?
I
stretched out on the sofa and punched Raven’s number into my cellphone.
“I’ll
need to talk to Kitty’s ex-boyfriends,” I said. “Sam and Corey.”
“I don’t
know how much help they’ll be,” Raven said.
“Like I said, she wasn’t with either guy for very long.”
“Doesn’t
matter. How can I reach them?”
Raven rattled off two phone
numbers. I dialed Sam’s first and got a
recording. This mailbox is full. I
tried Corey next.
“My name is Sasha Jackson. I’m a private investigator,” I said when Corey
picked up after the second ring. “I’m
looking into the death of Julie McPhee, although you might have known her as Kitty
Vixen.”
“Sorry. I can’t help you,” he said. And with that, the dial tone started humming
in my ear.
Wow.
My investigation wasn’t off to a very good start.
Sunday or not, tired or not, I decided
that I should try to be productive. I went
into the den of the Riverdale home I share with my dear old dad, Jack, and my
awesome brother, Shane. Neither one was
home right now, so I cranked up the tunes – Mötley Crüe – and started surfing
the internet. There were things I wanted
to know about the world of adult entertainment, and the internet seemed like a
good way to kick-start my investigation.
I thought it would be a good idea to learn more about the porno industry
and about the world Kitty had been a part of.
At least Google can’t hang up on me.
I found the website for XRatedCon
right away, and read up on the event.
The expo, which started in 1999, bills itself as the world’s largest
“adult entertainment and lifestyle” tradeshow. Participants could spend time in the
‘interactive fetish playhouse’, or they could attend the porn industry’s
version of the Academy Awards, premium ticket holders could go to ‘private
parties’, and anyone with extra cash could get rid of it at any of the two
hundred exhibitor booths. The vendors
were promoting everything from live sex chats, to edible condoms and flavoured
motion lotion, to ‘lifelike’ silicone sex dolls that came with a variety of
wigs so their owners could pretend to have several girlfriends. Some of the dolls were priced at eight
thousand dollars.
Wow.
I surfed around a bit more and found a
newspaper article discussing the economic impact of the event. Apparently, more than 200,000 people visit
the expo in Los Angeles every year, hotel rooms are sold out months in advance,
and the convention does upwards of a couple million dollars in business annually. There was speculation that the show’s
promoters were going to start doing two expos a year to meet demand.
Wow.
I surfed a bit more to get a sense about
the adult movie industry, and was pretty gobsmacked by what I learned. The United States makes over fifteen thousand
adult flicks a year, and they’re not the only place producing them. In fact, the worldwide porn industry is worth
upwards of $100 billion. I read it
again. Yes: $100 Billion.
Holy
smokes.
I tried to reconcile that number with the
thousand bucks a day that Raven said the actresses are paid. How many girls would have to be exploited in
order to generate revenues like that?
What kinds of profit margins are we talking about here?
That was enough general background for
now, so next I clicked onto the website for Triple A, Triple X in order to
learn a little bit about Kitty’s former employer. Their homepage was even sleazier than I
expected, and I had a feeling that the Members’
Only pages would make me want to bleach my brain. That’s saying a lot, given my previous
case-load, and my brief stint working at a phone-sex hotline.
A link near the bottom of the webpage
offered the usual disclaimers and over-eighteen legal mumbo jumbo. Next to that was a tab labelled Work For
Us.
Here
we go...
If I had dreams of a career in the
dirty movie biz, I could probably be on my way to x-rated stardom in under an
hour. The webpage had a pop-up screen
confirming that all applicants are eighteen years or older. I clicked the box that said “yes” and
continued.
Apparently, Triple A, Triple X’s
recruitment process begins with three photos, one of which has to be a
full-length nude picture, and no more than one of the three pics could be in
black and white. The photos were to be
attached to the online pre-employment survey of the candidate’s willingness and
experience. There were boxes for
activities like “girl on girl” and “bondage” and “oral” next to which the potential
actress could click “yes” or “no”. I
wasn’t surprised that there was no box asking for references. Also not surprisingly, the application didn’t
request academic transcripts. A notice
at the bottom of the page said that all applicants would be considered for movies,
or live web chats, or both, and that in either case, an audition would be
required.
Gawd,
I bet that could take the ‘casting couch’ cliché to another level.
According to the About Us section, AAA-XXX has made over 600 videos since they were
founded about a decade ago. Wow. That’s a lot of smut. Horndogs could search movies by keywords,
like “Back Door” and “Gang Bang,” or look through titles alphabetically, or
search by actors’ names. Movies could be
downloaded for as little as $3.99, and there was a link for private live web
chats, starting at $15.99 for 30 minutes.
As well, “premium members’” could pay a flat monthly fee for two hours
of web chats, plus unlimited movies. Wow. Sex on the internet is cheaper than I
imagined.
My father has a rather foolish habit
of leaving his extra credit cards in the top drawer of his desk. No doubt, when he gets home from his current gambling
trip, and receives his next Visa statement, he’ll be shocked to see how much he spent this month on adult
entertainment.
I downloaded a number of exceptionally
tasteless porno flicks with absurdly uninspired titles, like Mmmmmuffdiving and Full Frontal Fun and Adult
Toy Story.
I watched the first few minutes of
several Kitty Vixen movies. Kitty was exceptionally
hot. A luscious blond with full lips,
come-hither green eyes, and a body that wouldn’t quit. I could see why anyone would be sexually
stimulated by her. The current video was
supposed to be a gang bang at a summer picnic.
Kitty was spread-eagle on a picnic table, covered in melting ice cream,
and the guys around her were doing disturbingly creative things with
strawberries and hot dogs. Yikes.
I reminded myself that this was the
same girl who had brought Raven chicken soup and had covered her half of the rent.
The moans and sighs of the flick were unbearable,
and completely unlike any of the sounds I’ve ever made with Derek or any other
bedmates. I muted the video and cranked up my heavy metal playlist. I growled along with Guns ’n Roses while I
watched the on-screen hump ’n grind. Too
bad Axl Rose turned out to be such an asshole, and that the band had broken up
so soon after hitting it big. Axl had killer
heavy metal pipes, and Guns ’n Roses was one of the rock groups that had
inspired me to pursue a career in the music biz. My lungs were just as powerful as Axl’s, my moves
were a bit more willowy, and I had better hair, but I’d never mastered the art
of being an asshole – which is the prerequisite for making it in the world of
rock ’n roll.
Maybe that’s all for the best,
though. Besides, being a private investigator is a pretty good
consolation prize, and, surprisingly, it makes frequent use of the skill set I
developed during the bar band days.
Bullshitting, flirting, and faking it can take you pretty far in either field.
As soon as I had a glimpse of the
entire cast, I advanced to the end of the video to read the credits. I made a list of all the cast members as the
credits scrolled across the screen. The
male actors’ names were either super-cheesy or hairball-hacking glottal, like
Darius Rockwell, Lance LeMans, Rory Swaine and Chad Fist. I bet in real life at least one of them had a
nerdy first name, like Eugene or Dilbert.
And Chad Fist sounds like he ought to be in gay porn. I’m
just saying...
Raven had mentioned that Kitty often
filmed with Clint Slade and Dixon Cash, so I zeroed in on movies with
them. After watching a few minutes of
Clint and Dixon in action, I could see why they were both cast in porno
movies. Although neither guy was
especially good looking, each one was hung like a Zanzibar donkey. Yowzah.
My iPod switched over to some
delightfully sour caterwauling from Buckcherry. Josh Todd and his band of bad boys were
going on about being too drunk to fuck, which wasn’t the case in the flicks I’d
seen so far this afternoon.
A few female actresses had appeared in
multiple movies with Kitty, so I wrote down those names as well. The feminine porno names were even cornier
than the masculine ones. There was
Trinity Splitz, Crystal Frost, Misty Chambers, Tatiana Mounds, and Portia St.
Germaine. I remembered that Raven said
that Trinity and Crystal had chipped in to hire me, and Portia St. Germaine
sounds like she ought to be on a soap opera.
I heard a car pull into the driveway,
so I shut down the computer and wandered into the kitchen. Shane and his girlfriend Lindsey – who’s been
my best friend since we were in training bras – were unpacking groceries.
“What are you doing here?” Shane
asked, making zero effort to disguise his annoyance.
“Ummm, I live here,” I said.
“I thought Lindsey and I had the place
to ourselves,” he kvetched.
Lindsey didn’t miss a beat. “Don’t be a jerk Shane.”
This is why Lindsey’s my best
friend. I love people who speak without
thinking.
“Sorry. I just thought that, you know, with Dad out
of town, and I hardly ever get a Sunday off...” Shane mumbled.
Our dad had retired a few years ago
from his job as a math professor at the University of Toronto. His numero
uno pastime for his Golden Years is spent putting statistical probability to
work as a professional Blackjack player.
This week, dad is in the Bahamas, trying hard to relieve the Atlantis
casino of some of their money. His
latest Blackjack theory has something to do with something called Idiot Insurance Camouflage, which is even
more boring than it sounds.
“Never mind,” I said to Shane. “I can make myself scarce. I forgot you were off today.”
Shane is the Executive Chef
Extraordinaire and co-owner of Pastiche, one of the premiere dining spots in
Toronto. Pastiche is a très cool
contemporary restaurant, serving mouth watering dishes - like smoked duck with sour cherries, or fennel
crusted tuna steaks - that had opened to fantastic reviews not that long
ago. During his twenties, Shane had
slaved away in five star kitchens across Europe where he honed his skills,
always with the goal in mind to start his own place someday. It was nice now to see his dream come to
fruition. But, given the nature of his
business, it’s no surprise he works most weekends. As it happens, Lindsey, who is a real estate
agent, works wonky hours as well, so their leisure time together is predictably
unpredictable, except that it’s rarely on the weekend.
“Don’t be
silly,” Lindsey said, as she twisted a corkscrew into a bottle of Italian red.
“We’re doing Italian tonight—”
“Veal parmesan and Caesar salad,”
Shane said.
“Stick around. We bought way too much stuff.” Lindsey - never one to stand on ceremony,
such as letting the wine breathe - poured three glasses of Montepulciano and
took a sip from hers immediately.
“I’ll bail after my glass of
vino. I really should get to work. I have a new case,” I said.
I told them about Kitty Vixen’s murder
while Shane pounded veal medallions and Lindsey rinsed the romaine. My culinary reputation precedes me, so I
didn’t even offer to help, saving Lindsey and Shane the bother of having to
decline. I can fuck up a bowl of cereal.
“Porno stars? I’m sensing a theme here Sasha,” Lindsey
said.
“What? It’s not as if I go looking for
sex cases.”
“I’m just saying: bordellos, fetish
parties, and now dirty movies...” she said.
Shane piped in, “And let’s not forget
that you were working at a phone sex line when you landed your first major
case...”
“The clients find me...” I didn’t protest too loudly because it was
true.
Shane continued, “I hope you’ll stay
fully clothed when you solve this case.
And try not to kill anyone this time.”
I had no retort for the “fully
clothed” comment, again, because it was true.
But I flinched a little inwardly at the “kill anyone” remark, and was
irked by Shane’s insensitivity. How come
big brothers can be such jerks at times?
My last big case was a murder investigation
that involved a volatile collision of municipal politics and kinky sex. I solved the crime, but in doing so, I had
caused the death of another human being.
The person who had died was a truly despicable individual with
absolutely no redeeming features, so society hadn’t really lost out. But I still had mixed feelings about taking a
life. The Private Eye manuals don’t say
anything about dealing with guilt.
“So how are you going to tackle this
one?” Lindsey asked.
“The usual. Talk to a bunch of people and try to figure
out who’s lying. I’ll check out the
porno studio and talk to her co-stars, see what her family says, and her
ex-boyfriend.”
The world of detection lacks a
concrete set of Standard Operating Procedures.
Hunches, common sense, and chutzpah are usually all I’ve got to go
on. Lucky for me, I have an abundance
of each.
