“You know, looking like you do, you could make a lot of money yourself.”
“Thanks for thinking of me,” I quipped. “Just be careful.”
“Of what?” he teased me. “Too much sex and money?”
We hadn’t spoken for two weeks after that, and he stopped coming to class. I figured he’d dropped out until he cornered me on my way to the parking garage at the end of one of my long days.
“Jesus,” I mumbled, shocked at his gaunt, hollow-eyed appearance. “How long has it been since you ate or slept?”
“It’s fine. I just—I’m sorry for blowing off your calls and texts when you were just being a friend and checking up on me. Are we okay?”
I thought he was going to cry. “I’m more worried about you now than I was before.”
“It’s fine, I’m fine. Don’t worry.”
“Let’s at least get something to eat, all right?” I couldn’t help it; I was a youth counselor down deep. It was ingrained in me to find and offer solutions, the most basic of which was sustenance.
It took a bit of convincing, but he finally relented.
He disappeared again after that. I hadn’t seen him in class, and when I went by his dorm room, he wasn’t there either. My calls went to voicemail, and I found myself writing him off until he’d called out of the blue and asked me to take his escorting gig. It was the money, a grand, that made me say yes to him.
“A thousand dollars just to go to dinner?” I asked him. “Are you kidding?”
“Look, if he wants more and you don’t want to, that’s your choice, all you have to do is tell him. Gina always says it’s up to us.”
I didn’t believe that for a second. Gina was a procurer, and she knew exactly what her customers wanted. And it definitely wasn’t just dinner.
“I’ll get the money sent to me as soon as the guy tells Gina I’m there, and I’ll forward it right to your bank account.”
It sounded good, easy, so I went along. But now the police had Shawn and I had a detective on the phone.
“Why is he in protective custody?” I asked the detective, trying not to sound pained but having trouble. “And what does it have to do with me?”
“Shawn has run afoul of the Brotherhood of Folsom Shield.”
“I have no idea what that is.”
“They were a biker gang about three years ago, but now they’re moving a fair amount of drugs and guns.”
“Okay, but Shawn’s not a drug dealer or a gun runner, so what’s the connection?”
“It sounds like you know Shawn well.”
“Because I know he’s not a criminal? Really? That’s your criteria for knowing someone?”
“Fine,” he replied irritably. “But you’re saying you never hung out with him?”
“I don’t have time. I work and go to school. I only know him from class.”
“And yet you accepted the escort job he offered you.”
Shit. “Am I in trouble?”
“Did you do something?”
“Yeah. You just said. I accepted the job from him.”
“And you’re going to school to be a social worker.”
I tensed, seeing my entire future flushed down the toilet. “Being an escort isn’t against the law, and if you’re going to talk to my advisor, I––”
“No, no, that’s not what this is at all. We know you were doing him the favor, and nothing about him not showing up was planned. We have his texts back and forth to Gina.”
I took a breath. “So you’re not looking to mess with me?”
“Not at all.”
“Then what do you need from me?”
“Anything at all that stood out for you in your conversations with Shawn.”
My heart was still hammering, but I was calming. “I don’t know what that means, and even more than that, I’m confused. You have him, you have Shawn, you can ask him questions, so why’re you calling me?”
“Because Shawn seems like the kind of guy who isn’t aware of what’s happening most of the time, but he talks a lot.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“We’re hoping to find out from his friends anything he might have mentioned in passing or just, like I said, stuck in your head.”
“Again, we’re not friends.”
“Classmates, yes, sorry.”
“The only thing we talked about that had nothing to do with class was the escort thing, and then when he called me to do him that favor.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know if you’ve talked to Gina, his pimp or whatever, but he made it sound like she was going to murder him if he didn’t show up.”
“Yeah, we already talked to her, but it’s far less sinister than it sounds. Her business is legitimate, as far as it goes, but he’d been flaking on assignments right and left, so she was ready to kick him to the curb.”
“Oh,” I mumbled, understanding then that she was threatening him with termination, not death. He’d told me she would kill him, but she wouldn’t have done more than fire him. All the panic I’d heard in his voice had been over losing his job. “Can I ask a question?”