I served for years as a pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps. I’ve been trained to spot a glint of metal or a puff of smoke on the ground from ten thousand feet up. In the dark.
But I didn’t need pilot’s training to recognize the filth right in front of me.
The man called Gozan Remari sat in an armchair with the hauteur of a prince. He looked to be about fifty, white-haired with gold-colored, catlike eyes. Remari wore an expensive handmade jacket, an open pin-striped shirt, a heavy gold watch, and nothing else—not even an expression of surprise or anger that cops were coming through the door.
A nude woman lay at his feet, bound with silk ties. Her arms and legs were spread and she was anchored hand and foot to a chair, an ottoman, a table, as if she were a luna moth pinned to a board. I saw bluish handprints on her skin, and food had been smeared on her body.
There was an arched entrance to my right that led to a bedroom. And there, in plain sight, was Khezir Mazul. He was naked, sitting up in bed, smoking a cigar. A young woman, also naked, was stretched on her back across his lap, her head over the side of the bed. A thin line of blood arced across her throat, and I saw a steak knife on the cream-colored satin blanket.
From where I stood in the doorway, I couldn’t tell if the women were unconscious or dead.
Captain Warren yanked Gozan Remari to his feet and cuffed his hands behind his back. He said, “You’re under arrest for assault. You have the right to remain silent, you piece of crap.”
The younger dirtbag stood up, let the woman on his lap roll away from him, off the bed and onto the floor. Khezir Mazul was powerfully built, tattooed on most of his body with symbols I didn’t recognize.
He entered the living room and said to Captain Warren in the most bored tones imaginable, “We’ve done nothing. Do you know the word con-shen-sul? This is not any kind of assault. These women came here willingly with us. Ask them. They came here to party. As you say here, ‘We aim to please.’”
Then he laughed. Laughed.
I stepped over the room-service cart and went directly to the woman lying near me on the floor. Her breathing was shallow, and her skin was cool. She was going into shock.
My hands shook as I untied her wrists and ankles.
I said, “Everything is going to be okay. What’s your name? Can you tell me your name?”
Cops came through the back door, and one of them called for medical backup. Next, hotel management and two guests came in the front. Bungalow six was becoming a circus.
I ripped a cashmere throw from the sofa and covered the woman’s body. I helped her into a chair, put my jacket around her shoulders.
She opened her eyes and tears spilled down her cheeks. “My daughter,” the woman said to me. “Where is she? Is she—”
I heard the cop behind me say into the phone, “Two females; one in her forties, the other is late teens, maybe early twenties. She’s bleeding from a knife wound to her neck. Both of them are breathing.”
I said to the woman whose name I didn’t know, “Your daughter is just over there, in the bedroom. She’s going to be all right. Help is coming.”
Clasping the blanket to her body, the woman turned to see her daughter being assisted to her feet.
A siren wailed. The woman reached up and pressed her damp cheek to mine. She hugged me tight with her free arm.
“It’s my fault. I screwed up,” she said. “Thank you for helping us.”
/> THE HOT SPRAY beat on me from six showerheads. Justine lightly placed her palms on my chest, tipped her hips against mine.
She said, “Someone needs a massage. I think that could be you.”
“Okay.”
Okay to whatever she wanted to do. It wasn’t just my car that could go from zero to ninety in ten seconds. Justine had that effect on me.
As she rubbed shower gel between her hands, sending up the scent of pine and ginseng, she looked me up and down. “I don’t know whether to go from top to bottom or the other way around,” she said.
“Dealer’s choice,” I said.
She was laughing, enjoying her power over me when my cell phone rang. My fault for bringing it into the bathroom, but I was expecting a call from the head of our Budapest office, who’d said he’d try to call me between flights.
Justine said, “Here’s a joke. Don’t take the call.”
I looked through the shower doors to where my phone sat at the edge of the sink. The caller ID read Capt. L. Warren. It could only be about the rapists the cops had just arrested at the Beverly Hills Hotel.