I kept the red car in sight, getting close enough to recognize its elegant shape. The car was a Porsche.
My face got hot as my fear and anger came together. I gunned my engine, following the Porsche as it wove through traffic, crossing the double yellow line repeatedly.
The last time I’d seen that car, Keith had been fixing the oil pan.
It was Dennis Agnew’s car.
A dozen miles flew by. I was still on the Porsche’s tail when we went up and over the hills into San Mateo and south on El Camino Real, a seedy thoroughfare bordering the Caltrain tracks. Then, without signaling, the Porsche hooked a sharp right into a strip mall entrance.
I followed, squealing into the turn, coming to a stop in a nearly desolate parking lot. I turned off the engine, and as my racing heart slowed to a canter, I looked around.
The minimall was a down-market collection of retail shops: auto parts, a Dollar Store, a liquor store. Down at the far end of the lot was a square cement-block building with a red neon sign in the window: Playmate Pen. XXX Live Girls.
Parked in front of the poster-plastered storefront was Dennis Agnew’s car.
I locked the Explorer and walked the twenty yards to the porn shop. I opened the door and went inside.
Chapter 66
THE PLAYMATE PEN WAS an ugly place lit by harsh overhead lights and flashing neon. To my left were racks of party toys: dildos and ticklers in garish colors and molded body parts in lifelike plastic. To my right were soda and snack machines—refreshment for all those film lovers trapped inside tiny video booths with their brains hooked into their fantasies, hands firmly on their joysticks.
I felt eyes tracking me as I walked the narrow aisles lined with videos. I was the only female wandering loose in the place, and I guess I stood out more in my slacks and blazer than if I’d been stark naked.
I was about to approach the clerk in front when I felt a dark presence at my elbow.
“Lindsay?”
I started—but Dennis Agnew looked thrilled to see me.
“To what do I owe the honor, Lieutenant?”
I was caught in a maze of stacks and racks of chicks-and-dicks, but like a steer in the chute of a slaughterhouse, I could see that the only way out was straight ahead.
Agnew’s office was a brightly lit, windowless cubicle. He took the chair behind a wood-grain Formica desk and indicated where I should sit—a black leather sofa that had seen better days.
“I’ll stand. This isn’t going to take long,” I said, but as I stood there in the doorway, I had to look around the room.
Every wall was hung with framed photos signed to “Randy Long” from G-stringed lovelies, porn film publicity stills of overheated couplings featuring Randy Long and his partners. I also saw a few flashbulb snapshots of Agnew posing with grinning guys in suits.
Bells started clanging as I matched the mugs of young up-and-coming wiseguys to the mobsters they’d later become. At least two of the suits were now dead.
It took me another couple of seconds to realize that Dennis Agnew and the younger, long-haired Randy Long in the photos were one and the same. Agnew had been a freaking porn star.
Chapter 67
“SO, LIEUTENANT, WHAT CAN I do you for?” Dennis Agnew said, smiling, making neat stacks of his papers, corraling a loose pile of cock rings, pouring them like coins from one hand to another, then onto the desktop.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to pull,” I said, “but where I come from, running a car off the road is a crime.”
“Seriously, Lindsay. You don’t mind if I call you Lindsay?” Agnew folded his hands and gave me one of his bleached-beyond-white smiles. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s crap. Twenty minutes ago you ran me off the road. People could’ve been killed. I could’ve been killed.”
“Oh. No. Couldn’t have been me,” Agnew said, furrowing his brow and shaking his head. “I think I would’ve noticed that. No, I think you’ve come here because you want to see me.”
It was infuriating. Not just that Agnew was a creep with a fast car who didn’t give a shit, but his mocking attitude really fried me.
“See these girls?” he said, hooking a thumb toward his “wall of fame.” “You know why they do these flicks? Their self-esteem is so low they think by debasing themselves with men, they’ll actually feel more powerful. Isn’t that ridiculous? And look at you. Debasing yourself by coming here. Does it make you feel powerful?”