Below the Line by Lowell Cauffiel

Author:Lowell Cauffiel [Cauffiel, Lowell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781956763492
Published: 2023-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

26

POOLE WAS PRETTY SURE WHAT he was looking at as he watched the house in Studio City after Blake went inside. Men picking up nicely dressed girls one at a time. Probably their drivers. A biker showing up. Inside for only a few minutes and then leaving quickly. The guy fetching the cash drop, Poole guessed. He’d picked up for a few operations like that himself in the past. Escort services located in good neighborhoods. A half dozen girls sharing a home or large apartment, catering to both in-call and out-call.

Blake was visiting your basic LA whorehouse, Poole decided, the man no doubt spending more of his big earnings.

Poole checked his watch. He’d been tailing Blake all day. He considered calling it a night. Go back to the hotel. Get a couple drinks at the bar. Maybe hit the whirlpool. Call Dagney to see how the kid was doing. Hopefully, Dagney wouldn’t be a pain in the ass and demand he pick up the kid again.

But as the sun fell below the hills, Poole decided to move in for a closer look. He pulled the Beretta Tomcat from its ankle holster and slipped it into his windbreaker. He like the pistol because it was so concealable, one of the smallest .32 caliber semi-autos ever made. It carried seven rounds. But there was no need to rack the slide to chamber a shell. The barrel popped up so you could place in a single bullet. On certain jobs, Poole never fired more than one bullet. If you needed more than one, you weren’t qualified for that type of work.

The property was perched under a slope surrounded by a thick tree line. Poole quietly opened and closed the door on the Camry. He crossed the street so he could hug a fence line. It was getting dark now. His plan was to approach the house and peek through the windows. But as he got closer, he heard music coming from the back. He carefully worked his way through a thick stand of young eucalyptus trees. He was only fifty feet away when he saw the patio lined with tiny lights.

Blake, sitting there. Not talking. Listening to a woman sitting across from him. She was talking and gesturing a lot. He couldn’t make out what she was saying. He couldn’t see her face.

But Blake didn’t look pleased. If he’d shown up for a friendly in-call, he was getting none of that. He looked like a guy taking a lecture from his mother or a pissed off girlfriend. Finally, the woman stood up and snatched a cup off the table, turned around and walked into the house.

Now Poole recognized her. Not all decked out like she was at the restaurant. This time she was wearing tight jeans and a blouse. He thought, former detective hooking up with a whore, or more likely, the brothel’s madam. He’d seen that kind of thing with cops on the take in Vegas.

Ex-cop Edwin Blake, he decided, was no fucking choirboy.

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