Death Turns A Trick (Rebecca Schwartz #1) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

cleaning up, and Elena sent her to your house to return it. I live in North Beach—on the low-rent side of Telegraph Hill—so I asked Kandi to drop me off.”
    “Why didn’t Elena send the purse with you, then?”
    “I don’t have a car, and I was tired and I wanted to go home. We didn’t know if you’d be home or if someone would have to wait for you, or what.” She gave it one last little self-righteous shot: “Anyway, Kandi was still on duty.”
    “How’s that?”
    “The senator plunked down five hundred dollars for the pleasure of greeting the dawn with her,” said Elena. “That meant half for the house and the other half for her. But he was gone, and I figured Kandi might as well do something to earn her two-fifty.”
    “Besides,” said Stacy, “it was easier than fighting with me about it.” Her voice was unmistakably malicious.
    Elena sighed. “You got it, honey.”
    “It was a kind of special occasion for the senator,” she continued. “He spent the afternoon with Stacy and Kandi.”
    “Wait a minute,” I said. “You mean the senator spent the afternoon with Kandi and Stacy, then wanted a whole night with Kandi? What kind of freaks have we got in Sacramento?”
    “He has a thing about being recognized and, as you have no doubt gathered, very specific tastes. He would always come in the back door and have Kandi meet him in the kitchen, which of course was always locked when he was expected. She would be wearing a costume, a description of which I’ll spare your middle-class ears, and she’d be holding a candle. Otherwise, the kitchen would be dark. We even have special window coverings for his visits.
    “I believe he and Kandi had some sort of dialogue they had to go through, the gist of which was that he was Kandi’s slave. Kandi would undress him, handcuff and blindfold him, and put him in that black robe you had the misfortune to see. Then she’d lead him downstairs to the ‘torture chamber’ and tie him up. Part of the deal was that he had to be left alone for long periods of time while Kandi was turning tricks. That was part of the ‘torture,’ if you see what I mean.
    “She’d come back at intervals and do various entertaining things for him, some fairly conventional, some a bit on the imaginative side. That armoire is full of all sorts of things you don’t want to know about. Anyhow, when we closed up for the night, he always left, because it ceased to amuse him if Kandi wasn’t making it with other men between visits. A cool five hundred dollars every time.”
    “I thought you said something about greeting the dawn.”
    “The money covered that, but he never stayed past three o’clock.”
    “Go on.”
    “Well, he’d always wanted a session in the waterbed room with two women, but he never had the nerve to go upstairs when we were open for business. He tried to make his usual appointment for Friday, but I told him we’d be closed because of the party. He seemed to think that would be even more exciting than the usual routine—God knows why—and furthermore, since the house was also closed that afternoon, it meant he could go upstairs then. He offered me a hundred dollars each for Kandi and Stacy in the afternoon, then the usual five hundred dollars for the night.” She shrugged.
    “That was nearly as much as we were getting for the whole damned party, and it meant I’d have Kandi as an extra hand at the party. The purpose of the party wasn’t for the money—one thousand dollars is about what we make in an hour on a good night—it was to get those FDOs interested in coming back as customers. And Kandi was quite a drawing card. So I didn’t see how I could refuse.”
    “The little snit,” said Stacy.
    “Don’t be jealous, dear,” said Elena. “The senator specifically requested you for the afternoon.”
    Stacy showed her sharp little teeth. “I’m flattered as hell.”
    I changed the subject. “You two had better be careful the next time you give a party. If there’s ever a real raid, you can’t count on the lights going off so conveniently again.” Stacy whooped. Even Elena couldn’t suppress a mild giggle.
    “Did I say something?”
    “My poor innocent,” said Elena. “That’s the only thing we
can
count on. Didn’t you think it was a hell of a coincidence? I just flipped a little switch under the mantel.”
    “Oh.” I was so put out I asked a question I already knew the answer to. “How’d the FDOs know about your place if