“No need.” Rick leapt from his desk and strode to one of his filing cabinets, yanking open a drawer. “I’ve been waiting years for someone to walk through that door and make me an offer.”
Scout and I exchanged incredulous looks. “Please tell me you’re serious,” she said.
Brooks twisted in his chair. “You thought someone would be back for dirt on Easton?”
“Not Easton.” Rick seized a fat folder out of the file cabinet and dropped it with a thud on his conference table. “Gabriel Knox.”
The three of us glanced at one another—then, as one, we scrambled for the table.
“Hold your horses.” Rick laid a hand on the folder. “You want what’s in this file, you gotta pony up.”
Bile climbed my throat. Beside me, Brooks stiffened. But Scout stayed cool. “How much?”
“Hmm.” Rick sized her up, trying to take measure of her need, sense its value. “Twenty thousand.”
“What the fuck?” Brooks yelped. “That’s insane.”
“It’s extortion,” I said.
“No, it’s American capitalism,” said Rick. “Listen, you folks are lucky you got here first. I was about to make Knox’s campaign an offer on this baby.” He tapped the file. “Can you imagine how much they’d pay to make sure their opponents never saw what’s in here? He’s a billionaire running for president. Those are some deep pockets. If anything, I’m cutting you a deal ’cause you seem like decent people, helping with Bolero and all.”
Brooks snorted, but Scout, after taking a deep breath, said, “I’ll pay.”
I whipped my head to her. “Do you even have that?” The money from Scout’s booming record sales would take ages, maybe even a year, to trickle in.
“I’ll use my savings,” she said, then took out her phone and started typing. “I’m sending an email to my money manager right now. Rick Flores, PI.” She showed him her screen. “See? Now show us the photos.”
Whatever email Rick saw on Scout’s screen must’ve satisfied him, because he flicked open the file. The first shot was a large color photo, blown up to eight by eleven, of a group of men in suits sunk low into couches in the VIP section of a club. It took me a second to place the vivid viper green before I realized it was the Serpent Room. Unease crawled through me. The Serpent was our place.
“Easton, Reese, and Gabriel,” Brooks said, tapping each of them in the photo. “And is that…” He frowned. “Hardy Martin?”
“The actor?” I squinted at the photo, and sure enough, it was a younger Hardy, back when he’d grown out his hair for a string of dramatic roles, trying to put his A-list action star status behind him. “I didn’t know Hardy and Easton were friends.”
“All sorts of people came in and out of their circle,” said Rick, folding his arms. He spoke with a confident ease, like he had a PhD in Easton Banks. “Sometimes a big-name celebrity or an NFL star would join them for a night, or even stick around for a few months.But Easton, Reese, and Gabriel were the core.” He sighed. “What I wouldn’t give to have snapped some shots of Reese at the Beverly Hilton. Could’ve sold those suckers for a pretty penny when his accusations broke.”
Brooks took a step away from Rick, like the man physically repulsed him. It brought him close enough to me that I could feel the soft hairs on his forearm brush mine.
Scout flipped impatiently through the pictures, murmuring, “So many scantily clad women.” Easton was the focus of the shots, which made sense given the investigator’s assignment, but Reese and Gabriel were in the majority. It was like touring through the seediest parts of old Hollywood, the version that had existed back when we moved here, before LA had grown its meager moral compass: women crowding the stage at strip clubs, grainy images of sex in darkened hotel suites, the shots obviously taken through open windows, topless women straddling Reese’s lap, Easton licking something off a woman’s inner thigh, Gabriel leading women by the hand into opaque-tinted town cars.
Brooks picked up one of the shots from a strip club. “How’d you get this? Strip clubs don’t allow photos.”
“You’d be surprised how easy it is, actually,” said Rick. “Keep your surveillance subtle and tip well, and the staff will usually let things slide. Everyone has a price. You just gotta figure out what it is.” Rick shifted on his feet. “I know these shots seem like your run-of-the-mill CEOs behaving badly,” Rick said, “but trust me, these guys were a different breed.”
I looked up at him as Scout kept flipping. “How do you mean?”
“They were the kings of the after-party. Most nights, they’d take a handful of girls back to one of their houses,” said Rick, “and I’d lose them because of security—gates, guards, whatever. I never knew how those nights ended, but I figured sex, drugs, blah blah, vanilla. Then this one night, I ran back into a girl I recognized. She’d worked at the Lucky Rhino—you know, that high-end strip club? Went home with them, back to one of Gabriel’s houses. I asked her about it, but she refused to talk. Got this real fearful look, you know? Practically ran away from me. I’ve been in this business for three decades, and I’d never seen a reaction like that. Gave me an uneasy feeling.”
Scout eyed him. “You think they were doing something weird with the girls?”
His expression turned pensive. “I think those guys had too much money and too few rules. Too many people bowing to them. It’s a bad recipe. Makes you feel like you’re God. Like you can indulge all your basest desires and no one will do shit.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“May I?” Rick thumbed through the photos, taking over from Scout. “Lila Baumgarten wasn’t too interested in these, said all they proved was Easton was a shitty husband. But here—thiswas the money shot.” He swept a pile of photos away to reveal a blown-up picture of Easton at a bar, a girl in his lap, giggling while he kissed her neck. The girl looked familiar.
“Holy shit,” Scout said, picking up the photo. “That’s Hardy Martin’s daughter.” She turned to me. “Remember that night we went out to that crappy bar and Emmy and Dakota drugged her because she pissed them off?”
The memory clicked into place. “Mallory Martin. She was in high school with Dakota.” I gaped at the series of photos, which showed Easton and Mallory in a variety of compromising positions. “Jesus. He’s disgusting.”
