“There is a confidentiality issue there. I don’t want her dragged into this. She doesn’t know anything and has nothing to do with this.”
I shook my head as though I was dealing with a child.
“For now, Andre, I’ll let it pass. But if I take this case, I will at some point need to know who referred her. And you cannot be the one who decides whether someone or something has relevance to the case. I decide that. You understand?”
He nodded.
“I’ll get a message to her,” he said. “As soon as I have her okay, I will connect you. But I do not lie and I do not betray confidences. My business and my life are built on trust.”
“Good.”
“And what do you mean, ‘if I take the case’? I thought you took the case. I mean, you’re here, aren’t you?”
“I’m still deciding.”
I checked my watch. The sergeant I checked in with said I would get only a half hour with La Cosse. I still had three separate areas of discussion to cover—the victim, the crime, and my compensation.
“We don’t have a lot of time, so let’s move on. When was the last time you saw Giselle Dallinger in person?”
“Sunday night late—and when I left her she was alive.”
“Where?”
“At her apartment.”
“Why did you go there?”
“I went to get money from her but I didn’t get any.”
“What money and why didn’t you get it?”
“She went out on a job and my arrangement with her is I get paid a percentage of what she makes. I had set her up on a Pretty Woman Special and I wanted my share—these girls, if you don’t get the money right away, it has a tendency to disappear up their noses and other places.”
I wrote down a summary of what he had just said even though I wasn’t sure what most of it meant.
“Are you saying that Giselle was a drug user?”
“I would say so, yes. Not out of control, but it’s part of the job and part of the life.”
“Tell me about the Pretty Woman Special. What does that mean?”
“The client takes a suite at the Beverly Wilshire like in the movie Pretty Woman. Giz had the Julia Roberts thing going, you know? Especially after I had her photos airbrushed. I assume you can figure it out from there.”
I had never seen the movie but knew it was a story about a prostitute with a heart of gold meeting the man of her dreams on a paid date at the Beverly Wilshire.
“How much was the fee for that?”
“It was supposed to be twenty-five hundred.”
“And your take?”
“A thousand, but there was no take. She said it was a dead call.”
“What’s that?”
“She gets there and there’s nobody home, or whoever answers the door says he didn’t call for her. I check these things out as best as I can. I check IDs, everything.”
“So you didn’t believe her.”
“Let’s just say I was suspicious. I had talked to the man in that room. I called him through the hotel operator. But she claimed there was nobody there and the room wasn’t even rented.”
“So you argued about it?”
“A little bit.”
“And you hit her.”
“What? No! I have never hit a woman. I’ve never hit a man, either! I didn’t do this. Can’t you be—”
“Look, Andre, I’m just gathering information here. So you didn’t hit her or hurt her. Did you physically touch her anywhere?”
La Cosse hesitated and in that I knew there was a problem.
“Tell me, Andre.”
“Well, I grabbed her. She wouldn’t look at me and so that made me think she was lying. So I grabbed her up around her neck—with one hand only. She got mad and I got mad and that was it. I left.”
“Nothing else?”
“No, nothing. Well, out on the street, when I was going to my car, she threw an ashtray down at me from her balcony. It missed.”
“But how did you leave it when you were up in the apartment?”
“I said I was going to go back to the hotel and knock on the guy’s door myself and get our money. And I left.”
“What room was it and what was the guy’s name?”
“He was in eight thirty-seven. His name was Daniel Price.”
“Did you go to the hotel?”
“No, I just went home. I decided it wasn’t worth it.”
“It seemed worth it when you grabbed her by the throat.”
He nodded at the inconsistency but didn’t offer any further explanation. I moved off the subject—for now.
“Okay, then what happened? When did the police come?”
“They showed up at about five yesterday.”
“Morning or afternoon?”
“Afternoon.”
“Did they say how they came up with you?”
“They knew about her website. That led to me. They said they had questions and I agreed to talk to them.”
Always a mistake, voluntarily talking to the cops.
“Do you remember their names?”