The chairs were hung with what looked like camera bags and backpacks. In the living room, a fluffy couch faced a cabinet that held a television, a CD player, and a row of color photographs of Dana spinning around a stripper's pole. She looked pretty good upside down.
I said, "Nice pictures. Is that you?"
"What the fuck you care, is that her in the nice pictures? You think those pictures NICE? You want us to have a little coffee, pass time like we FRIENDS?"
I looked at him. The day had been a slow grind from morning to midafternoon with not much to show for it. He didn't like me looking at him, and glowered even harder.
He said, "What?"
Dana came up beside me and pulled at my arm.
"He's scared of the three strikes. He has two convictions."
"Don't tell him nothin' about me, not a goddamned thing."
I understood his fear-if he caught another felony conviction he could go back to jail for the rest of his life.
I said, "No one cares about you unless you know something about Faustina. Do you?"
"No!"
"Then that's all you have to say. The police are going to talk to Stephen. If he tells them you drove and you say you didn't, what's that going to look like?"
"I ain't sayin' nothin' to nobody! I can NOT be part of this!"
Dana's eyes worked up to full-scale tears.
"Stephen said we gotta."
"Fuck Stephen! You leave me out of this and do NOT even mention my name! I don't want to hear my name, not ONE TIME!"
Thomas jabbed the air to show her what one time meant, then stalked around the corner into the dining room. Suddenly, after all the shouting, their apartment was silent. Dana wiped at her eyes and cleared her throat. She spoke softly so Thomas wouldn't hear.
"Stephen says it'll be all right. He said to cooperate."
"This is a homicide investigation, Dana. The police won't be here to bust you-or Thomas. They just want to know about Faustina. You see?"
She glanced to make sure Thomas wasn't listening, then lowered her voice still more.
"Thomas took those pictures. He's a really, really good photographer. We're doing a pay site and he's taking the pictures of me. He's even building the web site for me. He knows all about that stuff."
I nodded, and knew why she told me-all her dreams with Thomas were riding on the hope that Stephen had told her the truth-that everything would be all right.
"Dana, I want you to look at this."
I showed her the morgue shot of Faustina and walked her through my questions exactly as I had with the others. Faustina paid Dana to pray for his forgiveness. He told her nothing about himself and his reasons for being in Los Angeles; they did not have sex; and, when they finished praying, he walked her to the door. During their hour together, he never mentioned where he was from, why he was in Los Angeles, how long he intended to stay, or any other person or place. The only difference with what I heard from the other escorts was that Dana had asked Faustina why he needed to be forgiven. I guess Dana wasn't yet so hardened that she no longer cared.
I said, "Did he tell you?"
"He said for loving too much."
"You asked him why he wanted God to forgive him, and he said for loving too much?"
"Isn't that sad?"
"What or who did he love too much?"
A woman he met once and never saw again? A son he never knew?
"I dunno. I said, how can you love too much? Loving someone is a good thing-you don't have to be forgiven for that. I wanted to make him feel better, you know, but he said love could be terrible, he said love could be the Fifth Horseman and could kill you as dead as the other four, and then he started crying and I felt so bad I started crying, and I put my arms around him because I wanted him to feel better, but he didn't want me touching him like that. He kinda unwrapped me and gave back my hands and said let's keep praying, okay?, asking me real nice, 'cause that's the only thing will make it better, so we kept praying, and I didn't even know what he meant until Thomas told me."
Thomas's voice came quietly from the dining room.
"The Horsemen. She didn't know about the Four Horsemen, so I had to tell her what he meant by the fifth."