I had just finished the first quarter mile of my morning run when my watch vibrated. I looked down, and it was a message from Freddie the doorman.
He just walked in.
I stopped running and typed back, On our way. Let me know if he leaves before we get there.
I called Mechanic and arranged to pick him up on my way over to North Green Street.
The lobby was mostly empty when we arrived. A couple of women and self-important men in suits walked out of the elevator, nodded at Freddie, then pushed through the revolving doors, on their way to work.
“What’s his apartment number?” I said as we approached the front desk.
“I’m supposed to announce all visitors,” Freddie said. “I have to call him and let him know you’re here to see him.”
“The cameras are on you, right?” I said.
“They are,” he said. “Two of them cover the front desk.”
“Is there audio?”
“No audio, just video.”
“Good. That makes it easier.”
“But if I let you up, and Fitz doesn’t know it, and he complains to management, I’ll lose my job. Man, this gig doesn’t pay much, but I need it.”
“Don’t worry, we’re not gonna cause you to lose your job over something like this,” I said. “Is there a mail or package room nearby?”
“Yes, right behind me.”
“So here’s the plan. You’re gonna walk into the package room as if we asked you about a package. You’re going to stay in there for two minutes. We are going to go to the elevator and go upstairs without you knowing we did that. No one can blame you for something you didn’t see.”
Freddie looked at me, then at Mechanic. “Are you going to do something bad to him?” he said. “Fitz is a cool guy.”
“We just wanna have a little talk,” I said. “We come in peace.”
A young woman in spandex hustled through the lobby with her earbuds in and gave Freddie a quick wave before she pranced through the revolving door and down the street.
“Apartment 2120,” Freddie said, then he turned and walked into the mail room.
Mechanic and I quickly made our way to the other side of the lobby, around the marble wall, and into an open elevator. We got off on Fitz’s floor and made little time getting to his door. Mechanic stood to the side so that he couldn’t be seen through the peephole. I rang the bell. Seconds later, the door opened, revealing a bare-chested Fitz Darcy in a pair of black biker shorts. Hours of tanning had turned his skin almost the color of mine. He wasn’t exactly muscular, but he wasn’t scrawny either. He stood about an inch shorter than me.
“I think you’ve got the wrong apartment,” he said. “I didn’t order anything.”
I almost punched him in the face for saying that, but instead, I smiled and said, “You’re Fitz Darcy, correct?”
“I am,” Fitz said. “Who are you?”
Mechanic stepped into view.
“Batman and Robin,” I said. “Your pick who you want to be Batman.”
I pushed past him and walked into the apartment.
“What the fuck?” he said. “Get the hell outta my apartment before I call security.”
“I hope you can dial with your front teeth,” I said. “Because by the time he finishes with you, that’ll be all you have left that can push anything.”
Mechanic pressed Darcy into the apartment and closed the door behind him. Mechanic leaned against the wall. The three of us stood there while Darcy made some serious calculations.
“We just want to have a little talk,” I said.
“About what?” Fitz said.
“Your name, for starters.”
“My name?”
“You have a very famous name,” I said. “Or at least a derivation of a famous name. So I was wondering about the etymology of it.”
Fitz wrinkled his brow, then looked at Mechanic for help.
“The man likes big words,” Mechanic said. “What can I say? It turns him on. I like to put people in the hospital. That turns me on.”
“So back to the name,” I said. “Were your parents being coy when they named you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “This was the name they gave me.”
“You know who Fitzwilliam Darcy is?”
“No idea.”
“You study literature in high school?”
“Of course.”
“Then you must’ve been absent during the class on Pride and Prejudice.”
“I read that book.”
“Then you weren’t paying much attention. Fitzwilliam Darcy was the rich guy in love with Elizabeth.”
“Okay. I remember something like that.”
“Well, you seem to be the rich guy in love with escorts.”
He looked at me quizzically but didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The expression said it all.
“But we’ll get to that in a second,” I said. “First, tell us your real name.”
“You already know it,” he said. “You just went through the history of my name.”
“The history of the name you stole,” I said, “from a man who died ten years ago in a hospital in Sarasota, Florida.”
“Are you the fuckin’ police or federal agents or something?” Fitz said.
“None of the above.”
“Then why the fuck do I have to answer any of your questions?”
“Because if you don’t, that quiet guy standing over there is gonna hit you so hard, you’ll be pissing blood for a week.”
Fitz looked at Mechanic, whose eyes were half-closed by now. His pulse was probably somewhere in the low fifties. He liked to slow everything down before he went to work.
“I really don’t know what’s going on right now,” Fitz said. “Just level up with me. Are you undercover cops? IRS agents? What are you?”
“Listen,” I said. “We’re not here to get you in trouble, if that helps. I know you run an escort service. I know you have an account at Bank of America. I know you use the $Cashtag @friendlypartners69. The sixty-nine part is actually pretty clever. So let’s not do the whole denial bullshit. I don’t give a fuck that you’re able to afford this lifestyle because a bunch of old rich guys will pay through their nose for a hand job. I just want to ask you about one of your girls and a job she did on May second.”
Darcy considered my words for a moment, then said, “And this stays between us?”
“You give me the information I need, and you can keep on being the fake Fitz Darcy and poppin’ bottles at the club.”
“Okay,” he said. “Follow me.”
Mechanic stayed posted against the wall as I followed Fitz down a long hallway and into an office that had a full western view of the city. The United Center, home of the Bulls, wasn’t too far off in the distance. He sat in front of an enormous, curved computer monitor, tapped a few keys, shuffled through several screens, then said, “Okay, what’s the date again?”
“May second.”
“Do you know the name of the friend?”
“Vernon.”
Fitz tapped his keyboard a few times, then a chart popped up. It had all of the details about the assignment. Very professional.
“So, what do you want to know?”
“Who made the request?”
“You mean Vernon’s real identity?”
“Do you have that information?”
“No. The reason why people like our service is because we never ask for the friend’s real name.”
“How do they make a request?”
“They send an email or text with the address and the specifics of what they want. We take the request and check to see if it’s a new or returning client. We do our due diligence, then when everything looks okay, we assign the friend a name. We then send the information to another service that provides the girls.”
“Which service do you use?”
“Depends on the request.”
“Which service did you use for this assignment?”
Fitz moved the cursor across the screen, then stopped. “This one went to Karol’s Angels. We use them when the client has more upscale tastes.”
“So you send the client’s name, address, and their preferences to Karol’s Angels? That’s it?”
“That’s all they need to know.”
“And who does the friend pay?”
“He pays us directly. We don’t set up the appointment until we get payment in full. Once the girl completes the appointment, we pay the service provider their percentage of the fee. In Vernon’s case, we paid Karol’s, because they provided the girl.”
“And how much information do you have on the people who make the request for a friend?”
“Not a lot,” he said. “We make it a point to be as minimalist as possible. Clients prefer it that way. So we just ask for the essentials—email or the number they texted us from and the form of payment. No one uses a credit card for obvious reasons, so they typically send a wire or Zelle or bank transfer.”
“If you have their email address or phone number, then theoretically you could discover their identity.”
“I’ve never tried doing that, because it’s not likely to work. These guys use burner phones or fake email addresses.”
“Was Vernon a new customer or returning?”
“New.”
“Can you tell if his request came in via email or text?”
Fitz tapped a few keys. “Email.”
“What was the address?”
“VintageBlackOnly@gmail.com.”
“Can you tell if he made any requests after the second?”
Fitz typed the name Vernon in the search bar. No results. Then he typed the email address. Still no results.
“Looks like only that one request,” he said.
“Was that assignment on the second completed?”
“Yup.”
“How do you know?”
“Because we only release the funds to the service provider once the girl has contacted the service provider to report it’s complete, and we match that with a confirmation from the friend that they received their services.”
This told me a lot—most importantly, that Kantor might’ve requested Jenny Lee, but a dead man couldn’t send a confirmation that the visit was complete. Someone had to have done it for him. Who was VintageBlackOnly@gmail.com?