Private Vegas (Private 9)

They were visiting this paradise called Los Angeles. They were on holiday, their first visit to the West Coast, and had rented a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, palatial by any standard. This opulent three-bedroom cottage was as pretty as a seashell, set at the end of a coral pink path and surrounded by luxuriant foliage: banana trees and palms.

It was unlike anything in their country, the landlocked mountainous triangle of rock called the kingdom of Sumar.

Now, the two men held the experiences of this hedonistic city like exotic fruit in the palms of their hands.

“I am giving you a new name,” said Gozan Remari to the rounded blond woman with enormous breasts. “I name you Peaches.”

There were no juicy women quite like Peaches in Sumar. There weren’t many in Southern California either, where women with boylike shapes were considered desirable and ones like Peaches were called fat.

As if that were bad.

“I don’t like you,” Peaches said

slowly. She was doing her best to speak through the numbing effect of the drugs she had consumed in the very expensive champagne. “But…”

“But what, Peaches? You don’t like me, but what? You are having a very good time?”

Gozan laughed. He was an educated man, had gone to school in London and Cambridge. He knew six languages and had founded a boutique merchant bank in the City of London while serving on numerous boards. But as much as he knew, he was still mystified by the way women allowed themselves to be led and tricked.

Peaches was lying at his feet, “spread-eagled,” as it was called here, bound by her wrists and ankles to table legs and an ottoman. She was naked except for dots of caviar on her nipples. Well, she had been very eager for champagne and caviar a couple of hours ago. No use complaining now.

“I forget.” She sighed.

Khezir got up and went to the bedroom just beyond the living room, but he left the double doors open so that the two rooms merged into one. He lay back and lounged on the great canopied bed beside the younger woman who was the daughter of the first. This woman was even sexier than her mother: beautifully fleshy, soft to the touch, with long blond hair.

Khezir ran his hand up her thigh, amazed at the way she quivered even though she could no longer speak.

He said to the young woman, “And I will call you…Mangoes. Yes. Do you like that name? So much better than what your pigs of parents called you. Adrianna.” He said it again in a high, affected voice. “Aaay-dreee-annnna. Sounds like the cry of a baby goat.”

Khezir had cleansed many towns of people who reminded him of animals. Where he came from, life was short and cheap.

The girl moaned, “Pleease.”

Khezir laughed. “You want more, please. Is that it, Mangoes?”

In the living room, the CD changer slipped a new recording into the player. The music was produced by a wind instrument called a kime. It sounded like an icy gale blowing through the clefts in a rock. The vocalist sang of an ocean he had never seen.

Gozan said, “Peaches, I would prefer that you like me, but as your Clark Gable said to that hysterical bitch in Gone with the Wind, ‘Frankly, I don’t give a shit.’”

He leaned over her, slapped her face, then pinched her between her legs. Peaches yelped and tried to get away.

“It’s very good, isn’t it? Tell me how much you like it,” said Gozan.

There was a loud pounding at the door.

“Get lost,” Gozan shouted. “You’ll have to come back for the cart.”

A man’s voice boomed, “LAPD. Open the door. Now.”

Three

SPRINKLERS SHOT BROKEN jets of water over the lush gardens in back of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Night was coming on. I was armed, waiting behind a clump of shrubbery a hundred feet from bungalow six when I heard footsteps come up the path. Captain Luke Warren of the LAPD, with a gang of six cops right behind him, came toward me.

For once, I was glad to see the LAPD.

I had information that Gozan Remari and Khezir Mazul, two heinous cruds who were suspected of multiple rapes but hadn’t been charged, were behind door number six. But unless there was evidence of a crime in progress, I had no authority to break in.

I called out to the captain, presented my badge, handed him my card, which read Jack Morgan, CEO, Private Investigations.