Brewster is one of Ericson’s top clients. Ericson helps turn his client’s illegal money into legitimate investments. I haven’t been able to prove it yet, but I believe Ericson is skimming money off his client’s accounts.

“He was there again?” Lenora asks. “Oh, I just got the pic. Did you see him with anybody?”

Shouldering my phone, I dig into my bag and produce the notebook. I flip to the tally page. This is how I determine how deserving a subject is of my client’s revenge. I have a system of checks and balances.

It’s called: The Douche Checklist.

Clever, right? I have to amuse myself, because it’s a rare thing when someone else can.

On Ericson’s list, I have: Name (he gets a check mark for that alone). He keeps a separate apartment his wife doesn’t know about. More than one mistress (he never sleeps with the same woman twice, and I have counted five conquests in the past three weeks that I’ve been stalking him). Then last week, as I waited outside his secret apartment building, I tracked down one of the sex workers who—for a hefty fee—told me he doesn’t use protection. Ericson has no concern for transmitting a disease to his wife of over a decade.

This makes him a top-ranking douche.

Which would be enough, but there’s also his deviant nature, the greedy bully inside him that needs to control and destroy. This, of course, is why he goes outside his marriage. To prey on women who won’t report him, women who need the money. And why he associates himself with a man like Brewster—a man with the seediest of ties.

I’ve kept this information from Lenora. Not because it will cause her pain. I don’t want to shield her; I feel no empathy for her suffering. Nor do I have close relationships with clients. The fact is, Lenora is already on the edge with her husband. What would she do if she discovered what kind of fiend she really married?

Call the police? Report him?

In my experience, it’s never a good idea to involve authorities. As if the police could do anything, anyway. Men like Ericson are never convicted. There’s no tangible crime, is there? If a man attacks and beats a prostitute, who will be judged: the man or the whore?

In a world ruled by men, I know what most people would think, as they judge from the comfort of their middle-class home, their steady workplace. A sex worker asks for it when she puts herself in a dangerous situation. It’s rather easy to judge from a secure position, with food in your belly and prescription drugs swimming in your veins. Hell, if some of those hypocrites couldn’t get their Starbucks, they’d be out there sucking cock for a caffeine fix, I’m pretty damn sure.