She was right about that. “It’s my usual. A hundred dollars an hour.”

“I can pay it.”

Could she? It wasn’t much of an apartment she lived in. She had signed a retainer agreement with me. I was going to have to develop a form so they’d have to provide me with some information, like a driver’s license, in the event they tried to skip out on my bill. A quick credit check, whatever they run in order to accept Visa and MasterCard. They hadn’t taught us this in school. She better not bitch when she got my bill.

Although the street name she gave me was familiar, I looked it up to be sure. A business area downtown. I checked my hair, turned on the answering machine and locked up the office. I was nearly down the stairs before I remembered that they speak Spanish in Guatemala.

The hooker was by the pepper tree, as usual. Hollywood Boulevard late in the afternoon, the constant line of traffic, an argument erupting into a fight in front of the camera store across the street. A couple more hookers—black ones in purple lame and wigs like the Supremes—stalked the corner. That afternoon she was a blonde. She was wearing a red knit minidress with black fishnet hose and a pair of black sandals. The “chase me, catch me, fuck me” kind, with clear-plastic heels. She was picking at her cuticles.

“Hi.”

She looked up suspiciously.

“Do you speak Spanish?”

“Do cops eat doughnuts?” She gnawed on her finger until it began to bleed, then spat the offending piece of skin on the sidewalk.

“How much do you charge for your time?”

She put her hand on her hip and lifted her chin to take a better look at me.

“Just your time. That’s all I’m interested in. I need to hire an interpreter. How much do you charge?”

“You tell me.”

She’d been arrested. All the girls I talked to at jail used that line.

“No, you tell me.”

“Thirty-five for a straight fuck or a blowjob. It goes up from there. Where’s the guy? I need to see him before I decide.” Her voice was childish and breathless. I hadn’t noticed that before. She had painted a black beauty mark above the left side of her mouth. “If you’re heat, this is entrapment,” she pouted. “It’ll never stick.”

I’m five eight in my heels. She was at least four inches shorter and a lot lighter. She looked like a kid.

“You’ve been in jail, haven’t you?”

She shrugged. “Once.”

“This is a real job. No sex. Fifty bucks. All you have to do is come with me and translate what I say.” I didn’t know if this was enough to offer, but it was the best I could do.