“What about drugs?” Milton asked.

Trip shot a glance at him.

“What about them?” Aaron said.

“They ever involved?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “Sure, man, what do you think? These girls ain’t saints. Some bring coke to help stretch the calls out beyond an hour or two. The dispatcher asks the john whether he wants any brought over — ‘party material’, they call it — they give it to me and I deliver it. Sometimes I’ll get some to sell myself — I’ve lived here my whole life, it’s not like I don’t know the right guys to ask, you know what I’m saying?” He delivered that line with a blasé shrug of his shoulders, like it was no big thing, but Milton wasn’t impressed and fixed him in a cold stare. “I ain’t endorsing it,” Aaron backtracked, “can’t say I was ever totally comfortable with having shit in the car but the money’s too good to ignore, you can make the same on top as you do with the girls. This one time, I was out of the city and we got pulled over. It was me and Madison, actually, way I recall it. Apart from the fact that they were looking for guys driving girls, going after us for procuring prostitution, we had three grams on us. I said she was my girlfriend and we got away with it.” He looked apologetically over at Trip.

“What about Madison?” Milton asked. “Does she use at all?”

“Yeah, man, sure she does.”

“Bullshit,” Trip said.

Aaron looked at Trip with a pained expression. “You don’t know?”

“She doesn’t.”

“It’s the truth, dude, I swear. They use, all of them do.”

Trip flinched but held his tongue.

“What does she use?”

“Coke. Weed.”

“Anything hallucinogenic?”

He shook his head. “Never seen that.”

“Alright. Tell us about her.”

He shifted uncomfortably. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

He shrugged again. “I don’t know, man, I’d driven her before, this one time, maybe a year ago. We hit it off right away. She’s a great girl, a lot of fun — the only girl I ever drove who I looked forward to seeing. Most of them — well, most of them, let’s just say they’re not the best when it comes to conversation, alright, a little dead behind the eyes, some of them, not the smartest cookies. But she’s different.”

“Go on.”

He looked over at Trip and then back to Milton. He looked pained. “Is this really necessary?”

“Come on,” Trip insisted. “Don’t pussy out now.” He must have known where this was going but he was tough and he wasn’t going to flinch.

He sighed helplessly. “Alright, man. I guess this was seven, eight months ago, before she went missing. The dispatcher said it was her and I was happy about it, I’d had the same girl for a week and she was driving me crazy. I went over to Nob Hill and picked her up in the Lexus, the same place we always met, and she got up in front with me, not in the back like they usually do. Sometimes there’d be more than one girl but it was just me and her this time and she talked and talked, told me everything that was going on in her life, said she was into books, I mean, that shit was never my bag, I ain’t the best in the world at reading, but she was into it big-time, loved it, writing too, and I thought that was kind of cool. Turns out that they put us together for two shifts after that. That’s like almost two whole days and nights. The third time out we were together the whole time. It was a day shift and it was quiet, just two or three gigs, and we kind of kept getting closer. The next night was the same. The shift ended, and we kept talking. I found a place to park the car, and she pulled out a fifth of vodka, and we drank it, then I had an eight ball of coke in the glove box and we ended up doing bumps of that, too. She said things about the work that I hadn’t heard from the other girls.”

“Like what?” Trip said, suddenly with a little aggression.

“That sometimes the calls are just about sex, sometimes they’re about keeping someone company — a john paying someone to hear him out. Said she liked those calls best.”

He cleared his throat and looked down at the table.

“Keep going,” Milton said, knowing what was coming next and hating himself for pressing, hating what it was going to do to Trip.

“Then — I guess it just sort of happened. We had the cash to get a hotel but I guess we didn’t wanted to wait. We had sex in the car.”

“And?”

“She said she liked it. I didn’t really believe it but then, the next time I was driving her, like a couple of days after that, it happened again.”

Trip stood abruptly. Without saying a word, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the café.

“I’m sorry, man,” Aaron said helplessly. “I didn’t want to say—”

Milton stared at him. “Keep going.”

He frowned, his eyes on the table again. “I had a girlfriend then but I ended it. I couldn’t stop thinking about Madison. I knew it wasn’t right, my girl was cut up and I knew Madison had a guy, but I couldn’t help it, neither of us could help it. I was getting pretty deep into working for the agency then and my girl had always been jealous about that, the girls I was driving, but Madison didn’t have any of that. No jealousy, just totally cool about it all. She got me, totally, understood where I was coming from. Sometimes I drove her and sometimes I didn’t, but it didn’t matter. We were both cool with how it was. When I drove her, we slept together between calls. Sometimes she’d pretend to be on call during the day but she’d meet me, we’d check into a hotel and stay there all day. We’d get room service, watch movies on the pay-per-view, I’d usually have a couple of grams on me and we’d work our way through that.”

“What was she like?”

“How do you mean?”

“Ever think she was depressed?”

“She had her moments, like all the girls, but no — I don’t think so. If you mean do I think she’s run away or done something worse, then, no, I’d say there was no chance. That’d be completely out of character. You want my opinion, I’d say that something bad has happened. No way she stays out of touch this long. She says nothing to me, nothing to your friend — no, no way, I ain’t buying that.”

“You know you have to tell the police, don’t you?”

“About us?”

“Yes, and about the agency.”

His eyes flickered with fear. “No way, man. Talk to the cops? You mad? Salvatore, he’s connected, you know what I mean? Connected. It’s not like I know everything about how it works, but, my best guess, the things I heard from the girls and the other drivers, he’s fronting it for the Lucianos. You know them, man? The fucking Lucianos? It’s fucking mafia, right? — the Mafia! Ain’t no way I’m getting myself in a position where they might think I was ratting them out to the cops. No way. You know what happens to guys they reckon are rats, right?”

“Your name doesn’t have to come out.”

“Fuck that shit, man! What you been smoking? That kind of stuff don’t ever stay under wraps. They got cops on the payroll, everyone knows it. My name would be on the street in minutes and then they’ll be coming over to talk to me about it and that ain’t something that I want to think about. Next thing, I’d be floating in the Bay with my throat cut. Fish food, man.”

“Alright,” Milton said, smiling in the hope that he might relax a little. “It’s okay. I understand.”

Aaron looked at him suspiciously. “You’re just a driver, right?”

“That’s right.”

“So why you asking all the questions, then?”

He spoke with careful, exaggerated patience. “Because I’m one of the last people to have seen Madison before she disappeared. That means I’m a suspect and I’d rather that I wasn’t. Trip is a suspect now, too, and it’ll probably get worse for him when the police find out that you were sleeping with his woman. Jealousy, right? That’s a good motive. The more information you can give us, maybe that makes it easier for us to find out what happened to her and then maybe the police realise me and him had nothing to do with it. Understand?”