She Majored in Sex Merchandising

No graphic sex. This short story is based on a conversation with the son of a woman who had been a client before I retired as a barrister. As usual I must stipulate that these characters are works of fiction and have no resemblance to persons living or dead.

*****

Lynn would take her M.B.A. degree in three weeks.

As most working people know, you don't just buy a ticket, hop a plane and fly away for three days to see your daughter get her M.B.A. Can't be done if you have any value to your boss.

I'm a lieutenant supervising detectives, and lieutenants always die young of shouldering a never ending overload. To be sure, they never have the option to "take a day off" and get some sleep let alone saying, "Boss I'm taking off four to watch my daughter get an M.B.A."

My wife, Anne, had warned me before I left for work that morning. I was on thin ice.

I am Cody Powers, a public servant. To be sure, I am one of those euphemistically benighted souls destined by comedic gods to serve my neighbors as a cop. At the moment of this recitation, I was a detective lieutenant sitting as acting commander of the Criminal Investigations Division.

This primeval day began with an ominous note sounded by my wife. My lovely spouse had not been so lovely for quite some time. For some unfathomable reason this morning, Anne had chosen our daughter's impending conclusion to her extended education as a point of conflict.

Well, Anne testily hooked my difficulty in taking time away from work to Lynn's lament that she had not seen me much during her years away at school.

With only two weeks remaining before Lynn's big day, the chief had not confirmed my leave to attend the graduation ceremonies and festivities. Lynn's winning admission to an East Coast academic powerhouse had made us glow with pride, but it had proved to be a mixed blessing. It also had created critical problems in our maintaining close contact.

Since the university was half a day away from us by air, I had seen her only briefly at holidays. Anne was more fortunate. As a lawyer with her own office, she could create the time to fly to New England frequently for weekend visits.

"Tell Archie to get his butt in gear and send your authorization through today," my wife had commanded, though she maintained her thin professional smile.

There was more. My sister-in-law was arriving at DFW at 3 p.m.; and I was to meet her plane and provide chauffeur services. Though Anne's peremptory attitude and failure to respect my work load irritated me, I would happily comply with her orders.

You see, I respectfully loved my sister-in-law and would value renewing our friendship without Madame Whipmaster's presence. Carly, who was older than Anne, was different in important respects. She could not compete with Anne for sexiest figure, but she was more attractive as a person, smart and comforting to know. I had met Carly during a theft investigation at her university dorm, and she had introduced me to Anne.

After Carly received her BA in mathematics and computer sciences, she had moved to Nevada to work for a corporation that provided cybernetic services as consultants for the vulnerable casinos. It was the same as my distant relationship with Lynn. No one was at fault. Demon distance and impossible job demands had become the nemesis.

Though I loved Anne dearly, I had often sworn under my breath that if she had been a lawyer when we met, I would have never proposed. Of course, after 26 years, I should be forgiven my gallows humor. In truth, I suppose I've loved every minute of loving her.

When I parked in my reserved space at the Public Safety Building, my boss, Chief Archie Baldwin, was coming out of the building striding toward his unmarked car. He motioned for me to follow.

"You ready for this?" Archie asked me rhetorically as he pulled into the street. "Those idiots running the schools are being accused of teaching whoring."

I stared at Archie half in shock half expecting him to spring one of his jokes. When he said no more and screwed his face into an ugly snarl, I knew that the absurd had filtered into the realm of the possible.

Only after Archie threw some weight as police chief did the palace guard admit us to the inner sanctum of the superintendent of schools. Dr. Thelma Ashton Northcamp, Jr., sat rigidly in a massive leather puff of an object that could have been a chair. She had mounted her throne-like seat on a dais that raised her at least one foot higher than anyone seated across from her.

"I"m very busy gentlemen," she hissed through thin lips, "so get to it and explain your attempt to interfere in the development of the public school curriculum."

"We're certain it's a misunderstanding," the chief said. "But when complaints are filed in accordance with the law, we must conduct the appropriate inquiry."

"Teaching the methods and procedures of selling sex could be classified as pandering or pimping," I said without an effort to tread softly. "Our complainant alleges you provided such classes and will authorize a 'sex worker' booth at your spring Jobs Fair."

"I consider your coming to my office an effort to intimidate, coerce and interfere with the director of a government agency," the superintendent of schools responded as she abruptly arose waving a hand dismissively. "This interview has ended."

"Strange behavior for a person who has just been told she may be guilty of a felony," I said, again making no effort to placate or compromise.

"Our attorneys will be available to consult with you if you persist," the superintendent said.

"We came here to inquire unofficially," Archie said as we moved toward the door. "Now I must make this an investigation and that becomes a matter of public record."

It was almost 5:30 and I was preparing to leave for home when Archie's formal directive arrived. I was to determine if the school's curriculum included a class that promoted prostitution. He wanted a report of initial findings by the end of the next day. Now I would need to interview the complainant that night if I were to meet Archie's requirement for a preliminary report.

My command encompassed the Criminal Investigations Division and several lateral specialty units. Conveniently, Marjorie Campbell stuck her head in my door to say goodnight. Marge was a workhorse detective that I had mentored through her qualifying exams.

"It's your lucky day, Marge," I said, attempting to give the impression that I never slept, never complained and always happily worked an 18-hour day. "I need assist and back-up eyes and ears for a high priority interview tonight."

"Looks like I'm it, huh?" she responded without complaint.

"Sorry! But the department will buy our dinner," I said. Marge was a chip off my tree as a cop. She never complained, and she always gave a hundred per cent.

We had a great dinner at Barfield's Steak House. Our conversation was light, laced with benign jokes, some happy reminiscing and a briefing on the assignment.

I had called home the moment Archie's directive hit my desk at 5:30 and got no answer. Anne had already left her office. During dinner with Marge, I had redialed home on the cell phone at least half a dozen times.

Then it hit me as we finished dinner and paid the check. I had forgotten Carly. I had promised Anne I would meet Carly at the airport. Damn! Damn! Damn. Trouble! Trouble! Toil and and more Trouble!

"Anne's pissed beyond recognition by now, Marge," I said with resignation. "I forgot all about meeting my sister-in-law at the airport."

"Can't be that bad, Cody," Marge said. "Surely, after all these years Anne knows you have greased lightnin' by the tail in your job."

We arrived at the home of the complainant on time. Marge set up the interview quickly, requesting permission to record. I was pleased that the man's two daughters and his wife joined us. It enhanced my opportunity to make a judgement about the reliability of the fact basis on which they were hinging their serious allegations.

Immediately upon establishing the man's identity and all of the vital statistics to make the interview useful as evidence, my first question hit me personally in the gut with the force of a tornado.

"I'm sure you already know everything that I know," the man said defensively. "As I understand it, your daughter was among the first five to go to the that brothel in Nevada for what they called the internship."

"I visited with your daughter last month when we both worked a brothel in Nye County, Nevada, for the weekend," said a woman in the background behind me. "We talked during breaks, and she told me all about you."

Marge spontaneously turned off the recorder, her face wooden with shock and rising confusion. She turned to me with a questioning expression before she realized that I was as bewildered and momentarily defenseless as she.

"I'm sorry! Damn, man, I'm sorry!" the man exclaimed. "Damn! You didn't know anything about this did you!"

"Mr. Powers, your wife went to Nevada with the girls every summer as a chaperone," the man's daughter volunteered. "We all thought you must know and approved of the internship since your wife was a manager for the three weeks."

It gave them all more of a feeling of security to know that a police officer and his wife seemed to be sponsoring the incredible event, the girl assured me. Everyone in the room fell silent as my emotions played across my face. Probably my anger was dominant. Of course humiliation and incredulity were there in painful proportions.

"Cody! Go to the car and wait," Marge said, her voice respectful but firm. "I can finish this."

After an interval in which I recovered my equilibrium, I visibly shook off the paralysis. I told Marge to begin recording and plodded forward into the interview. My blood pressure was spiking, and that was a concern; but if I had withdrawn and asked marge to complete the interview, my sanity would have been sacrificed and my wife and her cohorts would have been dead by morning.

Marge suggested the obvious, that we must interview the complainant's daughter as well. Most certainly, we would question the daughter. My first question, of course, concerned the girl's age when she was first approached to become part of the school system's academy for whores. The girl understood and quickly cleared the air.

Without missing a note, the girl answered that she could "certify" that she was 18 years old when she requested enrollment in "The Class."

Gratuitously, the girl informed us that she had chosen prostitution as a profession while "Loafing through a 'Jobs Fair' with her friends."

"You can't get into 'The Class' before you independence birthday," the girl said confidently. "You've got to be legal."

"And you consider being legal all there is to it?" Marge asked almost through gritting teeth.

"Of course," the girl answered almost smugly. "We were taught to make certain we were always legal under Nevada law, because it's the Nevada law that makes our business possible."

"But your school is not in Nevada," Marge countered. "And you don't live in Nevada."

"We were warned in class that someone would raise questions like this," the girl responded. "We only academically discussed the sociology and psychology and legal aspects of selling sex."

It was academic, the girl snapped, her eyes narrowed as she challenged me and Marge. Yes, indeed, this aspiring young whore had been well coached.

Yes, the girl loved the word "academic."

"No one ever asked us to sell our sex or consider working in a Nevada brothel," the girl said, obviously gaining in her sense of superiority in this encounter. "Everyone was a legal adult in all of the states, and it was our own decision to apply for the Nevada license."

As Marge's features darkened, I began a line of less threatening questions. This provided Marge an opportunity to master her roiling emotions. Marge had sweated and toiled to raise three girls who now were in various stages of completing their university degrees and obtaining various professional licenses.

Without a doubt, Marge could be witnessing no greater heresy than this.

Fortunately, I had recovered sufficiently to do my job; but my pride in family accomplishments and illusions about community worth had shattered when the girl's father included my wife and daughter in his slimy scenario. Suddenly, I was a personal reality with only one dimension. I was simply a competent cop.

Our questions and the elicited answers continued until after midnight. Our complainant and his daughter registered fatigue, but they persisted in an effort to record all facets and nuances of the brothel story as well as the incredible instigating nucleus in the local school system.

Marge drove as we left the complainant's house at 1:30 a.m. I began the ordeal of working through the episodic interview. Considering the fact that this was the most incredible field testimony I had every heard, the daughter's account of her encounter with my wife was simplistically incriminating and revealing.

"Obviously, Marge, I never knew this woman," I said without rancor, now devoid of personality. "There's a duality here, perhaps, maybe a schizoid tendency; but I fear that the woman I saw in the bedroom, the anniversary parties and the holiday dinners with the extended family never existed."

Apparently, the Anne I married was a figment of my not too fertile imagination. If such be the case, I must retire tomorrow. I was never qualified to be a cop.

We listened to the voice of the 19 year-old whore initiate as she described her three-week orientation into the rationalized dimensions of whoring. Only three months prior to our interview, the girl had sat beside my wife on flight to McCarran International at Las Vegas.

My star witness related the story of becoming beguiled by Anne, the impressive lawyer-cum-whore-patron: "We spoke casually at the airport before we boarded the plane; but when I found that I was seated beside her, I couldn't contain my excitement. Anne's beauty and powerful personality created a new excitement. When I told her I knew that I could never be as beautiful and successful, Anne said that I would be as sexy and charming as necessary. I must dedicate myself and learn about my capacities during the three-week internship, Anne warned me. She emphasized that I had excelled in the special classes offered during my senior year. With that encouraging beginning, I could have a very profitable future as an escort, sex entertainer or brothel whore. When she smiled and tossed the word 'whore' to me, I choked for a moment before I understood.

"We left the airport in three limos and drove for more than an hour into the desert away from Las Vegas and then into the mountains. Where we stopped there was no town. We passed a service station and convenience store and turned up a mountain road that led to a large house surrounded by doubled security fencing. It was plastered with sensors and cameras. The house was more like a dorm with great rooms on the first floor and seemingly unlimited bedroom suites on the second floor. There was a third floor, but I never went there.

"The first day we swam in the pool, played tennis and got to know each other. Anne was so much fun that day. But the next morning, classes began, and Anne was all business. She reviewed what we had learned in our senior classes. It was all about what she called the legal aspects of the'comfort profession' as she called it. Emphasizing the fact that we all had turned 18 before we began the senior classes, she made her point about the importance of legal detail. Then she drilled us on the organization charts for the brothel business and the relationship between the governmental agencies and the brothel owners. Finally, she handed copies of laws and rules that applied to us as brothel employees, escorts or 'special companions.'

"It was after breakfast of the third day that we began learning about the 'technology of selling our sex' as Anne called it. At first it was humiliating. We were informed that we would remain nude all day, a 'necessary conditioning process.'

"If the third day was awe inspiring, the fourth began with the announcement that the 'practicum had begun.' Before fear or regret could begin we found ourselves servicing an endless line of indifferent men. During the hours of continuous sex, we received instruction in all aspects of using a penis and a vagina.

"By the time we completed the three-week orientation, those of us committed to enter the business realized that the physical coupling had little to do with marketing sex.

"It's the illusion of coming near their reason for being that you are selling," your wife told us in her final lecture. "Men will come to you and achieve biological results very much like blowing their noses; and they'll pay and brag, though they question the wisdom of paying a whore; but...there will be those who will come seeking the answer to the question of who they are and why they exist, and they will pay incredible fortunes for the special weekend."

As she pulled into the ramp leading into the police garage, Marge articulated a truth I had suppressed. She had talked privately with the girl before we left.

"She's continuing in the business," Marge said, her voice tense and her words hoarse with controlled anger. "She has fulfilled all of the requirements under Nevada law for a whore's license and has a job already."

I remained silent.

"I take it you're ready to contact the Nevada regulators," she said.

"Yes! I'm calling the sheriff in Clark County, Nevada, tonight," I said. "I can't give him the location of the school for whores, but I'll ask for his help in informing the brothel regulators of what we know."

"They'll arrest the girl when she reports for work at her brothel, you know," Marge said almost rhetorically.

"Yes," I said, nodding stoically.

Marge went to her car and left for home. I punched the auto dial for home again. No answer. I took the elevator from the garage to my office where I called the sheriff I knew in Nevada.

I remained until almost dawn dictating my report for Arch. When I was finished I requested a dozen search warrants and seven arrest warrants. I then began calling my troops. i would need almost everyone in the department for the four-hour sweep that afternoon.

As I drove home, I realized the sun had risen on a new day, though I had not finished with yesterday.

True! I found a beautiful woman in my bed; but as I had anticipated, the lovely being was not my wife. Watching the woman from the doorway, I suddenly realized that I no longer had a life outside the department.

Carly awoke as I tapped on the bedroom door.

"She's not here," Carly said wiping sleep from her eyes.

"I didn't expect her," I said. "Tell me where she's hiding."

"No," Carly said.

"We'll find them, Carly," I said. "And when we do, we'll add flight to avoid prosecution to the charges. No possibility of a winning outcome for Anne,"

Carly said nothing. She watched me without expression as I turned and left the house.

Arch was waiting for me when I returned to the office. I joined him for coffee.

"All of them flew," Arch said laconically. "They all left on the same flight for Venezuela with the exception of Anne."

"Why Venezuela?" I asked, not really interested.

"Turns out the super was a Venezuelan here illegally," Arch said with humorless laugh. "What about your wife?"

"Anne flew," I answered.

"Your daughter was picked up by the FBI changing planes in Los Angeles," Arch said.

Arch did not attempt to say he was sorry about Anne.

"I'll get her," I said.

"Yes," Arch said.

********

ANNE

It was good to be off that damned airplane and in the sanctuary of a luxury bar in Mexico City's most cosmopolitan hotel. I had escaped down an alley behind my offices as Arch and that damn Sgt, Campbell were riding up in the elevator.