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the Box complain?”
    “We’re going out tonight,” he says.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
     
    Hollywood is business disguised as a party, and the party is in full swing at the Hotel Molique when Melvin and I arrive. The sleek, circular, brushed aluminum bar is packed three bodies deep with fabulous people. The hostess greets us—a stunning young woman in a tiny black designer dress. She glances at my off-the-rack navy sport coat, then makes Melvin and me wait until our party is complete before we will be seated. We are waiting for a retired guy from Vice, who is going to give us the down-low on this infamous place. Melvin is wearing a black Dolce & Gabbana suit that fits him like horsehide on a hardball. A few people at the bar glance at him, looking right past me.
    The dining room is huge, with a domed ceiling covered with a trompe l’oeil sky painted over it. As the minutes tick by, the lighting changes subtly, causing the painted sky scenic to transform from late afternoon to magic hour, as cinematographers call it. Everyone else calls it twilight, but this is not a place where everyone else is welcome.
    “I feel like a pound mutt at the Westminster Dog Show,” I say to Melvin as we stand there, waiting. Melvin glances at my clothes.
    “They probably think you’re my harried, underpaid assistant,” he says.
    “I’m not being paid at all,” I say.
    “Rightly so,” he says.
    The retired vice cop arrives. His name is Mike, he’s in his sixties, beefy and thick, with a pock-marked, go-to-hell Irish face and a cop mustache. The hostess greets him effusively, calls him by his first name, gives him a kiss on the cheek, and leads us immediately to the best table in the room, near the bar.
    “I feel like I’m having dinner with Brad Pitt,” I say as we sit down. Mike grins.
    “There’s a reason for that,” he says.
    Our waiter breezes over and takes our drink orders and then Mike talks.
    “This was my beat for a long time,” he says. “I know everybody here, and I know all the dirt. They tried to pay me off when the news of what actually goes on here hit the press. I wouldn’t take their money, but I still get the best table when I come in.”
    “So what goes on here?” I say, after the waiter brings our drinks.
    “It’s a whorehouse,” Mike says. His eyes do a quick scan of the bar as he sips his Scotch. “From here I can count at least six or eight women at the bar who are pros, and there are probably some new faces I don’t know.”
    I do my own scan of the bar. All of the women are young, beautiful, extremely well-dressed and bejeweled, and exuding refinement as they chat with the men around them.
    “You meet at the bar, make some conversation, do a little discreet negotiation, then it’s upstairs to a suite,” Mike says. “Most johns go for a full night—most of the girls won’t do anything less. Between the suite, the bar, room service, and the girl, you can party all night like Charlie Sheen for about ten grand. Depending on your tastes.”
    “That kind of thing goes on in swag hotels in every big city,” I say. “What was the big scandal?”
    “Dope,” Mike says. “About fifteen years ago, when everybody was a high-roller, johns started asking for drugs as part of the party package. Coke, rock, meth, pharmaceuticals—uppers, mostly. If you’re paying ten thousand bucks to party all night with a gorgeous gal you don’t want to fall asleep.”
    “Still not uncommon,” Melvin says.
    “Yeah,” Mike says. “The trouble came when a doctor named Veltzin started moving his celebrity clients in here to dry out. Only Veltzin’s method of treating addiction was to give his patients more drugs—different drugs, more potent drugs. Not to mention the fact that his patients could come and go as they pleased, and there was a bar one floor down, which was full of beautiful women available at a price that a celebrity could easily afford. By the time we busted the whole thing up, pretty much the