Chapter 105

The security guard saw a host of cars arriving at the Daystar lot just minutes after his shift started. He watched as one beautiful woman after another piled out and he wondered what they were shooting this evening. Whatever it might be, he was glad his job included a free membership to three sites – if he was interested. He might be switching his choices depending on what this was all about.

He checked his clipboard and saw a single notation from the man who worked inside during the day: "Ben B. has a large group arriving, 5 p.m. Don't fuck with them."

That was clear enough. He smiled politely when a tall young woman with red hair told them they were there to see Ben Benedict and he unlatched the gate without hesitation. The fact that the entire group smiled at him and said thank you amazed the guy. The folks who worked at Daystar usually offered a wave as they left for the night but performers – and this group had to be performers – treated him with contempt if they acknowledged him at all. He decided the three guys who were the last through might be the luckiest sons-of-bitches on the planet.

There was an even chance he was right.

Ben watched with a smile as the group wandered into the lower-level studio. He knew Rita Looker by sight but he'd never met her and it had been two years since he'd spoken to Cassie Charms. Shelly followed those two in, side-by-side with two young women he didn't recognize, Trinity and Erin. Rachelle, Mary, Allie and Sarah also had someone new with them but he knew her to be Jenny Cinnamon or the ever-pleasant phone voice that he knew as Karlie. Three guys came trooping in at the rear.

"My God, look at what came slinking in last," Ben laughed. "Good to see you all."

He walked to Rebecca and extended his hand.

"It's nice to finally meet you," he said. "I'm really happy that you agreed to do this for us. I think you'll be impressed with the demeanor of the young woman you'll be working with. She calls herself Shawna Young. I'm positive she'll be here by 5:30 p.m., so I'll let her introduce herself."

"If you say she has potential, I'll certainly take your word for it," Rebecca replied. "I'm only sorry that we couldn't find a way to meet her before we do a scene. I've been tied in knots on web site issues."

"Believe me, I understand web site issues," Ben said.

"Not these you don't," Rebecca told him. She gave him a brief synopsis of what had transpired with her site. Ben frowned and shook his head. The problem with tech geeks, to Ben, was the fact that they had no qualms about destroying other people's property for their own amusement.

"Hi, Cassie," Ben said, when he turned to Leslie. "It is good to see you again."

"You, too," Leslie replied. "It's been too long. I hope you'll find something for me to do at Daystar in the future. You have taken such a huge step by bringing Ashley aboard and I know things are going to be fantastic here in the coming months."

Ben moved down the line, saying hello to those he knew and introducing himself to those he didn't.

"Trinity," he said with a smile. "My dad and I got a long, well-needed chuckle when these guys told us what your fictional name would be. Ann Jones, we loved it."

Trinity was surprised that anyone in the group had even mentioned her to Ben Benedict, let alone made reference to one of her jokes.

"I hear you are a source of good humor and you manage to keep Adam on his toes," Ben continued. "He needs that."

"Uh, sure," Trinity replied. She was a bit in awe of a man who owned 20 percent of a multi-million dollar company. She stopped that line of thought when she realized that she knew a lot of people like that now. A smile popped up quickly.

"Uh oh," Ben said, taking a step back. "I've been warned that when you get that look, someone is about to find themselves looking for cover. I think I'll go on now since I am the least prepared to deal with it. It was great to meet you. I can see you're everything your friends said you were. They're lucky to have you around."

Trinity had always considered herself the lucky one. But Ben was sincere and she realized that her friends had not only mentioned her to this media mogul but had spoken positively about her.

"Thanks," she replied, truly humbled by the feelings of appreciation that went through her.

"And who might you be?" Ben asked Erin. "I can put a name to a face to everyone else. Wait, give me a second. Crap, I know you're one of these guy's sisters but I'm sorry, I've only heard your name once."

"Erin, I'm Sean's sister," she replied.

"You definitely got the best end of that gene pool," Ben said, smirking at Sean, who was only a few feet away.

"Well, you know how it is," Erin smiled. "He's not much to look at but he's ever so sweet. We keep him around so the dogs will have someone to play with."

"You got the top end of the wit scale, too," Ben laughed. "It's good to meet you. You'll be living in L.A. this summer?"

"That's the plan," Erin replied. "I'm really looking forward to it."

Allie greeted Ben with a kiss on the cheek and she and Sarah gave him a rundown of what had happened at Peaches that day.

"Do you have a couple of minutes for some serious discussion?" Allie asked.

"Of course," Ben said. Rebecca asked to use the shower to freshen up before her scene – since she had been sitting outside in the sun right before coming up to the studio. The rest of the crew found an open space on one of the soundstages.

"Ben, do you know what a Rabbit Hole is?" Sarah asked.

"I've heard the term," he admitted. "From what I understand, it's some sort of fictional place they send undesirable actresses and actors. It's how they wash out some of those who either can't cut it or won't play by the rules."

"It's not fictional," Allie said. "And it's not just for undesirables."

She laid out the evidence that the young women of the group had compiled. The further she got, the whiter Ben's face got.

"Give me a second, please," Ben said, his voice tight with anger. "I want to call my father. I swear to you, if he knew about this and was complicit in this, I'll be submitting a resume to Subarctic tomorrow. I won't screw over Shawna and Rita. I'll finish things here. But I'll be working for you tomorrow. This is such fucking bullshit. To think you almost fell into that, Allie. I'm sorry. I didn't know but God damn it, I should have."

He stepped away, dialed a number and spoke for a few seconds.

"Dad is on his way down," Ben said. "He said he knew what a Rabbit Hole was and he knew they existed. I'm not sure he knew it was to this extent. He'll be here in a minute."

Sure enough, Tate Benedict walked in only seconds later. He wore a troubled expression and only nodded a greeting to the group.

"Now, what has you so pissed off?" he asked his son. Ben started pulling out documents and information detailing the routes each agency sent their talent. Tate's mouth dropped as each new piece clicked into place.

"That's illegal!" he said. "I mean, we're talking prison time illegal. Gloria said Sven was skimming from her. I thought she meant he wasn't reporting all the jobs he got. Damn it to hell. I should have seen this."

"Ben, Tate," Adam said in a soft voice, "there is no way either of you can know every single actress in the industry. There is also no way for us to clarify which of these girls actually wanted to do the sites and which were compelled into accepting the jobs. Don't beat yourselves up."

"But that is my job," Ben insisted. "For the last three years, I've been the casting supervisor here. It's my job to recognize trends like this."

He and Tate looked at the stack of papers that Allie had brought with her. They were color coded by agency and by the performer's status – active or inactive.

"Can I write on these?" Tate asked suddenly.

"Sure," Allie replied.

He pulled a pen from his pocket and sifted through the piles of inactive performers, stopping periodically to circle something then set the page on another pile. When he was finished, he turned to the group with a look of abject anger on his face.

"This pile," he said, gesturing to 10 or 12 that he'd set aside, "have one thing in common. All these girls committed suicide shortly after they were sent down the Rabbit Hole."

"Look at the dates," Tate said, pushing papers aside. "The 2257s don't lie. They fudged on the release dates but they can't lie to the Feds."

He shook his head, almost in denial of what he was seeing.

"God damn them," he said fiercely. "I promise you – I promise every one of you – by this time next week, I'll have the names of every son of a bitch who participated in this scheme. I don't care if we have to shut Daystar down, I'll force every God damned agency and every God damned owner to admit culpability and to make restitution before I'll let another one of their girls work here."

"Dad," Ben said softly, "that only plays into what they want. I think we should make it a point to contact each and every one of the owners on Monday and tell them we want to use their middle ground talent. We'll force them to turn us down. They have to know, Dad. I know you think Gloria Jackson is this clueless old woman stuck in the 1980s but this can't go on without her having at least an inkling."

"Gloria is out at Elite," Tate said. "Fiona Sparks is running the company starting Monday. She has a good head on her shoulders and she is one who will look out for performers."

"Ben's right," Trinity said. "They know. I've done a lot of this research. I don't want you two to get ahead of yourselves, but I want you to see this. Pick any girl off the active pile. It doesn't matter which one you choose because there are only three that I can think of who don't follow this path."

Ben pulled out a sheet of paper: Kristi Clear.

"This girl started four years ago with Premier Casting," Trinity said, pointing to the first line, highlighted in green. "She did the normal things all newbies do. She did a shoot for a couple of fairly tame web sites and a girl-girl with Dazzle and boy-boy-girl with RapidFire, things that got her a following on the web. You can tell when her first contract ended because of the gap in jobs. It's standard. After your contract ends, it's always two or three weeks before they get a new gig. The first job on her second contract was 'Older and Younger.' Again, nothing really terrible about that from what I've seen. Then she hit the Rabbit Hole."

She pointed to a series of entries highlighted in yellow. They were typical for the girls from Premier – first came 'Bukkake Beatdown.' Two weeks later it was 'Teen Reeducation.' There was a four-week gap – likely while she healed – then she went to 'Dark Meat in Petite Seats, ' an interracial anal site. Again, there was a four-week break.

"That takes her to the end of her days with Premier," Trinity said. "Look what comes next. She goes from having six guys sodomize her to a nice little part in a feature for Vapid. Then she gets a part in another feature for Austere. It's that way for all of them. It's like..."

"'There are better jobs out there if you just show you're willing to work for them, '" Allie said in a toneless voice. "That's word for word what Sven told me. 'There are better jobs out there if you just show you're willing to work for them.' Mother fucker."

"Sorry, Allie," Trinity said sincerely. Allie's face was set in a grim mask but she just shrugged at Trinity and motioned for her to go on.

"The next thing anyone knows four or five weeks after she is through with Premier, she lands at Silver Wing," Trinity said. "She was there for a year. But look at what happened when she left Silver Wing. Look at the jobs she got the last month of her contract."

They were the same sort of jobs she had been forced to take for Premier – gangbangs, sadism and fisting.

"Blood in, blood out," Ben said almost in a whisper.

"What?" Tate asked.

"It's like getting into a gang or into the Mafia," Ben said, still in the same soft voice. "You make your bones at 'Teen Reeducation' and they throw a few decent jobs at you. Getting a name girl like Kristi Clear to do 'Teen Reeducation' would never happen if she weren't coerced. She started out with the same type of potential Allie and Sarah show. But they got her there and made big bucks off it. When she decided she wanted to leave Silver Wing, they sent her back down the hole. When you hit the big name agencies, they own you. Allie, you know this. If you land at Jade or Silver Wing or Pinnacle or Apex or Summit, they hold your contract and you are given little choice in where you work or who you work with. If you refuse, they hit you with a lawsuit or simply refuse to find you jobs anywhere."

Allie nodded.

"So they signed her up to do a bunch of humiliating and degrading sites as punishment for leaving them," Ben continued. "Just like a gang makes you take a beating to get in and take a beating to get out. That's what this is. Jesus, Trinity. It's this way for all of them?"

"The pipeline rarely changes," she said sadly. "The girls who come out of their second contract with Elite land at Pinnacle. Rival sends theirs to Jade. Summit gets the girls from Live Angels. Silver Wing gets the girls from Premier. Sure, there are one or two who don't go that way. Some take time off between their Rabbit Hole days and their next contract. A couple landed at the same agency that reps a guy they worked with a lot. But I would guess – of the 39 girls we've tracked who made it completely through their second contract and stayed in the business – 90 percent of them followed that route."

Tate's face had grown increasing angry as Trinity had pointed out the path. He was looking at another printout with another starlet's name at the top. The names were different but the game was the same.

"Tate," Adam said warningly, "you can't fix this part. It's too big for you and it's too dangerous to fuck with some of these people. Silver Wing and Austere are close. Vapid and Regal are close. The money boys behind the studios are not people that either you as a person or Daystar the company want to fuck with. I'm not talking about them forcing you out of business. These are the type people who firebomb your fucking house."

"We need to find a way to shut down the little players – Elite and such. If we pressure them to stop this, it will stop. Let's be honest. Daystar, Dazzle and Subarctic together aren't anywhere near the size of Vapid or Austere. I mean we are not even in the same stratosphere. I'm all for making sure the new girls coming into the business are aware of what is happening. But it is not worth dying over. I'm sorry, I don't mean that be sound crass."

Tate's expression hadn't changed.

"Adam," he said, pointing the pile he had separated earlier, "you didn't know these girls. I did. Josey Swallow worked here her first week in the business. She wasn't very smart, I'll grant that, but she was as funny and as friendly a girl as you could find. If you pull this list apart and look at it you'll see what I saw when I look at it. These are real people, damn it. These girls are the ones people like Sven Swenson prey on. They don't have the resources to fight back. They don't have the ability to stand up to them and tell them to fuck off. So they get exploited – and then they can't take the blow to their already fragile self-esteem and they kill themselves. The fuckers who made a buck off these girls killed these girls the same as if they stuck the gun in their mouths or put the pills in their hands."

"It could have been me," Sarah said, almost in a whisper.

"It almost was me," Allie added.

"By this time next Friday, I'll have this stopped," Tate declared. "I'm not as big as RapidFire or Red Line. But I know enough people in this business who think like I do – who think like you do – that we can make it extremely tough for Elite and Premier and the rest of those shitholes to stay in business if they cross us."

Ben walked to a different section of the studio in a vain attempt to clear his head. He had a scene to shoot and it would be exceedingly unfair to both Rita Looker and Shawna Young for him to bring his present state of mind into that endeavor.

"Sorry, Ben," a voice said from behind him. He turned to find Adam and Shelly standing just outside of the doorway of the room where he had retreated. It was Shelly who had spoken.

"We knew this was going to be bad but we didn't realize how personally you'd take it," she said. "It's not your fault and it's too big for you to have done anything about."

"I can accept that part," Ben said. "But I still wonder how many of these girls I refused to consider for something later in their careers because of something they couldn't control. I wonder if maybe a few of that last pile of faces might still be around if I had made a decision to call their agency."

"Don't take this the wrong way," Adam began, "but I'm willing to bet it wouldn't have helped. You contacted Elite about Ashley, right?"

Ben nodded.

"And they said she wasn't interested in working for Daystar," Adam continued. "It would have been the same thing for Kitten Davis, Josey Swallow or Nita Daze. Why did you call Allie directly?"