The PDM offices were just what I had been expecting. I’d never been there but I might as well have. The Valley was riddled with hundreds of places exactly like this. A warren of mildewy, over-airconditioned rooms up front and a huge hollow warehouse space in the back. A couple of indentured editors lurking lemur-eyed and unshaven in rooms lit only by images of grinding flesh. Mexican and Salvadoran ladies slipping slick printed covers into thousands of plastic DVD clamshells. Fulfillment girls and a forklift driver and some poor sod on QC, watching hour after mindless hour of smut in a never-ending hunt for digital glitches. A busy little beehive all working tirelessly, day in and day out, so that you can look at naughty movies in the comfort of your own home. The ‘B’ in B. Handerlan turned out to stand for Barbara. She was blonde, plain and mushroom pale with the same expression of weary, put-upon exasperation worn by employees at the DMV. She acted as though the enormous effort involved in getting up out of her spavined chair and walking over to the file cabinet to find the records Malloy had requested was almost more than she could bear.
What do You think about Hard Case Crime: Money Shot?
