Dangerous Women

by George R. R. Martin

  “That didn’t take long,” Peter said, without looking up from his laptop.

  “I wasn’t trying to make her happy,” Danny replied. He looped his tie back around his neck, knotted it quickly.

  A smile twitched across Peter’s mouth as he tapped an envelope on the table. Danny scooped it up and tucked it into his jacket. He didn’t bother counting it.

  “I think I’ll go visit a bookstore now,” he said with a grin.

  “Tell me if you find anything dirty.”

  The aroma of sweat and stale coffee greeted Danny as he entered the station with his arrestee. He kept a hand on the upper arm of the handcuffed man, guided him around the other dregs and the other cops.

  “You can’t do this!” his guy kept saying, as if hoping that if he said it enough, it would be true, that a cop couldn’t simply walk into his bookstore and find drugs that were never there before. “Please. Please! I have a family. You can’t do this. Those drugs weren’t mine. You—”

  Danny gave him a hard yank, pulled him off-balance. His guy let out a yelp as he struggled for footing and went down on one knee. Danny crouched, making a show of helping him back to his feet while he leaned in close to the guy’s ear.

  “You need to settle the fuck down and be a good boy,” he said in a calm, low voice. “This is going to happen whether you behave or not. You want it to be worse?” He met the guy’s eyes. “It can be worse.”

  Sweat tracked down the side of the man’s face. Danny watched as a spark of rebellion struggled for life within his eyes.

  “There’s a lot of paperwork in an arrest like this,” Danny continued smoothly. “Some of it might get lost. Maybe it’s the part that describes the evidence and the chain of custody. Or maybe it’s the part that says you were booked into jail and need to have a bond set. Which one you want lost? You want to have the case thrown out before it goes to trial? Or you want to spend an extra week or so in central lockup?”

  The spark of rebellion died. His head dropped.

  “That’s right,” Danny said, helping the unresisting man back up to his feet. “You be a good boy and this’ll all be over soon.”

  Danny booked him in, filed the initial paperwork, and was on his way down the hall to his office when he saw her sitting in an interview room. The girl from the corner. She’d changed into jeans and a deep maroon blouse, but he’d have known her no matter what she was wearing. She looked small and scared in the metal chair, her hands clasped around a paper cup of coffee and her eyes on Detective Farber in the opposite chair.

  He stepped into the open doorway, knocked on the jamb. She jerked her eyes up to his. A whisper of a smile touched her mouth and he thought that maybe now she didn’t look so scared. “Whatcha got?” he asked Farber without taking his eyes from her.

  “She talked to Jimmy Ernst late last night,” the detective explained. “Might’ve been the last one to see him alive. We’re just getting started.”

  “I’ll take over,” Danny said, moving into the room. He shifted his gaze, caught Farber’s eye. The other man hesitated, then flicked a glance back at the girl, hid a grin.

  “Yeah, sure thing.” He stood and picked up his things. “By the way, Ernst had a gun on him. It’s been sent to the lab.” Ballistics testing was routine. Maybe they could pin some cold cases on Ernst and improve their stats. Farber’s eyes flicked toward the girl, then back to Danny. “Lemme know if you get anything,” he added, the double meaning hanging in the air.

  Danny waited for him to leave, closed the door, and took a seat in the empty chair. “I’m Captain Danny Faciane,” he told her. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Okay.” She paused. “I’m Delia,” she said, releasing her grip on the paper cup.

  “Last name?”

  She sat back. “Rochon. Delia Rochon. I talked to Jimmy last night. About midnight or so, I guess. He used to come by the club a lot.” Distaste skimmed across her features.

  He wrote her name on the pad. “Club?”

  “Freddy-Z’s.” Her eyes dropped to the hands in her lap. “I’m a dancer.”

  A stripper. Freddy-Z’s was one of the best in what was left of the city. Danny jotted the info down. Not because it was important to the case, but because he wanted her to think it was, that it wasn’t simply important to him that he knew where to find her again.

  He went ahead and asked her about her conversation with Jimmy Ernst, went through the motions the same way they did with most other cases like this. She gave him a clear but sparse tale of the encounter. Jimmy had asked her about a girl who’d used to work at the club, wanted to know where she was now. Delia hadn’t told him anything. Nothing too exciting.

  She didn’t like the victim. She never came out and said so, but it was clear in her manner, the hardening of her eyes when she spoke of him. Then again, Danny knew that he’d be hard pressed to find anyone who did. Jimmy was a pimp, specializing in girls who looked really young.

  Danny finally set the pen down on the pad. She looked at the pen, then to him. “Am I under arrest?” she asked, voice small but steady.

  He let out a snort. “For Jimmy? Nah. We don’t give a fuck about him.” No one would ever go to jail for that murder. Not unless they came to the station and made a full confession—and that’s how it was for most of the murders in this city, not only for scum like Ernst. Danny, and everyone else, did just enough to keep from being indicted for malfeasance.

  The cops in this city knew how to survive. And a few smart ones, like him, knew how to prosper.

  He walked her out, offered to have an officer drive her home, but she merely smiled and shook her head. It was raining again, a steady downpour that would wash all the trash into the streets and clog the drains, but she simply opened her umbrella and walked out into it without a hitch in her stride. He watched the red umbrella grow smaller in the distance until it was lost in the grey haze of the rain.

  Danny talked to the bartender at Freddy-Z’s later that day, found out that Delia had started there about a month ago. No one knew much about her. Then again, no one really cared, according to the bartender. They didn’t give a shit about the girls’ personal lives as long as they showed up on time and kept any trouble they were in away from the club. Delia did both.

  She was working that night. He made sure he was there to see her. He didn’t even try to convince himself he was checking out a possible witness. He knew damn well that he wanted to see more of her, and not simply the more that happened when she pulled her clothing off.

  Neon flashed in tempo to the bass thump of the music. The mingled scents of sweat and sex, money and misery, swirled around the dancers and the men gazing up at them. Delia worked the pole with a lithe grace and sureness that spoke of years of training, and Danny wondered if, in some distant past, she’d been a far different sort of dancer. Yet, despite her obvious strength and control, she exuded a sensuousness, a base sexuality, that he doubted she’d learned in a ballet class.

  She only looked at him once, a lingering caress of attention paired with a shy smile, at odds with the sultry glances she bestowed on the other patrons. And because it would have seemed odd or rude for him not to, he held up a fiver and slipped it under her G-string when she paused before him, then felt dirty for doing so with this girl.

  “She’s a fucking hot piece,” said a familiar voice. Danny turned his head, forced a smile for Peter. The other man’s eyes were on Delia. Appreciative. Admiring. Hungry.

  “She’s a witness in one of my cases,” Danny found himself saying. Maybe Peter would be scared off by that. He was usually pretty careful about not associating with criminal types. After all, that’s what he had Danny for.

  But Peter merely smiled, kept his gaze on Delia.

  Danny knew what would happen next. Peter would get a lap dance, then pay for a private room. It was possible that he’d invite Danny to come with him, and with any other girl he’d have gone and enjoyed himself.

  Danny stood, moved to the
bar on a pretense of getting another drink. The envelope crinkled within his jacket and he frowned. He’d been so caught up in thoughts of her that he’d forgotten to take it out and put it someplace safe. But now he felt only relief. He didn’t even think before calling the manager over, paying the money for a private room with Delia and another one for Peter with a different dancer. Part of him knew that there was every chance that this wouldn’t work. Peter had money and influence and was used to getting what he wanted. But Danny had his own sort of influence. He slid the manager a hundred, along with an agreement to help the man out if he ever got into the sort of trouble that Danny could help with. A few minutes later, the club’s second-prettiest dancer made her way over to where Peter sat.

  Peter raised an eyebrow as the blonde draped herself around his shoulders, chuckled under his breath as she rubbed her breasts on the back of his neck. He scanned the room for Delia, then asked the blond girl a question. She shrugged and nodded in Danny’s direction; he fixed a smile on his face and lifted his drink as Peter looked his way, tried to make it look as if he’d bought the girl for Peter simply because it was a cool thing for one guy to do for another.

  The two men locked eyes, gaze broken when the blond dancer took Peter’s hand to lead him to the back room. He stood and followed, paused as they neared the bar.

  He leaned in to Danny. “I saw what you did there,” Peter said, mouth showing amusement that his eyes didn’t share. “I think it’s cute that you like that girl enough to pull a stunt like that.” He paused. “Don’t you ever fucking cockblock me like that again.”

  He turned without waiting for a response and continued through the curtains to the private rooms.

  Danny stayed where he was, hands clenched into fists in the pockets of his jacket, telling himself he was controlling himself from going after Peter and beating that smug, superior smile from his face, but knowing that he was actually fighting down the sick knowledge that he and Peter might be cut from the same cloth, but they sure as shit weren’t equals, weren’t partners of any sort. And as much as he hated Peter at this moment, he knew that when the man summoned him he’d go and do what he was told, like a goddamned trained dog. Too much to lose if he didn’t.

  He also knew that he didn’t want to go to a private room with Delia. He turned back to the bartender. “The redheaded kid down by the left stage. Is he a dick to the girls?”

  Bartender shook his head. “Nah. Comes in with twenty bucks a coupla times a week. Never caused trouble.”

  “Give him my room. Tell him happy fucking birthday.” He peeled off another hundred to cover a tip. “And tell him if he gets out of line with Delia, I’ll break his fucking neck.”

  He left the club, waited in the bar across the street for her to finish her shift. When he finally saw her step out of the back door, he dropped a twenty to cover his tab and went out to meet her.

  She was with two other women. A petite, mousy thing who tried and failed to do “sexy librarian” and a curvy Hispanic with big tits and long legs. As he approached they paused their low conversation. Delia’s eyes held a whisper of uncertainty, but the other two watched him with the naked wariness of a rabbit watching a fox.

  He wanted to growl to the two rabbits to get lost, watch them skitter off, but instead he merely asked Delia, “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  As if she hadn’t heard his question, she turned to the other girls. “I’ll see y’all tomorrow night,” she told them, exchanged quick hugs. Not until the two were halfway down the block did she return her attention to Danny. Her mouth pressed into a tight, thin line.

  “I’m not a whore,” she said flatly.

  Danny found himself smiling. “I know. I promise, I just want to buy you a cup of coffee.”

  The look she gave him was measuring, doubtful. He wondered if she knew what he’d done in the club and, if so, whether she could possibly understand why. Then again, he didn’t completely understand it himself.

  “There’s a café over on Decatur,” she finally said. “It’s really good, but I don’t like walking there by myself at night.”

  “I’ll protect you,” he replied.

  She liked her coffee sweet and rich, added enough cream to where it matched the pale mocha color of her skin. Her croissant she tore into small bits before eating it in dainty bites between sips of coffee and conversation.

  Like anyone else in the city, they talked first about why they were still there after the Switch, why they hadn’t abandoned the city the way that the river had. After all, anyone who could had left, leaving only the very poor, the rich who knew how to profit from disaster, and the few people those rich needed to get richer and stay comfortable.

  “Lots of cops left and went over to Morgan City,” he told her. “Plenty of work there. But … I dunno. I didn’t want to leave, and I had enough seniority to avoid the layoffs.” And plenty of stroke, too, he added silently. He’d called in a lot of favors to make sure that not only would he stay but those in line ahead of him for promotion would get the ax instead. He’d made captain less than six months later.

  “This is my home” was all she said to explain why she stayed. “I love this city.”

  “Even now?” he asked her, eyebrow cocked in disbelief.

  “Especially now,” she replied, a soft smile on her lips.

  He thought about that for a moment while he drank his café au lait. The night breeze brought the stagnant scent of the river, mingled with the aroma of beer and piss in the street. Even hours before dawn, the muggy air wrapped around them with warm tendrils, promising a brutal summer to come. But this city suited him, suited his personality. The Switch had been the best goddamn thing that had ever happened to him.

  “Me too,” he finally said, because he knew she expected it, and pushed aside the strange twinge of sadness that came from realizing that he loved it for far different reasons than she did.

  Though he never went back inside the club, he waited for her each night and walked her to the café. On the third night, she tucked her arm through his as they walked. On the fifth, she greeted him with a kiss and a smile.

  On the seventh, she asked, “Do you have a coffeemaker at home?”

  He had an apartment south of the Quarter, a more than decent place where he lived for free, thanks to a desperate landlord who agreed that it was better to have a cop live there than have squatters take up residence. With so many vacant homes and apartments in the city, it was rare for any cop to pay rent.

  It was almost a mile from the café, but she insisted that she didn’t mind walking.

  His place wasn’t overly messy, but it sure as hell wasn’t set up as a nice place to have company. The curtains had been left behind by the previous tenants, and had likely been old back then. Décor was limited to a pile of magazines with scantily clad women on the covers, a cluster of empty beer bottles on the coffee table, and, by the door, a framed newspaper article from several years back with the headline: Witness recants testimony. NOPD officers cleared in wrongdoing.

  He never brought girls back here, had never thought what it would look like through a woman’s eyes. Oddly ashamed, he started to apologize, but she stopped him with a smile. “It’s all right. It’s good. You’re a good person.” Which only made his shame increase, because he knew that he wasn’t, though it had never mattered to him before.

  He snaked his arms around her waist and pulled her tightly to him. She let out a small squeak of surprise. “Nah, I’m a bad boy,” he said, trying to be flip, yet feeling it like a confession. He instantly felt silly for saying it and sorry for being rough. He didn’t want this girl to think of him like that. He didn’t want her to be the kind who was only attracted to the assholes and pricks.

  But she simply smiled and laid her hand on his cheek. “You’re not fooling me,” she said, voice low and husky. “You’re my good boy.”

  Danny knew how to fuck, how to get what he wanted, how not to care. He’d lost count of the number of prostitution “
arrests” he’d made—girls who’d paid their fine directly to him with their mouth or cunt. It had been a long time since he’d had any sort of concern for the pleasure of his partner, and he felt like a fumbling virgin as he touched Delia, shamed and horrified when his uncertainty translated into a betrayal of his own physical response.

  Yet she neither mocked nor took insult. Lowering her head, she gently coaxed him back, easing him, exciting him. And before he could squander her efforts, he shifted her to her back and returned the attention. She tasted sweet and wild, and as she tightened her hands in the sheet and cried out, he couldn’t help but feel a pleasure that nearly matched her own. When she finally lay spent and shaking, only then did he move up and find his own release, thrilled beyond measure when she clasped her arms and legs around him and cried out his name.

  He held her close after, stroking her hair as her breath warmed his chest, savoring the almost foreign sensation of feeling whole, secure. Happy.

  The next night they walked out to what was left of the Mississippi, made their way upriver, and stood on a dock where, only three years earlier, the Canal Street Ferry had loaded and unloaded thousands of cars and people. The river had a bit more temper here due to the bend in it and the way the silt had settled. The current roiled beyond the mud, but to Danny it felt like an older woman trying to prove she was young and attractive. Look at me, he imagined the river saying. I still got it. I’m still a bad girl. In a few more years, the silt would build up more and the river would subside, muttering, disgruntled, and hurt to be so unappreciated.

  “When I was a kid, my mom would take me out to the levee nearly every Sunday afternoon,” Danny told Delia. “We’d sit and watch the ships and barges go up and down the river and we’d make up stories about what they carried and where they were going.”

  “That sounds nice,” she said, tilting her head to look at him.

  “Yeah. It was cool. She’d pack sandwiches and chips and we’d make a picnic of it.”