Skin Trade

by Reggie Nadelson

  It was what Katya had told me.

  “You?”

  She nodded. “The little one you met also is from Bosnia. You want to talk? You have more lovely dollars?”

  “Sure.”

  “She could use help.” Amber went to the door. “She has baby. She takes care of her kid, not like whores who abandon children. In Czechia near German border are child-homes full of kids left by whores.”

  Amber left me alone in the dismal room. There was an electric heater and I switched it on, but the bars that turned red were cold. From the road I heard traffic heading south to Prague, then Vienna.

  The door opened. Amber came back with Chanelle. She pulled her sweater tight around her little body and looked at me warily. Amber spoke to her. I offered Chanelle a cigarette and cash. She took both, then sat on the bed, legs crossed. Her legs, in her tight jeans, were thin as sticks.

  “What do you want?” she said in English.

  I pointed at the pictures of Lily and Zhaba. “I’m looking for a man who beats up women like this. He beats them, he breaks their fingers, and sometimes he rapes them, and cuts their hair off for a trophy. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “Is this him? Your friend said you knew.”

  Slowly, Chanelle rolled up the sleeves of her pink sweater and showed me the bruises on her elbows. One of them had been badly set and the bone stuck out at an awkward angle. She said softly, “I know who does this beating.”

  “Who? Is it him, this Zhaba?”

  “If I tell you, they’ll come again and break my head this time.”

  “I’ll find a way to protect you.” I lied to her because of Lily.

  The girl helped herself to the purple liqueur. She lifted the bottle to her lips and sucked some out. It left a smear on her lips. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then lit the cigarette and glanced out of the window into the night. She patted the bed beside her. I went and sat next to her. I could smell her. She had on plenty of perfume but she was just a kid. I wondered what she thought about, how she was inside. If she had any insides left.

  “There are ways to protect you,” I said again. “I could help you.”

  “I will take more cash instead,” she said. “Also I want to eat.”

  There was a greasy plastic menu and I ordered the two most expensive bottles of wine on the list and steak for all of us, though Chanelle wanted fish. There wasn’t any fish, except the herring that passed for an appetizer. It came out of a jar.

  The restaurant was up a back road from the building where the women lived. The village consisted of a couple of farm houses, a derelict gas station, a shuttered shop and, in a low, stained stucco building, the restaurant. Lights were in the windows, there was a Pils sign on the door, and Streisand was singing “Send in the Clowns”.

  Another day had gone by and I still had no hard information about Zhaba. It made me impatient and crazy, but I knew I had to take it easy now or Chanelle would back off. She wore a white knitted cap with a yellow pom pom.

  The half-dozen tables in the restaurant were all occupied by men. There was a stuffed fish on the wall. The bartender, a man with a pencil mustache and not much hair, worked frantically serving up the booze, and there was, from a kitchen somewhere, the heavy smell of meat frying. It was night in the middle of Europe in a village whose name I didn’t know, and I was eating herring with a couple of hookers called Amber and Chanelle. I scanned the men in the room. Zhaba wasn’t there.

  Amber drank a couple of glasses of red wine. Chanelle drank steadily but left her food untouched. The older woman reached over and stabbed Chanelle’s herring up with her fork and ate it. A tall man I recognized from the Vietnamese supermarket glanced at me and Amber saw me stare back.

  “Leave it,” she said. “He’s nothing.” She went back to her food, but added, “Like he thinks he is in movie.”

  “So what’s your movie?”

  “Terminator.” She paused for effect and flexed her arms, though there wasn’t much muscle. “Some day, I say to myself, I’m going to get money and come back and …” She looked around at the creeps hunkered down in the dim room, the smoke rising, Streisand singing, the stink of fried food. Amber chortled and dragged my cigarettes across the table.

  I looked at Chanelle. “You want to talk here?”

  Her voice was low. “Here is OK. Nobody speaks English, also there is noise. No one thinks you are talking except for sex.” She put my hand on her thigh. “Fake it like this is business, OK?”

  Her flesh was warm through the jeans. It was hot in the restaurant. She pushed her plate aside, leaned her arms on the table, leaned her chin on them. In one hand she clutched the glass of vodka she was drinking now. I leaned forward.

  “This woman you show us who gets hurt, she’s also whore?”

  She meant Lily. I said, “No.”

  “So why?”

  “She tried to help girls who got hurt.”

  Chanelle snorted. “She’s crazy. What’s to help?”

  I kept quiet.

  Amber leaned over and put her arm around the girl. “If she’s not whore, somebody big is very angry, because is not normal to mess around other women.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about him?” I held up the picture. “This one they call Zhaba.”

  They looked at each other. Chanelle shook her head. “We don’t know.”

  “You said you knew. You showed me your arm.”

  “I don’t know.” She turned petulant.

  “Is he a boss? He collects the dolls?”

  “I said I don’t know.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I told you. Give us money.”

  “Then tell me where to find him. Tell me where he works. Is he here?” I looked around. “Is he?”

  “Wait,” she said, and I knew now it was bullshit. She didn’t know. Neither of them knew.

  “I can’t wait.”

  By two in the morning, loud bad Czech rock on the stereo, everyone in the restaurant was stupid drunk. The tables were crammed with empties, beer, vodka, schnapps. The owner took away the piles of dishes. A couple more girls wandered in. You could feel fights brewing up, the men laughing too loud, yelling, joking. One of them looked at the women with me and called out something dirty; the other men laughed harder.

  I threw some money on the table, we got up, Amber and Chanelle took my arms.

  “Pretend we are threesome,” the older woman said and called out to the men about her good fortune finding this handsome American at the border. I could make out just enough Czech to get the drift. Something in the pit of my stomach lurched.

  We went out into the frigid night where the snow was still coming down, piling up, the road frozen solid. Chanelle, in her high-heeled boots, stumbled. In the apartment they offered me more liqueurs, but all I wanted was to know where he was.

  I said, “I have to go.”

  Amber said, “You want this guy?”

  “I want Zhaba, yes.” I leaned forward.

  Amber put her mouth against my ear. “Maybe we heard about him. He moves around very fast. We hear the rumors. He has whole set of tools he can use. Hammer. Knives. Serb guy, OK? Probably Serb.” She nodded at Chanelle. “Give her one hundred more dollars.”

  I looked in my wallet. “I have mostly French money.”

  Amber looked at the girl, who nodded, and the older woman said to me, “OK, give her equal amount.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing here.”

  “Listen, just tell me the fucking truth. You can keep the money.”

  Amber said, “OK, so we don’t know this bastard.”

  I was angry. I was exhausted. I wanted to sleep and I didn’t know if she was lying or not. Chanelle’s eyes were shut.

  Amber put her hand on my arm. “OK, so go to Vienna. Look in Black and Blue Club, OK? I give you this for free.”

  “He’s there?”


  “Maybe.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Small town in Bosnia.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Visno.”

  I gestured at the sleeping girl. “Her town, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have family there?”

  “There is no one there.”

  23

  The car lights were on.

  “Momo?” I was talking into the phone, walking down the sloping road, away from the women. Through the dense snow and fog, I could see the lights. Did I leave my car lights on?

  I began to run. The signal on the phone was lousy.

  “Momo? Where was she from, the little girl behind the billboard in Paris, what was her town?” I was shouting into the phone, but before I finished, the signal went dead.

  My feet tried for traction on the icy surface; my whole body was stiff from the effort, from trying not to fall on my ass, trying to stay awake, feeling someone on my back. I knew the car battery was dead. My shoulders clenched up, my gut churned. I got to the car. I climbed in. I turned the key. Nothing.

  Someone had jimmied the door, been in the car, turned on the lights. I could smell him. I climbed out again and opened the hood. The snow was falling faster than I could brush it away.

  There was a screen of thick bushes between me and the main road and I could hear the traffic pass. No one could see me. My socks were wet, and I thought how much I hated wet socks. Idiotic, but the fatigue made me concentrate on the socks. I was distracted. Then he was there. I could smell him. I smelled the sweet aftershave. Suddenly I knew what the smell was: it was the stink of over-ripe apples, like the disinfectant they used to clean up after the drunks in Moscow buildings in the old days.

  He was behind me.

  He yanked my arms back behind me so hard my knees buckled. The ice-cold blade of a knife was against the back of my neck.

  Knives scare me. Knives are slow and cold. The creeps who use them enjoy it, they like cutting you, the feel of the flesh and bone, the blood, they like doing it slow; all this was running on a loop in my head, even while I felt the cold knife on my neck, my wet socks, the warm trickle of my own blood mixing with the snow.

  Was it him or was it only one of the hoods in the restaurant who had seen me with the women? Did they know him?

  He shoved me onto the ground. I tried to say the name, but he kicked me and mumbled – Czech, Serbo-Croat, I couldn’t figure it out. I was dizzy. He ran the blade along my neck, not cutting deep, just playing games. No pain, only the terror and stink of the guy pulling my arms back hard enough to break them. He was going to snap my arms like toothpicks.

  In Russian, I swore at him and, from behind, I felt his muscled body tense up with rage. Through the bushes, I could see the headlights. Cars passed. A few yards away, there were cars. Lights.

  Without any warning, still holding my arms, he shoved me onto the ground, face in a drift of fresh snow. He pulled me up, shoved me back on the ground again. I could feel the big squat body, the force like an ox, a bull. It was what he had done to Lily. She would have smelled him before he raped her. She was conscious. Conscious enough to bang on the floor of the apartment near the rue de Rivoli.

  He jerked me up a third time. In the snow in the muffled light from a passing car, I saw his knife. From the road came the sound of voices, someone arguing; a hooker and a potential client were drunk. There was snow in my eyes. I thought about Lily. I was frantic. I grabbed for the knife.

  I got it. I got the knife. I stabbed at his leg. Then I cut him hard. Deep. I could feel bone. He whimpered. He moved away. I lunged at him again. He ran and I followed him, sliding on black ice under the new snow, crashing through bushes, following the noise, his stink. I ran towards the village where the restaurant was, but he vanished between the buildings. Maybe he went for cover in one of the houses. Maybe in the restaurant with the men. He was one of them.

  The muscles in my shoulder had been ripped, my face was burning, my feet were numb. I got back to the car, felt in my pocket for the cell phone; it was gone. On my hands and knees, I scrabbled in the snow and dirt; the phone wasn’t there. I trudged up to the supermarket where a young guy was reading a Vietnamese martial arts comic book. He took some cash off me and went out with cables to jump start the car while I tried Momo from the pay-phone.

  At his station house the line crackled with static. I finally got him on his cell phone. I was panting, out of breath, terrified.

  “Artie? You hear me? The phones are fucked all over France. You there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “You anywhere near Vienna?”

  “Near enough. Why?”

  “Someone saw him check into a hotel in Vienna.”

  “Who?”

  “What?”

  “Who checked in?”

  “I can’t hear you?”

  “It wasn’t fucking Zhaba who checked in, Momo. He was here. What hotel?”

  “Not Zhaba,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It was Levesque. The guy who checked in. He registered as Eric Levesque. He had the passport,” Momo said, then the line went dead.

  I went to Vienna because of Momo. There was no point hanging around after I cut Zhaba. Almost from the beginning I’d set myself up as a decoy. Now I figured he’d follow me to Vienna the way he’d followed me so far. I was a threat now. Amber had told me he worked out of the Black and Blue in Vienna. Or maybe she was lying. But I went because there was no place else to go. I moved forward because I couldn’t go back.

  The airports in Germany were still closed, according to the radio. Prague, too. My phone was gone. Some blind momentum pushed me down the empty road.

  On the road, I followed the tracks a snowplow left. I tried not to drive off the road. My shoulder was killing me, but I followed the plow, driving snowblind, trying to make out the news on the radio, in Czech or German, not understanding. There was nothing outside except the endless flat road and the snow.

  My eyes closed. I jerked myself awake over and over and when I saw a turn-off, I managed to drive down it. There was a road-side café with a crummy hotel. I banged on the door until a woman in a hairnet let me in. In the room where I dragged my suitcase, I fell onto the bed in my clothes and slept. The nightmares lasted until I woke up in a room that was too hot. The radiator belched; grit mixed with snow on the window sill.

  In the morning, in the dull half light, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, felt a sharp pain in my shoulder when I sat up, looked at my watch, saw it was Thursday. Wednesday morning I was in Paris, then last night the border. It was Thursday. I felt like a tourist on a bad trip; it was as if some travel agent on acid had booked all the wrong places, but I had paid and there was no way out.

  Keep moving, I thought. Hurry. I hobbled into the bathroom with its cracked tiles and stood under the thin trickle of warm water. I saw my right shoulder was swollen and I poked around for broken bones. It was so tender I yelled out loud. Then I remembered my phone was gone, lost in the snow, stolen off me by the thug with the knife.

  In the café, the woman in the hairnet was making coffee. She offered me some stale cake – no deliveries had come through for two days, she said. An old TV stood on the bar. I switched it to CNN while I drank the coffee and ate a Danish.

  Three fishermen in Russia had fallen through the ice the night before. In Holland, people went to work on skates; there were icicles a foot long as far south as Budapest; the only European airport east of Paris that was open was Zurich.

  The pay-phone was broken too, but the woman let me use her phone. While I watched the TV, I called the hospital over and over; I couldn’t get through. I swallowed the last piece of sticky Danish and paid; I was using Tolya’s cash up fast.

  Then I was back on the road and there were signs for Prague now. Prague. The fabulous little city like a Disney construct that I only knew from th
e movies, movies about Mozart, movies about tanks rolling down the beautiful streets in 1968. The Czechs really took it up the ass from the system that destroyed them. Long time ago.

  That morning, the snowplows were still on the roads. I kept driving. There was no place to go now except Vienna.

  24

  In Vienna, the hotel manager, obviously glad for a customer, sidled out of his office. He smiled with his long teeth showing, led me into the bar off the lobby and offered me coffee and a slice of sacher torte, a flat black chocolate cake with jam inside so sweet it would rot those teeth. When I thanked him, he said, “We Austrians live to serve.”

  It’s about two hundred miles past Prague to Vienna, and I’d stopped at every gas station to call Lily. Once, I got through to her; she whispered into the phone. She didn’t say my name, but it was her voice. As soon as I got Zhaba, I’d go back to Paris and take Lily home. Home. It was like a mantra now. I got to Vienna, I checked into a modern hotel near the center of town. Later I dumped the car at Hertz.

  The snow had stopped, but the temperature was down; everything had turned to ice. The garbage workers in Vienna were on strike and black plastic bags poked up through the frozen snowdrifts like weird sculptures.

  The hotel manager sat opposite me, still smiling. I pushed some of Tolya’s money discreetly into his hand and got him to reserve a seat for me on the first flight to Paris the next morning if there was anything going, or a train if there wasn’t. He helped me cancel my cell phone, then called a friend of a friend who sold phones. For cash, inside an hour, I had a new cell.

  I went upstairs, unpacked my bag and left the hospital my new number. I left it for Momo, along with the name of the hotel. God knew if he was getting the messages. All I got were answering machines or over-worked cops at his station house or lines that filled up with static. I didn’t know if he was getting the messages. I didn’t know if he was even alive from one day to the next.

  Sitting on the velvet bedspread that was the color of puke, I worked the phone, running down local hotels, looking for Eric Levesque because Momo said he was here. I went through the motions. I didn’t have much luck, but Levesque was a side-show now; I was in Vienna for Zhaba.