Zhaba had been chasing me down the road, playing cat and mouse; I wanted him out of his hole, but I was running out of Tolya’s cash, so I made a stink about my room which the manager agreed to change, then I persuaded him to cash a check for me. I wasn’t sure if I had anything in my account, but I didn’t care. I’d get it back to him later. Some other time. I asked him where the main police station was. He gave me directions.
Outside, there was the clang of shovels on cement as workers tried to chip away ice. Women in dark-green loden coats and high-heeled fur-lined ankle boots minced carefully along the icy streets. The men wore the same green coats, with brushes in their small-brimmed hats. Through the window of an old coffee house – the window filled with cakes and marzipan – I watched a couple meet. Both of them wore the green coats. The man removed his hat, she took off her glove and held out her hand and he kissed it.
Vienna was built to show off an empire: the buildings were big, grandiose and dark, all Baroque curlicues and grime under the frozen snow. The boulevards were big, too, like Paris, but with more bombast.
It weighed you down, Vienna; it was probably full of Nazis. You couldn’t tell them from the rest of the people in the street unless you figured every guy with a brush in his hat for one of them.
What did I know about Austria? Vienna? The Sound of Music! Freud? Mozart? Cake? It was a border town, everything about it was Western except that it was stuck in the East, further east than Prague even. For a while, after the war, they split it like an orange into four segments. Now it was a neutral nowhere with a lot of UN money. “We live to serve.”
Posters on the walls advertised politicians and opera. I was hungry. Mostly, the restaurants were empty; the tourists were gone, and every tourist restaurant I passed claimed the biggest schnitzel in town at bargain prices. Vienna obviously took its clichés pretty seriously. Maybe it had to. What did it have except tourism, and there weren’t any tourists except me as I strolled along, whistling “My Favorite Things”. The words went around in my head all day (“snowflakes that fall on my nose and eyelashes”), but I switched the lyrics off and listened, in my head, to John Coltrane’s miraculous version.
After I got lost walking in circles and wandered away from the Ring Road, I found myself staring at a huge statue of some guy on a horse. Some emperor carved in stone, covered in snow. I looked at the street sign: Josefplatz. I found a taxi.
The driver, an Israeli who talked too much, claimed he was an expert on crime in Vienna so I passed over my picture of Zhaba. He shrugged. I sat back, lit a cigarette and tried my phone.
“Lily? Are you there?”
At the police station, I showed the cop on duty my passport and told him in a loud voice that I was an American businessman. I owned a travel agency.
He barely spoke English. Four sodden Austrians, huddled in heavy coats, waited patiently on a bench to the right, eyeing me while I talked at the cop. New York, I said.
Oh ja, he said. I love New York.
He was a big guy with a sad stupid face, but I didn’t care. I bullied him some more. I wanted someone in charge, I said. I had received a threatening phone call at my hotel and I was worried. I was American and I wanted a senior officer to pay attention or I’d call the embassy.
A door on my left opened and an officer in uniform came out, gave a crisp little bow, shook my hand, welcomed me to Vienna. How could he help? Please come into my office. Please sit down. I told him about the threatening calls. More than one? he asked. At least three, I said. Maybe four. As soon as I’d checked in that morning. The hotel was hopeless. They moved my room. Very short beds, I said. Not really adequate, and the frightening phone calls! I took out the picture of Zhaba and handed it to him. His expression never changed.
This man, I said. I had noticed him in the lobby.
You took his picture? the cop asked. Yes. I had my Polaroid camera, I said. I was photographing the lobby because it was my hobby to take pictures of hotel lobbies. He was watching me, I said, and I was worried, so I took his picture. Smart, huh?
The officer summoned a secretary in a tight turquoise sweater and bright pink lipstick who wrote down my name, my address, my cell phone. I gave them all the information, said how much I admired Vienna, how pleasant the people were, how lovely the women, the pastry. How I planned to send my many clients from my travel agency on vacation to Austria. Then we all shook hands, the officer, the secretary, the cop, me. I fawned, mentioned my aversion to all politics that interfered with international accord and tourism. We wished each other well. He said he’d be in touch. Don’t worry, he said, and I thanked him and smiled a businessman’s smug smile and he responded with a good cop smile. Vienna seemed like a good place for make-believe. I strolled out of the station and down the stairs to the street.
By the time I got back to the hotel, I figured that half of Vienna would know I was there. It was freezing. I went into a store and bought a blue fleece shirt and a hat, complained about the foreign sizing, then stopped at the Café Mozart because it was packed with tourists. There were models of cakes made out of plastic in the window.
Inside, a small group of Japanese tourists looked pissed off at the weather. I ordered cake with whipped cream and complained about the service. The waiter wasn’t interested. I used my new cell phone to check out some more hotels; I was looking for Eric Levesque, but there was no Levesque. No one by that name, not in the last few weeks, no, sorry. Very sorry. I was jittery. Couldn’t sit still. Had to move on.
Maybe Momo got it wrong.
I walked some more. I found the American Bar, a tiny box that was all mahogany and mirrors, like the inside of a humidor. There were green leather seats and Tony Bennett and Bill Evans on the sound system. The bartender, an American kid who talked jazz non-stop, made good martinis. I saved the toothpicks from the olives in the martinis. Said I collected them. Who could forget an asshole who collects olive picks?
Where was Zhaba?
Later, at the hotel, I went upstairs, switched on the TV. While I changed my shirt, I watched Austrian kids whack each other around; half were anti-government, half pro. Jorge Haider appeared on the screen. He was a good looking man and I knew what Lily would say: political beefcake, she’d say, and oozing charm. This was a country that was a sucker for charm. God, I missed her. I missed her in bed, I missed her brains, her nutty political views, her curiosity. Lily is interested in the world and it makes everything, even the most mundane, alluring. She gives it all a buzz. Like Martha Burnham said, she turns your head. She had turned mine. Poor Martha.
Around nine, I went to the lobby and talked on the phone to my machine in New York. I talked loud. I talked about the locals. Then I cracked jokes about Nazis and Freud with the bartender who didn’t understand any of it, or maybe he was pretending.
Where the fuck was Zhaba? A four-year-old could have found me. The guy at the hotel never heard of the Black and Blue Club, or he wasn’t saying; neither had the kid at the American Bar.
It was bitter cold in the street. Outside the opera house, big white lights lit up the night like day. A group of men and women in eighteenth-century costumes strolled by, everyone in wigs, the men in knee-pants and stockings. One was smoking. Another skirted some cables. The movie crew in heavy jackets messed with tracks and lights on the icy street.
There was a bar nearby and I went inside. Two actresses, their huge blue silk skirts hitched up over their knees, sat at the far end of the bar eating sandwiches and drinking beer. It was warm inside and I climbed on a bar stool.
On the bar was a copy of Hustler. There were also copies of some local rag in English. The pleasures of Vienna. I got a beer, took out a pack of cigarettes and glanced up at the TV over the bar where CNN played. The bartender watched me drink. He was young, handsome and bald; when I took out a smoke, he held out his lighter.
I said, “You’re from Vienna?”
“I’m from Vienna. You’re American?” I nodded.
It was still early. The bar
wasn’t crowded, he was in a talkative mood and I wanted his confidence, so I asked for another beer, told him my name, held out my hand.
“I am Walter,” he said.
I glanced at the copy of Hustler. He saw me do it and snorted. “For customers,” he said.
“But not for you.”
“No.”
“How come?”
He smiled. Behind the bar he had a catalogue from a New York gallery propped up.
I said, “You’re an artist.”
He looked happy. “You are perceptive,” he said.
“Thanks. You weren’t always a bartender?”
“Very good.”
“For an American, you mean.” I kept the tone light.
“I am an artist, but no one comes to Vienna for this, only for the past. For the nostalgia. Or for sex.” He looked up. “So, you too?” Walter added, practically crackling with irony when he said it.
CNN droned on. The screen was filled with images of people stranded by snow. “Bad weather.” Walter smiled as if it somehow pleased him. “Nothing moves. Not even the garbage.”
Walter had his own conversational agenda. I said, “What kind of art?”
“Art that no one buys. The rich want old stuff, even gangsters want ancestral portraits.” He lit up and sucked in the smoke. “I’m sorry. This is stupid talk. What can I do for you?”
I went carefully. “Maybe some nightclubs?”
He fumbled behind the bar and took out a newspaper. It was eight sheets of listings.
“It’s English,” he said. “Excuse me one minute.” He tossed me the paper and went to the end of the bar where the two women in big skirts were gesturing at him.
While he was gone, I glanced at the paper. There was plenty here (‘This guide shall help you to find your preferred girls without making bad experiences’). There were sections for “Street Prostitution”, “Call Girls”, “Escort Services”, “Bars”, “Peep Shows”. There were price codes: “Oral sex in the car”, “Oral sex and intercourse in the hotel”.
Walter returned and tossed a couple more papers at me, a Vienna newspaper named Kurier where he marked the section labeled “Hostessen”, and a magazine, S.O.Z, advertising prostitutes in Vienna, complete with phone numbers, pictures and the services on offer. Most of the girls were in the Gurtel district.
I went back to the English paper, which included “a small dictionary with sexual terms”. I drank my beer and got up to speed with terms such as Algierfranzosich, “the girl licks your ass-hole”; bis zur Vollendung/mitSchlucken, “the girl will give you a blow job until you cum(!) into her mouth and swallow your sperm”.
Walter glanced at me. “Something is funny?”
“Nothing,” I said and looked out of the window; there wasn’t much traffic, but cabs passed from time to time.
Walter spread out the papers on the bar and picked up a felt-tip pen.
“You’re looking for something special? Girls? Boys? Good club for boys is name Vienna Boys’ Choir.” He chuckled.
“Sure,” I said. “Girls. Good-looking. Expensive. From Bosnia, maybe.”
I pushed the magazine across the bar. Walter flipped the pages, marked a few entries, gave it back to me. “The girls are OK here,” he said. “Clean, but expensive. They charge double for the Champagne.”
I said “Thanks”, put some money on the bar and added, “You ever hear of a place named the Black and Blue Club?”
He shrugged. “Not so much for tourists like you.”
“Who for?”
He looked at my clothes. “For big money.”
“I’m not that kind of tourist.”
“Everyone is this kind of tourist. All forms of human exchange are corrupt: sex, money, death, irony. This is my belief.” Walter laughed. “Too much irony, bad for the soul. You are going to Black and Blue?”
“Maybe.”
“To other clubs?”
“Sure.”
“You should be careful.”
“Why’s that?”
He glanced at the door where an old man entered, his arm around a young boy. “In Vienna, everyone is whores,” Walter said.
25
The Bee Gees singing “Staying Alive’ blasted my ear-drums when the doorman pulled open the heavy padded door of the Black and Blue Club. On my way here I’d seen plenty of women, even in the cold, working the streets. Once you started looking, you saw them. Girls, too. Little girls, twelve, thirteen, some pretty. They were everywhere.
Maurice Gibb always sounds like someone just stepped on his balls. The doorman who doubled as a bouncer took the money I gave him and I was ushered in out of the ghostly street where the snow was ankle deep.
The club was a black lacquer box with mirrored walls. On the long black bar and little tables were lamps with blue glass shades. Women sat with men at the tables drinking Austrian champagne. At a corner banquette were men who took their style cues from The Sopranos; there were plenty of leather jackets, big rings, silk suits, loud shirts.
The smoke was thick. We were underground and the signal on my cell phone was dead. I found a phone and tried Momo’s station house, got through and was instantly cut off. I checked my messages. Nothing from Momo. At the bar I got a drink and looked around. Zhaba wasn’t there. Not yet.
Disco music thumped relentlessly. On a crowded dance floor, topless girls danced with customers to the Bee Gees and Donna Summer. It was Seventies Night at the Black and Blue. I scanned the place for Zhaba, and while I was watching, I saw Walter arrive.
The bartender I’d met earlier was wearing tight black jeans, black tee shirt, a pin-striped double-breasted jacket. He saw me. “Any luck?” he said.
I bought Walter a vodka and tonic, then another.
He said, “You’re looking for someone?”
I picked up my beer. “Maybe.”
Where was he? Where was the blonde hair, the sloping shoulders, the smell of rotten-apple aftershave?
In the gloom, my eyes darted all over the place. Once I thought I saw him, but it was someone else. And everywhere there were girls. Hookers. Dancing. Drinking.
I thought about Finn again, the guy on the border. SEXDOLLS.COM. Happy Poking. “You can haggle. You must say two times out loud how long is your time period.” He went to the border once a month, sometimes more, and there were a million Finns. Tens of millions. The women only lasted a few years. There was plenty of turnover and I began to see the edges of the industry and how many women it consumed, how lucrative, how big it was.
You’d have to turn the girls over constantly if you wanted them fresh, like Finn wanted them, if you wanted them like the girls on the dance floor in the Black and Blue. It was bigger than drugs.
“You come to this kind of place a lot.”
Walter snorted. “When I’m invited.” He added, “For the art, of course. This is special art form.”
“Tell me you’re here accidentally tonight.”
“No.”
“What?” “Let’s sit.”
“I’m happy like this.”
We leaned against the bar. Again, once or twice, I thought I saw Zhaba, but it was always someone else, some other guy with sloping shoulders and fine blonde hair. Walter turned his back to the room, leaned on the bar and said, “Why is it you wanted girls from Bosnia?”
“I have strange tastes.”
“I can go away if you want.”
“I’m sorry.” I signaled for more drinks.
“I know some refugees. From the war.”
“What kind?”
“Women. Friends.”
“Here?”
“Here, there.”
“OK.” I slipped the picture of Zhaba out of my pocket and showed it to Walter.
In the dim light, he squinted at me. “What are you?” “A tourist. What about you?”
“I told you, I’m an artist, and I think you’re a cop.”
“So I’m a cop. What about this guy.”
Walter peered harder. �
��Sure, he’s a pimp. I’ve seen him lots of places.”
“Here?”
“Here,” he said. “Yes.”
“What other places?”
“You should ask him,” Walter said.
“How can I find him?”
Walter shrugged.
“You want money?”
“I don’t mind money.”
I gave him some of what I had left from Tolya’s cash. He put it in his pocket and said, “Wait here.”
I waited. I watched the men and women. My shoulder hurt, I worried about Lily. In the distance, halfway across the floor, I watched Walter talk to some women, head down, laughing with them.
He came back over. “OK,” he said, “I can tell you something.”
“What?”
“Let’s have another drink.”
“No. First tell me.” I didn’t know what his game was. “You want more money?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I prefer you get this bastard.” “So where the fuck is he?”
Walter said, “I don’t know, but I know his town.” “What town?”
“In Bosnia.”
“What’s it called?”
“He comes from the town named Visno.”
26
“She was from Bosnia,” Momo said as soon as he saw me in the coffee shop.
“How the hell did you get here?”
“The girl behind the billboard, the one you figured for Albanian?”
“Yes?”
“She wasn’t Albanian. The town is called Visno.”
“Like I thought.”
“Yes.”
“Him, too. Zhaba.”
“How do you know?”
I thought about Walter. “I met someone. I’m fucking glad to see you.”
It was the next day. I’d spent all day running down false leads in Vienna, looking for Zhaba, coming up empty. I went back to the bar to look for Walter, but it was his day off. The Black and Blue Club was shut until late. The weather was still lousy and I couldn’t get a plane.
Skin Trade Page 20
