Taming a Sea Horse

by Robert B. Parker

  "How is Mrs. Silverman?" April said. She leaned toward me, her hands clasped, her chin resting on her thumbs.

  "Loving, intelligent, beautiful, funny, the usual stuff."

  April nodded. Her eyes were very green. They hadn't always been. I realized she was wearing tinted contacts. She said, "Boy, are you in love, huh?"

  I nodded. April's eyes moved over the room again and stopped. She was looking at the back of a tall black man sitting at the counter eating a croissant. Her eyes moved on. The waiter brought her eggs and my sandwich.

  "I love eggs Benedict," April said.

  "How come you didn't order them?" I said. "I might have ordered you Raisin Bran or something."

  She giggled. "Oh, you would not."

  We ate a little. The tall black guy at the counter finished his croissant and had a second pot of tea. While he waited for it he looked aimlessly around the room, his eyes passing over us with no flicker of hesitation. He was slender. His hair was cut short and his thin mustache was carefully trimmed. His pale beige linen suit was stylishly loose. His shirt was an off-white, his tie was a shiny beige silk, and his shoes were light tan with pointed toes. His skin was the color of coffee with milk. Talk about color-coordinated.

  "So you still haven't told me," April said, "what you're doing here in town."

  "Patricia Utley called me, told me you'd left and she couldn't find you."

  "She knows where I am," April said. "I talked with Steven."

  "When he found you."

  "I'm a big girl now," April said. "I don't have to tell everybody everything I'm doing."

  "That's true," I said.

  "So why are you here?"

  "Well, at first I came down to find you, in case something bad had happened, but now I get here and you're okay, I just wanted to make sure you'd made a wise career move."

  "I know what I'm doing," April said.

  "That puts you one up on me," I said. "How come you decided to make the change?"

  She poked at her eggs with the points of her fork. She made a small shrugging motion, like a bad habit almost broken.

  "How'd you hear about Tiger Lilies?" I said.

  "A guy I know," April said.

  "And the minute you heard the name you were enthralled," I said.

  She poked at her eggs some more, her shoulders frozen in their semi-shrug.

  "I've got to be a part of it, you said. Tiger Lilies are my life, you said."

  April shook her head. "No," she said. "You don't have to make fun of me. It wasn't like that."

  "So what was it?"

  "Like I told you, it was a guy I knew."

  "He wanted you to work for Tiger Lilies?"

  "He said it would be good for me," April said.

  "Was he right?"

  April nodded vigorously.

  "Will it be good for you next year?"

  April frowned. "Of course," she said.

  "How can you be sure?"

  "He says so."

  "How do you know he's right?"

  "He loves me," April said. She looked straight at me. "And I love him."

  "What could be better," I said.

  "You're in love," she said.

  I nodded.

  "Well, I am too. You think a hooker can't be in love?"

  "With a guy who wants you to keep hooking?" I said.

  "He's a musician. He's studying at Juilliard. As soon as he starts making money, I'll quit. Right now it's something I can do for him."

  "Juilliard?" I said.

  "Yes. You don't know what Juilliard is? It's just the best music school in the world."

  "I know what Juilliard is," I said.

  "And what I do when I'm hooking is just my job. It's not anything like what we do."

  "You and the musician?"

  She nodded hard. "That's right. What we do is love."

  "What's the musician's name?"

  "Why do you want to know?"

  "I hate calling him the musician," I said. "What if I have to give the bride away?"

  She paused. Her eyes flickered toward the counter. A woman wearing a lavender cape and a huge hat came in, paused on the platform, then swept down into the restaurant. It was like watching The Loretta Young Show.

  "His name's Robert," she said.

  "Not Bob?"

  "No, he hates Bob. His name is Robert. Robert Rambeaux."

  I finished off the first half of my sandwich. April had eaten one egg. The monochromatic man had another pot of tea at the counter. If he wasn't Robert Rambeaux, then I wasn't puckish and adorable.

  "I'll try once," I said, "and then I'll get off your ass. What I know about the, ah, human condition tells me that a man doesn't love a woman if he turns her out to hook."

  April's face started to close down.

  "What I hear from Patricia Utley is that this place, Tiger Lilies, will use you up and sell you down scale. And old musical Robert Rambeaux will go out and recruit somebody else."

  Tears had formed in April's eyes. "You fucking prick," she said. She stood up and turned away and walked up the stairs and out the door without even pausing for a pose.

  So much for puckish and adorable.

  I paid the check and finished my coffee and went out. Going out it's easier not to pose. I was halfway to the corner of 53rd and Park when the monochromatic man came out through the revolving door and walked along behind me. I walked up Park toward 59th Street. He cruised along behind me, sampling the spring air, admiring the young women in their spring clothes, checking out the elegance of the avenue. If he were any more casual, he'd have fallen down. He was about as subtle as Jesse Helms.

  I turned west on 59th Street and walked two blocks to 59th and Fifth. The Plaza. Central Park. The Pierre just up the street. The Trump Tower just down the street. The great big city's a wondrous toy. Mr. Monochrome studied the artifacts in the window of A la Vieille Russie behind me. The light changed and I crossed and went into the park. Monochrome followed me.

  There were people roller-skating in the park, and people with enormous tape players on their shoulders, and people with all their gear stuffed in a shopping bag. There were pretzel vendors and people walking Irish wolfhounds, and some joggers, and two guys sharing a pint of something from a paper bag on a bench. I went past them and found an empty bench and sat down. Monochrome walked past me and looked around and turned and walked back toward me. I gestured toward the empty space beside me. He ignored it and stood looking down at me. I smiled at him.

  "Beige," I said.

  He said, "How come you're bothering my lady?"

  "Ah, it is you, Robert Rambeaux."

  "What do you want, bothering her?"

  "I was hoping she could get me tickets to your next recital," I said.

  Rambeaux sighed and shook his head. "Everybody's a wiseass," he said.

  "Now don't generalize, Bob," I said. "All that has been established here is that I am a wiseass."

  "Robert," he said. The correction was automatic. "I asked you a question, whitebread, and I want an answer."

  "White bread, Bobby? Racial taunts? You're about as black as Grace Kelly."

  "I ought to kick your ass for you right here."

  "Little question of that, Bobb-o," I said. "But you can't. And if you try, you're just going to get your outfit all wrinkled and sweaty."

  Robert stepped about a step away and looked at me thoughtfully.

  "You're a cocky motherfucker, aren't you," he said.

  I shrugged. "It's just hard for me to get serious about a guy whose outfit took three hours to assemble."

  "I'm tired of bullshitting around," Robert said. "I don't want you comin' near April again. You understand?"

  "You really go to Juilliard?" I said.

  "You understand?"

  "I bet you don't," I said. "I bet you're a pimp instead."

  Robert went inside the coat of his beige outfit and came out with a straight razor. He held it like he knew how.

  "You better li
sten what I'm telling you, whitey."

  "Heavenly days," I said, "talk about ethnic stereotyping."

  "You go on back to Boston, fishbelly, and stay there and don't you come near my lady again."

  I was still sitting. I put my left foot behind his right ankle, put my right foot against his right knee, pulled with the left, pushed with the right, and Robert went over backward. I stood up and stomped the razor out of his hand. I got a little of the hand in the process and Robert yelped.

  "There goes your violin career," I said.

  He came up swinging and he was better than he looked, with a lot of fluid speed in his punches. He was almost fast enough to hit me. I caught a punch on my right shoulder and rolled my chin away from another one and hit him in the solar plexus and he doubled over and backed away, holding his stomach, gasping.

  "See why I'm cocky," I said.

  His eyes scanned for the razor. It was ten feet away on the ground. It might as well have been in Paramus. Still bent over, he looked at me as the semiparalysis began to ease.

  "What the fuck you want, man?" he said.

  "Mostly I want to know that April Kyle is all right, and is going to stay all right."

  Robert had straightened up. His shoulders were still a little forward and he was massaging his stomach with his right hand. But he could breathe.

  "She's a fucking chippy, man. How all right do chippies get? How long they stay all right, you know?"

  Two black kids on skateboards zipped between us and on down the walk.

  "I didn't turn her out, man. She was a chippy 'fore I knew her."

  I nodded. "Everything's relative," I said. "I don't want her worse off than she was."

  "Hey, she's better off. She's making better bread than she ever made with Utley."

  "And keeping it?" I said.

  "Sure, man, whatta you think, I'm no pimp."

  "Yeah, sure," I said, "you're a music student. You probably carry that razor to trim clarinet reeds."

  "No shit, man. I'm taking courses at Juilliard."

  "Robert," I said, "what's the point? If I can talk her out of you, I will. If you can stop me, you will."

  "You can't talk her out of me, man."

  "Probably not," I said. "But I'll try. And if you try to cut me again, I'll break both your arms."

  "Maybe next time I won't be alone, man."

  I turned back toward Fifth Avenue. "I think we can count on that, Rob," I said.

  4

  I strolled across the park toward Lincoln Center. To my left the row of high-rise hotels on 59th Street gleamed in benign elegance over the burgeoning green swales of Olmsted's grand design. Roller skaters and Walkmen and joggers and Frisbees and dogs and kerchiefs. Lunch in brown bags and park rangers on horseback and outcroppings of dark rock on which people sat and got the early yellow splash of spring sun in their faces. Birds sang. Maybe ten years ago a group of young men raped a young woman in the park and left her naked, gagged, and bound hand and foot. Another group of young men came along and found her and raped her too.

  Ah wilderness.

  Lincoln Center looked like an expensive complex of Turkish bathhouses, a compendium of neo-Arabic-Spanish and silly. It did for the West Side what the Trump Tower did for the East, offering the chance for a giggle on even the drabbest day.

  A large-eyed woman wearing a full skirt and silver New Balance running shoes opened a file folder and told me that in fact Robert Rambeaux was registered at Juilliard. He was taking a course in composition with a practicum in woodwinds.

  "What's his address?" I said. "He still living on First Street?"

  "I'm sorry, sir, it's against our policy to give out that sort of information."

  "Quite right," I said. "People drive you crazy if they know where you live. A person has a right to privacy."

  She smiled at me and nodded. Her hair was pulled back behind her ears and fell to her shoulders. She didn't look very old, but there were gray streaks in her hair. Premature. Probably from worrying about the rights of privacy.

  She had a cup of coffee in a white mug with Beethoven's picture on it. As I stood I brushed it with my elbow and spilled it across her desk and onto her lap.

  She jumped up, trying to keep the coffee from soaking through, brushing her skirt with both hands.

  "Oh, my God," I said. "I am sorry."

  While I said that I shuffled the stuff on top of her desk frantically out of the way, and in doing so I copped the top sheet out of Rambeaux's folder and folded it inside my jacket.

  "It's all right," she said, her graying head still bent over, smoothing at her skirt. "Really, it's all right. The skirt is washable."

  I closed Rambeaux's folder and put it and two other folders and a long pad of yellow paper in a pile on the corner of the desk. She left her skirt and turned her attention to the calculator on her desk, wiping it off with Kleenex she took from a drawer.

  "Really," she said, "it's my fault. I shouldn't have left the coffee there. It'll be fine. I'll just get a wet paper towel from the ladies' room and wipe off the desk."

  "Well," I said, "thanks for being so decent about it."

  "No, really," she said.

  I smiled my earnest smile at her and thanked her again and she put her file folders away in the file and locked it and went to the ladies' room to get a paper towel. I left.

  Walking through Columbus Circle, I read Rambeaux's transcript. He'd done well in his courses. And he lived on East 77th Street. I put the transcript in a trash bin attached to a lamppost. Incriminating evidence. Probably could have looked Rambeaux up in the phone book. How many Robert Rambeauxs could there be? But it's good to keep in practice. And the risk factor at Juilliard was low.

  I walked back across the park and crossed Fifth Avenue and turned uptown. There was a plate glass window on the Hotel Pierre and I checked my reflection as I went by. I was wearing a leather jacket and a blue-toned Allen Solly tattersall shirt and jeans, and Nike running shoes with a charcoal swoosh. I paused and turned the collar up on my leather jacket. Perfect. Did the traffic slow on Fifth Avenue to look at me? Maybe.

  It was nearly four in the afternoon and getting less sprf nglike when I turned east on 77th Street. I crossed Madison Avenue, the Hotel Carlyle on the southeast corner. Rambeaux's building was five and a half blocks east. Between Second and First avenues, a five-story gray brick building with black iron fire escapes zigzagging the front. The bell directory listed Rambeaux in SD. I settled into the entryway of a brownstone church across the street and waited.

  Rambeaux knew me, so it would be harder following him. But not so hard it couldn't be done. I zipped my jacket up. It pulled a little tight over my shoulder holster, and it lost the nice contrast with my Allen Solly shirt. But the alternative was coldness. It's almost never perfect. After five, people began coming home. Students with school bags and musical instruments in cases, young women in tailored suits with blouses and bows at the neck, young men in tailored suits and white shirts and ties at the neck. A lot of briefcases. Nothing happened across the street. It was a quarter to six, it was chilly, I was missing the cocktail hour. Soon I would be missing the supper hour.

  At six-twenty Rambeaux came out of the house wearing a tweed coat with a velvet collar. There was a young woman with him. It wasn't April. They walked to Second Avenue and caught a cab downtown. I drifted along behind them and caught the next one.

  "I can't think of a slick way to put this," I said to the cabbie, "but follow that cab." The driver turned toward me and said, "Where you go?"

  "Follow that cab," I said.

  "La Guardia?" he said. "Grann Central? Waldorf?"

  "Allez-vous apres ce taxi?" I said.

  He shook his head. Rambeaux's cab took a right turn on 75th Street.

  "Never mind," I said and got out of the cab and started across Second.

  "Som a beetch," the cabbie yelled after me, out the passenger window.

  "Sonova," I said. "Son… of… a… bitch. Short i."
/>   The cabbie pulled away, spinning a little rubber as he went. I walked back to the St. Regis. Follow that cab. It seemed simple enough. Used to work perfect for Richard Arlen.

  5

  The next morning I went over to the Hertz place on West 56th Street and rented a tan Toyota Celica, and drove up to 77th Street and parked across the street from Rambeaux's place, in front of a hydrant, with the nose of the Toyota aimed at Second Avenue. I let the motor idle, and listened to WNEW and ate two bagels with cream cheese and drank coffee. I had on jeans again and my leather jacket and my Nikes, standard tracking outfit. But I had changed my shirt and was wearing my Utica Blue Sox baseball hat for disguise. Also because it made me look stunning. William B. Williams was just saying that WNEW was where it all began when Rambeaux emerged from his building. It was nearly noon. He turned toward First Avenue. God damn. I pulled the Toyota out from the hydrant, ran the light turning left onto Second Avenue, made the light turning left onto 76th Street, and ran the light turning onto First Avenue. Many New Yorkers honked at me. But ahead of me Rambeaux was just getting into a cab and heading uptown.

  Follow that cab.

  We went to 87th Street, where Rambeaux picked up a young black woman with her hair pulled tight in a chignon, who was waiting on the corner. Then we went crosstown to Fifth Avenue and back downtown to 76th Street. Rambeaux paid off the cab and he and the lady walked down 76th Street. I edged around the corner and double-parked behind a truck that said it delivered Boars Head sausage. Rambeaux and the young lady went into a restaurant near the corner of 76th and Madison, Les Pleiades. It didn't look like a place where jeans and a Utica Blue Sox cap would pass unnoziced, so I waited behind the Boars Head sausage truck for an hour and forty-five minutes.

  I'd once eaten lunch in Les Pleiades. I had had a lamb stew with haricots verts and several bottles of Fisher beer. Maybe they were having that, or fresh asparagus with the butts carefully peeled, served with a mild vinaigrette. At ten of two they came out and caught a cab and went back to her place on 87th Street. Rambeaux went in. He came out at four and walked back to his apartment with me dawdling several blocks back, annoying hell out of maybe thirty-five cab drivers. At four-twenty he turned into his building and I was back at my spot on the hydrant. At four thirty-five an NYPD patrol car pulled up with two cops in it and the one on the passenger side told me to move away from the hydrant: I nodded and smiled and apologized and pulled out behind them and went around the block and parked on the hydrant again.