Taming a Sea Horse

by Robert B. Parker

  The woman said, "A nice massage today, sir?" She had on a red blouse and wore big round rose-tinted glasses with blue frames, the kind where the bows come off the bottom instead of the top.

  I said, "This is sort of embarrassing, but may I speak to the manager?"

  The tall guy in the cowboy hat said, "What do you want to see the manager about?" He was looking very hard at me. Hard enough to notice that someone had whacked me recently along the side of the head. He seemed like a man who noticed such things.

  "I'd like to ask about a young woman," I said, "used to work here."

  "You ain't a cop," he said.

  "I'm too polite," I said.

  "Un huh."

  "-I'm working on a thing in New York," I said. "No problem for you."

  "Private cop," he said.

  "Yes."

  "There a reward?"

  "No," I said, "except I go away and don't annoy you."

  He nodded. "What's her name?" he said.

  "You the manager?" I said.

  He grinned. His bottom teeth were missing in front. "I represent the manager," he said. "What's her name?"

  "Ginger Buckey."

  A guy in a gray plaid suit came in. He looked at us uneasily. The tall guy gestured with his head and we walked over to a door beyond the sofa. Behind me I heard the lady with the purplish red hair say, "A nice massage today?"

  We went through the door and into a corridor. There was a stairwell up the right wall. The tall guy opened one of the doors. It was a small room like the examining room at a doctor's office. The walls were narrow vertical planking painted green. There was a table covered with a white sheet, a straight chair, and a small side table with baby oil and lilac water and a small pile of towels on it. The tall guy closed the door and leaned against it.

  "Customers get sort of nervous they see a guy looks like you hanging around in the reception area."

  "Afraid I'm a cop?"

  "Well, you got the look, 'cept you're so polite."

  "Nothing wrong with a good massage," I said. "No law against that."

  "Sure, what do you want to know about Ginger Buckey?"

  "Where she went from here," I said.

  "Beats me," he said.

  "Her father brought her to you," I said, "and you gave him a finder's fee. Now that may be doing business just like U.S. Steel does business, but it might be white slavery."

  "And if it was?"

  "If it was, or if it looked like it was, I bet I could get the cops and Cumberland County and maybe the U.S. Attorney's office interested enough in whether it was white slavery or not to make a genuine economic impact on the business here."

  "Maybe you'd end up feeding lobsters in Casco Bay, you did that," he said.

  "Tough talk for a guy wearing a shoestring for a tie," I said. "I'm already the toughest guy in Lindell."

  "Where the fuck is Lindell?" he said.

  "It's where Ginger came from. Why do this hard? You tell me where she went from here and I go away and leave you to massage your way to health and fortune, maybe even get yourself a lower plate. You don't, and either you've got to put me in the bay, which I don't think you can do, or have me accusing you of trafficking in children. The Press Herald will be on your ass, and the cops. It'll be awful."

  He was wearing a gun under his left arm. You can wear a gun without it showing, but some guys want it to show, and some guys don't care.

  "You don't think I can handle you," he said.

  "If I thought you could, would I still be here annoying you?"

  He put his left hand into his side pocket and came out with a pair of brass knuckles. He put them on his right hand and moved it in a little circle at waist level and said, "Now what do you think?"

  I sighed. "I think it's been a hard year," I said. "And I'm tired. And I think you are dumb as hell to put those things on your right hand, which means it will take you an hour and ten minutes to get your gun out from under your left arm, whereas I…" I took the gun off my hip and showed it to him without really pointing it. He looked at the gun. His right fist stopped moving in a circle.

  I said, "Sort of embarrassing, huh?"

  He let his fist drop to his side. "Now what?" he said.

  "I don't feel like shooting you," I said. "I don't feel like taking your brass knuckles away and knocking you down and kicking out the rest of your teeth. All I want is to leave you in peace and good health and go see the people that Ginger Buckey left you for."

  "I'll get in trouble," he said.

  "They won't know," I said.

  "How do I know you won't tell them?"

  "Because I said I wouldn't."

  "And if I don't tell you?"

  "I blow the whistle on this place so loud that the people you're bribing won't be able to help, and the ownership will get in trouble and be mad as hell at you."

  "For crissake, man, she was already a pro when we got her."

  "She was fourteen," I said. "White slavery, babe. Film at eleven."

  "I passed her on to a guy from Boston," he said.

  "Who?"

  "Guy named Art Floyd."

  "And what did he do with her?" I was still holding the gun in a sort of random way, not exactly pointing but not really hanging at my side either.

  "How the fuck do I know, man. Probably put her in a house up there. You think we had a long talk about it?"

  "Did Ginger want to go?"

  The tall guy laughed. "Something else we didn't have a long talk about."

  "Finder's fee," I said.

  "Sure," he said. "She's product, man. You know? You raise cattle, you give the cows away?"

  "So you sold her to a guy from Boston named Art Floyd."

  "Yeah."

  "Okay," I said. "I'll see if I can locate Art. If I can't I'll come back."

  "Hey, man, he said he was from Boston. What can I tell you?"

  I nodded. "Give me your gun," I said. I leveled my gun as he took his knuckles off and put them in his pocket again and took a Browning automatic out of his shoulder holster and handed it to me.

  "Cost me $475," he said.

  "I'll give it to you outside," I said. "I just don't want you shooting me while I walk away."

  "I wouldn't backshoot you, man."

  "Course you wouldn't," I said, and went out of the room and through the reception area. The tall guy followed me. The threat of him was gone. He wanted his gun back. I got in my car and opened the window. I took the clip out of the gun and checked the action once to make sure there was nothing in the chamber. I thumbed the bullets out of the clip. Put the clip back in the gun and handed it to him.

  "You gonna keep the bullets?" he said.

  "Oh, hell," I said, and put my hand out. He cupped his hand and I let the bullets fall into it.

  "You won't tell Floyd, will you?" he said.

  "No," I said, "I won't."

  16

  The only Arthur Floyd in the Boston phone book was a retired pediatrician. It didn't prove he wasn't a whorehouse recruiter, but it cut down on the probability enough for me to look elsewhere.

  I called a vice squad cop named McNeeley. He had never heard of Arthur Floyd. It was possible that the cowboy in Portland had been jiving me, but I didn't think so. He had been so worried about getting his gun back that he'd have told on his mother.

  Just because Arthur Floyd wasn't in the Boston phone book didn't mean he wasn't around. He might be in the Worcester phone book, or Lynn, or Fall River. Or Tucson or Detroit. I had a lot of options. If I went through every phone book for every city in the country, I'd be sure to find him. Unless he had an unpublished number. Or had moved to Toronto. I could open my office window and shout down at the people going by on Berkeley Street, and ask them if they knew anyone named Arthur Floyd. Maybe I should just ask for Floyd, since Art might be a nickname. On the other hand Floyd might be an alias. Maybe I should just yell down and ask if they knew anyone. Or maybe I should go work out.

  I chose the last course a
nd went down to the Harbor Health Club. When I had begun working out there, the Harbor Health Club had been appropriate to the waterfront. As the waterfront went upscale so did the Harbor Health Club. Only Henry Cimoli's influence kept the boxing room from being turned into a boutique. There was one speed bag, one heavy bag, and a jump rope pressed into a narrow corner by the steady spread of steam rooms and sauna and eucalyptus inhalant rooms and sun-tanning rooms and juice bars and a heated pool and an overgrowth of hanging plants that made the place look like a Henri Rousseau painting. Hawk was there to add to the illusion. His shaved black head gleamed among the potted ferns as he walked toward the Nautilus room. He was wearing a magenta tank top and white satin warm-up pants and a white terry sweatband with a thin magenta stripe in it.

  "Christ," I said. "Designer sweats."

  Hawk grinned. "Clothes make the man, babe."

  "Don't people call you a sissy when they see you dressed like that?"

  Hawk's grin widened slightly. "No," he said. He took the handles at the pull-up station and began to do pull-ups with his legs held parallel to the ground. The muscles in his arms and shoulders swelled and relaxed as he went up and down as if they were separately alive. People, as they always did, peeked at him when they thought he wasn't looking, glancing out of the corners of eyes and in reflections in the glass. Hawk knew it. He always knew everything that went on around him. It made no impression on him. Almost nothing did. He didn't enjoy it. He didn't mind it.

  I was doing curls. Hawk said, "How you and Susan doing?"

  "Love is lovelier," I said, "the second time around."

  "Worth the scramble," Hawk said.

  "Yes."

  Hawk shifted from pull-ups to dips. He whistled to himself through his teeth, his lips together so one barely heard the small internal melody. He was whistling "On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe." We both finished on the Nautilus equipment and went to the boxing room. I jumped rope, Hawk played games on the speed bag. Now he was whistling "Sweet Georgia Brown."

  I said, "You still on good terms with Tony Marcus?"

  Hawk said, "Sure."

  I said, "I think I need some help from him."

  "Nothing Tony like better," Hawk said, "than to do favors for some honkie who punched him in the mouth the only time he met him."

  "It's why I asked about your terms," I said. "If he liked me I wouldn't need you."

  "If you need me 'cause people don't like you, babe, you need me bad. What you want from Tony?"

  I crossed and uncrossed the rope as I jumped. "I'm looking for a guy named Art Floyd. He recruited a kid for a whorehouse in Boston."

  "You looking for the kid?"

  "No. I'm looking for him. The kid's dead."

  "Well, Tony the man," Hawk said. "Nothing much happens in the whore business that Tony don't follow. Floyd kill the kid?"

  "No, I doubt it. I'm looking for April Kyle again."

  "The little blond kid from Smithfield."

  "Un huh."

  "Man," Hawk said, "you do hang in there. Tell me about it, maybe we work something out with Tony."

  I told him about April and about Ginger Buckey.

  "So you figure you find out what happened to Ginger Buckey you maybe find out what happened to April," Hawk said.

  "April's gone, Ginger's dead, and Rambeaux is scared. There's got to be a connection."

  "Well, I see what I can do. But Tony don't remember you fondly."

  "I'm not asking him to dance."

  "Good to know," Hawk said. "What Tony get out of this?"

  I shrugged. "A favor to me?"

  "Besides that," Hawk said.

  "A favor to you?"

  "Tony usually looking to get favors more than he looking to give them," Hawk said.

  "Okay, we'll owe him one," I said.

  "What this `we' shit, white man?"

  17

  Hawk and I met Tony Marcus at a Chinese restaurant called Ming Garden on Route 9 across from the Chestnut Hill Mall. Marcus was maybe my age with a modified Afro and a thick mustache. The mustache had some gray in it, but his face was smooth and unlined. He sat in a booth alone toward the far end of the restaurant. At a table next to him four other black men sat with menus closed in front of them. All of them wore suits. One of the guys sitting with his back toward us was too heavy for the suit and where it pulled tight across his back I could see the faint line of a shoulder-holster strap.

  "Why here?" I said to Hawk as we walked toward them.

  Hawk shrugged. "Likes the food, I guess. Man was willing to come, I didn't ask many questions."

  We reached the booth. Marcus smiled. The four guys at the table all looked at us without any expressions. Marcus gestured that we should sit across from him and we did. Hawk slid in first and I sat beside him.

  "Tony," I said.

  "Good Szechwan cooking," Marcus said. "You like Szechwan, this is the place. Better than Chinatown."

  I nodded. A waiter showed up with some Chinese beer and put it down and went away. "I already ordered," Marcus said.

  "Thoughtful," I said.

  The waiter returned with two platters of Peking ravioli and some hoisin sauce. Marcus smiled again, and rubbed his hands softly together. We each ate a ravioli and drank some beer. The four guys at the next table weren't eating or drinking. They just sat.

  "Understand you looking for a man," Marcus said.

  "Art Floyd," I said. Marcus nodded.

  "You know him?" I said.

  Marcus nodded again. He speared a second ravioli from the platter and spooned a little sauce over it and cut it in two with the edge of his fork.

  "You find him he going to be in trouble?"

  "I don't know," I said. "I'm looking for a kid and it depends on how willing he is to help me."

  Tony ate half his ravioli. Patted his lips with his napkin, took a sip of Tsingtao beer, and said, "Maybe it ought to depend on whether I want him in trouble or nor."

  "Do you?" I said.

  Marcus smiled again. "Un huh."

  I nodded. "That's what you get out of it," I said.

  "Un huh."

  "What kind of trouble you want him in?"

  "What kind you got?" Marcus said.

  "Tell me about him," I said. "We can work something out."

  The Peking ravioli were gone. The waiter took the platter, replaced it with mu-shu pork and another round of beers.

  "Running whores is traditionally black turf," Marcus said. "In New York, in Chicago, in Detroit… here." He put a pancake on his plate and added a spoonful of mu-shu and carefully folded it over into a neat package and took a bite. Then he drank some beer and used his napkin. "Been that way a long time and everyone sort of accepts that."

  I nodded.

  "Which means here it's mine," Marcus said.

  "Okay by me," I said.

  "Even if it's not," Marcus said.

  "Just being polite," I said.

  "Polite is shutting up and listening, sowbelly," Marcus said.

  I looked at Hawk. "Sowbelly?"

  "White," Hawk said, "like salt pork. He insulting you."

  "Ahhh," I said.

  "Maybe you ought to sit on it too, Hawk," Marcus said. The four guys at the next table all looked over at us. Hawk poured the rest of his second bottle of beer into his glass, tipping the glass slightly so that the head of foam worked just right. He put the empty bottle down, picked up the glass, took a sip, looked for a minute at the color of the beer, holding it so the light showed through. Then he put the glass down and leaned back in the booth and looked at Marcus.

  "Ain't enough of you, Tony, to smartmouth both of us," he said.

  Marcus looked back at him and then looked away. "Fuck that," he said, and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "Let's talk business."

  Hawk smiled and drank a little more beer. I waited.

  "Artie Floyd works for a guy named Perry Lehman. You know Lehman?"

  I nodded. "Skin magazines."

  "That's on
e part of it," Marcus said. "Soft porn, hard porn, gay porn, kid porn, fetish porn." Marcus paused and finished his pancake. He made another one. "Lehman got magazines for every taste."

  The waiter appeared and took away the empty platters and brought a bowl of steamed rice and a platter of chicken with cashews. Marcus gestured at the beer and the waiter went for some.

  "I think it's shit but no skin off my ass, is it." Marcus spoke in a neutral dialect most of the time, softly, like an FM announcer. But every once in a while there was a Caribbean trace in his speech. He served himself some chicken and some rice. "Then he branches out. He opens a series of resorts and vacation clubs and he starts staffing them with hostesses. At which point he starts cutting into part of my franchise. So I have lunch with him one day, and I tell him that he's off base. And that he should stick to the fuck magazines and let me run the actual fucking." Marcus drank some beer. "Try the chicken," he said. "Stuff's excellent."

  I nodded and put a little on my plate.

  "So the fucking sleaze bag says, sure. Right. He hadn't realized that, and he'd take care of it, and maybe we could work out… what the hell he say…" Marcus put his head back for a moment then looked back at me. "A franchising fee. A fucking franchising fee, man." Marcus shook his head. "Shit!"

  I ate the chicken. It was good. But I had already had more lunch than I was used to. The beer was good too. Marcus seemed to have a low tolerance for it. As he ate and drank he talked faster and louder and more profanely and the island accent became more frequent.

  "So I tell him to go think about it and we'll have lunch next week and we'll come to a decision. And I go and talk to some of my money people and they say maybe some sort of fee isn't a bad move, and I say no, you let the little Hymie prick in, man, and pretty soon he's all the way in."

  "And there goes the neighborhood," I said. Marcus paid no attention. He was rolling.

  "So I have lunch with him the next week, Jap restaurant in Harvard Square, and he don't show up. Instead a couple of wise guys show up."

  "Vinnie Morris?" I said.

  Marcus shook his head. "Not Vinnie. This is bigger than Joe Broz. You don't need to know the names."