Taming a Sea Horse

by Robert B. Parker

"Jesus Christ," Whitfield said. "You can't show yourself here."

  "Shut up," Jacky said without heat. He wasn't looking at Whitfield. He was looking at me.

  "How's things, Jacky," I said.

  "I don't think they're too good, right now," Jacky said, "especially for you."

  He was a tall wiry guy with high shoulders. He was wearing an eight-hundred-dollar suit of pale gray, with a pink shirt and a pink-and-lavender striped tie. His pocket handkerchief was lavender-and-pink dots. His shoes were shiny black and long and pointy and probably cost nearly what the suit cost. He was wearing the kind of sunglasses that lighten inside and darken outside. His dark hair was cut long on top and short on the sides and combed back with a big wave in front and a part on the left side.

  "Dammit, Jacky," Whitfield said, "I warned you to stay out of sight. Now he knows."

  "He knows anyway," Jacky said. "He don't know any more than he did. And it's nothing he can prove."

  I nodded. "He's right," I said to Whitfield. "I know you're conected to Mr. Milo. I know you went to St. Thomas with Ginger Buckey. And so far there's nothing I can prove. But there will be."

  "No," Jacky said, "there won't. No need to be fancy about this. We're going to kill you." Jacky had no emotion in his voice. He might have been talking about real estate.

  I was watching Whitfield. The talk was scaring him badly.

  "Like I said, all I want is a kid named April Kyle, you clucks have been in a goddamned lather to keep me away from Whitfield when all I want is April Kyle, now you've got it escalated to where you've got to kill me."

  "Don't make any difference," Jacky said, "how it got here, it's where we are. I'd have done it a long time ago, but I'm not in charge."

  "How 'bout Warren?" I said. "He's looking a little peckish."

  "He does what he's told," Jacky said. "And he likes it."

  "You may have to do him too," I said. "I think the strain's getting to him."

  "Don't matter none to me," Jacky said. "Won't matter much to you either, you being dead and all."

  "God damn it, Jacky, I don't want this kind of thing talked about in here. It implicates me. Take this talk out into the streets where it belongs."

  Jacky turned toward him slowly. "You really got to understand something, Whitfield. We don't work for you. You work for us. We supply the bimbos, you do what you're told."

  "For God's sake, Jacky," Whitfield said. "I'm president of-"

  "You're shit," Jacky said. "You work for us. Don't you?"

  Whitfield stared at him. Jacky leaned slightly toward him.

  "Don't you?"

  Whitfield nodded slowly.

  Jacky looked back at me. "You got any final words?" he said.

  I said, "You know I've got all this stashed with someone so if I go down it goes to the cops."

  "And if you don't go down?"

  "Maybe it doesn't have to," I said.

  "Nothing you can prove anyway."

  "You know better, Jacky. The feds find out you're connected to this bank and they'll be all over you like leather on a baseball. They'll turn something up."

  Jacky shrugged. "They've turned up stuff before. We're still in business."

  "Sensible attitude," I said, "except you been acting just the other way, like if I got to Whitfield the sky would fall."

  "So you got a proposition?" Jacky said.

  "I want April Kyle, and I want to know what happened to Ginger Buckey."

  "And that's all?" I nodded.

  "Okay," Jacky said, "take a hike. We'll get back to you."

  I made a shooting gesture at Whitfield with my forefinger and thumb, and went on out. Downstairs in the lobby Hawk was leaning against one of the writing islands looking at two guys near the door.

  He nodded toward them. "Mr. Milo?" he said.

  "Un huh. Jacky was upstairs."

  "I bet he mentioned shooting you," Hawk said. We were walking straight at the two guys near the door.

  "Sort of. I offered him an alternative."

  "He go for it?" Hawk said.

  "We'll see," I said.

  The two guys by the door moved aside as we reached them and we went out onto Franklin Street.

  34

  In the morning Jacky Wax came to see me. He came into my office wearing a three-piece blue suit and a pink tie and carrying a paper bag with two cups of coffee in it. He gave me a cup, and sat down in my client chair and opened the coffee, peeling the lid off away from himself so if any spilled it wouldn't get on his suit. I opened my coffee and had a swallow. Jacky had a little of his.

  "Okay," Jacky said. "We are running a business, and we try to do what's best for the business. If it's best for business to kill somebody, we kill him. If it's best to buy somebody, we buy him, you unnerstand?"

  "Un huh."

  "If it's best to deal, we deal."

  "Un huh."

  "We want you to unnerstand that. Mr. Milo himself said he wanted that crystal clear, that you ain't getting away with something you shouldn't."

  I nodded. Variety is the spice of life. "So we like the deal," Jacky said.

  "Which is?"

  "Which is you get the bimbo back, and you leave everything else alone. Lehman, Whitfield. Everything else."

  "Who takes the fall for Ginger Buckey?" I said.

  "Who?"

  "Ginger Buckey, the hooker got killed in New York. Somebody's got to go down for that."

  "Why?"

  "Christ, Jacky," I said, "I don't know. But somebody does. Nobody cared about her one day in her life."

  "What fucking difference does it make to her now," Jacky said.

  "I don't know that either, but somebody's got to pay the price. She's going to matter."

  "You didn't say anything about this yesterday," Jacky said.

  "I didn't know about this yesterday. Until just now I thought I was looking for April Kyle."

  "And now you're not?"

  "Her too, but we're going to get even for Ginger."

  Jacky drank some more coffee. His long legs stretched out in front of him. His white shirt had French cuffs, I noticed. With sapphire cuff links. He swallowed a mouthful of coffee a little at a time and looked at me while he did it. He shook his head.

  "You are a piece of fucking work," he said. "You know who you're dealing with. You've known it for a while. And you keep pushing anyway, and when you get lucky and we offer you a deal, you push more." Jacky shook his head.

  "Kid's father was raping her when she was twelve. Then he sold her to a pimp, and he sold her to a pimp and so on and then somebody killed her."

  "So her old man was a creep," Jacky said. "Don't matter anymore."

  "I want somebody," I said. "Otherwise the whole thing goes down."

  "You think you know what the whole thing is?" Jacky said.

  "I know some, I guess some. I say Whitfield is washing money for you. I say he's got one of your dummy companies on an exempt list so that the cash transactions over ten grand don't get reported to the IRS. I say in return you have Perry Lehman supply him girls and a safe place to use them where his Boston Banker reputation doesn't get pecker tracks all over it. Maybe he gets a piece of what he washes, but I bet mostly it's women."

  "And you figure we own Lehman?" Jacky said.

  "Of course you do. He's operating highclass whorehouses all over the country. He never gets busted. Tony Marcus doesn't dare touch him. I annoy him and your guys appear."

  "Makes sense," Jacky said.

  "So I start looking for April Kyle, one day, and this is the part I don't get, and it trips some alarm someplace. I don't know why, but everybody starts panicking 'cause it's going to lead me to DePaul Federal. And somebody goes down to New York and starts closing doors."

  "Sounds pretty fancy stuff for a simple laundry scheme," Jacky said.

  "Scheme was simple enough, but it was worth saving. DePaul is the eighteenth biggest bank in the country," I said. "I looked it up. You run one of the biggest cash businesses in the c
ountry. Whitfield solves a lot of problems for you."

  Jacky nodded and finished his coffee and looked around for the wastebasket.

  "It's back here," I said. "Give it to me." Jacky handed me the cup and I dropped it in the wastebasket.

  "Whitfield likes young women," Jacky said. "And he likes a lot of things that women don't. So we supply him broads that don't have much choice. Ginger Buckey was one, but she took off on him with the coon, and she had to be replaced."

  "And April was her replacement."

  Jacky nodded. "We took her from the pimp who took the other whore away from Whitfield," Jacky said. "Whitfield liked that."

  "And I came looking for her and in the process found Ginger for you."

  Jacky nodded again. He was smiling faintly. "And you didn't kill her to keep me from finding out about Whitfield. You killed her as an object lesson for April; or anyone else you might give Whitfield."

  "Both," Jacky said. "We killed her for both reasons. We had the pimp do it."

  "Rambeaux?"

  "Yeah."

  "And you beat him up for taking Ginger from Whitfield."

  Jacky smiled wider. "Both," he said. "Teach him a lesson and make sure he don't say anything to you."

  "And then when I kept at it you aced him to be sure."

  "Yep. Been smarter to have aced you, way back at the beginning." Jacky stretched his neck as he talked, as if to loosen a kink in the right side. "But that's Monday morning. We decided to stay away from you if we could. People say you're hard to kill and you got friends that cause trouble. Bad for business. So we went the other way."

  "Nobody's perfect," I said.

  "So we already gave you somebody for Ginger Buckey. We gave you the guy that did her."

  "Doesn't seem enough," I said.

  "Better be," Jacky said. "That's all there is. Anything else would be bad business."

  "You can't spare Lehman and you can't spare Whitfield," I said.

  "That's right."

  "Lehman thinks you tried to hit him," I said.

  "I know."

  "He's going to crack on you someday, Jacky."

  Jacky shook his head. "You underestimate how scared he is." he said.

  "Maybe," I said.

  "You want the girl or not?" Jacky said.

  "Yes," I said.

  "We'll bring her here at noon. Keep something in mind, though. If anyone blows the whistle on Whitfield, there's no point to us not killing you then. Her too."

  "I've thought of that," I said.

  35

  April Kyle showed up at noon. By herself. Carrying a small overnight bag. She wasn't dressed for work today. She had on jeans and a T-shirt and pale lemon jazz shoes. The T-shirt had a picture of a penguin on the front and the legend PENGUIN LUST underneath it. Her face was without makeup. She wore no lipstick. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and held partly in place by a pale yellow headband that matched her shoes.

  She opened my office door and walked into the room and stopped in front of my desk and stood without moving, her head down, holding the overnight bag by the strap with both hands in front of her. She didn't speak. No one came in behind her.

  "Long time no see," I said.

  She nodded without looking up.

  She hadn't closed the door when she came in and the corridor behind her remained empty. I got up and walked around my desk and out through the open door and looked up and down the corridor. No one was there. I closed the door and went back around the desk and sat down. April stood as she had, her eyes fixed on something near her feet.

  "You okay?" I said.

  She nodded again without looking up. Maybe I should try to think of a question without a nod-shake answer.

  "What would you like to do now?" I said. A master of sparkling small talk.

  She shook her head. "Had lunch?" I said. She shook her head.

  I could feel the first trickle of sweat in the small of my back.

  "Well," I said, smiling warmly, "when in doubt, eat."

  Normally my warm smile does it. Women often undress when I've given them my warm smile. April had no reaction at all. Probably because she didn't see, because she was still eyeing the floor. I thought of other approaches. Look at me or I'll kill you? Probably too direct.

  I said, "Was it-" caught myself and rephrased. "How bad was it?" I said.

  She didn't say anything. She kept her eyes down and shook her head again.

  I got up and walked around the desk. I stood close to her without touching her.

  "It won't be bad anymore," I said. She nodded.

  "You're with me," I said. "You're safe." Nothing. Not even a nod.

  "We have known each other for four years," I said. "I don't know if we ever actually liked each other, but we've known each other long enough to start."

  More nothing.

  "You want to see your parents?" I said. She shook her head.

  "You want to see Mrs. Silverman?"

  Shrug. Shrug? Christ, a shrug was eloquent. I was on a roll.

  "Okay, this evening we'll see Mrs. Silverman. You staying anyplace?"

  She shook her head.

  "Okay," I said. "You can stay with me." She nodded.

  "As a guest," I said, "your own room. No professional responsibilities."

  She shrugged. The little chatterbox.

  "Are there clothes or anything we should pick up?"

  She shook her head.

  "That's it? One overnight bag?" She nodded.

  "Okay," I said. "Then we'll go have a little lunch, maybe take a walk along the river and plan our next step."

  She made no movement.

  "There is a next step, kiddo," I said. Her shoulders hunched slightly. "And we'll plan it together."

  Her shoulders hunched more and began to shake. Her breath came shorter and shorter and she was crying. I put my hands on her shoulders. She shrank in toward herself and pulled away without moving. I left my hands on her shoulders.

  "You're all right now," I said. "You're with me, and you can stay with me as long as you want to."

  The sobbing got louder and faster. I patted her shoulders where my hands rested.

  "It won't happen to you again," I said.

  "Whatever it was, it won't happen again. I won't let it happen again."

  She leaned her head forward against my chest and cried some more. I patted her shoulder some more. Then she suddenly lunged against me and pressed against me as hard as she could and put both arms around me and hugged as hard as she could. I shifted my hands from her shoulders and put my arms around her and held her firmly against me. She shook hard, her teeth chattering as she cried and her crying muffled as she pressed her face to my chest.

  We stood that way for maybe ten minutes. until the crying started to subside. It seemed more as if she wore out than as if she got control. Finally we were still, standing pressed together awkwardly, with the overnight bag clumsily on the floor between our feet. We stood maybe three or four more minutes like that, in perfect silence. Then she leaned slightly back from me without letting go and took a breath. And another and slowly her breathing began to regulate. She looked up at me for the first time. Her eyes were swollen and her nose ran.

  "I'm sorry," she said. Her arms were still around me. Mine were lightly around her.

  I nodded. "If you didn't want lunch," I said, "a simple no would have sufficed."

  She made her lips smile, but it was simple politeness. Nothing seemed funny to her yet. "There's a washbasin in the bathroom there," I said. "Go in and wash your face. Cold water is good. Then we'll consider lunch again."

  "And then a walk," she said, "along the river?"

  "Un huh."

  "And…"

  I shook my head. "We've planned far enough ahead. One step at a time, cookie." She nodded and went in the bathroom. The water ran and I heard her splashing it on her face.

  So far so good.

  ing a Sea Horse