by phuc
Bad for business. A girl wants to fly, I let her fly. A girl thinks she can do better with someone else, I let her work for someone else."
"What's this got to do with Heather B. With Creamy?"
"Really top drawer. Beautiful, sure, like I said. She was really beautiful bodywise." Chaplin shrugged. "But she wasn't very good. Didn't turn much business, not aggressive, not too good at selling her attributes. Lot of girls think they'll rake big money working the street, but the truth is it's hard work. Lot of girls can't cut the trade once they're out there."
"I still don't see what this has to do with "
"She booked," Chaplin said. "Flew the coop about two weeks ago or so. You walk in here with your storm troopers so I figure she got into some trouble, got herself killed."
"Did she discuss it with you?"
"Discuss what?"
"Her decision to leave."
"No, no. She just up and left. Disappeared. Didn't even come back for her things. What, you expect a working girl to put two weeks' notice?"
Throughout Chaplin's monologue, Spence was careful to watch his face, as Simmons had taught him. Tarsal plate fluctuation the muscles beneath the top eyelids usually indicated a negative impulse, or a lie. Chaplin held the beer can in his right hand; statistically his eyeline would drift left when lying. Yet Chaplin exhibited none of these characteristics. It was almost a disappointment. He's not bullshitting, Spence concluded.
"Did she live here?"
Chaplin smirked broadly. "None of my girls crib here. Most of them have their own apartments, Greenbelt, College Park, Bladensburg. They make livings, Lieutenant. They have cars. They drive to and from work every day just like you. New girls, or slow learners, I crib myself 'til they can get on their feet in the trade. I gotta a rowhouse two blocks down. That's where Creamy lived, with three other girls." Chaplin scribbled the address down on the back of a lawyer's business card. "You want to send your motley crew down there, fine. All my girls are clean. You find any drugs, let me know. I'll give them their walking papers."
Spence found it hard not to like Chaplin. It was hard to exhibit himself as an authority figure. "So your girls don't do drugs?"
"Hell, no. I mean maybe a little crank or pot when you can get it. But none of the tough stuff.
You don't believe me, why should I give a shit? I don't want none of that crack shit in my stable.
And any girls who fire up, they're out the door. Needle marks on a girl are bad for business, and they don't exactly make for a positive public sensibility these days." Chaplin lounged back, complacent, articulate. "A guy like you, prim, proper, John Law, you probably got me nailed as a bad guy because I happen to provide a mutually agreeable service that's against the law. Crack, skag, ice that's against the law too, but there's a big difference between that and sexual services rendered between two consenting adults. You ask me, you ought to take all these drug people, line them up along a brick wall, and kill them. I believe that hard drugs are evil; that's why I won't touch a girl who's into them. If I worked girls who were strung out or cokeheads, I'd be just as bad as the assholes who sell the shit to 9 year olds on the playground." Chaplin shrugged, sipped his St. Ide's. "That's how I feel. You don't believe me, you think I'm feeding you a line?
That's too bad."
A pimp with ethics? Spence wondered.
"What the fuck?" Chaplin, frowning, got up and walked back to the kitchen, glaring out. "Hey, your men Shemp and Larry just set off the motion detector lights in my back yard. Come on, Lieutenant. This is my home, not a southeast hardhouse."
Spence rolled his eyes. He could see the two 3D plainclothes standing astonished in the floodlit back yard. "Just a precaution," he said, thinking Keystone Cops. Kohls and the three TSD re emerged with their field kits. "Place is clean," Kohls told him. "It's just a house." Spence gave him the card with the address for Heather B. Willet's "crib," along with the warrant. "I'll be down in a few minutes," he said.
"Later, boys," Chaplin said as they were leaving. "You want to party with some pretty ladies, you ask for ‘Rome."
"Back to Creamy," Spence said.
"Oh, right. Like I said, she booked. Happens all the time."
"She a kink?"
"No. None of my girls are. If a guy gets off on being tied up and walked on by high heels, I tell him to go to Miss Wanda's Massage Parlor. My girls don't do kinks. It's too dangerous."
"Did Creamy ever work in a hospital or a hospital supplier?"
Chaplin set the beer down, making a face. "How should I know? All I know is she worked some tittie bars before she hooked up with me."
This was going nowhere. "What about her father? You know anything about her father? Her mother?"
"Hey, man, a girl's family life is her own business. She didn't tell me nothing about that, and I didn't ask."
"She have any wild friends? Weirdos? Like that?"
"As far as I know, she didn't have any friends. Pretty much a loner. Quiet. And like I said she was top drawer, never really knew what she was doing. All I can tell you about her is that she got four busts, two PBJ's, two suspended sentences, which I'm sure you already know. And she was beautiful. She had a little harelip you could barely see, but a body like angelfood cake. That girl looked good on the street, I can tell you. She could put wood on a monk."
"You know if she was religious? You know of any reason why crosses would have any special meaning to her?"
"She ain't a vampire, if that's what you mean." Chaplin laughed. "These are some freaky questions. You gonna tell me what's going on?"
"No," Spence said. "I can't." He left his card. "Please call me if you see her. And let me ask you one more thing... Who's your clothier?"
(III)
"So where are we going?" Maxwell asked.
Kathleen pulled the T Bird out onto P Street, and nearly got hit by a cab whipping into the Omni Hotel. "Inconsiderate dick!" she yelled.
"Who? Me?" Maxwell asked.
"No," she droned.
"So you're in one of your better moods tonight, I see."
"Don't give me a load of shit, Maxwell," she said very coolly. She felt tempered, ticking. Her hands were clammy on the wheel. Her emotions felt like thread unwinding, each fiber flying in a different direction.
"So what's new?" he said once they got going.
"Nothing. Not really."
Not really? She couldn't get Spence off her mind; he was one of the threads. Something must be happening, she concluded. Had he found any more victims? If not, then why did he persist strong arming her? There must be a reason, she thought. Spence knew more than he was telling.
Maxwell crooked his arm out the window. His fine blond hair blew around, and he was smiling.
Georgetown pedestrians milled happily in their droves. Kathleen caught herself examining girls who waited at each crosswalk, and she dismally concluded that almost every single one was better looking than her. Most were trim young Washingtonians in traditional summer yuppie garb. Sandals, shorts, loose, pretty blouses. I'm a dinosaur, she thought. Why can't I look like those girls?
Last night, before what she could now only describe as a breakdown, Maxwell had told her she was beautiful. And today he'd left a note that said he loved her. These were nice things to hear.
Maybe I'm just not a nice person, she reflected. Maybe that's why she didn't feel good.
She parked in a back pay lot on Wisconsin Avenue. Maxwell went to pay the attendant. "I'll pay,"
Kathleen said. "No," he countered. "It's only fair that I pay for parking, since you're paying for dinner." He laughed, his hair sifting. "I'm broke."
Walking down the street, he reached to hold her hand but she bogusly diddled with her purse.
"So where did you say we were going?"
"Sushi," she said.
"Sushi. Yes."
"You like sushi, Maxwell?"
"Do I? I mean, I'm not complaining. I'll try anything once."
"You'll like it. Trust me," she
said.
A few minutes later they were sitting up at the bar before a long glass case of multi colored slabs of fish. A white socked waitress in a kimono asked for their drink orders. "Two Asahi Drys,"
Kathleen said. "The big bottles." Behind the bar, the sushi man looked like a punk rock Tojo.
Kathleen ordered expertly: "Two orders maguro, two orders toro, two orders amaebi, two orders ika, two orders ikura with quail eggs, two orders uni." The sushi man nodded and went to work.
"Wow, you really know your way around sushi," Maxwell commented.
"I come here all the time."
"Special first." The sushi man leaned over the bar and placed a plate of fried shrimp heads between them. Maxwell leered. The waitress returned with their beers and set a little green tray beside each of them. "I don't smoke," Maxwell said. The sushi man guttered laughter.
"That's not an ashtray, Maxwell," Kathleen told him. "You mix your soy sauce and wasabi in it."
"I knew that," Maxwell said. He attempted to pick up a shrimp head with his chopsticks. The shrimp head flicked to the floor. "Can't take me anywhere, huh?" he said.
She showed him how to use the sticks, not to much avail.
"I read somewhere that certain amino acids in raw fish increase the sex drive," Maxwell pointed out.
"True," the sushi man agreed and set an order between them. "Make you amorous." He guttered more laughter, a keen light in his eyes.
"Maxwell," Kathleen groaned. "You don't pour the soy sauce on the fish, you put it in the little dish, and dip the fish."
"I knew that," Maxwell said. "Weren't we going to talk about something tonight?"
"Yeah." Kathleen dipped the end of her piece of maguro into the soy sauce and ate it whole.
Maxwell followed suit. "Hey, this is pretty good," he said. "What was it we were going to talk about?"
"Maxwell, I "
"Look, look!" he enthused. He'd actually managed to needle a shrimp head in the sticks. Before he got it into his mouth, though, it flicked to the floor.
"Maxwell, you're wasting perfectly good shrimp heads," Kathleen complained.
The sushi man guttered laughter.
"Yes, admittedly I am," Maxwell agreed. "But that does not dissuade the irrevocable fact that I love you."
Here it is. Kathleen couldn't think of a response just then. She stared at her sushi, at her beer. She stared at her life.
"Yet you seem to be very bothered by that," Maxwell went on. "If we don't talk about it, we'll never get anywhere."
"Maxwell " She sighed, looked up, looked down. She looked everywhere but at him. "We haven't even known each other a week." The sushi man busily prepared their orders of ikura, cracking the quail eggs over them, but she could tell he was eavesdropping. She lowered her voice to a whisper. "You can't know that. You can't know you love someone you haven't even known a week."
"Did a burning bush tell you that?" Maxwell asked. "What, did Charlton Heston come down off a mountain with that in his arms? Thou can't lovest if thou only knowest each other a week?"
"Don't be a smartass, Maxwell."
Maxwell shrugged. "Why not? I'm being honest. I don't think what we're talking about should be judged by some socially preordained set of proximal standards."
Preordained proximal standards? "Love at first sight isn't a reality, Maxwell," she said to the shrimp heads. "It only works in the movies."
"This isn't love at first sight," Maxwell corrected. "It's love at second sight. You want to know what's not a reality, Kathleen? Categorizing human emotions."
Was that what she was doing? Before she could form another reply, the sushi man, laying split raw shrimp atop rice lumps, nodded in gruff agreement. "Human love," he said in his elliptical accent. "Never bound. Is like lightning on summer night."
Kathleen was outraged. Just make the goddamn sushi and mind your own business! She lowered her voice further. "Maxwell, this isn't the place to "
"I see. Charlton Heston came down off a mountain with that in his arms too, right? Thou shalt not talk about how we feel in sushi bars."
Kathleen took a sip of her beer from the bottle. "You're being such an asshole," she muttered.
"Oh?" Maxwell glanced up. "Excuse me, sir?" he inquired of the sushi man. "In your opinion, am I being an asshole?"
Kathleen's teeth were grinding. The sushi man placed another order between them. "No," he said and shook his head. "No."
"We're leaving after this order," she said.
Maxwell dipped his raw shrimp amaebi into the little dish of soy sauce. "Why are you mad?
There's no reason for you to be mad. We're communicating, aren't we? Most relationships fail simply because the people involved fail to communicate "
"Just because we had sex a couple of times doesn't mean we're in a relationship!" came the fiercest whisper of her life. The sushi man turned away, raising a thin black brow. Kathleen sputtered, disgusted. I don't care, she thought. I don't care if the whole world hears. So what?
"Maybe it doesn't, you're right. So why don't we try to determine that? At the very least, I have a right to know how you feel, don't I?" Maxwell concentrated, again wielding his chopsticks toward the pile of fried shrimp heads. "Don't I?"
Yeah, you do, she thought, but what did that really mean? Anything? Each response that assembled in her mind fell apart before she could get it out of her mouth. She saw cars crashing, seats flying off Ferris wheels, bridges collapsing. She saw children waving at her but they were too far away to hear what they were saying. She saw skeletons dressed in wedding gowns, and old withered women dying alone. In the glass sushi cabinet she stared at the reflection of her own face and saw a stranger staring back...
"What are you afraid of?" Maxwell said.
| |
Chapter 15
(I)
She remembers what he looks like.
That's good.
She remembers the night she picked up the prostitute.
"Yeah, all right. Whatever you want."
"I have $300. Is that enough?"
The prostitute looked momentarily old in the queer street light. She looked tired. Her red hair looked glossy, wet. "I usually don't do girls," she said. "But, yeah, that should be enough." Her smile looked brittle somehow, like she was very sad underneath. "There's a place up from Vermont. You have a car? If not we'll have to get a cab."
"I have a car," she said.
She'd put on plates she stole from the parking lot at Landover Mall. They were driving up L
Street. The prostitute smelled nice. Suddenly she put her head down in the seat. "What's wrong?"
"That guy over there," the prostitute replied. "I don't want him to see me."
"Why?"
"Never mind."
She looks across the intersection.
She sees the sharp, handsome black man getting into a BMW. She realizes that he's the prostitute's pimp, and that the prostitute is holding out on him. That's why she doesn't want the black man to see her. That's good, she thinks. That makes it even easier.
"What's his name?" she asked later.
Back at the house.
In Daddy's Room.
Don't hurt her, her mother says. It's not her fault.
"What's his name, the black man's? If you don't tell me, I'll have to hurt you. I don't want to hurt you."
The prostitute told her.
Perfect, she thought.
Then she Amytaled the prostitute and sewed her lips shut.
«« »»
L Street, between 13th and 16th, looks like a black hall of mirrors from all the plate glass on the office buildings.
It's a beautiful, warm night.
She feels happy, sexy.
Beautiful.
I'm a prostitute tonight, she thinks. I'm a whore!
Cars rove by.
Men whistle at her.
Her high heels tick along the dark cement. The sound of traffic, the whistles, the overall sounds of a city night, make her feel f
ree in a great open space. One prostitute passes her on the left.
Silly tight gold hot pants like foil. Big brunette curls shiny with hairspray. Little breasts swaying braless beneath a red fishnet top. She frowns over her shoulder as if to say Invader! Two more prostitutes pass in the opposite direction. They're dressed like twins, arm in arm, in short leather miniskirts and pink halters. They, too, frown at her. Of course, she thinks. Territorialism. It shouldn't be long. "No one works this block solo, honey," a fourth prostitute says to her at the dark crosswalk. "You better be careful." High heels tick away on the asphalt. She remains on the corner.
