“Got it, Basil,” Hector had replied. “Mi casa es su casa. That means I’ll bring all the wolfesses you can handle to my crib and you can shit on my bed and even on the wolfess if you want to. No problem.”
Now, remembering that first encounter with Basil at his house, and the languorous Asian masseuse he’d supplied for the Russian, he was distressed that even a flash of recall about that night could creep him out. He hated and feared everything about the man, from his purported vast wealth to the white streak that blazed across his hair from the widow’s peak to the crown. And he especially despised the way the drunken Russian freak had cackled while showing his horrible photos. Hector was sure that Basil was insane.
Hector Cozzo did remember the last troubling question he’d asked his employer that day. He’d said, “Mr. Markov, Basil would never, you know, want to . . . do something like that to someone, would he? Like, make an amputation really . . . happen?”
Markov had chuckled and said, “Basil is a very rich man with a very unfortunate condition, Hector, but he is not Jack the Ripper.”
The phone call came after Dinko’s breakfast, which consisted of one slice of toast and a half-eaten fried egg with two cups of coffee.
“I only hope you were not smoking marijuana,” Brigita Babich said to her only child when he got up from the breakfast table and put his dish and coffee cup into the dishwasher. “I hope it was just booze that makes you look like hell this morning.”
“I don’t smoke that crap anymore, I told you,” Dinko said. “Jesus! You think getting a thirty-day suspension from work didn’t teach me something?”
“There’s been way too much methamphetamine use on the docks, Dinko,” she said. “So of course I’m gonna worry about you. After the trouble you had with your car . . .”
“Not that again,” Dinko said. “Can’t you let it go?”
“If there’d been anyone in the parked car you hit, you could be in prison now,” she said.
“I spent the night in jail. I totaled my car. I paid a fine that almost coulda bought me a new car. I got my insurance dropped. I did my probation. Damn, why not crucify me in Point Fermin Park after Mass next Sunday?”
“It was the marijuana, Dinko,” she said. “Drinking and driving is bad enough. Smoking dope and driving is suicidal behavior. I just hope—”
“I’m going back to bed,” he said. “I got a headache and you’re making it worse.”
“Take a shower and you’ll feel better,” she said.
Back in his bedroom, he heard the cell phone on the nightstand chiming. Later, upon remembering this call, he realized that if his mother had kept ragging on him about smoking weed, he would’ve missed the call. It turned out to be a very impulsive call, and maybe she would not have left a message. And she might never have called again. He had always believed utterly in coincidence and fate.
“Hello.” There was silence on the line for several seconds and he repeated, “Hello?”
A soft voice said, “It is Lita.”
“Lita!” he said. “I never thought I’d . . . what happened? Is something wrong?”
“I have hope that you can come to me for little while? I am feeling very much like I wish to talk with you.”
“About what?”
“Your friend.”
“Hector Cozzo?”
“That is right.”
“Is someone there so you can’t say what it’s about?”
“That is right.”
“I can be there in maybe an hour or a little longer.”
“Thank you,” she said, with a quiver in her voice. “Please come at eleven o’clock.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, opening the nightstand drawer, where he kept a pen. “Go ahead, gimme the address where you’re at.”
She gave him the address of a liquor store on Hollywood Boulevard east of Western Avenue, where Thai Town and Little Armenia overlapped. She said she would be standing in front of the store, and before hanging up, she added, “I am sorry for this. I do not have nobody else.”
He was surprised how fast his heart was beating, and he was stunned to hear his own voice say, “I’m glad you called, Lita. Very glad.”
Dinko took a shower, shaved, and put on clean cargo pants and the newest polo shirt he owned, the yellow one that the salesgirl had assured him would somehow also complement his blue eyes and make his light chestnut hair appear a bit golden. He’d always been such a doofus when it came to cute salesgirls. He slipped into his new deck shoes and told his mother that he might be home late.
“Where’re you going?”
“To town,” he said.
“Where to town?”
“Hollywood,” he said.
“Why in the hell would anyone be going to Hollywood in the morning?” she asked, but he was already out the door.
Shanghai Massage looked far more depressing in the daylight hours, Hector thought, after parking in the limited space at the rear of the business. He used his key to enter through the back door and could hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner, and voices jabbering in some gook language. One thing about Kim: he got his money’s worth. He made the girls he’d smuggled into this country do the work of masseuses, whores, janitors, and any other job he could find for them.
Ivana was mopping the floor in one of the massage rooms with her hair tied back under a bandanna when she saw Hector head for the lobby. She followed him and closed the door that led to the corridor.
He lit a cigarette and looked in vain for an ashtray under the counter, but she said, “Is okay. We got to sweep and mop anyways.”
“So what’s the big problem that I had to come running over here?” he asked. “Something about a girl? What, somebody thinks they can jist quit and not pay off their obligation?”
“Is the thing down at the harbor!” Ivana said, turning involuntarily to make sure the door was still shut.
“What thing at the harbor?”
“The people. All the ones that perish from the cargo ship? You do not know? The big container box is at the storage place when they find bodies inside.”
“I got a little bit loaded last night. I ain’t heard nothing,” Hector said.
“Twelve girls and one man. They die from breathing gas, and the police they find bodies yesterday. And one of dead girls is the sister of Daisy. She was coming on the cargo ship, and now she knows the sister is dead!”
“How does she know her sister was among the dead?”
Ivana said, “She is knowing the smuggler and the ship he uses, and when it arrives. And she wait all week for Mr. Kim to get the girls from outside the container box. It is them, no question.”
“I don’t know Daisy, do I?”
“Is the new name she chooses. Tall Korean girl who dances at Club Samara? She is home today with grief.”
“Oh, yeah,” Hector said. “The tall Asian dancer. I remember using her on a couple of parties for somebody.”
“You mean Mr. Kim? He calls here today and asks if we seen you. He is showing anger.”
“Oh, shit,” Hector said. “My voice mail.”
“You must talk with Suki,” Ivana said. “I get her.”
While Ivana was gone he checked his phone and saw another message from Kim. The big slope was gonna break his neck! Hector lit another cigarette with the butt from the first.
Hector couldn’t remember which one Suki was. After a while, the names, the faces—they all ran together in Hector’s mind. He just had to make sure that somebody semihonest would report exactly how many massages each girl had done and what kind of massage they had given, and that job had gone to Ivana. They got to keep half their tips and 5 percent of the massage fees, but the rest went to Hector Cozzo, and from him to Kim, and on very rare occasions to Markov himself. With Kim’s approval, because of Ivana’s job as manager and snitch, Hector had forgiven some of her debt for her passage to America and her current living expenses.
“Tell to Mr. Hector what you hear from that new Mexican girl that
is living with Daisy and Violet,” Ivana ordered the frightened girl she led into the lobby.
Suki turned out to be short and cute, half Cambodian and half Thai, much younger than Ivana, with surgically enhanced breasts. She passed herself off as Japanese to her round-eyed customers because they seemed to prefer the idea of Japanese masseuses, and she sometimes claimed to have been a geisha in Tokyo. Suki was a relatively new girl and would be working off her expenses for a long time. She said, “Violet say to me that Daisy runs away from the apartment when she hears about baby sister dying with other peoples. Daisy tell to Violet and Lita that all the peoples owe for travel to Mr. Kim.”
“Running away to where?” Hector asked.
Suki hesitated. Ivana poked her and said, “Tell it all!”
“To police,” Suki said, while looking at her sandals.
“What?” Hector yelled it so loud, both women flinched. “And what is she gonna tell the police?”
Suki looked up fearfully and said, “About how Mr. Kim help many to get to America, and how me and Daisy got to work for him very long time and pay to him money for . . . for all things he tell us to do with customers, and . . .”
“Yeah, what else?”
Suki’s chin was quivering when she said, “And she say she also going to tell about Mr. Hector, who collect the money for Mr. Kim.”
“Son of a bitch!” Hector said. “The cunt is gonna put us in the joint! Where is she?”
Suki said, “Daisy runs away from the apartment this morning crying tears.”
“And what the fuck’s the other roommates gonna do about it?” He posed the question to both women. “Violet’s the Vietnamese girl, right? And Lita’s the Mexican.”
Ivana said, “Violet told to me that her and Lita keeps shut and says nothing to nobody about what Daisy is saying, but I think you must find Daisy and talk with her before Mr. Kim discover about this and . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Kee-rist!” Hector said, hearing his ringtone. He didn’t have to look. He knew who it was.
Ivana told Suki, “Okay, go back to work now.”
When she and Hector were alone, she said, “I got good news, too.”
“I could use some,” Hector said. “What is it?”
“You remember how you ask me to say if I ever get customer with leg or arm cut off? And to learn if the operation was in Tijuana, Mexico?”
“Yeah,” Hector said, almost having forgotten about Basil and his special needs.
“Is missing foot okay?” Ivana asked.
She was wearing cutoff shorts, a tank top with a cotton shirt over it, and tennis shoes. It made her look more than ever like a kid, he thought. A fragile kind of kid. Dinko pulled to the curb in front of the liquor store on Hollywood Boulevard and tooted the horn once. She ran to his car, opened the door, and got in. She seemed different from the last time they’d met. He shut off the engine and looked at her.
“What happened, Lita?” he asked before she could speak.
“I am so full of fear, Dinko,” she said.
“Is it your boss? What’d he do to you?”
“No,” she said. “I have not done nothing for the boss. He is Russian man who is bartender. I am learning the lap dance from other girls, and I am serving drinks, and one time I do the dance onstage, but the boss he says I am bad dancer, like you say also. I only make little bit of money from tips so far. But yesterday something bad happens down there where you come from. Down by the harbor. Many people die.”
“Yeah, the Asians that were found dead in a can at a storage yard. I read about it. What’s that got to do with you?”
“I am living with two girls in our apartment. One is call Daisy. They find out on the television about the people dead in the, how you say, container?”
“Yeah, a can. A container. So what happened with Daisy?”
“She got crazy with sadness last night. She scream, she cry. She say a dead one down there is the baby sister. And she say she is running to police. Violet say, ‘No, Daisy. You must not run to police. Is great danger to you.’ That is what she say to her.”
“What? Daisy was gonna rat out the smuggling operation?”
“Sorry, I don’t . . .”
“To tell about the people who brought them all to this country?”
“To tell, but the man who pay for them to come to America is our boss. He is the Korean man, call Mr. Kim. Hector sees me dancing in the place where you first meet me and calls Mr. Kim, who is boss over Hector. He is the man all girls must pay money to for our job, even girls like me that come to this country without his help. I still got to pay him for the job and to live in the apartment and for the food and clothing I must wear in my work. And Mr. Hector is the one who collects the money for Mr. Kim.”
Dinko thought it over, the consequences if the police learned that Kim and Hector Cozzo were involved in the smuggling caper that had gone way sideways. “I hope you’re not worrying about Hector,” Dinko said. “He’s always been just a second-rate hustler, but if he wants to work for gangsters, then he deserves to go to jail with them. If I know Hector, he’ll end up ratting out his boss. Is that what you’re worrying about, my old friend Hector getting arrested?”
“No, Dinko, I am in fear for me!” she said. “When Daisy runs away I try to call her back. She is the best girl of all I meet here. I go out of our apartment and run after her. When I arrive to the corner, I see the big car come by. The big black car with shiny wheels. Daisy stops at the corner and the driver of the black car tells something to her and he opens up the door. Daisy looks at him. She yells loud at him in the Korea language. Then she looks very afraid. Then she says something more in the language. But then she has a look of fear and she gets into the car. I run up to see who is the driver of the big black car.”
“Let me guess: it was the Korean.”
“I cannot say because I only see some of his head, but I think it is Mr. Kim.”
“I get it. So you’re scared that because she didn’t come home last night, he did something bad to her. Is that it?”
“That is it.”
“So you’re scared for Daisy?”
“And for me also,” she said. “When I get back to my apartment I am so full of fear I say to Violet that I see Daisy talking to some man in a black car, but I do not say he look like Mr. Kim.”
Dinko was stopped cold by that bit of information. Then he said, “This is not my problem.”
“No,” she said. “Is not.”
“I got nothing to do with these Hollywood players.”
“No,” Lita said.
“Just because I gave you a ride, that don’t make me responsible for you.”
“No,” she said.
“Goddamnit,” he said. “Why did you call me?”
“You was good to me,” she said. “I do not know nobody but the girls I am working with. They cannot help me. They cannot help nobody.”
“Goddamnit,” he said. “You expect a lot from a stranger.”
“I am sorry. I am sorry I call you. Please forgive.”
She started to get out of the car. He said, “Wait a minute. Sit down. Lemme think.”
Then he said, “Maybe Kim just had a chat with Daisy and talked her outta snitching him off to the police. Maybe she’s staying overnight with Kim for a kiss and a cuddle. I think pimps are good at that kind of thing. She’s probably fine.”
Lita said, “But if Daisy is not fine, Violet can tell Mr. Kim what I say to her. About how Daisy went away in a black car with shiny wheels.”
“Are you sure you did not tell Violet you thought it was Mr. Kim in the car?”
“No, I had too much fear to say the man look like Mr. Kim. Then I know I got to run away from those persons.”
“Did you tell her that Daisy was speaking Korean to the guy in the car?”
Lita thought about it and said, “Maybe I tell that to Violet.”
“Christ,” Dinko said. “Tell you what, can you come home with me tonight? I’ll
take you to my house, and tomorrow you can call and see if she came back. If Kim talked her outta going to the cops and she’s back to normal, I’ll drive you back here to Hollywood. But I wish you’d stay in Pedro or Wilmington or maybe Long Beach and get an ordinary job.”
“I cannot earn enough money cleaning the houses, Dinko.”
“Yeah, yeah, you said. Your mother and brothers back in Mexico. Anyways, run back to your apartment now and get a few overnight things.”
“People like me do not got things for one night,” she said. “All I got is in one big maleta.”
“Okay, go get the big maleta,” Dinko said. “Let’s get going.”
He waited twenty minutes, until she came struggling back along the street, now wearing a jersey-knit wrap dress that he figured she’d maybe bought on Alvarado Street for about twenty bucks. She was carrying a heavy piece of worn leather luggage with both hands.
He got out of the car and took it from her and loaded it in the open hatchback of the Jeep. When he got back in the car and looked at the girl beside him, he thought, What the fuck am I doing? Why am I taking on this kind of crazy responsibility? I’m not her daddy. She’s just a Mexican whore!
His frustration rising, he told her, “I’m only thirty-one years old and somehow you make me feel like an old man with these responsibilities I didn’t choose.”
“I do not understand,” she said.
“Neither do I,” he said.
He started up the car and headed east, toward the Harbor Freeway. When he was driving south on the freeway he said, “I bet you think I’m bringing you home to have sex with you, right?”
She continued looking straight ahead at the road, as though she was expecting exactly that from him, and she said, “I am no child, Dinko.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that,” he said. “But I got a news flash. Sex’s got nothing to do with why I’m being such a stupid bozo. If it did, it might make a little sense. If it did, I wouldn’t be taking you home to my mother’s house. There’s no sex, drugs, or rock ’n’ roll under her roof, I can tell you. So I don’t know why the hell I’m doing this.”
Harbor Nocturne Page 11
