Ceremony

by Robert B. Parker

  And then it was over. Hawk and I stood in a small open space with people stumbling, or fallen, gasping for breath and bleeding, in a circle around us. Men and girls with clothing torn, blood-spattered, and sweaty with an occasional splotch of vomit or spit spoiling a shirt, and the cold, clean air streaming in the broken French doors starting to dry the sweat that had even soaked through my jacket. I looked at Hawk. His jacket too was black with sweat across the back. Hawk looked at me and grinned. "You right, Mitchell sure do know how to throw a party."

  "Lucky he doesn't have any strong friends," I said. "I might have got my nose broken."

  "Who could tell?" Hawk said.

  There was a loud pounding at the front door and at the same time four cops pushed through the broken French doors and pointed guns at everyone. McNeely had arrived.

  Chapter 31

  The genie we'd let out of the bottle was a lot bigger than any of us were going to know for a long time. But sitting in Poitras's living room drinking Schlitz beer from a long-necked bottle, I knew my nose was whole. Hawk and I had washed up. And one of the prowl car cops had brought in a first-aid kit and patched us up. The cut inside my mouth would need a couple of stitches. There were a lot of bruises that would swell and discolor. But my nose was hale and intact. I stroked it with pleasure. The prowlie was putting a butterfly closure on a cut in Hawk's eyebrow.

  "How's his nose?" I said. "Fine," he said.

  "Oh." The cop looked over at me. "You sound disappointed," he said. Hawk said, "He five breaks ahead of me. He hoping I'd catch up."

  Four plainclothes vice squad cops were busy hauling out incriminating evidence in cardboard cartons. Poitras was in the kitchen with McNeely and an assistant DA. They were explaining his rights to him. Amy refused to leave him and they had only brought one policewoman, and she was busy, and they didn't know what to do with her. So as they talked in the kitchen she sat beside him in a straight chair and patted his thigh.

  The diplomat had vanished and so had the surlylooking man named Mickey that Hawk and I had thrown over the railing when we came in. But Vince was still around. He was just coming around now and he wasn't talking because his jaw was broken. April was gone. The other guests were in ragged clusters trying to get their attire straightened out-the vomit washed off, the blood wiped away. Trying to get their eyes focused and their brains reintegrated. There were three reporters and a news photographer there and the guests were avoiding them and covering their faces.

  The policewoman said to the photographer, "Most of these girls are juveniles."

  The photographer nodded and concentrated on the men. His strobe made small lightning flashes in the room. The assistant commissioner of education kept a handkerchief over his face and murmured to the vice cop who was taking his name that he was a friend of a city councilman. The cop nodded and asked to see his driver's license. The state rep kept asking to speak with McNeely and being told to sit down. "Lieutenant will get to you when he gets to you."

  The state rep told the reporter that he'd be in touch with his editor and the reporter said, "Whyn't you get in touch with yourself." And the photographer snapped his picture.

  McNeely came out of the kitchen and gestured one of the detectives in to watch Poitras. Or maybe to watch the assistant DA.

  "You know the girl?" he said to me.

  "Yes. Name's Amy Gurwitz."

  "You know where she lives?"

  "Here."

  "She told me that. But hasn't she got parents or something?"

  "Ask her," I said.

  "I did ask her. What the fuck do you think I'm asking you for?"

  I shrugged. Beyond him I could see her in the kitchen in her straight chair. She was still patting Poitras's knee. He had his head hanging forward and his shoulders slumped, slouched in the chair so that he was almost shapeless, his stomach covering most of his thighs as he sat. There was nothing left. He was shapeless with defeat.

  "Love is a many-splendored thing, McNeely," I said. "She wants to stay with him."

  "Don't lecture me about love, cowboy," McNeely said. “I got six kids. Where he's going she can't go."

  "How about you haul her down to Charles Street?" I said.

  "You know we don't put women in Charles Street," McNeely said. "Besides, she's a kid. Besides, she hasn't done anything that I know of. We got nothing to arrest her for." "She says she lives here?" I said.

  "Yeah."

  "Why don't you leave her here?"

  McNeely spread his hands and looked around at the room with a look that encompassed the whole building. "She's sixteen years old," he said.

  "You got a better idea?"

  He looked around again. At the litter of bottles and cigarettes, pills, snack food ground into the carpet, people grouped in frightened huddles waiting for the trip to night court. He breathed the smell of booze and dope and sweat and vomit.

  "No," he said. "Maybe later I can get somebody to send a social worker over."

  "I'll look in on her occasionally," I said. "And my friend Susan will too."

  Hawk had rummaged behind the bar and came out with two more bottles of Schlitz.

  "Man got a fine taste in long necks," Hawk said. He handed me one. "Sorry 'bout you being on duty, Lieutenant."

  McNeely ignored him. I took a long pull on the beer bottle. It felt clean and cold going down. I could use clean and cold for a while.

  I said, "The night is young, McNeely. Hawk and me got places to go, people to see. You need us anymore?"

  He shook his head. He was staring into the kitchen. "Not now," he said. "Somebody in the DA's office will want to talk with you one of these days. We'll let you know. "

  Hawk and I walked out into the cold night. There were police cars all over the street, their blue lights turning, the mechanical sound of radios rasping and crackling in some of them. A station wagon with the tailgate down was half full of cardboard boxes. A motorcycle cop in a helmet and leather jacket was directing traffic past the congestion and a bunch of Beacon Street neighbors were standing around hugging themselves and staring. To the right down across the street near the corner of Fairfield, Susan's big red-and-white Bronco stuck out into the traffic. People gave way as we walked toward it, looking at both of us, noticing the Band-Aids and the bruises, not saying anything.

  "Could of saved a lot of energy if we'd burned a couple people in there early. Nothing like a couple gunshots to clear an area," Hawk said.

  "Too crowded," I said. "No way to know who you're shooting. Most people in there didn't deserve to get shot."

  Hawk grinned. "Deserve," he said. He spat some pinkish saliva onto the sidewalk under the streetlight.

  When we got to the car, April was sitting in the front seat with Susan.

  Chapter 32

  "She came with me on her own," Susan said. Hawk and I had climbed into the back past April's tipped-forward seat.

  "I called the police and then I came back and stood outside. Several people came out, including the man from upstairs, and then April came out and saw me and walked over. When the police came we walked back to the car to get warm." Susan drove slowly past the Poitras house, waved on by the motorcycle cop.

  "Why do you suppose they wear those high boots?" Susan said. "Is there some motorcycle reason for it?"

  "Make them think they cavalry," Hawk said.

  Susan turned up Gloucester and then left onto Marlboro. “I assume we're going to your place," she said.

  "Yeah. You need a ride to your car, Hawk?"

  He shook his head. "I'll walk down from your place and catch a cab in front of the Ritz."

  Susan pulled up half a block from my front door. "My God," she said, "there's a parking spot."

  Hawk and I were silent.

  "I can't stand it again," Susan said. She opened the door and got out. April got out as soon as Susan did. Hawk got out and stood with them while I backed the Bronco into the first space I'd seen open on Marlboro Street since Labor Day weekend. Then I got out and join
ed them.

  "Send me a bill," I said to Hawk.

  He nodded, nodded at April, kissed Susan good-bye, and headed down Marlboro, walking as he did everything, without seeming effort, moving. to the rhythm of some internal and volitionless mechanism. I watched him go for a minute and then turned and gestured toward the apartment.

  "In case you have to wee wee," I said to April. "There's a place upstairs."

  "I don't need to," she said.

  We went up. My apartment smelled empty. It was neat, the cleaning person had been there. Somehow that made it worse. It looked like one of those display rooms in department stores.

  "Anyone hungry?" I said.

  April shrugged. Susan said, "Yes."

  "I'll make something while we talk," I said. "A drink while I'm cooking?"

  Susan had coffee. April wanted Pepsi, but settled for a beer. Me too.

  April sat beside Susan at the counter. On the other side of the counter I was working my magic. While I worked it, I talked to April.

  "You got a plan, kid?"

  "For what?"

  "For what you're going to do tomorrow?"

  "Can I stay here tonight?"

  "Yes."

  April drank a little beer from her glass. I could see she didn't like it much. Hard to warm up to someone who didn't like beer. Suze had managed to overcome that handicap, but it wasn't a good start. "And tomorrow?" I said.

  She shrugged. "You gonna drag me out to see Mommy and Poppy?"

  "No."

  April looked at Susan. Susan smiled neutrally and drank some coffee. She could smile a hole through Mount McKinley whenever she felt like it, and I was never able to figure out how she could modify the smile to neutral, or even, when she chose, disapproval.

  I had a country patd I'd made from lamb and duck and pistachio nuts and an anchovy. I sliced that up and made sandwiches on whole wheat bread. I put the platter of sandwiches out with a dish of bread-and-butter pickles that Susan and I had made in September from a bunch of small funny-looking cucumbers we'd bought at a farm stand in Danvers. "Well, what are you gonna do with me?" April said. "What do you want me to do?" I said.

  Susan picked up half a sandwich and ate a bite. "Do you have any of that peach chutney that Paul gave you?" Susan said. I did. I got the jar out and put it on the counter. Susan took a small forkful and put it on her saucer. She took a dab from the plate and ate it and took another bite of the sandwich.

  April looked at her sandwich. "What is this," she said. "Pat(-," I said.

  "What's that?"

  "It's like meatloaf," I said.

  Susan ate a little more chutney.

  "You got any white bread?" April said.

  Susan's eyes gleamed at me over her coffee cup.

  "No." "What's that jam?" April said.

  "Chutney," I said. "It's sort of a fruit pickle, it's not jam.

  April took a very small bite of the pit& sandwich and showed no more pleasure than she had with the beer.

  "Sorry," I said. "I'm out of Wonder Bread and bologna. Would you like peanut butter? Or toast and "Toast," she said.

  I sliced bread and put it in the toaster. I put out some Trappist boysenberry jam. I knew she'd prefer grape jelly, but I was out of that too.

  "So what are you going to do tomorrow?" I said to April while her toast was toasting.

  She shrugged again.

  "You want to go home?"

  "No." "You want to go back to Providence?"

  She shook her head.

  "Want a job?"

  "Doing what?" she said. "What would you say your most marketable skill was?" I said.

  She made a small unfunny laugh. "Fucking," she said and glanced sideways at Susan, checking the effect. Susan ate a pickle, holding it in the very tip of her thumb and forefinger and taking a bite out of it. She never ate anything in one bite.

  "I think I won't ask your second most marketable skill," I said.

  "Wise," Susan said. "April, let's see if we can cut through a little of the cynical disaffection. Spenser and I both think you're too young to be alone and directionless. We are trying to get you to help us think of something for you to do. I am less sentimental than he is. I might take you back to your parents' home, leave you there, and let them deal with the problem. But he won't do that. He would see that as merely postponing the problem, or giving it to someone else. On the assumption that you'll run away again."

  "I didn't go to all this trouble," I said, "to have you back with Red turning tricks in the Zone."

  "Maybe I like that," she said.

  "You don't," I said. "I saw the picture of your house on the wall in that crib you were living in on Chandler Street."

  "So what does that mean?'

  -I carried a picture of my house through nearly two years in Korea," I said. “I know why you had it on your wall, and I know what it means."

  Her toast had popped and I buttered it and put it out with a jar of jam and a spoon. She ate some.

  "So what do you think I should do?" April said. "I'd rather be a whore than live at home."

  I looked at Susan. She widened her eyes and shook her head-one of her don't-ask-me motions.

  "How about you move in with Amy?"

  "I don't like her," April said. "She's feebie. And her old man's going to jail. She won't have any money."

  "So we're back to whore again," I said.

  She nodded. I ate some of my sandwich and drank some of my beer.

  "How do you like whoring?" I said.

  "It's okay sometimes. Sometimes the guys are nice. It's not bad."

  "What's the worst thing about it?" Susan said.

  "Creepy guys, being alone with them in the back of a car or in some toilet or a dump like you saw."

  "How many tricks a night with Red?" I said.

  "Ten, fifteen."

  I got up and got more beer and sat back down on my side of the counter and looked at her. "If you're going to be a whore, why be a cheap one?"

  She shrugged. Made me think of Paul Giacomin when I'd first met him. That was two years ago. Now he was different. He hadn't even come for Thanksgiving. He'd stayed with his girl friend. He didn't shrug like that anymore. At least not at me.

  "If you'll go with me," I said, "tomorrow I'm going to take you down to New York and introduce you to a woman named Patricia Utley, who runs a high-priced and selective prostitution business."

  I heard Susan let her breath out softly.

  "You want me to be a whore?" April said. "No," I said, "but I know at least one good woman who used to be a whore for Patricia Utley. If you're going to be a whore, at least we can upgrade your level of whoring. You'd do one trick a night and not every night. You'd be dealing with a relatively civilized clientele. You'd learn how to dress and talk and order wine in a restaurant. You'd be better off than you are now."

  "In New York?"

  "Yes."

  "I never been to New York."

  "I'll take you," I said. "And if she likes you and you like her and she's willing to take you on, she'll look out for you."

  "You're really going to introduce me to a madam?"

  "Best I can think of," I said. "You decide you don't like it, let me know and I'll come down and get you and bring you back."

  "Is it in a nice part of New York?"

  I nodded. The sandwiches were gone. I was on my third beer. Susan was sitting very quietly now, watching and listening and not saying a word.

  "Should I?" April said to Susan.

  "No," Susan said. "I don't think you should. I think you should go home, and I will try, with you, to get you and your parents into counseling. I cannot believe that being a whore is a better choice."

  April looked back at me.

  "I won't urge you," I said. "Susan may be right. You have to decide. You have to judge whether your parents would seek counseling, whether you would, and if it would help."

  "And," Susan said, "you have to judge how you really feel about being a prostitute."

/>   "If you want me to be a whore, why'd you take me away from Red and them in the first place?" April said. Nobody says a whore has to be smart.

  I took a deep breath. "I don't want you to be a whore or not a whore. I want you to be free. I want you to choose what you do and I want you to live a better life than you were living in the sheep ranch in Providence. If your choice is between growing up with Red and growing up with Patricia Utley, 1 think you're better off with Utley."

  We were all quiet then, Susan and I looking at April, April with her plump, sullen little face clenched in confusion staring at the counter. I got up and cleared away the dishes. Susan made herself another cup of coffee.

  "Would you come with me?" April said to Susan.

  "To see Patricia Utley?"

  "Yes. You and him both?"

  Susan was quiet for a moment.

  I said, "She can't, April. What happens to a guidance counselor who places students in a whorehouse?"

  "You think it's okay," April said to me.

  "I do, or I might," I said, "But I'm not on the school committee in Smithfield. People rarely get elected to school committees because they have a broad and flexible sense of life's possibilities."