Songs of Innocence hcc-33

by Richard Aleas

  “Okay,” I said. And: “I’m sorry, Di. I’m really sorry.”

  But she wasn’t listening. “I’m going to kill both of them,” she said, mostly to herself.

  When I heard the front door swing shut and the elevator start its ponderous rise, I left the back room, drawing the door closed behind me. I met Rodeo coming out of the bathroom, wiping her hands on a paper towel.

  She favored me with a conspiratorial smirk. “When that boy comes he really comes, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Can’t say I do,” I said.

  “Boom! One time, he shot himself in the eye, another time up the nose. Man! Least he tips well.” She balled up the paper towel, dropped it in a trash can. Shooed the cat out of the armchair and sat down. “How’s Di?”

  “Like you’d expect,” I said. “Taking it hard.”

  “Yeah, poor woman, losin’ her man like that.”

  She didn’t sound too broken up about the whole thing.

  “Tell me about Cassie,” I said. “Did you know her well?”

  “Know her? We was like sisters.”

  “Did she ever talk to you about the place she worked before coming here?”

  “She didn’t need to talk to me about it—that’s where we met, at Mama Jay’s. On 51st.”

  “That the same as Spellbound?”

  She nodded. “Spellbound’s its real name. Mama’s just what we called it. ’Cause of the woman runs it. Ran it, I should say.”

  “Ran it?”

  “Yeah, she’s retired now. She was kind of forced out. Three stick-ups in one month, you know it’s not an accident. Way I heard it, first two times, they just took money, but the third time, they beat her up bad. Someone wanted her to get out of the business and eventually she said, okay, I’m gettin’.”

  “Any idea who did it to her?” Although I figured I already knew the answer.

  “No one was ever caught,” she said.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “No, I guess it’s not,” she said.

  The cat leaped up into her lap. She stroked its fur.

  “All right,” I said. “Do you know who runs Spellbound now?”

  “I know what people say.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The man,” she said. “Same one you say did Di’s boyfriend.”

  “Ardo?”

  She shrugged and went on stroking.

  “You seem pretty casual about the whole thing.”

  No reply.

  “Julie’s in the hospital, Joey’s dead—you aren’t concerned he might come after you?”

  “Me?” She shook her head, rocked back and forth a little in her seat. “I don’t bother nobody. Just do my job. I’ll work for whoever pays me. I don’t care if he’s white, black, Hungarian, whatever. You show me the green, I’ll show you the pink.” And she smiled. For all her cocky cynicism, it was an open, hopeful, guileless smile, a smile that held no sign yet of wear or weariness, of disappointment or disaster. That would come. If she stayed at the game long enough, it would all come. But she was a tough little thing and, by god, she had the world by the balls for now.

  “Any idea how I could find Mama Jay?” I said.

  “Only if you want to fly to Brazil,” she said. “She went home.”

  “Do you think there’s anyone still working at Spellbound who’d remember Cassie?”

  She thought for a moment. “Maybe Sharon. She’s been there forever.”

  Meaning, I figured, two, three years.

  “You know the phone number?”

  She rattled it off. I repeated it to myself a few times to commit it to memory.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “You sure you don’t wanna stay here? If the cops are lookin’ for you...”

  “If the cops are looking for me,” I said, “this could be one of the places they look. I’ve got to keep moving.”

  “Too bad,” she said, giving me that smile again. “I’d’a let you pet my pussy.” And she lifted the cat out of her lap like a baby, one hand under each foreleg, and wagged it at me, side to side, and laughed and laughed.

  Chapter 17

  I was dead on my feet. How long had it been since I’d had any real rest? I couldn’t even remember. My skin was tender where Di had sprayed me, my chin was covered with two days’ growth of beard, my eyes were aching just from being open too many hours in a row, and my wrists and chest still hurt. I found a payphone—the same one I’d used the first time I’d visited Sunset, I realized—and dialed the number Rodeo had given me, but I was relieved when the woman who picked up said that Sharon wasn’t working tonight.

  “She’ll be in tomorrow, starting at one,” she said. “You want to make an appointment now or call back...?”

  “Now,” I said. “One’s fine.”

  “How long will you want, a half or the full hour?”

  “Half.” I was thinking of my dwindling supply of cash. No guarantee I could get more tomorrow.

  “And have you been here before?”

  “No.”

  “Well, come to the corner of 51st and Second, you’ll see a Food Emporium, we’re across the street. Just call this number and we’ll tell you where to go.”

  This two-call system was apparently standard. I guess it gave the women a chance to peek out the window, see who they were about to let in. Though if what Di had said was right and their customers were all creeps, I couldn’t help wondering what someone had to look like to get turned away. Maybe you actually had to be carrying a bloody knife—or a badge.

  Or maybe, I thought, running my hand along my chin, you just have to be unshaven and haggard, with bloodshot eyes, unwashed hair, and clothes you’ve been wearing for two days straight.

  I’d have to clean up. And I’d have to rest. Normally that would have meant going home, but tonight it couldn’t, and the next best choice—a hotel—would require handing over a credit card. I might as well just go to the nearest precinct house and turn myself in.

  Which left what?

  It was cold on the street; maybe that’s what triggered the thought in my mind. Maybe it was just the sort of idea that starts whispering to you when your gas tank finally reaches the big E. I thought, where do I know in the city that’s not far from here, that’s warm, that’s open all night, and where I can sit quietly and not be bothered, all for less than a hundred dollars?

  I told myself, He owns so many. He can’t go to all of them. He probably never goes to any of them. He certainly wouldn’t think I’d go to one of them.

  And maybe, I thought, just maybe, I’ll learn something that’ll help me put the blame for Ramos’ death where it belongs.

  Keeping an eye out for cops, I turned north, toward Little Korea.

  On 32nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, in the shadow of the Empire State Building, the signs in English are the minority. Even the ones that look like they’re in English at first generally turn out to be transliterated Korean when you take a second glance. In the middle of the block there’s a Citibank, an oasis of calming blue in a jumble of swirling neon pictographs and signs promoting all-night table barbecue with larger-than-life photos of bibimbap and bulgoki; but on this street even the Citibank’s windows are plastered with Korean characters, and its ATMs are programmed to offer Korean as the main alternative to English.

  I chose English, and withdrew another $400 in cash. It was the machine’s limit and not far below my account’s, and it would have to hold me.

  Every third storefront here was a restaurant; another third were hole-in-the-wall import/export joints whose windows were crammed with Asian DVDs and silver-embroidered dresses. The final third were spas, and I scanned each sign, looking for one that said “Vivacia.” Eventually I found it on a sandwich board propped crosswise at the curb. Looking at the building you’d never have thought it contained anything sanitary, never mind a spa—the outside walls were dingy and the front door led to nothing but a poorly lit
hallway with an elevator in the middle and a fire door at the far end. But according to the sign there was a nightclub on one of the building’s five floors, a karaoke bar on another and, at the very top, the best spa in Little Korea. The sign showed a photo of a woman in a towel on a sauna bench. Next to her were the words “Vivacia—men, women, couples—24hrs.”

  I pulled the door open, headed for the elevator. A drunk couple spilled out of it a moment later, stumbling and laughing, and I took their place with some misgivings. The elevator was dingier even than the hallway had been, though not quite as dark. I could feel the pounding bass line from the nightclub rise and fall as the elevator approached and passed the third floor.

  When the door slid open on five, the difference was stark. The place was lit by flickering candlelight, and all you could hear was the twittering of birds and the sound of a gentle surf piped through hidden speakers. The front desk was staffed by a striking Korean woman in a pale blue t-shirt that hugged her curves, and behind her an S-shaped walkway led to three stone pools with palm fronds artfully arranged around them.

  I must have looked awful, but the woman’s expression didn’t show either disdain or concern. She stepped out from behind the desk and extended a hand, which I shook. It weighed about an ounce. “Hello,” she said. “Welcome to Vivacia. Mister...?”

  “Smith,” I said. “James Smith.”

  “Very good,” she said. “Do you have an appointment, James?”

  “No,” I said. “I just thought I’d use the facilities.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Have you been here before?”

  I shook my head.

  “Let me give you a tour.” She reached over to the wall behind her and lifted something off a hook and held it out to me. It was a key on a lanyard. I took it.

  She led me toward the walkway and then steered me to the right. A double row of wooden lockers lined one wall behind a pair of couches whose high backs more or less screened the lockers from view. “You’ll change here. You can get a towel and a robe—” she pointed at a stack of each, neatly folded “—and then shower over here.” She walked me up a pair of steps and past the soaking pools. There was one Asian man in the far pool, his head tilted back against the stone, his eyes closed. Dozens of lemons bobbed on the surface of the water.

  “You shower here,” the woman said again, pointing at three showerheads in an open, communal area, “then go to the dry sauna...” she aimed a hand at an igloo-like structure across the room, its entrance blocked by the sort of a heavy wooden door you expect to see at the front of a castle in an Errol Flynn movie “... or you can use the steam room.” She indicated a freestanding chamber in the middle of the room. The oddly angled walls of the steam room were made of glass, but all you could see inside were the hazy outlines of figures. The door opened, and a man with a shaved head emerged in a puff of steam, holding his towel closed with one fist.

  “You can also lie down in our clay meditation room,” the woman continued. She pointed back toward the front desk, where a large adobe dome loomed. “Take as long as you like. Then, when you’re ready, you can get a massage. Or a body scrub?”

  I thought of my bandaged chest and broken rib. “Not tonight. Just the facilities.”

  Her face fell, hardened, ever so slightly. “Don’t decide now. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

  “All right,” I said. “Maybe.”

  She held out a hand toward me again, but this time it was palm up and she wasn’t looking to shake. “One hundred dollars,” she said. “Please.”

  Julie had said seventy. But I was in no position to argue.

  “Of course,” I said, and reached for my pocket.

  When I returned to the locker area I was startled to find a couple there, changing. For one thing, I’d figured the wording of the sign on the street was just a dodge to keep the police away—I hadn’t expected that any women actually came here as customers. For another, neither the man nor the woman seemed the slightest bit bashful about my walking in on them undressed. While I opened my locker and hung up my jacket, the man casually wrapped a towel around his waist and his girlfriend—wife?—unfastened her bra and slipped it off her shoulders. They were both quite a bit older than me, he with the short-cropped white hair of a distinguished senator and she with the slightly tight expression of a woman who’s discovered botox or facelifts or both. But they’d both kept in shape, as I could see with slightly off-putting completeness. Maybe it was all the time they spent in spas.

  The man nodded to me as they walked past me toward the showers. The woman stopped, turned back, her robe unbelted. “See you in the sauna,” she said. She touched her fingertips to my cheek, patted twice. “But shave first.”

  So it was that sort of place.

  I wondered how the professionals felt about swingers horning in on their territory. Well, that’s what the hundred dollar door charge was for, I supposed. They got paid even if you provided your own entertainment.

  I pulled off my shirt and pants, locked them up along with my shoes and socks, and quickly slipped a robe on. I didn’t want anyone walking in on me and wondering about the bandages. There’d be no communal shower for me and no soaking tubs, not today.

  And I didn’t shave.

  The wooden door was as heavy as it looked. I needed to pull with both hands to get it open and again, once I was inside, to draw it shut. The interior of the stone igloo was dark except for the orange glow of a heat lamp recessed in the ceiling, illuminating the woven rope mats on the floor. Around the room’s periphery, a circle of wooden benches stood in shadow against the wall.

  It was hot, a hundred-something degrees—there had been a digital readout outside the door, and though I hadn’t paid close attention to what it said, the number had definitely had three digits.

  Near the door, a unit the size of a small stove held a layer of stones in a tray over a glowing heating coil. The couple from the changing area was sitting close to it. I took a seat on the opposite side, put my towel down beside me, kept my robe on and closed.

  After a minute, the woman said, in a soft voice, “Your first time?”

  Why did everyone keep asking me that? Was it that obvious that I was, as Susan had put it, vanilla? “Yes,” I said.

  “That’s sweet. Brian, isn’t that sweet?” The senator agreed that it was. She turned back to me. “There’s nothing to be nervous about.”

  After another minute passed, she asked, “What’s your name? I’m Grace.”

  This needed to be headed off. “Grace,” I said, “I’m sorry, I’m really just here to use the sauna. That’s all.” I added, “No offense.”

  She looked like I’d poured cold water on her, which under the circumstances was not an easy way to look. She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Your loss,” Brian said.

  He lifted a dipperful of water out of a wooden bucket by his feet and dumped it on the hot stones. It sizzled, and a smell of menthol started to spread.

  My loss, I thought. Mister, you don’t know the half of it.

  I unfolded the towel, draped it over my head and shoulders, and put my forehead down in my hands. I needed to shut the world out. I needed to close my eyes and bake my bones and let the horror of the last 72 hours recede. It was hard to believe that just a few days ago I’d been talking to Dorrie, that she’d been fine, she’d been happy—well, as happy as she ever was, but certainly not unhappy, and god knows not suicidal. Friday night, over dinner, she’d even sounded excited—she was better than halfway through her last chapter for Stu Kennedy and thought she could finish it in the next week. It’s why I’d e-mailed her all the material I’d amassed, so she could pull bits and pieces from it and work them into the second draft, make it what she wanted it to be. She always felt so good, so satisfied, each time she finished a draft of anything she was working on. It was what she’d come to Columbia for, and it gave her a taste of...of accomplishment, of having set and met a goal. It was good for her.
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br />   And then Sunday morning.

  And then the plastic bag and the pills and the book on the floor.

  Why had I even bought that damn book? What had made me pick it up when I saw it on the dollar discard rack outside the Mercantile Library? And if I had to pick it up, why the hell hadn’t I at least put it away where Dorrie wouldn’t see it, instead of leaving it splayed open on the table by my bed? Had I wanted her to ask me about it, to worry that I might be thinking about suicide? Had I been thinking about it? If so, I hardly needed a book to tell me how.

  And I hadn’t been thinking about it. Not seriously. It had just been a bad stretch—too many nights of Miranda coming to me in my dreams, too many mornings of lurching awake at 2:00 am with Miranda’s voice echoing in my ear: You killed me, John. You killed me. But the bad stretch had passed, they always passed, and Final Exit had just been part of the bad. For both of us. She hadn’t meant it seriously either.

  But the son of a bitch who’d put her in that tub had meant it.

  I took my glasses off, folded them, and put them in the pocket of my robe. I had to wipe my eyes. It was the heat, I told myself—and that was true, I was sweating, enormously. But I knew I was wiping tears away along with the sweat.

  And what’s sweat and tears without blood? But the blood I’d spilled I couldn’t wipe away. An image of Jorge Ramos with his throat slit flashed onto the inside of my eyelids. An image of Miranda, my love, my first love—dead before she turned thirty, a horrible death, and it had been my fault, my doing.

  And Susan—I saw Susan lying in my arms, in the shadows of Corlears Hook Park, her blood pouring out of her through the wounds in her chest, her sweater soaked with it, my hands covered in it.

  So much blood. I couldn’t sweat enough, couldn’t cry enough, to wash it all away.

  Minutes passed, hours passed, I don’t know which. Time didn’t move properly in the dark, in the heat. I just sat, searing myself from the outside in. Meanwhile, on the real outside, out in the streets, I was sure the police were drawing near, asking, Where is John Blake? Where is New York’s newest murderer?