Rubbed Out

by Barbara Block

  “Janet Wilcox.”

  He waved his hand in the air. “I already told her husband that I can’t—”

  “Her husband is ready to sue,” I interrupted.

  Simmone looked at me incredulously. “Sue?”

  When in doubt, lie. That’s my motto.

  “For loss of marital services.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Now I had his full attention. “Loss of his wife’s services. He claims his wife was fine before she started seeing you. He claims that you implanted the idea that she was abused as a child and that that idea has so unsettled her that she stopped being able to function. She no longer cooks, cleans, or fulfills her marital obligations. And now that she’s run away. . .”

  “Run away?”

  “I guess you don’t keep track of your clients very well.” I tapped my card on my front teeth. “He’s hired me to find her.”

  The frown turned into a scowl. “I still don’t get what that has to do with me.”

  “Well, if you could help me locate her, Wilcox might be willing to drop his lawsuit.”

  Simmone glared at me. “Are you threatening me?”

  “Hardly. I’m doing you a favor.”

  “Even if I did know, which I don’t, legally I’m not allowed to reveal anything.”

  I leaned forward. The sofa was too deep to sit in comfortably. “You are if she’s a danger to herself or others.”

  “She’s not.”

  “Her husband says different. He says she’s suicidal.”

  “Her husband has his own set of issues to deal with.”

  I wondered if therapists had to take another course in how to talk and not say anything. “So, you’re telling me he’s lying.”

  “I’m telling you he’s not a professional.”

  Simmone half turned in his chair, picked up a pencil off his desk, and began fiddling with it. The air coming through the heat vents in the room made a whooshing noise. I tried a different tack.

  “And the fact that she’s run away doesn’t concern you?”

  Simmone put the pencil down. “I’d have to know more about why she left before I rendered an opinion.”

  “I take it you’re not going to help me?”

  “No. I’ve already made that abundantly clear to her husband. It would be a breach of ethics.”

  “Suit yourself. I hope you have good malpractice insurance because you’re going to need it.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  I stood up. Being in the room was like being in a womb. It was making me claustrophobic.

  “Not to Walter Wilcox.” I placed my card on Simmone’s desk.

  From the expression on his face, I’d laid a dead mouse on his desk. He pushed it away with the tip of his finger. “People like you . . .” he began. But I didn’t give him time to finish.

  “Do yourself a favor,” I told him, “and call me if you remember anything. Or find anything out.”

  “I can tell you right now, you’re not going to be hearing from me.”

  “Okay. But I wouldn’t want to be you if this woman dies.”

  “Out,” ordered Simmone pointing to the door. Very dramatic.

  When I left, he was reaching for the phone.

  Probably to call his lawyer.

  Chapter Ten

  I was on my way back to Noah’s Ark when I got a call on my cell. It was the au pair from the Goldstein house.

  “Remember how you were asking me about Janet Wilcox?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I lied when I told you I didn’t know anything.”

  “Okay.” The SUV in back of me honked as I maneuvered my way around an Explorer that was turning left. “You’ve got my attention.”

  “Give me a hundred dollars, and I’ll tell you something interesting.”

  “That’s a little steep, isn’t it?”

  “Not for this. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to pay me.”

  “That seems fair.”

  We arranged to meet at the entrance to Wegmans Supermarket in ten minutes. I got to the grocery store early. It was a little before dinnertime and the place was jammed with shoppers. I had to circle the lot three times before I found a parking place on the far end. I waited inside the doors, next to the grocery carts, and watched people streaming in and out.

  The adults looked tired and drawn after their day at work, and the children looked cranky and fidgety. Everyone was in a hurry, anxious to get home. The carts going by me were full of frozen dinners and prepared foods, and then I saw a man walking out with a loaf of bread under one arm and a string bag containing artichokes, carrots, and circles of brie and I thought of George.

  George and his food. He liked shopping for it. He liked cooking it. He liked feeding me, the only man I’d ever gone with who had. He made himself dinner every night. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons in the winter he baked bread. It had been nice coming into his house, smelling the flour and the yeast. I wondered if his wife and child would like it. God. Better not to think about him. At all. Better to pretend he’d died. I was reaching for a cigarette when I spotted the au pair coming through the door.

  She was dressed in jeans, sweater, matching gloves and scarf, and a black microfiber jacket.

  “I’m buying milk for Mrs. Goldstein,” she said, indicating that I should follow her inside.

  I skirted a woman in a camel-hair coat and business suit balancing a screaming six-month-old on one hip and a bag of groceries on the other. Lines of exhaustion creased her face. Maybe my grandmother was right. Maybe you can’t have it all.

  “So what do you want to tell me?” I asked the au pair.

  She looked away. “I wouldn’t ordinarily do this, but there’s this concert I want to go to, and Mrs. Goldstein doesn’t. . . well, she doesn’t give me any money. I mean, she gives me a little, but taking care of the twins all day . . . It’s not that I don’t like them. I do. They’re adorable. But I feel as if I’m going crazy. I have to get out. And Don’t Go There are playing in Buffalo and my friend has a car. . . .”

  I put up my hand to stop the flow of rationalizations. “First off, tell me your name.”

  “It’s Kira. Kira Brown.”

  “Okay, Kira Brown. What you’re doing is a good thing.”

  Kira fingered her nose ring. “I guess you’re right” She brightened. “I mean, Mrs. Wilcox could be in trouble.”

  “Yes, she could.”

  “This is just. . . it feels dirty somehow. Like Judas and the twelve pieces of gold.”

  “I think it was thirty pieces of silver.”

  “Whatever.”

  She dropped her hand and began fiddling with the zipper on her jacket.

  We were standing in front of the produce stand while people eddied around us. Berries from Chile. Peaches from Argentina. Apples from Upstate. Twenty years ago you’d be lucky to get oranges in the winter.

  “This isn’t really about her,” Kira continued. “I mean, it is but it isn’t.”

  “Then what?”

  “I think I know why she left.”

  Kira paused again. I waited.

  “Her husband. He has a girlfriend.”

  “How do you know?” I will not think about George. I will not think about George, I repeated to myself.

  “Because she’s a friend of mine. She works down at Le Bijou.”

  Le Bijou is an all-nude bar that opened up fairly recently.

  “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Do I have to tell you?”

  “If you want your money, you do.”

  Kira bit her lip. “She’s going to kill me.”

  “She doesn’t have to know how I found out.”

  “You won’t tell her?”

  I put my hand up. “Swear. You’ll be doing a good deed.”

  Kira took a deep breath. “Alima. Her name is Alima.”

  “Does she have a last name?”

  “Matterson. Wilcox, he’s really nuts about her. Las
t week he gave her a diamond ring. A big one.”

  “How old is she?”

  “My age. Nineteen. He’s come on to me too. But that was before he hooked up with Alima.” She wrinkled her nose at the idea. “Don’t tell her that, though.”

  “I won’t,” I assured her. Cute.

  I thought of Wilcox’s daughter. She was—what? Twenty-five? Twenty-eight? I wondered what she would say. Then I wondered if she knew. Given her attitude toward her father, something told me that she might.

  “How do you know Alima?”

  “We went to high school together. Actually, she was the one that got me my job with the Goldsteins. She used to baby-sit for them when the twins were younger.”

  “So what got her into her present line of work?”

  “Her boyfriend suggested it. She’s got a really good body, and she was short tuition for vet tech school.”

  “Whatever happened to student loans?”

  “She doesn’t like to be in debt.” Kira leaned into the dairy case and reached for a gallon of milk. “It’s not like it’s a big deal,” she added.

  “If you thought that, you wouldn’t care if she knew that you told me.”

  “It’s not that. She’s a private person.” Kira clasped the gallon of milk to her breasts as if it were a baby. She searched my face worriedly. “So, is what I told you worth a hundred dollars or not?”

  “Enjoy the concert.” I counted out five twenties and put them in her hand. “Where can I get hold of Alima?”

  Kira hesitated. I reached for the money.

  “I can always take it back.”

  “She’ll be at Le Bijou tonight around ten.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I don’t know why I feel so bad,” Kira fretted.

  “I don’t either.”

  And I left her with her guilty conscience and went out the door. Flakes of snow drifted down under the lights. Two little children dressed in snowsuits stood with their faces turned up trying to catch snowflakes with their tongues, while their mother loaded groceries into the car. Zsa Zsa did that too. When I got home I’d take her for a walk.

  As I got in my car, I decided it would be interesting to hear what Wilcox had to say about his nineteen-year-old sweetie. And whether there was anything else he’d “forgotten” to tell me. His house wasn’t that far away from Wegman’s. I looked at my watch. It was conceivable he was home by now. I backed out of my parking place and drove over there.

  The lights were on. I parked in the driveway behind his Nissan. He hadn’t shoveled a path to his front door, and his footsteps were clearly visible in the snow. I added mine to his, climbed the two front steps to his porch, and rang the bell. He answered the door with a glass in his hand. He looked surprised to see me.

  “That was fast,” he said. He slurred the words together. I wondered how many drinks he’d already had.

  “I have a few more questions. Can I come in?”

  “Of course. Mi casa es su casa.” And he bowed.

  The table in the hallway of his house was overflowing with unread mail and newspapers. The strains of opera filled the air. I didn’t know which one because I’ve never liked the stuff myself. I sniffed and caught a faint scent of unemptied kitchen garbage cans.

  “You found something?” he asked, taking another sip from his glass. His jacket was off. I could see he’d added another stain to his tie.

  “In a matter of speaking.” I nodded toward the glass. “After-work cocktail?”

  “A Manhattan without the cherry. It’s the cherry that makes the drink, but I seem to have run out. I’ll make you one if you want.”

  I shook my head even though I wanted one. Once I started drinking, I had a tendency to keep going and I still had some things I had to do. It was at least seventy in the house. I took off my parka. Wilcox didn’t offer to hang it up. I suspected his wife had taken care of the social amenities as I threw it on the banister and went into the living room. Wilcox trailed after me.

  The place was a decorator’s dream. Everything in the room had been color-coordinated. The needlepoint pillows on the sofa picked up the pattern in the drapes, which picked up the colors of the pictures on the walls. Even the colors of the picture frames on the fireplace mantel matched.

  “Janet spent a long time putting this room together.” Wilcox drained his glass and gestured to the coffee table, which was covered with empty beer and soda bottles, Styrofoam containers, and empty pizza boxes. “We’re not supposed to eat in here. She’d kill me if she saw this. I’m going to clean it up before she gets home.”

  “I’m surprised she hasn’t killed you already.”

  He went over to the bar and mixed himself another Manhattan. I noticed his hands were shaking slightly as he put another ice cube in his glass.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me why?”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Does the name Alima mean something to you?”

  Wilcox took a big swallow of his drink.

  “Should I know who that is?”

  “I hope so, considering she’s your little cutie on the side. Tell me, was your wife mad when she found out? I bet she was. Is that why she ran off?”

  “I told you why she left.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  I ticked off the reasons. “Because you’re embarrassed. Because you’re ashamed. Because you don’t want to admit to yourself that you’ve been stepping out with someone younger than your daughter.” Then I gave him my standard honesty spiel. “Believe me, I don’t care what you’ve done. But if you want me to find your wife, you have to tell me the truth. If you don’t, you’re just wasting your money and my time.”

  Wilcox closed his eyes for a second. His shoulders slumped. It was as if someone had pulled the plug.

  “Okay.” He took another sip from his glass. “I didn’t tell you because I was embarrassed. I made a mistake, a really bad one. But this was the first time . . . I ever . . . oh, hell.” He swallowed. “I didn’t think it would make a difference. I didn’t think it would matter.”

  “What else haven’t you told me?”

  “Nothing.” He put his hand up. “I swear. Really. You have to find her for me. You just have to.” And he stared into his glass. “I need her back.”

  I felt a trickle of pity for Wilcox, and then I thought about George and the trickle dried up.

  Chapter Eleven

  I finished off the day by going to see Alima Matterson. There was a slim possibility that she might know something about Janet Wilcox’s whereabouts, and even if she didn’t, talking to her seemed better than going home and staring at the four walls. Which I’d be doing soon enough anyway.

  I got to Le Bijou a little before ten. The place was located off Erie Boulevard, shoved back from the main street and bordered on one side by a welding business and on the other by a printing company.

  The parking lot was only half shoveled. Judging from the number of cars in it, business was not booming. The place looked like a warehouse for dry goods. The sign out front—LE BIJOU. LIVE ALL NUDE REVIEWS ALL THE TIME—and the picture of the girl on the wall were the only things that said different. As I entered, I noticed that a couple of corner slats on the lower wall were working their way loose.

  The place was as erotic as a hardware store. The walls were covered with fake wood paneling. A sheet outlining rules of conduct was prominently posted in the entranceway. The space was large and sparsely furnished. No attempt at decoration had been made. There was the stage, a bare platform where a bored-looking girl was doing a desultory dance with a fire pole; the bar, which featured coffee and juice (liquor being off limits in joints like this); and the VIP rooms, where the girls did their lap dances.

  The description Kira had given me of Alima turned out to be fairly accurate, and it didn’t take me long before I spotted her cozying up to a guy at the bar. The guy was in his forties and looked like a mid-level insurance salesman.
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br />   Alima had her face turned up toward him and was gazing at him as if he were a god. Calli does that too. I’ve always wanted to go up to the guy she’s talking to and say, “Don’t you realize she’s putting you on?” But maybe I’m just jealous because I’ve never mastered “the look.” Alima had, though. For sure.

  “Yes?” she snapped when I got near her.

  She wasn’t what I would have picked for Wilcox. Usually men go for women like their wives, only fifteen years younger, so I’d figured him for something conservative. But she wasn’t. I couldn’t imagine Janet Wilcox wearing the equivalent of safety pins through her cheek, a ring through her nose, or stretchers in her ears even when she was younger.

  This girl was prettier as well, with small, regular features and large eyes that offset her blotchy skin and the scar above her upper lip where her cleft palate had been fixed. Her body was good. Certainly a lot lusher than Wilcox’s wife’s, voluptuous without being flabby. But it was the kind of body that would turn to fat by the time she was twenty-five if she didn’t hit the gym three or four times a week.

  “I’d like to talk to you about Walter Wilcox,” I told her.

  “You don’t look like the police.”

  “That’s because I’m not.” I took out my card and gave it to her. “He hired me to find his wife.”

  “So?” She handed the card back. “What does she have to do with me?”

  “I was hoping you might know something.”

  “About her? Why would I?”

  Before I could answer, the bartender ambled over. He was as big and as tall as he was wide. Tanned. Relaxed. Balding. Fortyish. The gold chain he was wearing around his neck served to emphasize its girth.

  “You okay?” he asked Alima. “She bothering you?”

  Alima nodded. He looked at me and jerked his thumb toward the door.

  “Leave.”

  I opened my mouth.

  “Now,” he added before I could say anything. “You want to talk to Alima, talk to her on her own time. This is a place of business, and you’re interfering with it.”

  I glanced around. “It doesn’t look that busy to me.”

  He took another step forward. “I’ve never thrown a woman out, but that doesn’t mean I won’t.”