All the Old Bargains

by Benjamin M. Schutz

  “I don’t know, honest I don’t. I work the topless clubs and free-lance a little. I never worked outcall. Shit, I don’t like sex that much. I only do this when I really need the dough.”

  “All right, all right.” I fished the folded C notes out of my wallet and held them out to her. “Thanks for your help. Now be smart and be gone. These’ll help you start over.”

  She took the money, slid out of bed and grabbed her dress, pulling it on quickly over her head without adjusting it to her plateaus and ridges. She slipped into her shoes, picked up her bag and skittered out the door.

  I reached over to the bed, grabbed the phone book and ripped out the massage parlor pages. As I turned to leave, Arnie motioned to the shower. I handed him the pages from the phone book.

  “Right, yes.” I stepped into the bathroom and turned off the water. The upright prune looked up at me saucer-eyed. I stuck out my hand and Arnie filled it with the kid’s wallet. I flipped it open to his driver’s license. “Okay, Jeff Melton, I know who you are and where you live. Life will stay pleasantly dull for you so long as you remember you were never here and heard nothing? Got it?”

  His head bobbed agreement and I flipped him his wallet. Arnie and I left the way we came.

  Chapter 13

  “Okay, where to now?” Arnie said as we slid out of the woods behind the motel.

  “A phone booth. I want to call the cops.”

  Arnie looked at me quizzically.

  “Actually a cop—Frank Schaefer—and ask him some questions about Monte Panczak and the mob.”

  We stopped on Route 1 at an Exxon station and I got into the phone booth and called the police.

  “Fairfax County Police. May I help you?”

  “Yes. Is Lieutenant Schaefer there?”

  “May I say who’s calling?”

  “Leo Haggerty.”

  As she tried to reach Frank Schaefer, I stood in the phone booth reading the obscenities on the walls. Wanda liked gang bangs and could be reached at …

  “Hello, Leo. What’s happening?”

  “Nothing much, Frank. I just want to know if Monte Panczak is connected to the mob?”

  “And why would you want to know that, Leo?”

  “It’s a case I’m on.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “No, no can do that.”

  “Pretty please.”

  “C’mon, Frank. I’ve got nothing of use to you. If I can turn anything over to you, you know I will. Just tell me about Panczak. He’s on the edge of this case and I’d just like to know who I’m irritating if I have to.”

  “Okay. Look, it’s a long tale. I’m leaving for a bite to eat. How about we catch the chicks at Dixie’s Pride and talk there?”

  “Uh, no, Frank. I’m persona non grata there right now. How about some wholesome family food at the Pig?”

  “Okay.”

  “Fine, we’ll be in a corner booth.”

  Frank came in, looked around morosely at the spick-and-span dining room but grinned when one of the waitresses called him “honey.” We waved him over.

  Frank was in his late thirties. He was well dressed in his three-piece suit. Apart from the three “V”-shaped scars under his eyes he looked like a typical upwardly mobile professional: real estate, accounting, what have you. The scars came from a kid who’d had enough PCP in him to turn his brain into fertilizer.

  He stopped at the table and spread his arms out, palms up. “Well, look at him—the famous shamus, the Sam Spade of Fairfax County. Christ, Leo, for a while I thought I’d never get away from your face, TV interviews, newspaper stories. Is it true they’re going to make a movie about it with Nick Nolte as you? Would you sign my napkin, please?”

  “Gimme a break, Frank, and sit down.”

  As he started to sit he said, “Bullshit and envy aside, that was a nice piece of work you did on the Saunders case.”

  “Thanks, Frank.”

  He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

  “You don’t look so hot, Frank. Something the matter?”

  Frank looked off out the window into the parking lot. “You know I’m not sure what kind of animals are out there anymore. It’s getting more insane every day. Now we’ve got designer criminals, regular fuckin’ Pierre Cardins.” He stopped for a second and took a sip of water.

  “Right after you called it came in. The seventh one, damn it. We got this nut we call the refrigerator rapist. He rapes women in their homes. Then for garnish he leaves something in them from the refrigerator. Last week an eight-year-old girl came home from school to find her mother tied to the kitchen table with a zucchini sticking out of her. Bastard was real cute, a fucking comedian. Cut the word ‘vegina’ on her belly. What kind of creature does something like that?”

  There was no adequate answer. None of us tried for one.

  Frank took a deep breath and shook his head sadly. “Well, Leo, what can I do for you regarding Mr. Panczak?”

  “Tell me about him, his operations. Is he free lance or connected with the mob? I know he’s got some outcall places and topless bars. Is he into anything else?”

  “No, he’s got a one-track mind. Sex is his bag. He’s like a shark with those fish around its mouth. What do you call them.”

  “Remoras.”

  “Yeah. He cruises around with these scumbags sucking the garbage off his lips. They do a little blackmail here and there, some extortion of smaller operators. He’s got some topflight muscle working for him.”

  “Where does he stand in the vice hierarchy?”

  “He’s a middle man trying to move up to the big time. He’s running all the action in northern Virginia right now: the combat zone around Belvoir and the massage parlors in Alexandria. He gets protection money from any small-time independents over here or he busts their heads. I think he pays for his piece of the act up the line. Who to, I don’t know. Believe me, he minds his manners. If any of the boys in New York thought he was getting greedy, he’d be taking all of his meals through a tube. He’s probably in their good graces. They like centralization, order, peace and profits and he’s brought all that to them. So as long as he’s willing to be the Duke of Fairfax and doesn’t threaten the big boys he’ll do well. If someone tried to muscle in on him he’d have no problem getting some out-of-town talent to keep the peace. He keeps his nose clean, takes his piece, pays the big boys and lives real well.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Where else but that bastion of breeding, Potomac Bluffs. Big old house on about five acres of land overlooking the river. Can you imagine him at the country club. “Excuse me, Mrs. Lethbridge. This is your neighbor, Mr. Panczak, the noted pimp? Oh, he keeps a low profile, does everything right. He’s got so many corporations all tied up to each other it looks like a daisy chain for octopuses. He has the best legal talent money can buy. If I even put my hands on Monte’s lapels I get one of those blow-dry shitheads screaming ‘police brutality’ in my ear. I wonder how they feel about their client having an electric curling iron stuck up the cunt of a recalcitrant employee?” Frank was trying to turn the table into sawdust and his intensity had created a zone of stillness around us as if all the air had been sucked in to feed his flames. Fortunately, we weren’t overheard and the waitress gingerly stepped up to take our orders.

  When she left, Frank exhaled and put his hands palms down on the table. He said, “See, I’m in control, this stuff doesn’t get to me. My stress management courses are working wonders, right? Shit. I’d love to bust one of those bastards. I’d sleep like a baby. I might even have good dreams.”

  “Hell, Frank, you do your best to contain the shit. That’s all you can do. I know how you feel. I can pick and choose the trash pits I work in. It adds to your life span.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know, I know.”

  “Listen, Frank, can you tell me what you’ve got going on Panczak?”

  “I can’t, Leo. Look, as far as the front end of his operation goes, nobody gives a shit wh
at he does. They can do it in the street. It’s the back room that people are interested in. Not busting hookers or burning up tons of trash, but using the porn connection to take a bite out of organized crime. The RICO statutes give us a handle to pry into the mob’s money. We think they filter a lot of money through it. Did you know it grosses four billion dollars a year? So we try to work back to the money men at the top. Hell, they could just as well be running St. Guido’s home for the mentally retarded. We don’t care about the front. It’s because you can empty the coffers of the mob and knock down some of the big boys—that’s why anything at all is done about porn.” Frank stopped talking as the waitress brought our beers, a pile of barbecued ribs and fries.

  “Anyway, think about it. You can add up what’s probably going on. But, yeah, we’re looking at Monte Panczak among others.”

  “Okay, Frank, I know nobody gives a shit about pornography. Only a couple of things that still turn people off: kiddie porn and kiddie hookers. Any of that around?”

  “Well, well, Leo. What’re you sniffing around at, old boy?” He leaned forward with a gleam in his eye and took a huge bite out of a rib.

  “Nothing, Frank. I’ve just heard some tangential stuff about Panczak in my work on a case and I wondered if you could verify it.”

  “Right, Leo, of course—idle curiosity. I’ll let it pass now, but believe me if you tumble on to something I want to know about and fast. Capische?”

  “Understood. So what’s the word.”

  “Nothing. Just straight hooking. They run a specialty shop up on Washington Street. You can get a chick to piss on your head if that what you want, but kiddies, no. Panczak’s smart. He takes only big benefit risks. His outcall places earned him a million bucks last year. Whatever earns lots of money, is low on a prosecutor’s priorities, and he can hide from in a corporate mess he’ll do. But kiddies—that still rankles a few in the Sovereign Commonwealth of Virginia, and I think he’d steer clear of that. But I’d love him to fuck up like that and float his ass downriver forever. Oh, that is a nice thought.” Frank finished a rib and looked up at Arnie, who had sat silently through the whole meeting. Their eyes met and as Frank was breaking his away Arnie spoke.

  “What happened to your face?”

  Frank looked at Arnie’s topknot and mustache and said slowly, “A kid thought my eyes were shooting fire at him so he tried to take them out with a bottle opener.” Frank patted his mouth and added, “must’ve made sense to the kid cause he sure as hell had ice in his eyes.”

  Arnie said, “What happened?”

  “He was on top of me trying to open my face. I shot him three times in the chest real close. This big gush of blood came out of his mouth all over me. I can still see it sometimes.” His eyes refocused on us. “It’s better than it used to be. Used to be I could feel it all over me. Leo, you take care now and keep in touch.” Frank excused himself and left.

  “Well, Leo, what now?”

  “We think about what we’ve learned. First of all, we know Panczak isn’t the mob. He coexists but is not connected. Two, nobody including the people who are looking at him know of any kiddie action. Three, he lives in Potomac Bluffs. Four, he’s cautious and doesn’t like risks. Five, the specialty shop is on Washington Street.”

  I went on. “Let’s put it together with the rest of what we know so far. Tony Julian works for Panczak. He recruits chippies. A kind of ‘Uncle Monte wants you!’ Panczak doesn’t take chances that we know of. Maybe Julian found out how old she was and he’s using her himself—a little free-lance action. If so, Panczak would be very pissed at that. He might even clear the way for us to take Julian off if he thought he’d been compromised that way. That’s our first order of business: sort out whose scene this is, Panczak’s or Julian’s. If Monte’s doing it he’ll be very upset if he takes a tumble for it. I’d rather not be the ‘ravell’d sleave of care’ for someone like Panczak. He just might decide to stitch it up with .45 caliber yarn.”

  Arnie kept eating while I talked. Then he said, “I think there’s another piece that we know. Chuck Campbell. From what Schaefer said, Panczak can call in first line pros from New York if he wants. Why use an amateur like Campbell? That sounds like Tony Julian scratching around for some local talent to me.”

  “Good point. I just want to be as sure as I can about what we’re getting into. Once we find out who’s running this gig we’ve got to see if it’s live or film. If Panczak is in this it’s probably films. The profit margin is so much higher. One fuck film and you can make countless copies. It’ll play forever. On celluloid the kids never get older. Julian would probably be running live action. It’s more portable; less overhead, lower security risks.”

  “Leo, don’t forget there may be nothing here at all. This guy Julian could be fucking the beauteous Randi and be keeping her on ice because she’s thirteen and the courts frown on true love between adults and wee children. It may be no more than that.”

  “Right and I’m Mr. Rogers. This kid was last seen with the chief procurer of the area’s biggest whoremaster. Since then they’ve both vanished. They’re working her one way or another.”

  “I don’t care what Frank says. If their intelligence was so good they’d have closed Monte down by now. I think we have to cover all the bases. For live action we ought to just order Randi up and see if Panczak can deliver. If so, we just walk off with the kid. If he doesn’t have her we’ll try Julian the same way. A film setup stinks; we’ll try that route last. Let me have that list of massage palors Jackie gave us—see if any one is on Washington Street.”

  Arnie pulled out the yellow pages, unfolded them and passed them to me. I scanned each page. “Here we are, Garden of Eden Health Salon.”

  We paid the check, left our tip and strolled out of the Pig, looking to set up a date with a thirteen-year-old hooker. Arnie drove me back to my car at the theater. I told him I’d call tomorrow morning with the details of the meet. We split up and I drove back to my house. I typed up a report and a bill for Benson and called him.

  “Hello. Mr. Benson? Leo Haggerty here. I know it’s quite late but I thought you’d want to know that I’ve made some progress in locating your daughter. I now have the name of the boy she was last with. I’m hoping to catch up with him tomorrow.” I thought I’d spare Benson my grimmest fears.

  “Fine. Fine. Sounds like it’s been pretty easy going so far.”

  “Yeah. Nothing unusual about this case yet.” If you were Spiderman, maybe.

  “Uh, you keep me posted on things, okay?”

  “Sure. I’ve prepared a report and an expense sheet to date. I’ll mail it out to you tomorrow. It’s been three full days today.”

  “How long do you think this’ll take to wrap up?”

  “Three more days is my guess.”

  “Okay. I’ll send you another check tomorrow.”

  “Fine. I’ll be in touch.”

  I pushed back from the desk, went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of Power’s Irish Whiskey. I leaned back in my stressless chair, darkened the room and closed my eyes. Today just wouldn’t go away. Once upon a time this was romantic to me. Sitting alone holding a grudge against the world for disappointing me. Savoring it like a fine brandy that only improves with age. Somewhere between my head, Steve Campbell’s teeth, Frank Schaefer’s tale and Jackie’s begging me not to hurt her, today got out of hand. I wanted to come home to something more than a dark and empty house, to sit in with a pain behind my eyes. I went to the phone.

  “Hello, Sam? This is Leo.”

  “Hi. I’m surprised to hear from you. Is everything cleared up?”

  “No, not hardly. At least this case isn’t clearing up. I know it’s real late but I’d like to see you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there in about a half-hour.”

  I paced around as if I were waiting for the first precinct reports on judgment day. My head was still pounding if
I moved too fast. I went to the bathroom for some aspirin. My forehead was sore and purple. I wanted to hit Chuckie boy again.

  Samantha was right on time. I let her in and stood there admiring her. A sporty little model in basic black and white. White designer jeans, black T-shirt and sandals. We kissed. It felt more natural this time. Stepping back, she reached overhead and stretched herself. I could hear her spine crackle.

  “Oh, that feels good. All day over a typewriter and I feel like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

  “How did the writing go?”

  “It was a good day. One of those times when the hand guides itself. It just seems to have a life of its own. It’s almost like being in a trance. When that happens I try to stay with it until the spell is broken. Then I quit. How about you?”

  “Interesting.”

  “I can see interesting. It’s written all over your face. In black and blue letters. What happened to your head?”

  “I tried to refinish a chair with it.”

  “Very funny.”

  “No. Somebody tried to scare me off this case, but it didn’t work. I’m getting closer. I can feel it. I also have a bad feeling that this kid is in deep shit.”

  “How so?”

  “Hooking. She’s thirteen, for Christ sakes.”

  Samantha hugged herself and turned away. “That’s terrible.”

  She looked at me closely. “You look terrible and I don’t mean your head. What happened today? I think I’d like something to drink.”

  “I’ll get it for you. What do you want?”

  “Some wine—white if you’ve got it.”

  “Coming up.” I went into the kitchen, poured her a glass of the house white, came back and handed it to her.

  I sat down on the sofa and patted the seat so she would join me. She declined and sat facing me in another chair.

  “Today got real confusing. The victims and the villains started changing places on me. About the only difference between them is who’s feeling the pain, and that’s about as clear cut as sunrise. First, you’re looking at one thing, then it’s something else and when it changed you can’t even say. Someday I’m going to make a big mistake and that worries me.” I stopped and sipped my drink. “Anyway, I just felt like having somebody to say that to.”