Street Justice: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Nelscott, Kris

  “I thought no one tipped you,” I said.

  She smiled. “That’s why you got no money.”

  “Truer than you know.” I knew if I walked back into the hotel, I’d lose any chance of talking to her again. She would figure I was one of the johns, and I wasn’t worth her time.

  So I nodded a goodbye and walked out the front door into the cold.

  Night had settled early. The cold had acquired a brittle edge. I bowed my head as if I were lighting cigarette. Then I walked toward the front door of the hotel.

  I looked back at the restaurant to see if anyone was watching. So far as I could tell, no one was. I pushed open those glass doors again, like I had done two days before.

  The interior looked different after dark, a little less seedy, a little more alive. A couple of men sat in the barrel chairs now, cigarettes dangling from their fingers. I didn’t recognize the guy behind the reception counter. He didn’t look up. He wasn’t interested in me at all.

  The staircase had a formal railing that curled toward a corridor which led to the back area. A long mirror placed at eye level ran the length of the wall between the bar and the corridor. I was now convinced that all of the mirrors, which covered walls into the back area, had one-way glass.

  I let my gaze pass over that, then rest on two of the women sitting suggestively on the couch under the mirror. They were older than Lacey, thinner, and they wore leather miniskirts and thigh-high boots. Instead of shirts, they wore tube tops that barely covered their breasts. The women had to be cold; the lobby was warmer than outside, but not that warm. I wanted to walk over to them and wrap blankets around them.

  I didn’t find them attractive at all. Just sad, cold, and clearly underfed.

  I gave them a nervous smile, then glanced at the bar. The bartender was watching the two patrons who sat in those barrel chairs. One of the men waved one of the girls over.

  The other girl watched as her companion went over to him.

  I headed toward the couch, but at the last minute, I went down the corridor. As I suspected, a bank of elevators covered that wall, just far enough back that a false back could have been built behind those mirrors. There was not a mirror anywhere near the elevators. I pressed the call button. One of the elevators opened immediately, and I got in.

  It smelled of spilled beer. The door closed quickly. I had several choices. I could go to any floor. I picked the top, but the button wouldn’t stay pressed. Nor would it press for the next floor. There was a keyhole beneath that button, which meant the access to those floors was restricted.

  So I hit the next button for the fifth floor, and that button stayed pressed. The elevator trembled its way up, and I wondered if the thing had been repaired in recent memory. The last thing I needed was to get stuck in an elevator in the Starlite Hotel.

  The elevator opened into a corridor on the fifth floor. The smell was actually better here—less cigarette smoke, no beer smell, and no stench of sweat or sex. The doors near me were closed. Jimmy was right: The locks were flimsy. I could have broken a door down with a kick. He just didn’t have the strength yet.

  I winced at the thought. I didn’t ever want Jimmy to need that kind of strength. I wanted him to survive by his prodigious brain, not by his street sense and his muscles.

  Maybe Jimmy’s heroism, more than the attack on Lacey, was the bigger impetus for my search for another school for him. I didn’t want Jimmy anywhere near the life he’d been born to, and this damn hotel was way too close, both in proximity and in lifestyle.

  I looked for mirrors and saw none, not even the anti-shoplifting mirrors that some hotel security people used to keep track of who was on a floor. A few doors were cracked open, probably so someone would know they were usable. I pushed them all the way, saw rooms with just a bed and a chair and not much else. The beds in the empty rooms had been made, if you called pulling a once-white chenille bedspread over the messed-up sheets “made.”

  One, at the end of the hall, was spotless, and the bed actually had crisp military lines. Clearly this room didn’t get used often.

  The window had iron bars over it on the outside, but through them, the alley was visible. I slipped out, saw a sign for the fire escape, and tried to open that door. It was locked.

  I started back down the hall when a girl came out of one of the rooms wearing a white satin dressing gown over a black lace bra and matching panties. She had on white heels so high that she was almost standing on the point of her toes.

  She started when she saw me. “Who brought you up here?”

  “I got sent up for Gwen…?” I said, grabbing the first name that came to mind.

  She frowned. “Gwen? We don’t have no Gwen.”

  “They said fifth floor, last room…?” I made myself sound tentative. I kept my head down.

  “Shit. I don’t know everybody who works here. But this is a break floor unless we’re so busy that we need it. You got to go to three.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Then I raised my eyebrows at her and hoped she would think I was being timid. “But I’m already here, if you want to…”

  “I,” she said with a flourish, brandishing a key, “am the lucky girl who gets to go upstairs tonight. You gotta hope there’ll be some blow and a lot of booze, because Eddie—” And then she shuddered. “Believe me, I’d rather stay here.”

  “I can pay,” I said, as if that would make a difference.

  “Not enough, Big Boy. Once a girl gets the key, she’s stuck with Eddie until he gets tired of her. And no telling what will make him tired.”

  She grinned at me, but there was no humor in it. Just some terrified bravado. I couldn’t even tell how old she was.

  “I’d invite you into the elevator, but I’m going up and you’re going down. So find the stairs, and be careful. You see anyone in the corridors, you tell them you’re looking for your girl on the third floor and you got off in the wrong place, okay? They don’t take too kindly to explorers around here.”

  She pushed past me, leaving a wave of Chanel and beer in her wake. She’d started drinking before she got upstairs, maybe for a bit of Dutch courage.

  So Eddie had the top floor, or at least part of it. I headed for the stairs, but stopped the moment the elevator door closed. I looked in the other open rooms, and didn’t see anything different. Then I went down one flight.

  The fourth floor had no mirrors, more closed doors, and a carpet so worn that those heels the girl had worn could have easily torn through it. I tried one locked door, and a deep man’s voice yelled, “Fuck off!”

  I moved away. I had no backup here. I really didn’t want to get caught.

  No fire escape markings at all and no open doors. The window in the hallway had been boarded shut.

  I went down to the third floor. These doors were all closed except a door toward the back that was missing the doorknob. This had to be the room where Voss assaulted Lacey. I stared in there for a moment. The bed had been stripped, and the mattress propped against the wall. Another mattress covered the floor. It looked someone was turning this room into storage.

  “Help you?” A female voice.

  I turned, and a light-skinned woman stood behind me. She too wore a white satin robe over black lace bra and panties, but she didn’t wear heels. In fact, her feet were bare.

  “I thought I was supposed to come here,” I said, nervously.

  “Ah, hell,” she said. “The new guy at the desk is a major screw-up. Come with me.”

  She took my hand and pulled me with her toward the other end of the hall. “I suppose he didn’t tell you the rules, did he? No all-nighters, no matter how much you pay. Twenty dollars gets you the standard stuff. Weirdo crap costs fifty, and if you like it rough, go downstairs and talk to Ramon. He’ll take direct you to a different house. It’s more expensive, but you’re paying to break the goods. You gotta remember that. If you hurt anyone here, you’ll get hurt worse. In fact, you’ll get hurt so bad you won’t be able to walk for a week. We c
lear?”

  She said all that in a flat voice as if she had it all memorized and said it several times a day, which she probably did.

  My head spun at the way anyone could be calm about what she said. I knew it was all in a night’s work for her, but still. Break the goods? As if the women were nothing but commodities?

  Which, of course, was all that they were.

  I had to make sure that my shock and sadness didn’t show on my face. I was actually grateful for the makeup. The caked feeling on my cheek reminded me to keep my expression neutral.

  We had reached the middle of the corridor. She was leading me toward an open door in the back.

  I finally came up with a question that I could ask and still sound like a john, albeit a new one. “What’s weirdo stuff?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” She shook her head and didn’t even turn around. She kept pulling me toward the room. “If you want to stick it somewhere unusual or you want to wear costumes or you want to mess with anything except breasts and pussy, then you’re crossing into weirdo territory. Got that?”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “Good.” She entered the last room down the hall. It looked like all the others, a single bed with a chenille spread that she immediately tossed to the floor, messed-up sheets that didn’t even try to hide the fact someone else had been there already, one chair, a nightstand with one lamp on it, and a blocked-off window.

  I pushed the door closed. “Is, um, talking weirdo stuff?”

  “You got twenty bucks?” she asked, extending her hand.

  I reached into my back pocket and removed my wallet, trying to make my hand shake just a little. I had two more twenties. I hoped she wouldn’t consider conversation a fifty-dollar charge.

  I pulled out one of the twenties and handed it to her. She put it in the drawer on the end table.

  “You can talk, you can scream, you can sing the national anthem,” she said, “as long as you’re only doing the standard stuff at the same time. Some guys are just naturally loud and we deal with that. Hell, I’ll scream if you need me to. No one cares. It’s not a big deal.”

  Screaming was not a big deal. Got that. My stomach turned.

  She sat down and patted the bed.

  I was not going to sit next to her. I pulled off my hat, but I kept my coat on. Then I reached for the chair and sat in it slowly, nervously, like a man who was extremely unsure of himself. I placed my hat on my knee, and kept my hand on the felt crown, my thumb and little finger in the two dents.

  I hoped the message was clear: I was going to bolt if I got any more uncomfortable. “I, um, actually meant, you know, a conversation. Nothing else.”

  “Oh, God,” she said, and flopped back on the bed, legs spread. Her pubic hair crept out of the underwear, probably on purpose. “Seriously? You’re one of them? Believe me, I don’t have nothing interesting to say. I get five guys, usually, except on the weekends. There’s five, I try to wash off between and that’s it. I’d rather just do it than talk about it, okay?”

  I had never been in this situation before, either intentionally or accidentally. I had talked to prostitutes; I used to talk to Jimmy’s mother to try to get her to take care of her son. But never about her life.

  My cheeks had actually grown warm, and it wasn’t just because the room was stuffy.

  “I, um, don’t care about that. The details about other men don’t do anything for me. I just want to have someone talk to me, okay? No one does.”

  She raised up on her elbows. “Why not? You’re not bad looking. You’re quiet. People should talk to you.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t…it’s hard to explain.”

  Because I had no idea how to lie about this. It was beyond my expertise.

  “Believe me,” she said, “I’ve heard it all. Mother issues? Shy? You don’t seem shy. How many girls have just tried pulling down your pants and seeing what happens?”

  I tightened my grip on my hat. “I’m a vet.”

  She frowned. “Vietnam? You’re too old.”

  “Korea,” I said, and finally, the right lie presented itself. “I can’t…you don’t want…I don’t let anyone…”

  “What’d they shoot it off?” she asked, looking at my crotch.

  I shook my head. “Just, it’s not pretty.”

  “Ah, hon,” she said, “it’s never pretty. They’re all different. I can take it.”

  “I can’t,” I said quietly.

  She sighed. “Shit. If I’d known you were a talker, I’d’ve given you to one of the new girls.”

  “New girls?” I asked.

  “There’s always new girls and they’re always scared and the talkers usually calm ’em right down. Talkers bore me. Same old, same old. Lonely, misunderstood, not that I’m trying to be insensitive.”

  Even though she was, probably deliberately so. She hated being in here with me.

  But I moved the hat nervously to the other knee. I’d paid her. I wanted to get some information out of her. “How about you talk?”

  “I told you. Five guys, except on weekends—”

  “No,” I said. “I really don’t care about those details. I just want to hear a voice. You know. Just talking.”

  “About what?” she said. “I don’t got education like you. I don’t watch much TV. I don’t got opinions.”

  She probably wasn’t allowed to have opinions. I clamped down on my thoughts and focused on keeping the conversation on track. Information. As much as I could get without tipping her off. “Just…tell me about the hotel.”

  “The hotel?” She sat all the way up and wrapped her robe around herself. I felt myself relax slightly. I really didn’t want to see every part of her. I didn’t find her attractive. I found her sad. “Why do you want to know about the hotel?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t want to know about the other men, and I can’t ask you about your…the guy you work for. And you live here, right?”

  “I work here,” she said coldly. “This is a working hotel. Only the new girls live here. And Eddie. He’s got some palace upstairs.”

  “Eddie?”

  “The owner,” she said, “and I’m not supposed to talk about him, so forget I said anything. I don’t live here. You can’t come here in the middle of the night and get something. Remember, I said, no all-nighters. Last call, last customer. Then we actually get out of here and get some fucking sleep.”

  “Last call?” I asked. “That seems awful early. You’d think there’d be a lot of business after the regular bars close.”

  “Last call for nightclubs is 4,” she said, as if I was stupid. “And we’re not allowed to take big jobs after that. By that, I mean, something that’s expensive, not, you know, guys built like you, without the…injury.”

  The deliberate crudeness actually bothered me. I was more of a prude than I realized.

  “They just bus you outta here, huh?” I asked. Just before they bussed in the kids next door. I knew that couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Her eyes narrowed. “What do you care? We don’t sleep here. You don’t need more than that. And you don’t even need that. Jesus. That’s enough business talk. Why don’t you pull down those pants and let me see if the damage is too much—”

  “No,” I said. “And I can’t think of anything else to talk about. I could ask for a happy memory or something, but that doesn’t seem right. Those things are personal. And this isn’t about personal, at least for you, right?”

  “This is weirdo shit.” She stood up and turned her back on me. She rapped her knuckles against the end table, but the sound wasn’t loud. I hoped it wasn’t some kind of signal. “I should’ve asked for fifty.”

  “You can give me my twenty back,” I said.

  “Hell, no,” she said. “You been in here too long for that.”

  I swallowed. “I don’t want you to get hurt. That’s what they’ll do, right? If you spend time with me and I don’t pay you?”

  She whirled. The robe flared arou
nd her calves. “You gave me money. I’m not giving it back.”

  I held up both my hands as if she had pulled a gun on me. I kept my hat in my left hand. “Okay. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “You’re not offending me. You’re weird, and I don’t like weird.”

  “You said you can’t talk about that Eddie guy and you don’t want to talk about the hotel, and you don’t live here, and so just tell me something. Do you eat in the restaurant? What do you like for breakfast? Do you—”

  “Coffee. I don’t eat much else, okay. I don’t need to.” Her nostrils flared.

  “How come the new girls get to sleep here and you don’t?” I asked.

  Her lips thinned. “They’re not working yet,” she said. “They’re learning, and Jesus. That’s enough. I don’t got to tell you nothing. You a cop?”

  There it was. I’d been afraid of that question all along.

  “No,” I said. “I told you. I’m a vet. I just ask questions because I can’t do anything else.”

  “You see action?”

  I nodded. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

  “Now you know how it feels.” She studied me for a moment, her arms wrapped around her torso. “It’s been long enough. You can get out now.”

  “But we just got started—”

  “We’re done with that. Fifty or nothing.”

  I figured I had asked her everything I could without making her even more suspicious. I stood slowly, eased my hat onto my head, and said, “Thank you for talking to me. Can you at least tell me your name?”

  “Not my real one,” she said drily. “So I can make up something if that makes you feel better.”

  “What do they call you here?”

  “I ain’t tell you,” she said, “because I don’t want you to ask for me again. Next time, you tell them at the desk or the girl you see in the lobby that you’re a talker. They’ll know what that means. Some girls like it. I don’t. Now get out.”

  I nodded, and let myself out, leaving the door open. She slammed it behind me, and cursed loudly, apparently so that I could hear.

  If I tried that again, and she and the other girl compared notes, I would get banned from this place. I wasn’t sure how much I needed to return, so I slouched and shuffled toward the stairs.