Lovely, Dark, and Deep

by Frank Zafiro

  Then I saw it. “You don’t want to scare away clientele,” I said.

  “Exactly. My black ass shows up to talk to some of these white bread folk, that business is gone as a motherfucker. For good. But you?” He motioned toward me. “You perfect. Just scary enough to get them old white cats to talk but not scary enough to keep them from opening the door in the first place.”

  I smiled. “I’m poor but clean,” I said.

  Rolo shrugged. “Whatever. You the perfect tool to get the job done, and I need to know who tuned up my girl. That end of the business is what you might call more delicate than what I got going on out here on Sprague. But that don’t mean I can let some shit like this pass.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “Just so we’re clear, the job is to find out who assaulted Monique. That’s it?”

  Rolo nodded. “Yeah. If one of her tricks did this, fair enough. We done. If it was someone else, someone in the game, I’ll deal with that shit myself. We good?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “How many regulars does she have?”

  Rolo shrugged. “Ask Rhonda about that. Can’t be that many. Only so many hours in the day, you know?”

  “All right,” I conceded. I paused, wondering how to broach the topic of money. I was glad I didn’t have to shoot my way out of The Hole, but at the same time, if I was going to do work for him, I wanted to be paid. Hell, I needed to be paid. The small medical retirement I got from the police department barely covered the basics.

  In the end, I didn’t have to say a word. Rolo reached into his jacket, removed an envelope and plopped it in front of me. I opened it and looked inside. A quick count caused my pulse to quicken. There was six months’ worth of rent inside the envelope.

  I looked back up at Rolo. “Plus expenses,” I said.

  It was his turn to be surprised, but it only showed for a moment. Then he smiled. “Aw’right. You write that shit down, and I’ll pay it.”

  5

  After he gave me Rhonda’s telephone number, Monique’s last name and her room number at the hospital, I had one more question for Rolo that I had to ask before I left.

  “Why me?”

  He considered me for a moment, then said, “I already told you that. You perfect for the job.”

  I shook my head. “No, I get that. But why trust me?”

  He gave me a long look, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. Finally, he said, “You proved it.”

  “I proved it? How?”

  “Did you ever say shit to the cops about me last year?”

  I shook my head. “No. I said I got that information from the bikers.”

  “Exactly,” Rolo said. “And the business in the alley back there?”

  I shook my head.

  “You didn’t bring in the cops on that, either. That was stand up. Then how you dealt with that young girl. Star?”

  “Kris,” I corrected him quietly.

  “Yeah, her. That was stand up, too.”

  I understood then. I’d held true to the code of the street, and that was what mattered to Rolo. “Okay,” I said. “I get it.”

  “Maybe you do and maybe you don’t,” Rolo said, “but I think you’ll get the job done either way. And that’s why you.”

  “Good enough,” I said. I stood and offered him my hand. He looked at it for a second, then grasped it firmly. We shook, and I left The Hole.

  6

  That night, I sat at my kitchen table, watching the news on a tiny television. I clutched a can of Keystone Light in my right hand, sipping at it slowly.

  The evening news played out on the small screen. I shook my head as I listened and watched. It was the same thing night after night. Effusive, pompous talking heads repeating the same stories every night with a few details changed here and there to keep us thinking we’re getting something new.

  I switched off the television in disgust.

  The beer warmed my belly, but I forced myself to drink it slowly. After leaving the police department, I’d run into some problems with pain pills and booze. After I got off both, there were a few lapses, but for the last year, I’ve kept things under control. Still, I like to have an occasional beer to test that resolve. To keep it sharp.

  My knee throbbed. Absently, I reached down and massaged the kneecap. My fingers glided over the now familiar hole. Images of streetlights and a full, hanging moon intermingled with the phantom sounds of gunshots. I winced slightly. Shadowy bursts of pain echoed in my left knee, my shoulder and my upper arm. I resisted the urge to rub each of these old wounds. Instead, I raised the beer to my lips and took a swallow.

  Life can deal out some shitty cards at times, I decided. I had a promising career until I screwed up and fell from grace. After spending a number of years wallowing in self-pity, booze and pills, I started the long crawl out of that pit. Sometimes, though, it felt like one step up, two steps back.

  I thought that maybe I could save Matt’s daughter, Kris, but I think all I really did was delay the inevitable. And then there was Cassie. Someone I cared about. I tried to help her and just ended up making it worse.

  So why even try? Why not just sit here in this crappy little apartment, one of twelve subdivided dives in what used to be some rich guy’s house a hundred years ago, and drink and brood?

  Why not?

  Because I was fucking sick of it.

  Sick of sitting around, waiting to die.

  Doing something, even if I failed at it, was better than doing nothing.

  I stood and walked to the sink, where I poured the last several swallows of the beer down the drain. Then I threw on my leather bomber jacket, the last real piece of luxury I owned, and headed out the door.

  7

  The door to room 370 stood half-way open, with no nurses in sight. I rapped lightly on the door.

  “Come in,” called a weak voice from within, surprising me a little.

  I nudged the door open a bit further and stepped in. The nearest bed sat empty. Monique Perrin lay in the bed by the window.

  “Who is it?” she asked, her voice raspy and raw.

  I stepped closer so that she could see me. “You should have asked that question first, instead of saying ‘come in’,” I said gently, trying to smile a little.

  One look at her made smiling a difficult thing to do. Her swollen, bruised face and one eye were partly covered with bandages. The full lips that had cast a coy smile my way in the Rocket were battered and split. The bottom one looked like an over-cooked sausage that had burst.

  She peered at me with her one good eye. Even that was partially occluded behind a pair of giant knots, one on her brow, the other below and slightly off-center.

  “Who are you?” she asked in a low voice.

  “My name’s Stef,” I said.

  “Do I know you?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Not really. I saw you at The Rocket Bakery a few days ago.”

  She looked at me warily. “What are you doing here?”

  “Rolo sent me. To see if I could help.”

  Disgust showed plainly in her eyes. “Help? Maird.”

  “Do you know who did this?”

  She stared at me coolly. “If I knew, don’t you think I would have called him already? Or Rhonda? Look at me.”

  I swallowed and shook my head. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Not that bad?” A frown twitched at the corner of her mouth. “My doctor says I may have blood leaking onto my brain.” She shook her head slightly. “Imagine that. My brain is sprung a leak. They might have to operate.”

  I didn’t answer. What can you say to something like that?

  Monique watched me in silence. Then she said, “Why would Rolo hire a cop?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re a cop, right?”

  My eyes narrowed. “No. Why would you say that?”

  She examined my face for a long moment. “Don’t lie. You’re a cop.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Not a
nymore.”

  “But you were.” There was no hint of a question in her voice.

  “I was,” I conceded. “A long time ago.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I get it.”

  No, you don’t! I wanted to yell at her, but a moment later I realized that she did get it. She had me pegged at a glance.

  “For how long were you a cop?”

  “About four years, is all.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Why’d you stop?”

  I hesitated. A tickle of shame and anger formed in the pit of my stomach, rising slowly toward my chest. “I got hurt,” I said finally. “Why do you care?”

  “I want to know who it is Rolo sent,” she said. “If you were dirty, or –”

  “I was never dirty,” I said forcefully.

  “Okay.” She looked at me for a long moment. “How’d you get hurt, then?”

  “Shot,” I said shortly. This conversation seemed to have devolved into a job interview, which was starting to piss me off. I already had the job. I didn’t need her approval. But then I realized that, on some level, I did.

  She didn’t say anything for a few moments. When she spoke again, her voice lacked the veneer of any laughter, rueful or otherwise. It was a spare sound, with a slight tremor of fear reverberating through every word.

  “I need help,” she whispered.

  “I’m here to help,” I said.

  She shook her head. “No, you’re here because Rolo paid you.”

  I shrugged. She was right.

  “He wants to know who did this?”

  “That’s what I’m supposed to find out, yeah.”

  She sighed. “He just wants to protect his business. He does not give one shit about me.”

  “Either way,” I said, “I’m here to help. Did you get a look at the men who beat you up?”

  “It was one man. A white man. He had a flat nose and a fishhook shaped scar under his left eye. And that’s all I saw before he knocked me out.”

  I made a mental note of her description. “Where did this happen?”

  “At my apartment. He knocked on the door. I answered and he attacked me.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Not a word.”

  “And you have no idea why this happened?”

  She didn’t answer for a long while. She stared at me, her deep brown eyes searching for something. Then she repeated, “I need help. I’ll pay you. But I need help. I don’t have anyone else I can turn to.”

  Almost involuntarily, my hand slid forward until it found hers. She clutched at my hand, her long fingers wrapped tightly around mine. We sat, our hands clutched together with the desperation of two like, lost souls holding on for dear life.

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  “Sit, then,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  8

  She kept her voice low, as if preserving her strength. She spoke without embarrassment or apology. I sat next to her bed and listened, making mental notes but holding most of my questions. I didn’t want to break her rhythm.

  “You know who I work for. It’s very low key, very quiet. Only about a half-dozen girls. We service an elite clientele. Some of them aren’t even bedroom jobs. Most are lonely, rich men who want company when they want it and then for us to disappear. They pay well for that privilege.” She paused, then said, “Lawrence Tate was one of my clients.”

  “The councilman.” I said.

  She pressed her lips together, her expression a curious mix of frustration and hurt. Then she nodded and continued.

  “He was married, of course. Most of them are. Only he never spoke ill of his wife, unlike some of the others. But it was clear that he was dissatisfied with her and with his life.”

  That surprised me. Tate was a successful politician. He won his last election with something like seventy-eight percent of the vote. He came from a poor background, growing up in Hillyard, so becoming a councilman was quite a success. But then again, people often chase what other people define as success instead of defining it for themselves and then pursuing our own definition. We’re all social animals, craving the approval of those around us. Maybe that’s why I stayed in River City after the Amy Dugger disaster. To win back that approval. Or maybe I’m just stubborn. My grandma used to tell me I was. I didn’t agree with her, but before I was old enough to admit she was right, she’d passed away.

  “We spent most of our evenings at the apartment I use for work,” Monique continued. “Many nights we just sat at the kitchen table, drinking wine and talking.” She paused. Her gaze took on a faraway look. “That’s the other thing that was different about Lawrence,” she said. “He listened. Most of the other men that wanted to talk didn’t want to talk with me. They wanted to talk to me. They needed someone to listen to them, to make them feel important. I think some of them needed that more than they needed the sex. Not Lawrence, though. He was interested in me. He listened to my opinions and ideas. He valued them.

  “I thought at first it might be some kind of crazy crush. You get those occasionally. Some guy thinks he needs to ride in on his white horse like Sir Lancelot and rescue you from this life. He falls in love. He wants to marry you.” She shook her head. “I can see those guys coming a mile away. But Lawrence never said anything like that. He just...listened.”

  She let out a long sigh and asked me for some water. I filled the glass and held it for her while she drew some through a straw.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  I nodded and waited for her to continue.

  She cleared her throat and went on. “I guess you could say we became friends of a sort. I looked forward to the times he would call. I even shared a thing or two with him about myself that weren’t made up. Simple things, really, but things I would never share with a regular client.”

  “Like what?”

  She glanced at me then. Her penetrating gaze seemed to be sizing me up, as if asking herself if I was also someone she could trust. The silence between us grew to the point where I thought that maybe she’d decided that I wasn’t particularly trustworthy. Maybe I was just some guy her pimp hired to con her. Maybe there wasn’t any connection. No shared sense of being adrift and alone. No grasping at each other’s hands in the dark of this life –

  “Small things,” she finally said. “Where I’m really from. My real name. Some things about my mother.” She shrugged. “My favorite ice cream.”

  “Strawberry?” I guessed.

  She exhaled with a half-chuckle. “That’s what I tell clients. That, or cherry, of course.”

  “What, then?”

  She stared at me for another moment before answering. “Tin Roof Sundae.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “It’s rich and nutty, with fudge.”

  I nodded my understanding and waited for her to continue.

  Instead, she asked, “What’s yours?”

  “My favorite ice cream?”

  She nodded.

  I shrugged. “Vanilla, I suppose.”

  “That’s pretty basic.”

  “I’m a basic guy,” I answered. “Poor but clean.”

  She pointed at the water cup. I held it for her while she took another several sips. When she’d finished, I put the cup back and she resumed talking.

  “Like I said, it wasn’t about sex for Lawrence. It was about companionship. For him, I was more a mistress than an escort. He brought me gifts. He confided in me.

  “I knew he wasn’t happy. Not just with his wife, but with his life. I remember one time I asked him why he wasn’t happy in his career. He looked at me with the saddest eyes I think I’ve ever seen and simply said, ‘I’m just tired of being responsible for everyone else’s problems.’ That was it, all summed up.”

  “He could have run for a different office,” I said, thinking aloud.

  She shook her head slightly. “No. He said he didn’t want to get outside the c
ommunity. It wasn’t about service at the state or federal level, at least in his opinion. Those people weren’t servants, they were politicians. It was all about power for them.”

  I shrugged, unable to disagree. “What about running for mayor, then?”

  She smiled slightly. “I suggested the same thing. But he pointed out that the new mayor had just begun a term barely two years ago. A popular mayor, he said, will in all likelihood be re-elected. That meant at least six years before he’d have a shot. And he didn’t think he could go on for six more years in the same way, which is what he’d have to do if he wanted a shot at the office on the seventh floor.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “The picture you’re painting only reinforces the version of events that I read in the paper.”

  “How?”

  “You’re describing a dissatisfied, middle-aged man in a dead marriage and at a dead-end in his career. All in all, a very unhappy guy. Suicide is a radical response to that, but it isn’t—

  “He didn’t kill himself!” she growled with surprising force. Her uncovered eye shot an intense glare at me. After a moment, her eyelid fluttered. She brought her hand to her head, wincing.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  She took several shallow breaths, her fingertips at her temple. When she finally looked at me again, the intensity in her eye had faded, but I could still see the remnants lurking there. “He didn’t kill himself,” she repeated calmly.

  “Okay,” I conceded. “I was just pointing out that it wouldn’t be unreasonable for an investigator to conclude that, based on what happened and what you’ve told me.”

  “I haven’t told you everything yet.”

  I waited for her to go on.

  She took another breath and continued. “He seemed to have reached a point where he was ready to change everything. He said he wanted to break out of the prison he’d constructed for himself. Just run free. He even asked me to go with him.” She smiled sadly.

  “When was that?”