Hundred Dollar Baby (11 page)

Two of the women giggled.

Amy nodded.

"I tell him then you tell him?" she said to Darleen.

"You're on," she said.

Once the deluge began, it was nearly impossible to staunch. They were so thrilled to be talking about themselves that I thought I might have to shoot my way out of there.

Darleen wouldn't tell me where she lived, or what her last name was. She was married to a guy who worked nights. He was nice enough, a good father, but he was kind of boring. Not so boring she'd want to leave him, and she guessed she actually did love him. But she liked sex more than he did. She had fooled around almost since they married, and to her, the work at the mansion was just more fooling around, except she got paid. She had a nice mutual fund going for the kids, which her husband didn't know about, and she had a little mad money of her own, which her husband thought she earned with a pickup-and-delivery service in the suburban area where they lived.... Amy was a grad student, she wouldn't say where, and had been hooking up with guys since junior high. Like Darleen, she enjoyed sex, and when the tuition bills started piling in, she thought if she were going to do it anyway, maybe she should get paid.... Jan said that getting paid for sex made her feel empowered. All of them agreed that it did. They were items of value.... Kelly was divorced and supported two children and her mother. Mother looked after the kids while Kelly was working.... Emily was an airline attendant.... Kate was a third-grade teacher.... They all enjoyed sex. None of them felt exploited.... All of them enjoyed the free time that the work gave them.... They also, though they never quite knew how to say it, liked being a band of sisters.... Two of them had responded to April's solicitation on the Internet. Two more had been recruited by a charming man they met in a dating bar. No one would name him, but I assumed it was Lionel Farnsworth....

"Everybody always talks about how prostitution exploits women," Amy said. "But I see it as exploiting men. They pay us for something we'd been doing for free. It's fun. And . . ." She giggled. "They'll do pretty much whatever you say when you have them excited."

The other women giggled with her. "They are kind of pathetic," Kelly said.

"I had a guy always brought candy," Jan said. "I always threw it out after he left."

"A fat whore with zits, perfect," Emily said. They all laughed.

"You know what else I like?" Darleen said. "I like working for April."

They all did a little hand clap.

"I mean, I don't want to sound like some women's lib crackpot," she said, "but it's nice to work for a woman in a woman's business."

They all clapped.

"I mean," Kate said, "there's no pimp. You know how nice that is?"

They clapped again.

"How about Lionel?" Amy said.

April frowned at her. But they were having too good a time talking about something they had probably never talked about-and to a man. No one responded to her frown.

"Lionel was just, like, a recruiter," Kate said.

"He was so sweet," Darleen said.

"And he never came on to us," Kate said. "He was a real gentleman."

They all nodded agreement.

"And cute," Kelly said.

"That's important," Amy said. "Wouldn't want to waste it on an ugly guy."

They laughed happily.

"You all know Lionel?" I said.

They did.

"It's getting on toward business hours, ladies," April said. "Is there anything else?"

"What's going to happen?" Darleen said.

I smiled at her.

"In general?" I said. "Or as regards Ollie DeMars?"

"Are we going to be safe here?"

"Probably."

"Will it come out about us?" Darleen said.

"No one wants to out you unless we have to," I said.

"Why would you have to?" Darleen said.

All the women, including April, I thought, had tensed up again.

"No reason I can think of," I said. "As long as everyone tells me the truth."

Darleen looked at me carefully.

"But if we told you the truth and had to be a witness, or something," she said, "wouldn't that be worse?"

"I was hoping you wouldn't think of that," I said.

"So we are not your first priority," Darleen said.

"Darleen," April said.

"No," Darleen said. "I want an answer."

The others agreed with Darleen. I took in a little air. "My primary purpose here is to help April. But Ollie DeMars is part of whatever threat there is, and I need to figure out who killed him so that I can figure out how best to help April. Collateral beneficiaries of anything good I can do for April would appear to be you. All of you."

"Would you sacrifice one of us to help April?"

"Probably," I said. "But we're now getting into one of those hypothetical realms, like if you had two children and both were drowning and you could only save one, which one would you save."

Darleen nodded.

"But," she said, "we actually might drown, we need to know."

"You can't," I said. "It's a question without context. I don't know enough. I can only do what I can do. And I can only do that when it's time to do it."

The room was silent. I didn't blame it. I sounded metaphysical, even to myself.

Then Amy said, "At least he's not lying to us." Darleen shook her head.

"They all lie to us," she said.

Ollie's clubhouse was locked. There was a big crime-scene sign on the door. But I had a key from Belson, and unlocked the door, and strolled brazenly in. I closed the door behind me and turned the bolt. It was very quiet. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator against the wall of the outer room. The crime-scene people had dusted for prints and collected and bagged and photographed and studied and gone through the place like they were auditioning for
CSI: South Boston.
I didn't have to be careful. I opened the refrigerator door. It was empty. I looked around the room. It looked the same as it had. There were two windows. Each of them had a thick security screen. I walkeddown the short hall. At the end was a small bathroom. I looked in. It was empty of everything except the toilet and the sink. I went into Ollie's office. Nothing different. I looked around. There was a security screen over the window in Ollie's office. There were no other windows. No doors but the front one. I opened Ollie's desk drawer. Crime Scene had cleaned it out. The wastebasket was empty. I went back to the front door and began to walk through it.

Okay. Killer came in here. No one's here, or they are here and they leave, for whatever reason. TV might be on, might not. I walk across the room. Even if I've never been here before, there's no place else to go. Down the hall. Ollie's door is open. I go in. He is at his desk. He sees me. He doesn't open the drawer. Doesn't go for his gun. I walk over. Do I talk? Does he talk? Do I have the gun out? Do I take it out? Whatever happened, I am right across the desk, I lean forward a little, point my gun in front of me, and plug him in the forehead right above his nose.
I pantomimed the shot.
He snaps back, bounces forward, starts bleeding onto his shirt. I put the gun away. Turn around and walk out? Why would I stick around? Somebody might have heard the shot. Unless he had something I wanted. Crime Scene found no sign of anyone looking for anything. No way to know. Anyway, as soon as I can, I leave. I walk back down the hall, out through the lounge, and out the front door.

I stood at the front door and then turned around and looked at everything again. Nothing spoke to me. I went to one of the ratty chairs in front of the TV and sat and looked at the room and the hall. Nothing. I'd seen Belson do this for an hour. Simply sit and look until he saw something. Or until he was certain there was nothing to see. It was more than close observation. I always suspected that if he did it long enough, he'd begin to intuit what happened. He never said so. But I was always suspicious.

Ollie DeMars was a rough guy in a rough business. He would not sit here at night alone in an unlocked building and allow somebody to wander in and shoot him. He had to have known the shooter. The slug they dug out of him was a .22.
A woman's gun? Or was I being a sexist oinker?
A woman made some sense, though. If he was expecting someone to come in and haul his ashes, maybe he'd send people away, and maybe he'd let a woman walk in and shoot him at close range. ME had said there was no indication of sexual activity. Which meant only that she'd gotten right to the shooting. If she was a she. Lionel was the kind of guy might use a .22, nothing big and heavy that might break the line of his suit. Or it might be some pro trying to confuse us. If so,
what happened to Ollie's crew? Did they sell him out? Were they frightened away? If it was a woman, was it April? Why would she shoot him? We'd already chased him off. Could she shoot him?
It was hard to figure April. She had not lived like most people.

Maybe it had nothing to do with anything I knew anything about. Ollie was a freelancer and busy. It could have nothing to do with me. But assuming that didn't lead anywhere. I wanted it to go somewhere. Things didn't make sense enough for me to leave it be. I didn't want to blow April's cover. But I wasn't exactly clear on what she was covering. I understood why she and her professional staff wanted to stay off the screen. She was running an illegal enterprise, and if it went public, the cops would be obliged to bust her. I didn't care about the illegal enterprise. Prostitution was probably bad for a lot of prostitutes. But it seemed pretty good to the group I was dealing with. And I had a limited attention span for larger issues. Smaller ones were hard enough.

I sat for a while longer in the silent room, made more silent by the white sound of the refrigerator. I let the silence sink in, looking for an intuition. I didn't get one. Maybe Belson never did, either.

I was back in New York. I had spent so much time in New York on this thing that people were beginning to greet me on the street. Spenser, Mr. Broadway.

It was the middle of February. The sun was bright. The snow had melted except in occasional shady lees. Either spring was early this year or the gods were making sport of us. The gods seemed more likely. On the other hand, pitchers and catchers had reported in Florida. And the first spring training game was only fifteen days away.

I met Patricia Utley for lunch uptown at Cafe Boulud. She had a glass of white wine. I had a Virgin Mary.

"You still in the same place?" I said, just to say something.

"No, after Stephen died, I moved a little east," she said, and a little uptown."

"He was more than a bodyguard," I said.

"Yes," Patricia Utley said. "He was."

"Do you have someone now?"

"I have a security man who works the house when there are clients. He's very capable."

"I hear a but," I said.

"But he is not there except during business hours. He is not Stephen."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Love makes you vulnerable," she said.

"Better than not love," I said.

"Yes," she said. "That's probably true. I'm glad I didn't miss it."

It was the first time she had ever alluded to a relationship with Stephen. We were quiet. The room was comfortably full but not noisy, with no sense of crowd.

"Is someone paying you for all of this?" she said when her wine arrived.

"Goodness is its own reward," I said.

She took a small sip and enjoyed it. Then she smiled at me.

"No," she said. "It isn't."

"It's not?" I said. "You mean I've been living a lie?"

"Sadly, yes," Patricia Utley said. "Is there more trouble with April?"

I nodded.

"And you need something from me on that score?"

"Maybe," I said.

She nodded and sipped some wine. I drank some Virgin Mary. I didn't like it, but it was there. Susan contended that I drank automatically, and that if I were given turnip juice, I would drink five glasses.

"I have gone nearly as far as I care to with April," Patricia Utley said. "I had very little reason to go anywhere with her. But years ago, when you brought her to me, I relaxed my cynicism enough to get caught up in your Goody Twoshoes passion."

"Goody Two-shoes?"

"I have been in the flesh trade in New York City for thirty years," she said. "I have earned my cynicism. I know in your own way you are probably more cynical than I am. Yet it hasn't made you cynical."

"You might be losing me," I said.

"No," she said, "I'm not. You may be the smartest person I have ever met. You understand me fine. I am not ready to give April too much more line."

"She fell in love again," I said.

"Oh, good God," Patricia Utley said.

"Guy named Lionel Farnsworth," I said.

She nodded.

"Yes, he always requested her. Then he stopped."

"She was giving him freebies," I said.

"Always a risk," Patricia Utley said.

"When you sent her up to Boston, he came along, cut himself into the business. They've been skimming. Putting aside the down payment so they could start a chain of their own boutique cathouses. Farnsworth says he has the rest of the financing in place."

Patricia Utley nodded.

"And," she said, "has she given the skimmed savings to Lionel?"

"I don't know, but what would you guess?"

"We both know she has," Patricia Utley said.

"We do," I said.

Maybe my cynicism had made me cynical after all. Our salads arrived. We paused while they were served. Patricia Utley ordered a second glass of wine. I had another Virgin Mary.

"According to April, Lionel cheated on her. She broke it off. He wanted his share of everything. She refused. He hired some bad guys. And now the guy he hired has been murdered."

"Oh dear," Patricia Utley said. "That means police."

"Yep. I've got some pull. The cops are willing to let April stay below the radar for now."

"And you've talked with Lionel?"

"Yes."

"How does his story jibe with April's?"