Skin Trade (12 page)

Was this the creep who attacked Lily? Was his putrid stink of aftershave the odor I thought I smelled on Lily's clothes at the station house?

He'd hit me so hard, I stumbled and fell on the floor. Instinctively, my hand went to my face. Getting up, I slipped. By the time I was on my feet, the men were outside. They climbed into a car outside the bar. I saw it go. I ran into the street. The car turned a corner and disappeared. The street was deserted.

I was halfway down the hill. A hundred yards away, I could see a wide street. Traffic, lights, people walking
fast, heads down against the wind and the snow. Somewhere I heard the wah-wah of a French cop car and maybe I should have waited, but I'd had enough of French cops.

I scrambled down to the main road. Outside McDonald's, I got a cab. I told the driver to take me to the hotel. He looked over his shoulder.

“Just take me, OK. I fell down,” I said in French and he raised an eyebrow. He let me know he figured I was some hopeless American looking to buy cheap drugs. He offered advice on the subject. I closed my eyes.

When we pulled up in front of the hotel, there was a patrol car outside. Someone was looking for me, maybe Momo, maybe his chief. And Carol Browne might show. The last thing I wanted was an encounter with the garden gnome.

I crouched low in the backseat. The driver looked over his shoulder. I shoved some money in his face and told him to keep moving.

“Just go. Drive around for a while.”

The driver went. We got to the Champs-Elysées which was still lit up for Christmas.

“Where to?”

I called Joe Fallon because I didn't know who else to call. I wanted to see someone from home. It was midnight, but he picked up. He was at the office, he said, working late, great to hear you, Artie. Come on over.

His office was off Avenue Montaigne. It was a cold impersonal suite of rooms, except for the family pictures and the loafers that lay on the bleached white wood floor
where he had stepped out of them. A pair of mis-matched socks were crumpled on top of the shoes. Behind the glass desk, Joe was massaging his bare feet.

“Hey, Artie, come on in. I'm sorry about this. I stubbed my toe so bad it's killing me.” He reached over the desk, wincing with pain as he put his foot on the floor, shook my hand, sat down hard and groaned.

“I'm so glad you came. I could use the company. Let me just finish this one thing and we could go out and eat.” He started typing something into a lap-top. “Take a look,” he added, waving at piles of stuff in one corner of the room.

They were samples from companies Joe owned: vintage wine in bottles with art labels; foie gras and other fancy food in elaborate packaging; boxed sets of Champagne flutes; a rack with fur coats, at least one sable. There was luggage, silver, linen sheets, handbags, watches, there were models of cars and brochures for hotels where the rooms started at a grand a night. Aladdin's fucking Cave.

Toys, Joe said, and shut his computer. Most of the money came from the new media companies. “I bought and sold like baseball cards,” he laughed. “'98, “99, you didn't need any brains, money just fell on your head. I had to put the money some place, I started buying fancy shit.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“I'm giving most of it to my oldest kid now. I'd love for you to meet Billy, he's a pistol with a really nice streak. He was doing great business, all of a sudden he tells me he wants to take time off to work with refugees.
I told him about you and he's crazy to get a look at someone from the old man's past.”

Joe and me. Lily and Martha. The past never lets you go.

“What's going on, Artie? You sounded pretty cut up. You want to go out?”

I shook my head.

“That's OK. I've got some booze here if you want. Or coffee. I could make coffee?”

“No thanks.”

“What's up?” He came around the glass table, still in bare feet and sat on a brown leather sofa with square edges. There was a chair next to it. I sat down and unzipped my jacket.

He said, “Maybe I can help.”

But I didn't tell him much. I liked Joe Fallon. I could see him as a friend, but I was wary. I told him Lily was sick. I spun some half truths about a car accident.

“That's really bad. I'm sorry. What does Lily do?”

“She's a journalist.”

“Artie?”

“What?”

“Would you let me get someone on it? I know good people. Doctors. The best.”

“Not yet.”

“Will you tell me when?”

“Thanks.”

“But are you OK with the doctors here? Because we could get someone in from New York, you know, from Cornell or Sinai.”

“You're still fixing things.”

“I know how it is. I know how it was when Dede was sick, I was trying to fix it, cure her, find someone who knew something, and it didn't make any difference.”

I was restless. I had to get out. I had wanted to see Joe, now I wanted to leave. I was drowning in my own craziness. It wasn't Joe Fallon's fault.

“Listen, Joe, thank you. For listening. This helped. Honest.”

“You want to eat?”

“No. Not now. I'm going over to the hotel to try to catch some sleep.”

“I could give you a ride.”

“Don't bother. Your feet don't look so hot.”

Hobbling, he walked me to the door of the building and let me out. “Call me.”

“I'll call you,” I said.

“Good. Just don't disappear on me again.”

The sun was bright the next day, but when I got out of the taxi the wind was cold enough to blow the skin off your face. Digging the card Gourad had given me out of my pocket, I turned the corner of the Champs-Elysées and passed a group of Russians. The women, in fur, were chattering and showing off their purchases; the men stood by, alpaca overcoats with the collars turned up, smoking, talking. At the curb, a couple of drivers waited for them, leaning against big Mercedes. I caught snatches of conversation as I ran by. Should we go to Manray or Barfly, which restaurant, darling, they said to each other, and eyed a Vuitton shop.

I turned onto rue Pierre 1er de Serbie, a street with handsome houses and fancy stores. I looked for the house number Momo Gourad wrote on the card. It was important for him, I knew, giving me this address.

There was a silver Mercedes parked outside the house. I checked the apartment number and buzzed. Said my name into an intercom. Mentioned Momo Gourad. The front door clicked open. Inside, I climbed a flight of
sleek marble stairs. On the first landing, a heavy door was ajar. I went in. The light in the hallway was soft.

From somewhere inside there were voices, chattering, someone laughing, a puppy barking. A voice called out, “Come in,” and I followed the sound through the heavy door.

As soon as I went into the room, the lush smells washed over me. Two women were playing cards at a little gilt table in front of the fireplace where a fake fire blazed. Two more sat on a sofa yakking, one with a King Charles spaniel in her lap. The women were all young, in their late teens and twenties, all perfectly dressed in skirts and little sweaters, Gucci, Hermès – I sometimes read Lily's fashion magazines in the can so I know about this stuff. These were babes and they were expensive. Hair done, make-up perfect, nails manicured.

The bodies were also perfect, some natural, some surgical, take your pick. In a bar once I heard a guy say he liked fake tits better. I don't get it; they look and feel pumped up, hard and round, like sports equipment. But I don't like little girls, either.

Lily is always shifty about her age. She was past forty when I met her, but I think she's nuts to care and she knows it. I always tell her she's nuts. Who wants some dim model? It would be like doing it with an unformed child. I don't know, maybe I'm the one that's crazy.

The women looked up from their cards and smiled at me. I could shut my eyes and see the babes transformed into elderly women. Like the inmates of my mother's nursing home where they play cards all day, bent over the games, hairpins falling out of their thin white hair.

“I am Katya.” She was older than the others, thirty, maybe, and as she strolled towards me, hand out, a big diamond glittered on her finger. Everything about her glittered, hair, eyes, diamonds. “Katya Strogonoff,” she said in English with a Russian accent.

“Sure. And I'm Bobby Borscht.”

“Very nice.” She grinned. It was playful, this disarming grin, and seductive. She added, “Well, not precisely my real name, but is OK. Sometimes they are calling me Kate. Hello to you.” The voice oozed attention. She wasn't tall, but the posture was perfect, as if she'd been to ballet class as a child.

I told her Momo Gourad gave me her address. She knew Momo, of course. He came to her parties, sometimes he took her to dinner, last time to Fouquet for oysters. It made me wonder where Momo got the kind of dough it would take for oysters at Fouquet, a restaurant I'd just passed on the Champs-Elysées. Where did he get the dough for Katya?

I took off my leather jacket and gave it to her, and she led me into an office, where she poured tea out of a samovar into glasses set in fancy silver holders. The office had black leather furniture and a black teak breakfront with smoked glass doors. Pastel silk flowers were arranged in Chinese vases.

Katya sat behind a large black glass desk. Under the desk lamp her hair was like hot copper, the eyes too green, the lashes too long. The pearls were real, though, and big as cherries. She looked me over tactfully. “Business,” she said, “or pleasure?”

When the Soviet Union started breaking up and
Russian women began crossing borders for business, it was the Turks who labeled the hookers “Natashas”. It was rough trade for these girls; they were the spill-out from the USSR, the debris.

The business exploded. The old Soviet Empire seemed to have an endless supply of gorgeous women. For the young ones with great looks – the mile-long legs, the Slavic cheekbones that could cut glass, the beestung lips – there were always guys, the men with money who wanted the right accessory. The Super Natashas, they were called, and they were thick on the ground wherever there was money; anywhere you could use a platinum credit card or buy a magnum of Cristal, these girls flocked, to New York, London, the Riviera, the Hamptons, like fabulous birds of prey.

They were seductive as hell, but not for me. I have a different fix on the Russkis given I grew up there. I was even offered a freebee one night in New York. The girl said I resembled a poet she once knew. Hip hop, she said, I resembled a hip-hop poet, a white guy, but cool. She was wired. I bought her a glass of Champagne and went home.

Clearly, Katya “Strogonoff” was one of them, a deluxe Super Natasha.

“Hello?” Katya was waiting.

“Sorry. I was thinking about something.”

“Surely.”

I offered her a pack of smokes. Instead, she picked up her own, shook the expensive box of exotic cigarettes lightly until one fell into her hand. I felt she could shake me down like one of her smokes if she wanted. She lit it
with a Dunhill solid-gold quarter pounder, leaned back slightly, inhaled deep and smiled. The perfect tits tilted up nicely under the snug black cashmere sweater.

Katya had copied her performance from some movie. Maybe she went to the pictures with Momo. She knew the part, the modern Russian business broad, direct, confident, clinging, flirtatious, all at the same time. There was a Russian creep I once nailed who watched
The Godfather
like it was a training manual. It made him cry, he said. The Italians had more style than Russians; they had honor. I told him he was an asshole and got him locked up for a long time.

I drank my tea and played along with Katya Strogonoff.

“Business, pleasure, I don't know,” I said. “What's going?”

“You are actual friend of Maurice Gourad?”

“You bet.”

“Professional friend?”

“What other kind is there?”

“Momo likes party, maybe you are special party friend.”

“Call it professional.”

“I see.” She straightened up. She understood I was a cop, and if I was, there was nothing in this meeting for her except maybe trouble. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, they were hard and smooth like marbles, and very cold. She squashed the cigarette in an ashtray and waited. It was quiet now, both of us sitting out the silence.

I went first. “I'm looking for someone who did this.
Someone who hurt this friend of a friend.” I tossed the picture of Lily onto her desk. “Momo says maybe you can help. Someone found her and hurt her very bad.”

“Who is she?”

“Like I said, a friend of a friend.”

“What makes you think I can help?”

“Momo Gourad thinks you know a lot of people.”

“I don't know people who do these things.”

“Would it help if my friend's friend had money?”

“It can always help, sure.”

“So let's say my friend's friend has a lot of money.”

“Is not real issue.”

“This is your place, Katya? Your whorehouse?”

“I am not understanding,” she said coolly, so I translated into Russian for her. She asked me my Russian name and I told her.

In Russian, she said sharply, “Don't be stupid, Artemy Maximovich Ostalsky. This is my flat. These are my friends. We have tea parties here, we play cards, we get together when we're not working. They each have their own flats also, you see?”

I looked at her.

“I'm telling you the truth.” She leaned over the table. “It doesn't work like you think. People are stupid. They assume everything.” Her Russian was educated.

“What were you?” I asked in English.

“What was I?” She spoke English in reply.

“In Russia?”

“I was doctor, pathologist. In Moscow. What do you care? You think it is only ignorant women, uneducated women do this thing, going with men?”