The Long Good Boy (14 page)

Even when I woke up at five in the afternoon, showered, ate, walked Dashiell, and started to read the papers my fax machine had spit all over the office floor, it didn't occur to me that I was now working the same hours as my clients, falling into a coma near dawn, getting up when it was already dark. There was too much to do to think about myself. Or perhaps it was something else, what I'd thought about before going to sleep, that I was involved in something so deeply ugly, I didn't want to understand it. If I let myself think, I might think my way back to dog training. For the time being, I had another commitment, and the less I thought about
my
life and the more I thought about
the
life, the faster I'd get to where I was going.

I had some papers now that showed the history of the private carting companies Keller's had used over the past few years. It was true, as the
Times
had reported; only a little over a month after Mulrooney had been hired to manage the plant, he'd changed carting companies. But that had been the third change in two years.

I remembered the stink in the paper when Giuliani took on the corruption at the Fulton Fish Market, requiring all businesses seeking to operate within the market to register with the Department of Business Services and for all their employees to undergo background checks and then be issued identification cards before they could work there.

Giuliani had cleaned up the fish market and had moved on to do the same at Hunts Point. Next on his agenda was the Gansevoort Meat Market and the Brooklyn Terminal Market. Hadn't there been some sort of law passed that would cover the industry citywide, as it were? Still, there wasn't any law enacted that couldn't be gotten around. Wasn't this just a case of the more things changed, the more they stayed the same?

CityWide Carting had been getting Keller's business for only eight months. And now the two men who had been arrested in connection with Mulrooney's execution, both of whom were employed by CityWide, had been released. What was that all about? After all, Mulrooney had been killed a week after Keller's switched to a new carting company, cutting CityWide out of the loop. I wasn't ready to accept Capelli and Maraccio's airtight alibis, even if the court was. I was still wondering how many times in that week Mulrooney had been threatened before someone actually got the job done.

I pulled out his personnel file. Until his untimely death, one of my all-time favorite phrases, Mulrooney had lived in Rego Park, Queens, with his wife, Frances. He took only one dependent on his paycheck. That meant their kid must have been grown and out of the house by then. I set that page aside, thinking I ought to pay Frances a visit, wondering whether or not I should lay things on the line for her or make up a story that would get what I needed to know but not give her any information at all. Then I started reading the rest of the papers, looking for the smallest clue that the death of Kevin Mulrooney was somehow connected to the death of Rosalinda, whose untimely demise was what I had been paid to investigate in the first place.

I had the notes from Vinnie Esposito's file in my hand when the bell on the wrought-iron gate rang. I glanced at the clock. It was eight-thirty. I was wearing the clothes I'd put on yesterday, clothes I'd crawled around a filthy roof in, clothes I'd slept in. I put the papers back on the pile, opened the top drawer and shoved them in, then took the steps two at a time and headed for the gate to see who was there.

I could see the bronze hair before I saw anything else. And two big hands holding on to the gate, as if she were in jail, holding on to the bars, watching for her attorney to show, waiting for something to happen.

“LaDonna. What a surprise.”

She waited for me to unlock the gate.

“You don't know the half of it.” She swept by me like the Queen of Sheba, sashaying down the tunnel into the yard, stopping, hands on her nonexistent hips, to observe my digs. The outside lights were on. It had just started to snow.

“The weather's gone nuts,” she said, holding out a big paw to catch the tiny flakes. “You going to invite me in, or we going to stand out here while the snow piles up to our privates?”

“It's not going to stick,” I said. “Door's unlocked.” I pointed, ever the gracious hostess. Just what is this about? I wondered, following LaDonna through the yard and up the steps to my front door.

But before we got the chance to go inside, the bell rang again, the muffled sound coming through the closed door.

LaDonna turned and put a finger on her cheek. “Now, who could that be? Oh, I know. I bet it's Jasmine. I told her, ‘Meet me at Rachel's at eight-thirty.' Bitch never showed up on time once in her whole life.”

She stood where she was while I went to open the gate a second time. I doubted it was a social call. I wondered if they were here to ask for a refund. After all, I was no closer to the answer they needed now than I'd been the night they hired me. I sure had expected Chi Chi to finish with Vinnie faster than she did. Maybe they thought I should be faster, that I could solve the case, get them the name they wanted, one, two, three.

Jasmine passed me without a word, as if I were her butler. When I turned to follow her, I noticed her ass. It was difficult to miss, bare and sticking out of her short shorts the way it was.

“You'll catch your death,” my mother would have said, and for once, she might have hit the nail right on the head.

I opened the door; Dash sniffed the girls and then followed us to the living room.

I pointed to the couch, a real Emily Post. “What's up?” I asked.

“That's what we came to ask you,” Jasmine said. There seemed to be a bruise on the outside of her left eye, but her hair was falling forward onto her face, and I couldn't tell for sure.

“Oh, you came for a progress report?”

“We did,” she said.

I looked at LaDonna, but she didn't say a word.

“I got into Keller's.”

“We already know that.” Jasmine pulled at her hair so that it covered more of her face.

“I was just going over the paperwork when you showed up.”

“And?”

“Well, I don't have an answer for you yet, if that's what you're asking.”

“When will you?”

“I don't know.”

Now all three of us were mute and staring, me at Jasmine and LaDonna, the two of them at me.

“Too slow,” LaDonna said.

“We could be killed while you're crawling around looking for a connection. We don't care about that. We only want to know who did Rosalinda.”

LaDonna frowned. I didn't give her a chance to speak.

“I know that. I really do. I'm looking for the connection only to see if that will be the route to finding out the name you want. I'll tell you this—”

LaDonna raised one huge hand, a silver ring on every finger, including her thumb. “Just one thing you need to tell us. The name of who killed them. We don't want to hear how you swung through the window like Errol Flynn. It's beside the point. It don't help us one damn bit.”

“I'm working as fast as I can.”

“We want you to work faster,” LaDonna said, standing. Dashiell stood, too. I didn't take that as a good sign, and suddenly all the things I'd ever heard about tranny hookers came crashing into my head, especially the stuff about how crazed on drugs they all are, how desperate and violent, how they all carry razor blades, just in case they need to protect themselves. I stood, too. Now only Jasmine was sitting, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees.

“We need to see your stuff,” she said.

“My stuff? What stuff are you talking about? You mean the papers from Keller's?”

She gave LaDonna a look. “Your
clothes
, girlfriend. We think the answer's out where we are. We think that's where you need to be to find it.”

I sat.

Jasmine got up.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No way. I never told you—”

“No. You're not telling us. We're telling you. I'm going to watch you. You're not going to be in danger. It's just—” LaDonna looked toward the kitchen, then back at me. “You got anything to drink?”

“What'd you have in mind?”

“Orange juice. Soda. Scotch. Beer. I'm real parched.”

I got up and brought the juice container and two glasses, setting them on the glass top that sat on the little red wagon and served as a coffee table.

LaDonna picked up the juice and just held the container. “We out there. But we don't know what to look for, the way you do.” She filled a glass for Jasmine, then drank from the container. “Got anything to eat?”

“You want me to order a pizza?”

LaDonna nodded. Jasmine didn't move. I sent Dashiell for the phone.

When the pie arrived, LaDonna went poking around in the kitchen and came out with a bottle of Chianti, a corkscrew, and a shit-eating grin. “You neat,” she said. “I can find everything I need in that sweet little kitchen of yours. I could live here in a second, 'cept for what's across the street.”

“There is that,” I said.

We moved to the small marble table outside the kitchen.

Jasmine said she understood if I didn't want to do any of the johns, she really did. “'Course, you could make a couple a hundred a night,” she said, “in addition to what we paid you, if you change your mind.” She waited. I chewed. Jasmine shrugged.

I thanked her for her understanding.

She said she wouldn't know how to do my job any better than I'd know how to do hers.

I thanked her again.

When she started to explain how to put a condom on a john without using your hands, so he wouldn't even know you were doing it, I put down the piece of pizza I'd been eating and held up my hand like a stop sign. “More than I need to know,” I told her.

Jasmine nodded. She was pretty understanding. You had to give her that.

“Truth is, we only want to dress you for the part,” said LaDonna, grinning again.

“You mean you're in a big rush for me to solve this, get you the name you're after, but you have the time to play with me?”

They both nodded. LaDonna picked up the piece of pizza I'd started and finished it in one bite. “You only ordered one pie?” she asked with her mouth full. “How'm I going to keep my strength up?”

I shrugged. Who knew, with all that cleavage, they'd eat like truck drivers?

“Ready for us to get serious?”

“Sure. What the hell.”

“We want you to come out this weekend, Friday night and Saturday night. One of us will stick with you. You just have to keep your ears open.”

“And your mouth shut.” That Jasmine, ever the comedienne.

“Count on it,” I told her. This time I was the one who got up, went to the kitchen, and came back with a bottle of Chianti. LaDonna stood and took out the cork, filling our glasses without waiting for the wine to breathe.

“We want you to see what's out there, maybe get some ideas about the case when you see who shows up, what their attitude is, what they say, all that. Because it could be, it's a customer done her. It happens.”

I nodded.

“One time, this john's wife comes out, in his car and in his clothes. He was doing her one night and he says another name, then starts to cry, confesses that once in a blue moon he comes to the meat market, which could or could not be the true story. So what does she do? She shows up in fucking drag. She's asking for Monica, which one's Monica, so she can warn her off, tell her she ever does her husband again, she'll be hanging on one of those hooks, like he told her the real story in the first place, like there's a Monica out there who did her old man.” Jasmine shook her head. “So you see a john without a dick in his pants—”

“Jesus, ladies.” I covered my face.

“What?” Jasmine was looking from me to LaDonna.

“She delicate,” LaDonna said, serious as an oncologist.

“Just can it,” Jasmine said to me. “We heard you had balls, so don't go crapping out on us now when we got this funny feeling about the stroll.”

“What funny feeling?”

“That something bad's going to happen again.” LaDonna stuck two long fingers into that nest of teased, sprayed hair and scratched. “Soon.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ebony, she said she was thinking of moving over to Madison Square Park again, even Hunts Point. She got a sick sense about these things. She been saying to watch out. It don't feel right out there. Things happen in threes, she said, and there's been two murders already.”

Jasmine leaned across the table. “We gave you our whole stash,” she said. “Every dime we'd put away. It'll take me an extra year to cross now. But without you finding out who did Rosalinda, I might not be here to do it. At all. We need you, Rachel. We're counting on you.”

LaDonna flipped the lip of the pizza box closed and drank the rest of her wine as if it were water and she'd just run a marathon. Then she stood and reached for my hand. “Time to look in your closet, bitch.”

I'd had too much wine and not enough pizza. I gave her my hand, stood, and nodded. That's when the phone rang. I was going to let it go, but Dashiell picked it up, brought it over, and poked me in the leg with it.

“Hello?”

“Rachel, it's me,” he said.

“Oh, hi.”

“Why do you sound so funny? Is something wrong?”

I looked at Jasmine and LaDonna and pointed to the stairs. Start without me, I mouthed, vaguely thinking about all the stories I'd heard about transvestite hookers stealing anything they could get their hands on. I watched them take the first few steps in their high heels.

“It's difficult to say,” I said into the phone.

“You're not alone?”

“Not hardly.”

“Rachel?”

“It's just a night in with the girls, you know, nails, hair, fashion.” I reached for my glass and finished what was in it. “You know something,” I whispered into the phone, “if not for their hard-core drug addiction, really strange appearance, lack of education and experience, and dysfunctional behavior patterns, these girls could really be something.”