The Long Good Boy (16 page)

LaDonna feigned great disappointment, motioned for him to put the box down, said she'd “think on it,” then asked for the ladies' room, and disappeared while I tried on the shoes of my choice, teetering toward the mirror, then back to my place.

When LaDonna returned, she tried on the green shoes, holding up one huge foot at a time, then walking over to the mirror to have another look. I looked at the side of the box. The green lizard shoes were going for six-fifty. I tried to get LaDonna's attention, tell her what the shoes cost, but she was studying her feet in the mirror, a very focused shopper.

She called the clerk with another hand gesture, palm in, four fingers vibrating. “They pinch my little toe,” she said, motioning for me to put my sneakers back on. Then she led me back to where I'd been earlier, the rear of the store, where all the clothes looked so tiny, they might have been for Barbie dolls.

LaDonna proceeded to take things off the racks, hold them up against me, cock her head, click her tongue, and put them back. After about fifteen minutes, she said it was time to go. Since I hadn't argued with her before, I decided not to now and docilely followed her out the front door.

“So what'd she say?” she asked. “Mrs. Mulcahey.”

“Mulrooney.”

“Whatever.”

“Not much. It was just a first meeting.”

“You hoping for a second?”

“There'll definitely be a second.”

She nodded thoughtfully, glad to see I was doing my job.

“So what was this all about?” I asked.

“You'll see. We supposed to wait for the others across from the Gay and Lesbian Center. Come on.”

“What others? Were they in there?”

LaDonna shook her head. “You aks too many questions,” she said. “Always did. Probably always will. I guess it's a good thing, too, considering your line of work. So, you going to ask this Mulrooney's wife what she knows?”

I nodded.

“She won't know nothin'.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Beg pardon?”

“What makes—”

“She a wife, right?”

I nodded. “Well, a widow now.”

“Same difference. They never know nothin'. They dependent on a man, makes them stupid. They invested in seeing nothin', hearing nothin', saying nothin', like the monkeys.”

Was she talking about husbands and wives, or hookers and pimps?

“But you go aks your questions, it makes you happy. What about the johns? You'll aks them questions, too?”

This time I didn't nod. We were walking along Washington Street, too late for the meat markets, too early for the hookers. It was called a twenty-four-hour neighborhood, but it was actually only about a twenty-two-hour one, unless you counted Hogs and Heifers, the motorcycle bar. I didn't ever remember seeing that closed, even though I was sure it did.

Did LaDonna, Chi Chi, and Jasmine really expect to tart me up and have me out here pretending to be a hooker? Working in the hosiery department at Saks was one thing. This was quite another.

LaDonna began to count on her fingers as we turned onto Thirteenth Street.

“One, to start out, you say, ‘Going out?'” She looked at me. “‘Going out?' You got that?”

“Going out?”

“Right. Only more, what do you call it?”

“Sexy?”

“No. Your clothes take care of that. Your location takes care of that. That's why they come here.”

“Blatant?”

“Wiseass.”

“Suggestive?”

“That's the one. Some of them say, ‘Do you want a date?'”

I repeated that, too. LaDonna smiled.

“'Course, you could say, ‘Like a blow job or something?' instead. More to the point. But you're probably too delicate a person for that one.”

My mother rolled over in her grave. In fact, my whole family, all the way back to the Garden of Eden, did.

“Two, the prices. You gonna be aksed. You gotta know.”

I nodded.

“You say, ‘It's forty for a blow job.' Got it?”

“Look, you said I wouldn't actually—”

“You gotta look real. You gotta sound real. You don't gotta do real. I'll take care of that part. Can I go on now?”

“Please do.”

“Forty for a blow job, but late in the night, you got to be willing to bargain. Too high's no good. But don't go too low. That's no good either. Some of 'em, no matter what you aks, they's going to drive away. They's just looking. Or they gets scared. Or they don't like your type, they want darker, bigger, hairier, whatever.”

I nodded.

“A straight fuck, aks fifty. Half-and-half, that's seventy.”

“Whoa. A straight fuck? Half-and-half?”

“I figured, in case you change you mind.” She patted her hair. “Things we can't do, you can. You can make hundreds in one night.”

“Yeah? And how much do I get to keep?”

“I didn't say you wouldn't incur no expenses, did I?”

“No. You certainly didn't.”

“No need to get your tits in a knot. You got expenses being an investigator, don' you, advertising, wardrobe, ve-hicles?”

“Yeah, right. So what expenses do I have here? Gotta know what to put down on my Schedule C.”

“You out there, we going to have to give a little something to Devon.”

“But I won't be making anything.”

“You wanna tell Devon that?”

“Does everyone have a pimp?”

LaDonna shook her head. “You could come out on your own. Some do.”

“But you don't?”

No answer.

“It's just a temporary thing, you being out there. Jasmine, she told Devon you from San Francisco, you on the run, something to do with some john, find himself dead. She told him you probably won't stay, you saving up now to go to Miami, you hate the cold, but you don't want no trouble while you're here, you'll pay him to take care of you for the time being. That's what she arranged.”

“And where is this money coming from?”

“Not your problem.”

“So why'd you even tell me?”

“Because he come, I want you to turn your back, like you don't want to be seen. You promise money, he'll respect that. You don't, or you stare at his face, look him in the eye, he beat the shit out of you.”

“For taking up business on his turf?”

“For dissing him, girl. The way Chi Chi did, letting you take her dog without going and aksing him first could her dog be groomed by a professional.”

I looked at LaDonna, who was looking straight ahead, her chin slightly up, a trickle of sweat sliding down her cheek. When we got to Greenwich Street, she grabbed my hand and began to run across the street, dragging me along with her.

Jasmine was lighting a cigarette. Chi Chi had just put Clint down to let him pee. They each had a shopping bag, but not from Jeffrey. Chi Chi had one of those plain brown bags with a handle. Jasmine's bag was from D'Agostino's.

“You ready?” Jasmine asked me. She handed me the shopping bag. Chi Chi picked Clint up and motioned for me to take her bag, too. Her mouth was yellow now, and her eye was still very swollen.

“There's makeup, shoes, everything,” Jasmine said. “We meet you here tomorrow night, nine o'clock, see what you can find out. I spoke to Devon. We cool.”

“Yeah. That's what LaDonna told me.”

“Okay. We'll watch out for you, but LaDonna, she'll be right with you, like you're going to do a two-fer. She might do the talking, but you might have to say something, too.”

“Might be better, her mouth, I say she don't speak English,” LaDonna said. “At least the first night.”

“Whatever.” Jasmine drew in hard on her cigarette, blew the smoke down toward her plastic, see-through, high-heeled mules. “Word is, someone in the life knows something, so you talk to the other girls, too. But be careful. Some of them are real weird.”

“Weirder than us,” LaDonna said, punching me in the arm and nearly knocking me over. “She'd be something, wouldn't she?” she said to Jasmine. “Good thing she's not going blond, or one of the others kill her for sure.”

“I do okay,” Jasmine said, “she don't scare me.”

It went on like that for a while, the two of them talking about me as if I were across the street instead of inches away. I stayed, my mouth shut, watching and listening, thinking that if I did open my mouth, that's what I should sound like, voice deep, pride deeper, and eyes sad as hell. I remembered something my t'ai chi teacher used to say when someone was puff-puffing, all ego and nothing real. The bigger the front, the bigger the back. He might as well have been talking about the stroll.

I opened the D'Agostino's bag and looked in. There was a kelly green leather miniskirt, a feather boa that might have been white at one time, and what must have been a halter top, what there was of it.

“From Jeffrey?”

“From Rosalinda,” Chi Chi said, the first words she'd spoken since I got here. “She was about your size. Except for her feet.”

Everything got quiet for a moment, even the traffic. Or maybe it only seemed that way. I opened the other bag. Red platform shoes, the ones I'd tried on at Jeffrey. Then Chi Chi held out her hand and slipped something into mine. “Tape it to your hip,” she whispered, “because you never know, you might need it sometime.”

I could feel it through the tissue paper she'd wrapped it in.

“Look,” Jasmine said. “She's so moved she's going to cry. Do it now, you going to do it. You do it tomorrow, your mascara's going to run, ruin that boa. She had three. That one was her favorite. She said it brought her luck.”

“We got to go to work now,” LaDonna said. Chi Chi looked up but said nothing. Jasmine wiggled her fingers at me.

“Okay, then I'll see you here at nine,” I said, turning away from them, the razor blade still in my hand, suddenly aching to be with Dashiell. I missed him so desperately I thought my knees would buckle when I tried to walk. But I didn't walk away, not just yet. “I'm bringing Dash,” I said, spinning back around. “That's not up for discussion.”

Jasmine shrugged. “Whatever gets you through the night, honey. Same as for the rest of us.”

She took a last puff on her cigarette and flicked it far out into the street, the sparks flying up and out, bright in the dark night, then disappearing. When I turned away again, I saw Devon headed our way. Head down, I crossed the street, and as soon as I'd passed the building line, I began to run and didn't stop until I was unlocking the gate, Dashiell's barks coming at me from inside the cottage, making me feel human again.

20

I See You Got My Message, He Said

I was standing in front of the full-length mirror dressed as a hooker when I heard the key in my front door. I teetered over to the top of the stairs, heard the refrigerator open, a soda can pop, the latch on the door lock, and there he was. He stopped as soon as he turned the bend of the staircase, as soon as he could see me standing taller than usual in my ankle-strap platform shoes with matching sheer red stockings, a kelly green miniskirt that covered some of my ass and wasn't exactly leather, as I'd thought at first glance, but some sort of leatherette, and my wowsa halter top, designed to make the most of cleavage. Rosalinda must have been on hormones. No way you could wear this top with a faux bosom. The boa was casually draped around my shoulders, devil-may-care style, hanging down to my knees. But it was probably the makeup that surprised Chip most, the false eyelashes, the green eye shadow, the glitter along my cheekbones, lipstick to match my shoes.

“Hi,” I said, the mistress of understatement.

“I see you got my message,” he said.

“What message?”

Dashiell went down the stairs, nearly knocking Chip over to get to Betty. Better late than never. Chip stayed where he was, shaking his head from side to side. “You look—”

“The outfit belonged to Rosalinda.”

He screwed up his face.

“Angel Rodriguez.”

“Ah. Then they're right,” he said. “Clothes make the man.”

I nodded. “The shoes are new.” I held up one foot, holding on to the wall as I did. “Shoplifted from Jeffrey.”

“You didn't.”

“Right. They did. But knowing that, I'm sure I'm guilty of something.”

He came up to the second floor, took my hand, and twirled me around.

“I have good news.” I patted my hair, which I'd piled high on top of my head, the way LaDonna wore hers, wispy tendrils falling down along my forehead and cheeks as graceful as shoots of wisteria, a rhinestone comb on each side. “I got a job at Saks, part-time, through Christmas.”

“Hence the outfit.”

“I'm not supposed to say that.”

“What?”

“Hence.”

He looked puzzled.

“Mulrooney's wife works there. At Saks.”

Nothing. He was simply staring.

“Tomorrow I get a couple of hours of training and my own locker. So I'll be really busy while you're in California. When do you leave?”

“You know something—” he said.

“What?”

“I could learn to like this.”

“What?”

“You dressing up for me.”

He swept me up in his arms and carried me to the bedroom.

“You forgot to ask how much,” I said as he was unzipping my green plastic skirt.

“Be quiet, Rachel. This isn't the best time for conversation.”

21

Dashiell Was on the Daybed, Snoring

When Chip fell asleep, I slipped out of bed, put on his sweater, and went into my office. Dashiell came with me, sailing over Betty, who was asleep on the saddle of the bedroom door.

Sitting at my desk, I opened the top drawer and pulled out the pages I'd faxed home, starting with what was on top, the ones from Vinnie Esposito's file. He lived in the Bronx, he was married, and he had one child. He'd worked for Keller's for four and a half years, and according to notes in the file, there had been three discussions about his desire to manage either this or the plant at Hunts Point. I couldn't be sure, because the notes were semi-cryptic, but it seemed that Vinnie had every reason to expect that when the previous manager, Charles Willensky, retired, he would be the new manager. Instead, Kevin Mulrooney was brought in from Hunts Point, but not from their own plant.