The Long Good Boy (17 page)

So now I had someone who resented Kevin Mulrooney, who knew Mulrooney was doing something that could get him killed, and who, from watching television, knew exactly how to do the crime. In fact, I was sure that if someone would have had a problem getting the deadweight of Kevin Mulrooney up onto one of the hooks the carcasses hung from, that person wasn't Vincent Esposito.

On top of everything else, he had lied to his hooker. Gee, on that alone he could get convicted.

Still, the cops hadn't arrested him. For all intents and purposes, he'd never been a suspect.

I'd faxed home the old manager's file, too, which I'd found in another drawer, not taking the time to read anything there but figuring it was better to have too much than too little. I wouldn't have minded poking around in Keller's in the middle of the night again. I found that sort of thing strangely exhilarating. And I got a real kick out of Clint and surely wouldn't have minded teaching him new chores, or doing a second run on the back-chaining I'd already taught him. But letting go of the roof and swinging into that small bathroom window, that I didn't want to do again, not in a million years.

I began to read Willensky's file, thinking it would be long and ordinary—address, phone number, number of dependents, when hired. But one of the first things I spotted changed my mind. Charles Willensky was forty-one years old. I'd heard of cops having their twenty years in by age forty-one, then getting another city job and double-dipping. But butchers? I didn't think so.

The file indicated that there was a Mrs. Willensky, too, a Myrna G. Willensky. And then I found something even more surprising. Just a week before retiring, Charles and his bride had moved from Queens to Greenwich Village. What was
that
all about?

So now I had four weird things to deal with. That Mulrooney came in from the outside wasn't unheard of, but it was a bit odd, considering that Vinnie had been all but promised the job. I had Willensky's sudden, early retirement and his move to a more expensive neighborhood. I had Vinnie's getting passed over for the job he was expecting.

More than ever now, I wanted to talk to Frances Mulrooney and see what she knew about her husband's career move. They must have talked about it. The only question was, would she talk to me about it?

And I thought it might also be a good idea to arrange to accidentally run into Mrs. Willensky, perhaps shopping for a standing rib roast at Ottomanelli's or buying a box of butter cookies at Balducci's.

Dashiell was on the daybed, snoring. That seemed like a good idea. But instead I wrote down names and motives, reminding myself that I was nowhere. There was surely something as smelly as a decaying rodent going on at Keller's. And knowing that, I might have been inching closer to who killed Kevin Mulrooney, and why. But I'd been hired to find out who had killed Angel Rodriguez. As far as that went, I still knew nothing at all. Except that the tranny hookers were not the only players here who weren't what they seemed to be.

I turned on the computer and went on-line, searching for information about the meat market, finding much more about Hunts Point than the Gansevoort market. Then I did another search, this time on the carting industry, getting the story behind Giuliani's self-serving statement that he'd put a stop to the mob's monopoly, finding out exactly what the law was, what it was the old-timers like CityWide were now up against, at least on paper.

When I finished reading, I picked up the faxed pages, tapped them together, and slid them back into the drawer. You never know who's going to drop by, and for now, I wanted this to be my business. But when I got up, I saw I had missed one. This one had gotten kicked under the desk. I bent and picked it up, straightening it out. Dashiell had stepped on it on his way to the bed. There were holes where his nails had punctured it, but it was only the activity report from my own fax machine, nothing important. I balled it up and lifted my arm, ready to pitch it into the wastebasket, when something occurred to me, stopping me in mid-toss.

Keller's fax machine did the same thing.

I opened the page and smoothed it flat on top of the desk.

On top, there was the date it had been received, the time it had come in, and my phone number—the phone number, that is, that connected the rest of the world to my fax machine. Below, it said, Activity Report. Then, Transmission OK. And under that, there was a list of facts and figures, the second one being the number of the connecting telephone, Keller's fax number. If anyone checked these reports at Keller's, they'd have my home phone number. From there, finding my name and address was a piece of cake.

But why would they look at it? I hardly ever checked mine. Except that I just had. For a moment I stayed there, frozen, my hand on the piece of paper, my forehead as wrinkled as Dashiell's when he knows there's something he needs to do but isn't sure quite what it is.

22

She Call Herself Peaches

Grace was standing on the corner where I was supposed to meet my clients, smoking a cigarette. Ebony was there, too, calmer than I'd ever seen her.

“Hey.”

Grace looked me up and down, a sly grin spreading her lips wide. “I see you gave up dog grooming. Or you moonlighting?”

“Got bitten once too many times. Man,
you
try taking knots out of a nasty Old English sheepdog, doing the nails of a Rottweiler who never had them cut at home, blow-drying a komondor, see how you feel about being a dog groomer. 'Sides, all that hot water was making my hands look like shit.”

“You think you been in hot water, sweetheart? You ain't seen nothing.”

She was tall and dark, her skin the color of bittersweet chocolate with a slightly blue-gray cast to it, her outfit more like something you'd wear to a rock concert than something you'd wear on the stroll, a long silky skirt, flowers on it, shiny black work boots with thick lug soles, a short leather jacket on top. Her hair was wild and loose, jet black curls going every which way. Her lipstick was nearly black, to match her nails.

“So what you goin' do,” she said, one long finger aiming at Dashiell, “two-fers?” She laughed so hard, she began to choke. Meanwhile Ebony was about as lively as the Lincoln Memorial, only by some miracle she was standing.

“Whatever,” I told her.

“Whatever is right,” Grace said.

“What's the big deal? I shake my tail, make a fortune, all cash.”

“Who tol' you that?” Despite her catatonic stupor, Ebony had been listening. When she smiled at me, I saw she had no teeth. Her dyed hair had broken off in places. Her skin was blotchy, dark in some places, nearly white in others.

“You should be on Lexington Avenue, at Hunts Point up in the Bronx, maybe waiting by the phone somewhere, you know, one of them high-class pieces of ass, does blow jobs in hotels 'stead of out here in the cold, a business girl, not a common ho.” Grace looked me up and down a second time. “Any fool can see you don't belong here. You the wrong hue, for one thing. The wrong gender, for another. You the wrong everything, wo-man.” She sent air audibly through her nose to let me know that, words aside, in her opinion I was beneath contempt.

“It's temporary. I just need enough cash to get me down to Florida.”

“You hard of hearing? She telling you—” Ebony, back from the dead again.

“What you telling her?” LaDonna, pushing me out of harm's way, my guardian angel in white leather. Some of the hookers looked really bad, especially the ones that worked on Sunday, in daylight. Dogs, every last one of them, out there for the desperate, out there as the last-chance saloon, no more gas for the next fifty miles, bridge out. They wore sneakers, for God's sake, and crappy clothes. They had bad hair, a five o'clock shadow on their sweaty upper lips, and maybe it was just the daylight, but you could see the fear shining in their eyes from two blocks away. Not LaDonna, come to save me from Grace and skinny little Ebony, neither of whom wanted more competition than they were used to, LaDonna looming over Ebony now, an Airedale menacing a Chihuahua.

“What's the problem?” I asked them both. “We're down one since Halloween. It won't kill you if there's one more
business girl
on—”

Grace pitched her cigarette into the street and glared. “What are you talking about?”

“Rosalinda is what.”

I felt barbed wire tighten on my arm, like some of the tattoos I'd seen on some of the dames along Washington Street.

“She only here for a week, two at mos'. Keep your gaffs on,” then louder, “all of you.” Then to me: “You know how it is. Someone disappear, that's okay. Someone arrive, it gets the girls in a snit, they's not going to get enough business no more, they's not going to be able to turn the men on, they's too damn ugly.”

LaDonna, nearly a foot taller than the rest of us, tossed her head, jiggled a shoulder, touched her hair. She wasn't worried. She was a beauty, and she knew it. Case closed.

“Oh,
I
get enough business no matter how many of you are around.” Grace pulled out another cigarette, but just held it. “What you know about her,” she asked, “about Rosalinda?”

“Rosalinda?”

“Yeah. Her.”

“Not much,” I said. “Don't know anything about the john got himself killed right before I left San Francisco either.”

“A john?”

“Must have been rude to one of the working girls, right?” Ebony asked. “Maybe her pimp—”

I shook my head.

“There was no pimp. Devon, he'll be the first pimp I ever give a dime to. I don't like to share, but LaDonna tells me, it's just for a week, you know, and since I'm new here, I could use the protection.”

“Yeah,” Ebony said. “Mouth like yours, you sure could.”

“What I wonder is, what's he going to protect me from, making a living?”

“He watch out for your health, girl.”

“My health? Like he did for Rosalinda?”

“You knew her?” Ebony asked.

I didn't say.

“That hers?” Grace said, pointing to my skirt. A skirt like that, you didn't see it every day of the week. It didn't surprise me that she recognized it. Again, I didn't say. I just tossed the boa across my neck so that both ends hung down in the back. It was chilly being out wearing so little. But if I thought a bunch of tired feathers would keep me warm, I could think again. How did they do this in January and February?

“'Stead of cross-examining her, you ought to be giving advice. She a sister.”

Grace laughed. “She's no sister of mine. But I do have some advice for her.” With that, she turned to face me. “Stay the hell off my corner.”

“Or what?” LaDonna asked, and I watched the two of them staring at each other, wondering which one would break eye contact first, like watching a pair of adolescent dogs, each of whom would rather be doing something else but neither one wanting to lose face.

“I know the rules,” I said. “We had rules there, too.” Giving them an out. “Don't give your real name. Don't carry ID. Don't make a statement. Don't agree to take a polygraph. Don't cooperate with the authorities under any circumstances. And don't take shit from any johns.”

“You mean they slap you or something, they dis you?” Ebony asked.

“I mean I don't plan to end up like Rosalinda.”

“Who said that was a john?” she said. “You know something?”

“Who do you think it was?” I asked her. “Her pimp? How's she going to make money for him now?”

No one had an answer. Not even LaDonna.

“John's what makes sense,” Grace said.

“You think?” Ebony said. “Then we all in grave danger.”

“Who do you think did her?”

“I'm no cop. I don't know. I mean, some of them get mean after, they won't pay you, they call you names, throw you out of the car, or they try to hurt you before they go back to their regular lives, be upstanding citizens, model husbands, take they's kids to Disneyland. But I never knew anyone who got killed before.” Ebony was shaking. “And worse thing is, I ain't got no other way to pay my rent, get what I need, you know what I mean?”

I nodded. I did know what she meant. Even cleaned up, with her strange appearance, finding employment would take a miracle. “You didn't hear anything, any rumors, anyone talk about a john who was
really
mean, someone who liked to do more than smack or punch?”

Ebony shook her head. LaDonna gripped me again. Instead of a tattoo circling my upper arm, there was going to be one mean bruise.

“It's time to go to work,” she said. She turned to go, taking me with her, Dash coming, too, all of us connected. But Ebony wasn't finished. She came trotting along behind us as we headed west.

“I did one time hear about this ho got killed, but I never met her.”

I wanted to stop, but LaDonna kept moving. “Don't listen to her. She crazy,” she told me, loud enough for Ebony to hear it, too.

“After she died,” Ebony said, rushing to keep up, “her family laid her out like a man, dressed in a suit, tie, the works, even where it wouldn't show, for God's sake, black socks, lace-up shoes. She would of died all over again in embarrassment, she knew. So when the viewing was over, three of her friends, they tell the grieving family, You go, we'll stay to make sure no one steals his silk tie, his cuff links, his ring before the coffin is closed. It's traditional, they tell the mother, for some loved ones to stay for this purpose. ‘Oh,' she says, the mother. ‘Then I'll stay. After all, he's my son.' But they tell her, ‘No, no, it always the friends what do this job. It's way too stressful for a mother to do it.' And when the family finally agrees, and they all gone, the friends do her the way she'd want to go—Dolly Parton wig, makeup, rhinestone earrings, a little halter top, paste-on titties, short skirt, fishnet panty hose, wedgies. No matter to them no one's going to see those shoes. She had this thing for wedgies, they said. She never wore no other kind of shoe. They sent her off right. That's what friends are for.”