The Long Good Boy (22 page)

I took a breath, redolent of hot roasted sugarcoated peanuts and regular unleaded. “It's an extensive piece,” I told her, grimacing. If I wasn't convincing myself, how could I be convincing Myrna Willensky?

“Retired?” News to her. Maybe she never read the paper. Maybe Mr. W. never talked to her. Maybe he did read the paper, over breakfast and again after work. “No, no,” she told me, “he's managing a plant at Hunts Point now. He doesn't get home until seven.”

“But the paper said—”

“Oh.” Pause. “They make mistakes,” she said. Then neither of us said anything for long enough for me to cross the street in the tight, moving crowd going uptown and downtown, everyone anxious to get out of Midtown as fast as they could. “If you leave me your number, I can have him call you.”

“I don't understand,” I repeated, hoping for more.

“There are problems in the Hunts Point plant. They brought him in to straighten things out. Once he does, he'll be back at the Greenwich Village plant. That'll be nice, too, because then he can walk to work. Now he's got a long subway ride both ways, unless one of the men who drives in from Brooklyn gives him a ride. So, do you want him to call you, or do you want to try him later?”

I picked a number off a passing taxi, replacing the final zero with a seven so that it would sound more like a home number. “He can call anytime,” I said. “Day or night.”

Why was I surprised? Since Mulrooney was there undercover, of course the story was released as if the old manager had retired and he'd replaced him. Had Mulrooney not gotten murdered, there would have been no story at all. In fact, Willensky had probably gone right to Hunts Point without missing a day's work. And would be back as soon as the undercover gig was over. Which meant that Timothy McCoy, despite the long résumé in his file saying otherwise, was also an undercover cop. And Vinnie had a long wait if he wanted to become manager.

I was passing a little boutique in the high twenties, a junktique actually, and they had an amazing outfit in the window, sort of a skintight strapless coverall, in a bright fuchsia spandex. If I wore it with Jasmine's sweater, I might actually be able to go outside without having my teeth rattle. I went inside, tried it on, and bought it. At the rate I was going solving this case, I'd get plenty of wear out of it.

Back on Fifth Avenue, passing the dog run at Madison Square Park, I stopped for a moment to watch a dalmatian bitch showing her teeth to an amorous cairn terrier, then continued on downtown. If it wasn't about the corruption in the carting industry, and it wasn't about the genetically altered meat, what was it about?

I thought that Mulrooney was offed because he switched carters, and that most likely, Rosalinda saw the crime. But that didn't work. Because if Rosalinda had been there, then the pig man had been there, and he, Vinnie, was still very much alive.

What if it was the other way around? What if it was Mulrooney who was the witness to a crime, not Rosalinda? Or what if they both were, which would make Vinnie the doer?

And suddenly I knew what made the cops so interested in Keller's market. It had been around me all along, because it was always part of the commercial sex scene, and because long before Jeffrey arrived with six-hundred-and-fifty-dollar shoes, long before Lotus was getting hundreds of calls a day for reservations, long before the art galleries, bakeries, and furniture shops moved in, the West Village belonged to sex clubs and hookers—and where there are sex clubs and hookers, you can take it to the bank, there are drugs. But to find out for sure that I was right, I'd have to get back into Keller's when it was closed.

I thought about sending Clint on his run again, about waiting for the almost imperceptible click that would let me know the latch was open, the woof that followed it, his announcement he'd done the job. Then I thought about swinging off the roof and dropping, hoping the hinges would stay in the old wood. I thought about the window creaking under my weight. I thought, No way, not this girl. Once was enough for that sort of thing. There had to be an easier way.

Dying for Dashiell's company, I stuck out my arm for a cab, remembered it was rush hour, and head down, lost in thought, I continued walking until I was all the way home.

28

Better Safe Than Sorry, I Told Her

At nine that night, wearing my new fuchsia cat suit and Jasmine's sweater, Dashiell in tow, I headed for the stroll. Always priding myself on my ability to be an innovator, I wore ballet shoes instead of the pair the girls got for me. For one thing, the red clashed badly with the fuchsia. Even more important, they made noise. Lots of it. And they were as difficult to walk in as they looked. I wasn't planning on swinging off Keller's roof. But I was planning on spending some time there, and on not clattering around and getting caught. For one thing, I was sure the gun I had taken had already been replaced, and that no way would it be in the drawer when I showed up again.

Two of the girls were in the usual spot on Hudson Street, waiting for something. They always seemed to behave that way, living in the later instead of the now. Considering their now, I couldn't say I blamed them either. Especially that night, because as I approached, I saw that Devon was there, too.

LaDonna was talking too loud, gesturing with a cigarette in her hand. As I crossed the street, I saw him slap her with the back of his hand, his ring leaving a bloody gash on her face.

“Any other complaints?” he said, looking at her, turning toward Chi Chi, and then staring at me as I stepped up onto the curb. “And what the hell is that all about?” He was pointing to Dashiell.

LaDonna, with blood trickling down her cheek, stepped between Devon and me.

“It's her signature,” she said. “You remember you tol' us what a good thing that was, that the johns look for something that makes us stand out, how you always want the family to be special 'cause it pays off?” She slapped one big palm with her other, perhaps Devon's way of telling the girls to stop with the excuses and fork over the cash. He was a man of few words, that Devon, a man of action.

“Well, so far I haven't
seen
anything special coming from this particular lady and this particular sig-na-ture.” He drew out the word, enunciating one syllable at a time.

I kept my eyes down, as I'd been instructed to do, but Dashiell didn't. I could feel the tension in the leash.

“I gave you everything, from her and me, last night and the night before. It's been slow.”

“Don't you lie to me, bitch.” He lifted his hand but didn't strike. He was too busy looking at Dashiell. “The johns let him in the car?” he asked me.

I nodded without looking up.

“I aksed you a question.”

“So far, they do.”

“Yeah? This I gotta see.” With that, he turned to leave. “
Two
fucking dogs I got to deal with now. I'm a regular Saint Francis of whatchmacallit.”

“He be watching you tonight,” Chi Chi said. She'd been standing back, not saying a word, trying to keep herself and her dog out of harm's way.

“Fine,” I told her, glancing at LaDonna's cheek, the sweat mixing in with the blood. I reached into my bag and pulled out a tissue, handing it to her.

“What you carry in there, a whole pharmacy?”

I shrugged. “Condoms.”

“Condoms? What you need condoms, you just sit and talk to them?”

“Better safe than sorry,” I told her. “Hadn't we better get to work, if Devon's going to be watching?”

“He always watching,” Chi Chi said. “He watching and he counting. He don't miss a trick.”

Walking over to Washington, I heard the click of high heels behind me and turned to see Jasmine, ebullient in the lucky boa, her hair in ringlets. “Couldn't get a train,” she said, and for the first time I thought of something I'd never contemplated, how the girls got here from home. But just as suddenly, it became something I didn't want to dwell on. Didn't I walk out of my house all tarted up, mincing my way through the neighborhood hoping like hell no one I knew would see me, or that no one who saw me was on the prowl, looking for a tranny to beat up, preferably one my size and not LaDonna's? Of course, I didn't think I looked male, any more than Dashiell looked female. But this outfit in this neighborhood could mean only one thing, and most people didn't look that closely, especially when they were looking at what they presumed to be a hooker.

I walked closer to Chi Chi. “I need you to see Vinnie tonight.”

“You jus' tol' me
not
to see Vinnie. You tol' me you made him real mad at you, now you want me to go in there and take the heat.”

“I need to get in there again. If we both go in, I can check things out while you distract Vinnie, calm him down, you know? I'll be right there, just in case you get into trouble, okay?”

When I looked up, Jasmine was practically on top of me. “I see you like the sweater as much as I like this,” she said, twirling the ends of the boa. “Want to make it a permanent trade?”

“Sure,” I told her. “Whatever makes you happy.” The sweater was a lot warmer, and besides, the boa made me sneeze.

“You look great tonight. Where'd you get that?” She was touching my hip, admiring the cat suit. I told her where it came from and how much it cost.

“I might get me one of those, too,” she said. She checked out my earrings, sparkly rhinestone fans I used to let my niece play dress-up with when she was little. Then she ran her fingers over the matching rhinestone bracelets, two, the whole set under twenty dollars at a street fair years ago, bargains everywhere. I took off one of the bracelets and gave it to her. She snapped it onto her wrist, as happy as a kid at Christmas. Last, she looked at my shoes. “Are those real?” she asked.

I stuck one leg forward and twirled my ankle around. “Yeah.”

“You a ballerina now, too, in addition to being a dog groomer, a detective, and a ho?”

“Yeah. I'm a person of many talents. There's no end to my abilities.” I smiled. She didn't. Jasmine, the joker, was dead serious.

“As soon as the case is over, you can have everything, your sweater, the boa, the green skirt, the cat suit, the ballet shoes—”

“Keep the shoes, honey. They wouldn't cover my big toe. But I'll take the rest. Unless you want to save any of it, for when your boyfriend comes over.”

“Oh, he prefers a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar and a plaid skirt, knee socks, oxfords, that look.”

Jasmine shrugged. “Doesn't surprise me. Takes all kinds.”

And then we were there, at work, and LaDonna was smearing a tube of makeup over the cut. She asked if I was still going it alone, and I told her I was. We spread out in front of the pig mural, and LaDonna began to dance around. I looked down the block and saw a car coming, its windows tinted dark. LaDonna danced up to the curb. She had to make some real money tonight, give it all to Devon, or she'd have much worse than a cut on her face. She knew it, and so did the rest of us, hanging back and letting her take the first trick.

The window on our side rolled slowly down. “How much for two of you to do the two of us?” the passenger said, the driver leaning forward to have a look-see.

“No problem. I do you both,” LaDonna said, opening the passenger door, motioning with her thumb for the man who spoke to get out, get into the backseat so that she could slide into the front one. “My legs way too long for me to sit in the back,” she said. “And not to worry, gentlemen, I'm enough woman for the both of youse. I do you both at the same time,” she told them. I could still hear her laughing as the car pulled away, LaDonna doing verbal foreplay, a full-service hooker if ever there was one.

I got into the next car. I don't know if the shlump behind the wheel didn't notice Dashiell or if he thought it was a kinky idea, that Dashiell would do something, too, that he'd get double his money's worth. In this world, anything was possible.

He was short and small, with weird little hands that clutched the wheel and made me think of a hamster on a treadmill. He took furtive peeks at me while he drove south on Washington, turning left on Horatio when I told him to. When I gave him my spiel, a whistling noise came out of his mouth, but no words, no excuses. He didn't promise anything. He didn't tell me it was his first time. And when I asked for my fee, because I wanted to have something to give LaDonna, to cover my share, he didn't argue at all. In fact, I'd asked for forty and he gave me fifty. I took his picture before getting out. That's when he came to life, reaching for the camera, letting go when Dashiell reached for his arm. One down, I thought, checking my new Timex, nine to go.

I gave all the money I'd earned on Horatio Street to LaDonna before heading around the corner to meet Chi Chi in the courtyard of Keller's as planned. She was already there, shifting from foot to foot, chewing on her cuticles.

“You sure this is a good idea?”

“Chi Chi, I can't figure this out for you without taking some risks.”

“But you risking
me
this time.”

“I know. But you're at risk anyway, until we find out who killed Rosalinda.”

“You right about that. You always right. Leastways, I hope you're always right, because I got a bad feeling about doing this tonight.” Chi Chi was shaking. Maybe she was right. Maybe I shouldn't have been asking her to do this. I looked up at the roof, thinking of the other way I'd gotten in there. I'd have more time that way, if the window held a second time.

“I'll be downstairs. Just holler if you need me and Dashiell.”

Chi Chi nodded, and together we approached the door, the padlock locked to one handle now, letting us know that Vinnie was there.

But he hadn't asked Chi Chi to come. Was there some other reason Vincent Esposito, the model employee, had arrived an hour and a half before he was due at work?