expected of her. Her hair was black and loose on her shoulders, and there was enough of it that you could smell it. I admitted to myself that I’d picked her because I’d thought she was the prettiest. I bent down and pecked her gently on the forehead, then straightened and stared straight ahead again, thinking hard. There was a curlicued wrought- iron grille over the window by her bed, painted white. That made sense, considering. Probably there’d be one over all the girls’ windows. It didn’t surprise Estrella, my not kissing her. She probably thought I didn’t want to kiss a whore on the mouth. She patted my chest and walked off toward the sink in the corner, then turned and beckoned me over. There was no expression at all on her tiny-eyed face, not even a look of resignation. They hadn’t lied much about her age. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, and I could feel it start to build up inside me, the way it does. You heard about places like this, but you always hoped people were exaggerating. They’d come here answering want ads for dancers or domestics, and then the Yale lock would click and somebody, the pimp probably, would sit them down and tell them what they’d be doing with their days from then on. They’d be illegals, mostly, who didn’t speak much English. They wouldn’t have anyone here to worry about them. They wouldn’t be able to yell for a cop. I wondered how old Estrella would be when they let her out. I wondered what she’d be made to do between now and then. I felt my heart grinding inside me now, as if it were being squeezed through a hole too small for it, a hole with sharp edges, and my blood going, and I saw that I’d made my decision. It would make a lot of noise, and probably be kind of tough on the pimp, but none of that could be helped.
When I didn’t come over, that didn’t surprise Estella either. There’d be lots of men who didn’t think they needed to wash. She walked back to me, sank to her knees, and took hold of my belt. I picked her up and set her on her feet again.
“No,” I said. “Let me think.”
She waited. She had a deep belly button and a round dark belly. I wanted to rest my face against it. I caught myself thinking that twenty minutes wouldn’t make any difference. That she probably wouldn’t even mind. But that was the point. She ought to have been able to mind. “You don’t speak English, do you,” I said.
She was silent.
“Put your nightgown on,” I said. “Here. Sit down. Here, next to me. Listen. Some bad things are going to happen now. Some, some unpleasant things. But not to you. And when they’re done happening, you’ll be able to leave. Out.” I gestured.
She began to have a look in her eyes, one of fright. She still didn’t move.
I took her by the elbow and led her around to the far side of the bed. “Lie down,” I said, gesturing. “Down. On the floor, here. And whatever you do, whatever you hear, don’t move, don’t say anything, until I come for you. I’m going to come for you.” She didn’t like any of this a bit, but it had been a long time since she’d even thought of trying to stop what she didn’t like, and she lay down on the floor. I pulled the spread from the bed and covered her up head to toe. “Okay,” I told her.
I leaned on it a while, and then gave it a few petulant jabs, and by that time I heard heavy footsteps down the hall and the pimp saying, “Easy, easy. I hear you.”
“What the hell kind of joint is this?” I shouted querulously through the door.
“Easy, friend. Just give me a minute,” he said, putting the key in the lock.
“I want you to see something,” I snapped. “I want you to have a look at this.” The door opened and the pimp came in. His left hand held a ring of keys and right hand was up near his gun, just in case. He wasn’t entirely stupid. I gave him the edge of my forearm across his throat, then opened my hand and yanked him foreward and off balance by the back of the neck, while my left hand slipped in ahead of his right and closed on his gun. It was a big fella, and I held on as he dropped away from it. By the time he hit the floor, I’d switched it to my right hand. He tried to sit up, choking, and I leveled the barrel at his mouth.
“You make a loud noise with that,” I said, “and I’ll make a loud noise with this.”
“Don’t shoot me,” he whispered raggedly. “Don’t shoot me.”
I pressed the door closed with my rear.
“Delores has the day’s take,” he whispered rapidly. “It’s just in a pouch. The safe’s in the pantry, but I swear to God we don’t have the key. I swear to God. They send a guy with the key to transfer the money a couple times a week. Don’t shoot me.”
“Get down on all fours,” I said. “Like that. Good. Does that key open all the rooms?”
“All the girls’ rooms.”
“Same key for all of them? Show me which. Slowly.”
“This one. Don’t shoot me, I swear to God.”
“Push it closer. How many customers right now?”
“Four. You and three others. In Two, Five, and Six. Two’s downstairs.”
“Where do you get the girls?” I said.
“What?”
“Where do you get the girls? Ads for singers and cleaning ladies, like that?”
I wanted him to tell me I had it wrong, that this was a plain old cathouse.
“Sure,” he said. “Some from bars. I get a commission. Please, guy.”
“How often do the girls get to go out?” I said.
“They get supper in the kitchen and a bath down the hall twice a week.”
“I mean leave the house.”
“Jesus Christ, they don’t leave the
“What about when they get sick? Or too old?”
He didn’t say anything.
I said, “How often does Halliday come by?”
“Who the hell is Holiday?”
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, isn’t this Halliday’s joint? Whose is it, Scarpa’s?”
“He’ll kill me.”
“I’ll kill you. Is this place Scarpa’s?”
“You moron,” he said, weeping, “you crazy goddamn moron, everything in this valley is Scarpa’s. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill me.”
“No he won’t,” I said, and shot him.
I put it in his forehead. It was probably cleaner than he deserved. He rocked back and then flopped down on his face and there was a little shriek from under the bedspread, but then she was still again, like I’d told her. I put another in the back of his head for insurance and then stood there a minute, rubbing my face with my free hand and muttering, “Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.” But I’d known it was a dumb play before I pushed the buzzer. I pulled the sheet from the bed and dropped it over the pimp, so Estrella wouldn’t have to see him on her way out. I was getting goofier by the minute. “Be right back,” I said, and reached over the bed to pat the hump in the bedspread. Then I ran downstairs three steps at a time. There was a lot of hollering behind the locked doors as I went by.
Delores was standing in the middle of the living room, looking wildly up the stairs, clutching a sawed-off shotgun by the barrel and stock. When I appeared, she flung it away with a little yip and ran. I caught her at the door. “Give me your purse,” I said. She nodded enthusiastically and lunged for the door again. I hauled her back. “Purse,” I reminded her. She nodded again and lunged the other way, toward the writing table. Her dress bared her back to the coccyx, and all the skinny muscles were twitching like cut worms as she hunkered and snatched up her purse, which had been sitting by a table leg in plain sight. She held it out to me and I tossed it on the sofa.
“The day’s take,” I said. She yanked open the top drawer of the table and scrabbled inside. The money was in a long canvas wallet with a zipper, the kind bank messengers use. I tossed it next to her purse. I grabbed her by the middle, slung her over my shoulder, and headed out the door as she kicked her legs around above my head. I couldn’t tell whether she was trying to kick me or just keep from falling off. Halfway across the road I started fumbling for my car keys. It’s hard to do while you’re running, especially with a woman on your shoulder. I opened the trunk. “Hey,” she said. “Hey listen.” I dumped her inside and slammed the lid.
When I got back upstairs it was pandemonium, the doorknobs rattling, a riot of frightened or angry voices behind them. I could stop running now. The doors didn’t have to hold much longer. I went back into Estrella’s room and said “Time to go,” and she threw off the bedspread and sat up, her impassive face slick with tears. I held out my hand. She took it, stepping around the pimp’s body without looking down, and we went next door. I put the key in the lock lefty, the way the pimp had, with the gun in my right hand. Inside was a Negro girl wearing just a middy
