He fell silent again. The car's ride was hypnotically smooth. He said, 'She can go.'
'Just like that?'
'How else? I'm not a white slaver, you know.' His tone put an ironic stress on the term. 'My women stay with me out of their own will, such will as they possess. They're under no duress. You know Nietzsche? 'Women are like dogs, the more you beat them the more they love you.' But I don't beat them, Scudder. It never seems to be necessary.
How does Kim come to have you for a friend?'
'We have an acquaintance in common.'
He glanced at me. 'You were a policeman. A detective, I believe.
You left the force several years ago.
You killed a child and resigned out of guilt.'
That was close enough for me to let it pass. A stray bullet of mine had killed a young girl named Estrellita Rivera, but I don't know that it was guilt over the incident that propelled me out of the police department.
What it had done, really, was change the way the world looked to me, so that being a cop was no longer something I wanted to do. Neither was being a husband and a father and living on Long Island, and in due course I was out of work and out of the marriage and living on Fifty-seventh Street and putting in the hours at Armstrong's. The shooting unquestionably set those currents in motion, but I think I was pointed in those directions anyway and would have gotten there sooner or later.
'Now you're a sort of half-assed detective,' he went on 'She hire you?'
'More or less.'
'What's that mean?' He didn't wait for clarification. 'Nothing against you, but she wasted her money. Or my money, according to how you look at it. If she wants to end our arrangement all she has to do is tell me so. She doesn't need anyone to do her talking for her. What's she plan to do? I hope she's not going back home.'
I didn't say anything.
'I suspect she'll stay in New York. But will she stay in the life? I'm afraid it's the only trade she knows.
What else will she do? And where will she live? I provide their apartments, you know, and pay their rent and pick out their clothes.
Well, I don't suppose anyone asked Ibsen where Nora would find an apartment. I believe this is where you live, if I'm not mistaken.'
I looked out the window. We were in front of my hotel. I hadn't been paying attention.
'I assume you'll be in touch with Kim,' he said. 'If you want, you can tell her you intimidated me and sent me slinking off into the night.'
'Why would I do that?'
'So she'll think she got her money's worth from you.'
'She got her money's worth,' I said, 'and I don't care whether she knows it or not. All I'll tell her is what you've told me.'
'Really? While you're at it, you can let her know that I'll be coming to see her. Just to satisfy myself that all of this is really her idea.'
'I'll mention it.'
'And tell her she has no reason to fear me.' He sighed. 'They think they're irreplaceable. If she had any notion how easily she can be replaced she'd most likely hang herself. The buses bring them, Scudder.
Every hour of every day they stream into Port Authority ready to sell themselves. And every day a whole slew of others decide there must be a better way than waiting tables or punching a cash register. I could open an office, Scudder, and take applications, and there'd be a line halfway around the block.'
I opened the door. He said, 'I enjoyed this. Especially earlier. You have a good eye for boxing. Please tell that silly blonde whore that nobody's going to kill her.'
'I'll do that.'
'And if you need to talk to me, just call my service. I'll return your calls now that I know you.'
I got out, closed the door. He waited for an opening, made a U-turn, turned again at Eighth Avenue and headed uptown. The U-turn was illegal and he ran the light making his left turn on Eighth, but I don't suppose it worried him much. I couldn't recall the last time I'd seen a cop ticket anyone for a moving violation in the city of New York.
Sometimes you'll see five cars go on through after a light turns red.
Even the buses do it these days.
After he made his turn I took out my notebook, made an entry.
Across the street, near Polly's Cage, a man and woman were having a loud argument. 'You call yourself a man?' she demanded. He slapped her. She cursed him and he slapped her again.
Maybe he'd beat her senseless. Maybe this was a game they played five nights out of seven. Try to break up that sort of thing and as likely as not they'll both turn on you. When I was a rookie cop, my first partner would do anything to avoid interfering in a domestic argument. Once, facing down a drunken husband, he'd been assaulted from behind by the wife. The husband had knocked out four of her teeth but she leaped to his defense, breaking a bottle over her savior's head. He wound up with fifteen stitches and a concussion, and he used to run his forefinger over the scar when he told me the story. You couldn't see the scar, his hair covered it, but his finger went right to the spot.
