man in a safari jacket, talked for a moment, took a cigarette and moved along toward 44th Street smoking. At the corner of 44th Street he spoke with two women, both in miniskirts and boots, one of them wearing a squirrel jacket, the other coatless, wearing a scoop-neck sequined blouse. One woman was white, the other oriental. He took the hand of the oriental girl and held it for a minute. I saw her face tighten in pain and realized he was squeezing it. Then he dropped her hand and smiled and kissed each of them on the cheek and drifted on up Broadway. Rambeaux was the home office. He was making a field inspection.
At 50th Street, Rambeaux crossed and worked that side of Broadway back toward 42nd. He smoked several cigarettes. He talked with whores, occasionally spoke with a colleague. As the evening cooled he slipped on his black trench coat, cut fashionably large, with a belt around the waist. There were fastfood joints and I was in danger of malnutritive hallucinations, but anything cooked in Times Square would probably give you rabies.
By ten I knew what I needed to know. Rambeaux was a pimp and he had a string of streetwalkers. Who the young ladies were he'd dined with uptown was not yet clear. But I knew what was happening here. I revisited two or three of the girls on my own and made sure I'd recognize them. Then I walked over to Sixth Avenue and caught a cab up to 77th Street and retrieved my car. The Hertz Corp. had gotten a ticket. Serves them right, parking on a hydrant. I put the ticket in the glove compartment and returned the car and went to the St. Regis with visions of the room service menu dancing in my head.
6
Times Square at eight-fifteen in the morning is as sleazy as it is at night. And as busy. The whores were out getting an early start on the daily quota. Several winos had managed to get drunk already. Everywhere the industrious among us were up and at it. Me too. I was talking with the youngish whore in the black miniskirt and white mesh stockings I'd seen talking last night to Rambeaux.
'What are you interested in?' she said.
'Baseball, English landscape paintings, beer. How 'bout yourself?'
She shook her head. She was tired and even my lyrical wit didn't seem to brighten her face.
'You want action or not?' she said.
'I want to buy you breakfast and talk with you,' I said.
She shrugged. 'It's an hourly rate,' she said. 'What you do with your time is up to you.'
'Okay,' I said, and paid her. 'Now you're mine until nine twenty-five.'
'Sure thing, sugar. Where we going?'
'How about the HoJo,' I said. 'Across the square.'
'Sure.'
We crossed Broadway and Seventh where they intersect and walked up to the Howard Johnson's and sat. in a booth. I had black coffee. She had scrambled eggs and sausage patties, two strips of bacon, and home fries, buttered toast, and a Coke.
'Take care of any cholesterol deficiency you might be suffering,' I said.
'Sure,' she said. 'What you want to talk about?'
'What's your name?' I said.
'Ginger.' She used a toast triangle to push some scrambled eggs onto her fork.
'How long you been hooking, Ginger?' She shrugged while she swallowed her eggs. 'Long time,' she said.
'Always with Rambeaux?'
She stopped eating and stared at me. 'You know him?'
'Sure,' I said.
'You and him ain't friends,' she said.
'True, but I know him.'
'You a cop?'
'No.'
'The hell you ain't,' Ginger said.
'I'm not a cop. I'm not going to arrest anybody. I'm looking for information.'
'You're a fucking cop,' Ginger said. 'You think I don't know a cop.'
She ate some more of her scrambled eggs. It didn't bother her a hell of a lot if I was a cop. Cops were just another itch to scratch. If I busted her, the pimp would bail her out and she'd be back at work tomorrow.
'You want to shake Robert down?' Ginger said.
'No. I want to find out a little about him.'
'How come?' She finished her eggs and sausage, and was nibbling a limp bacon slice in her fingers.
'Girl I know is in love with him. I want to see if he's reliable.'
Ginger put down her bacon slice and wiped her fingers on a napkin. She sat back in the booth and stared at me.
'Reliable?'
'Yeah,' I said, 'reliable.'
