'Do you have a client in this affair?' Patricia said.
'No, I'm on spec,' I said.
'That was the same fee you got last time you were involved with April.'
I ate some veal. 'Yum yum,' I said.
'Still sentimental,' Patricia said. 'I thought age might have toughened you up a little.'
'You called me,' I said.
She smiled again. 'And how will you proceed?' she said. She hadn't touched her second drink.
'I'll see her, reason with her. When that doesn't work I'll improvise. You going to drink that drink?'
'No,' she said. 'Are you going to remind me of starving children somewhere?'
'Nope, I was going to warn you about scurvy.'
She took the margarita and put it in front of me.
'Save yourself,' she said.
I took a sip. It went surprisingly well with the veal. On the other hand, the fourth margarita goes surprisingly well with everything.
'She left you with no explanation,' I said.
'That's right. Simply disappeared. Her room was cleaned out and she was gone. But no note, no phone call, no good-bye. When I called you I had no idea where she was.'
'Why would she leave you and go to another, ah, service? Money?'
'I don't think so. I think she was seduced.'
'Patricia,' I said, 'I don't wish to be coarse, but she's a whore. She's been a whore since she was sixteen.'
'And now she's twenty,' Patricia said, 'and she's still a whore. But whores do what they do for a lot of reasons, and I think April is in love with somebody that has her working there.'
'A pimp?'
Patricia Utley shrugged. 'Sure,' she said, 'for lack of a better word. My guess is that he's really more of a recruiter.'
'Like for G.E. or Indiana U?'
'Yes. It's done. You find that you don't have a particular kind of girl in your stable, you shop around or you get hold of someone who'll shop around, and he finds what you need: blond Miss America, exotic Latin, somebody who looks like Sophie Tucker, and he recruits her for you.'
'Always he?'
'No, a lot of recruiting is done in lesbian bars. But in this case it's a he.'
'What determines what kind of woman you want in your stable?' I said. 'Customer demand?'
'Yes,' Patricia said.
'Do you recruit?'
'No. I don't need to. My whores come because they've heard about my operation and because they want to work for me. Except the ones that are sent me by detectives from Boston.'
The waitress cleared our dishes. We ordered cheesecake for dessert. Patricia Utley ordered coffee. Not me. No point screwing up four margaritas.
'You were the best I could do,' I said. 'All the other options she had were worse.'
Patricia Utley smiled. 'Thanks,' she said. The waitress came with the cheesecake. Mine had cherries on it. I remained calm. Normally cherry cheesecake makes my nostrils flare dramatically. I took a small, dignified bite. Control.
'Being someone's whore is not an ideal option for anyone,' I said. 'I notice for instance that you're not. But ideal options aren't something I have much to do with. Most of the time I'm shuttling between bad and worse.'
'With me she has choice,' Patricia said. 'No one is coerced with me.'
'At least not by you. The world probably coerces them some.'
'I can't help that,' Patricia Utley said.
'Me either,' I said. I had another bite of cherry cheesecake.
'But you keep trying,' she said.
'Else what's a heaven for,' I said.
'And falling short.'
I shrugged. The discussion was distracting me from the cheesecake.
'But you keep doing it,' she said.
'April Kyle got a better deal out of life than she would have if I hadn't been around,' I said. 'I got her choices.
