accusation in her tone: Why are
“I just got lucky,” I said. Hearing Ardo’s voice in my head:
“And why did you come here? Not to tell me about Joey—you didn’t even know who he was.”
“No,” I said. “I’m still trying to figure out who killed Dorrie. If it wasn’t Ardo or Miklos.”
“You think it wasn’t?”
“They say it wasn’t.”
“And you believe them?”
“They’re not shy about it when they kill people.”
“No,” she said. “They’re not shy.”
“Di, tell me the truth, was there anyone who had it in for Dorrie, anyone who didn’t like her? Any client who seemed at all, I don’t know, off or dangerous in any way?”
“That can’t be true,” I said. “You must get plenty of ordinary guys who are just bored, cheating on their wives or girlfriends.”
“Ordinary guys don’t pay two hundred dollars for a handjob,” she said, her voice cold. “We get the men who can’t get it any other way—fat ones, old ones, skin problems. We get the ones who like to make women crawl. The husbands who are too scared to hire an out-and-out hooker, so they do this instead and tell themselves it’s not really cheating. We get the men who get off on corrupting women, getting them to do things they don’t want to do. They’ll dangle extra money and see how far they can make them go. That’s the men we get. You ask me, every one of them’s just a small step away from picking up a knife and giving a girl five inches that way.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “But most of them never take that step. With Dorrie someone did. Were there any clients that gave her a hard time? Any that pressed her to do something and she said no?”
She closed her eyes. “Probably,” she said. “Nothing’s coming to mind.”
“How about regulars, people she took with her after she left. Julie told me she gave Dorrie the green light to take her clients with her. Do you know who they were?”
“I can’t help you, John,” she said. “I can’t. Not tonight. Not after what you told me.”
“I understand,” I said.
“We don’t keep records like that anyway—just first names. I’m sure there are some guys who haven’t been here since she left, but all I could tell you is ‘Steve’ or ‘Paul’—and anyway, who’s to say she’s the reason they haven’t come back? Maybe they just haven’t gotten horny again, or haven’t saved up enough money. You know?”
“Okay,” I said. And: “I’m sorry, Di. I’m really sorry.”
But she wasn’t listening. “I’m going to kill both of them,” she said, mostly to herself.
When I heard the front door swing shut and the elevator start its ponderous rise, I left the back room, drawing the door closed behind me. I met Rodeo coming out of the bathroom, wiping her hands on a paper towel.
She favored me with a conspiratorial smirk. “When that boy comes he really comes, you know what I’m saying?”
“Can’t say I do,” I said.
“Boom! One time, he shot himself in the eye, another time up the nose. Man! Least he tips well.” She balled up the paper towel, dropped it in a trash can. Shooed the cat out of the armchair and sat down. “How’s Di?”
“Like you’d expect,” I said. “Taking it hard.”
“Yeah, poor woman, losin’ her man like that.”
She didn’t sound too broken up about the whole thing.
“Tell me about Cassie,” I said. “Did you know her well?”
“Know her? We was like sisters.”
“Did she ever talk to you about the place she worked before coming here?”
“She didn’t need to talk to me about it—that’s where we met, at Mama Jay’s. On 51st.”
“That the same as Spellbound?”
She nodded. “Spellbound’s its real name. Mama’s just what we called it. ’Cause of the woman runs it. Ran it, I should say.”
“Ran it?”
“Yeah, she’s retired now. She was kind of forced out. Three stick-ups in one month, you know it’s not an accident. Way I heard it, first two times, they just took money, but the third time, they beat her up bad. Someone wanted her to get out of the business and eventually she said, okay, I’m gettin’.”
“Any idea who did it to her?” Although I figured I already knew the answer.
“No one was ever caught,” she said.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No, I guess it’s not,” she said.
The cat leaped up into her lap. She stroked its fur.
“All right,” I said. “Do you know who runs Spellbound now?”
“I know what people say.”
“What’s that?”
“The man,” she said. “Same one you say did Di’s boyfriend.”
“Ardo?”
She shrugged and went on stroking.
“You seem pretty casual about the whole thing.”
No reply.
“Julie’s in the hospital, Joey’s dead—you aren’t concerned he might come after you?”
“Me?” She shook her head, rocked back and forth a little in her seat. “I don’t bother nobody. Just do my job. I’ll work for whoever pays me. I don’t care if he’s white, black, Hungarian, whatever. You show me the green, I’ll show you the pink.” And she smiled. For all her cocky cynicism, it was an open, hopeful, guileless smile, a smile that held no sign yet of wear or weariness, of disappointment or disaster. That would come. If she stayed at the game long enough, it would all come. But she was a tough little thing and, by god, she had the world by the balls for now.
“Any idea how I could find Mama Jay?” I said.
“Only if you want to fly to Brazil,” she said. “She went home.”
“Do you think there’s anyone still working at Spellbound who’d remember Cassie?”
She thought for a moment. “Maybe Sharon. She’s been there forever.”
Meaning, I figured, two, three years.
“You know the phone number?”
She rattled it off. I repeated it to myself a few times to commit it to memory.
“Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“You sure you don’t wanna stay here? If the cops are lookin’ for you...”
“If the cops are looking for me,” I said, “this could be one of the places they look. I’ve got to keep moving.”
“Too bad,” she said, giving me that smile again. “I’d’a let you pet my pussy.” And she lifted the cat out of her lap like a baby, one hand under each foreleg, and wagged it at me, side to side, and laughed and laughed.
I was dead on my feet. How long had it been since I’d had any real rest? I couldn’t even remember. My skin was tender where Di had sprayed me, my chin was covered with two days’ growth of beard, my eyes were aching just from being open too many hours in a row, and my wrists and chest still hurt. I found a payphone—the same one I’d used the first time I’d visited Sunset, I realized—and dialed the number Rodeo had given me, but I was relieved when the woman who picked up said that Sharon wasn’t working tonight.
“She’ll be in tomorrow, starting at one,” she said. “You want to make an appointment now or call
