The Consummata

“Sir, what is your name?”

“John Smith. I’m sure you’ll find it on the register.”

I hung up.

There was nothing more that John Smith, Good Samaritan, could do for Tango now. I rubbed my handkerchief on anything else I might have touched, gave the corpse one last dirty look, then shut the light off, eased out of the room and got back out to the street.

From the south I could hear the wail of sirens over the rock ’n’ rolling partyers.

We were in Bunny’s office now. She looked damn fetching for an older broad in a gold lame halter top and matching loose pants. She was behind her desk where a .38 was serving as a paperweight on those ancient papers of her husband’s that she’d shared with me earlier.

But her face was again showing her years, as the dismay over what had happened to Tango mingled with fear generated by the events of recent days.

She said, “But why torture her, Morgan? What did they want? What did she know?”

I was seated across from her. “No idea. She was out when I got there, and still out when I split. What did the hospital say?”

Bunny sighed. “Severe concussion and suspected skull fracture. She hasn’t regained consciousness.” The madam covered her face with her hands, her shoulders limp. When she looked up her eyes were misty and tired. “She’s on the critical list.”

“Think the cops can connect her to you?”

“Maybe not right away, but they will. She’s always used the address of her family, on the north end, and all that’s left there is her father, and they won’t get anything from that drunken bum. She paid his bills and went up there a couple times a month, but all he knows is that she worked someplace in Miami. She told him she was a waitress.”

“A waitress who could pay all his bills?”

“Reprobate parents getting their bills paid by their kids, Morg, don’t ask a lot of questions.”

“Good point. Otherwise she stayed here at the Mandor?”

Her shrug was grandiose. “Where else? She has her own room, like the others. My girls are welcome to live here fulltime, if they like. Most, like Tango, have an apartment or motel room somewhere, to get away on their days off, at least.”

“Let’s see her room.”

Bunny sat and watched me, her mouth tight. “Morgan...I think it’s time to let this thing end.”

“Look...”

Her expression beseeched me. “Look at all you’ve brought on, since you got here! Two men dead. And we have a girl who may die because of it.”

“Not my doing, Bunny. And I didn’t bring anything on. It was already here.”

“You can’t deny you’ve stirred things up.”

So I dropped the bomb on her.

“Bunny—one of the two men I tangled with in her motel room? Not the one who bought the farm, but...the other one?”

“Yes?”

“He was Jaimie Halaquez.”

Her expression fell and all the blood drained from her face.

Silently, I rose, slipped off the sport jacket, draped it over the back of my chair, then I slipped off the sport shirt and turned my back to her.

Showed her the nasty welt there, a welt about the size and shape of the side of a human hand, swung as a weapon.

With my back still to her, I said, “If I hadn’t moved a fraction of a second before he struck the blow, that would have hit my neck. And I’d be on a slab next to your old pal Dickie Best.”

She said nothing. She sat staring at the sheaf of papers and the revolver playing paperweight on top of them.

In the meantime, I got back into my shirt and jacket. “I figure you have a doc on call, right?”

She frowned in confusion, then nodded.

“Well, could you call him, and get him over here to check me out, in between passing out penicillin tablets? I think maybe Halaquez busted a rib for me. I could use taping up, and some decent damn drugs.”

She swallowed, nodded, and reached for her phone.

When she hung up, she said, “Half an hour.”

“Cool. While we’re waiting, let’s go see Tango’s room.”

Tango lived in relative simplicity. Her clothes were few, if expensive, the opposite of the casual things in the dresser at the motel—these were working clothes, or in some cases, evening wear. After all, she’d been known to date Richard Best.

“She didn’t meet johns in this room,” I said.

Bunny said, “No. Each of the girls has her own living quarters, modest but her own. You’ve been in Gaita’s. There are suites designed for entertaining guests—the girls share those. Those spaces are assigned when the client and a hostess are matched up.”

That explained the simplicity of a room bare of decorations except for two bowls of artificial flowers and a few abstract paintings of the starving artist variety. The only expensive item was a 21-inch color television set nestled in one corner with a battered comfy armchair before it. Tango’s small desk held a few cancelled bills, a dictionary, and a dozen historical romances with bodice-bursting damsels and swashbuckling bare-chested heroes on the front—everybody had their fantasies, even a woman who represented other people’s fantasies.

Her irritation with me ever more obvious, Bunny said, “Well? Does it send you any messages?”

I ignored her and went to the closet again. Tango’s shoes were neatly aligned in a rack with a matching handbag above each. Out of curiosity, I took the handbags down one by one and looked in them. Each one had some odd toiletry items along with a few coins. One had a letter from an old friend sent to her home address, four months ago, full of chatter about the other girl’s marriage and children in a more normal life than Tango had managed so far. I noted the street number of Tango’s house, and put the letter back.

But the blue bag held the kicker.

In the side pocket was a worn-edged picture that I held out for Bunny to see.

Softly, she said, “My God...it’s Jaimie Halaquez.”

“I thought Tango didn’t take to men. Especially younger men.”

Bunny frowned and handed the picture back. “That photo doesn’t mean she flipped over him or anything.”

“Hell, Bunny, it’s the only photo she has.”

“So?”

“You ever notice them together? Was Halaquez a client of hers?”

“Morgan, in this business, it’s a business to be together. You know already that he was a client here. Sure, he knew her, but he liked variety too much to single any girl out. Understand, this Halaquez was a real self-styled stud.”

“And an S & M freak. Don’t leave that out.”

“Yes, and not all of the girls were willing to go down that road. So that does narrow it for you. Within reason, if the money was right? Tango was willing.”

“In other words, two to tango.”

“Very funny.”

“Maybe,” I said, thinking out loud, “she had the same kind of yen and you didn’t know about it. Some women who were abused as young girls develop their own weird kinks.”

The madam didn’t argue that point—she knew all too well how many weird sexual byways there were for human beings to go down.

“Maybe,” Bunny said, “Tango had a thing for Halaquez, at least enough to hang onto his picture.”

“Do you know if she ever saw Halaquez outside of the club?”