“Y’all have fun now,” Ricky said, falling into a redneck accent. He’d decided that Iowa was probably somewhere in the South.
Detective Robert Schaeffer could’ve been the host on one of those Fox or A&E cop shows. He was tall, silver-haired, good-looking, maybe a bit long in the face. He’d been an NYPD detective for nearly twenty years.
Schaeffer and his partner were walking down a filthy hallway that stank of sweat and Lysol. The partner pointed to a door, whispering, “That’s it.” He pulled out what looked like an electronic stethoscope and played the sensor over the scabby wood.
“Hear anything?” Schaeffer asked, also in a soft voice.
Joey Bernbaum, the partner, nodded slowly, holding up a finger. Meaning wait.
And then a nod. “Go.”
Schaeffer pulled a master key out of his pocket, and drawing his gun, unlocked the door then pushed inside.
“Police! Nobody move!”
Bernbaum followed, his own automatic in hand.
The faces of the two people inside registered identical expressions of shock at the abrupt entry, though it was only in the face of the pudgy middle-aged white man, sitting shirtless on the bed, that the shock turned instantly to horror and dismay. He had a Marine Corps tattoo on his fat upper arm and had probably been pretty tough in his day but now his narrow, pale shoulders slumped and he looked like he was going to cry. “No, no, no…”
“Oh, fuck,” Darla said.
“Stay right where you are, sweetheart. Be quiet.”
“How the fuck you find me? That little prick downstair at the desk, he dime me? I know it. I’ma pee on that boy next time I see him. I’ma—”
“You’re not going to do anything but shut up,” Bernbaum snapped. In a ghetto accent he added a sarcastic, “Yo, got that, girlfriend?”
“Man oh man.” Darla tried to wither him with a gaze. He just laughed and cuffed her.
Schaeffer put his gun away and said to the man, “Let me see some ID.”
“Oh, please, Officer, look, I didn’t—”
“Some ID?” Schaeffer said. He was polite, like always. When you had a badge in your pocket and a big fucking pistol on your hip you could afford to be civil.
The man dug his thick wallet out of his slacks and handed it to the officer, who read the license. “Mr. Shelby, this your current address? In Des Moines?”
In a quivering voice, he said, “Yessir.”
“All right, well, you’re under arrest for solicitation of prostitution.” He took his cuffs out of their holder.
“I didn’t do anything illegal, really. It was just… it was only a date.”
“Really? Then what’s this?” The detective picked up a stack of money sitting on the cockeyed nightstand. Four hundred bucks.
“I–I just thought…”
The old guy’s mind was working fast, that was obvious. Schaeffer wondered what excuse he’d come up with. He’d heard them all.
“Just to get some food and something to drink.”
That was a new one. Schaeffer tried not to laugh. You spend four hundred bucks on food and booze in this neighborhood, you could afford a block party big enough for fifty Darlas.
“He pay you to have sex?” Schaeffer asked Darla.
She grimaced.
“You lie, baby, you know what’ll happen to you. You’re honest with me, I’ll put in a word.”
“You a prick too,” she snapped. “All right, he pay me to do a ’round the world.”
“No…” Shelby protested for a moment but then he gave up and slumped even lower. “Oh, Christ, what’m I gonna do? This’ll kill my wife… and my kids…” He looked up with panicked eyes. “Will I have to go to jail?”
“That’s up to the prosecutor and the judge.”
“Why the hell’d I do this?” he moaned.
Schaeffer looked him over carefully. After a long moment he said, “Take her downstairs.”
Darla snapped, “Yo, you fat fuck, keep yo’ motherfuckin’ hands offa me.”
Bernbaum laughed again. “This mean you ain’t my girlfriend no more?” He gripped her by the arm and led her outside. The door swung shut.
“Look, Detective, it’s not like I robbed anybody. It was harmless. You know, victimless.”
“It’s still a crime. And don’t you know about AIDS, hepatitis?”
Shelby looked down again. He nodded. “Yessir,” he whispered.
Still holding the cuffs, Schaeffer eyed the man carefully. He sat down on a creaky chair. “How often you get to town?”
“To New York?”
“Yeah.”
“Once a year, if I’ve got a conference or meeting. I always enjoy it. You know what they say, ‘It’s a nice place to visit.’” His voice faded, maybe thinking that the rest of that old saw — “but you wouldn’t want to live there” — would insult the cop.
Schaeffer asked, “So, you got a conference now?” He pulled the badge out of the man’s pocket, read it.
“Yessir, it’s our annual trade show. At the Javits. Outdoor furniture manufacturers.”
“That’s your line?”
“I have a wholesale business in Iowa.”
“Yeah? Successful?”
“Number one in the state. Actually in the whole region.” He said this sadly, not proudly, probably thinking of how many customers he’d lose when word got out about his arrest.
Schaeffer nodded slowly. Finally he put the handcuffs away.
Shelby’s eyes narrowed, watching this.
“You ever done anything like this before?”
A hesitation. He decided not to lie. “I have. Yessir.”
“But I get a feeling you’re not going to again.”
“Never. I promise you. I’ve learned my lesson.”
There was a long pause.
“Stand up.”
Shelby blinked then did what he was told. He frowned as the cop patted down his trousers and jacket. With the guy not wearing a shirt, Schaeffer was 99 percent sure the man was legit, but had to make absolutely certain there were no wires.
The detective nodded toward the chair and Shelby sat down. The businessman’s eyes revealed that he now had an inkling of what was happening.
“I have a proposition for you,” Schaeffer said.
“Proposition?”
The cop nodded. “Okay. I’m convinced you’re not going to do this again.”
“Never.”
“I could let you go with a warning. But the problem is the situation got called in.”
“Called in?”
“A vice cop on the street happened to see you go into the hotel with Darla — we know all about her. He reported it and they sent me out. There’s paperwork on the incident.”
“My name?”
“No, just a John Doe at this point. But there
Shelby sighed, nodding with a grimace, and opened the bidding.
It wasn’t much of an auction. Shelby kept throwing out numbers and Schaeffer kept lifting his thumb, more,
