Hundred-Dollar Baby

by Robert B. Parker

  Sapp nodded.

  “But there are some women who are uncomfortable with us precisely because there’s no sexual tension,” Sapp said. “They can’t use sex to control us. Flirting with us isn’t effective.”

  “That’s true of a lot of straight men, too,” I said.

  “Sure,” Sapp said. “Probably true of you.”

  “Might want to ask Susan ’bout that,” Hawk said.

  “That’s love,” I said.

  “Um,” Hawk said.

  “But even though that’s true,” Sapp said, “a woman like April can create a sexual tone to her male relationships that she can’t do with a ho-mo-sex-u-al.”

  “Sex is the only thing that ever worked for her,” I said.

  “And that sure worked out good,” Hawk said.

  “She knows that guy in New York,” Sapp said. “Doesn’t she.”

  I nodded.

  “You gonna let it slide?” Sapp said.

  Hawk laughed.

  “You done a couple riffs with him,” Hawk said. “What you think he gonna do?”

  “I think he’s going to chew on this,” Sapp said, “like a beaver on a tree.”

  “You going to New York?” Hawk said.

  “I am,” I said.

  “Gonna talk with Farnsworth?” he said.

  “Seems like a good idea,” I said.

  “Then what?” Hawk said.

  “Depends on what he says.”

  “How ’bout he says for you to go fuck yourself,” Sapp said.

  “Why should he be different?” I said.

  “Spenser don’t like Farnsworth the way he like April,” Hawk said.

  “So you might be more forceful,” Sapp said.

  “We have our ways,” I said.

  “Anybody paying you?” Sapp said.

  “I’m getting twice what you’re getting,” I said.

  “I’m getting zip,” Sapp said.

  “And worth every penny,” I said.

  Hawk pulled into the curb in front of the Delta terminal.

  “Least Robin Hood stole it,” he said, “’fore he gave it away.”

  “And,” Sapp said, “he had all those merry men.”

  27

  I used a different technique with Lionel Farnsworth this time. The lawyer-with-money trick probably wouldn’t play twice, with either him or the doorman. So I began to hang out near his building on a bright, crisp New York day. In the late afternoon of the first day, he came out of his building wearing a belted double-breasted camel-hair overcoat and turned right on Central Park West, toward Columbus Circle. I fell in beside him.

  “Nothing like a brisk stroll,” I said. “Huh?”

  He looked at me and did a little repressed double take.

  “You,” he said.

  “Me.”

  “Ah…the, ah, lawyer guy, right?”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “Sort of?”

  “I lied to you.”

  He stopped.

  “You lied?”

  “I did,” I said. “I’m a detective.”

  “A detective.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  We began to walk again.

  “New York City police?” he said.

  “I’m from Boston,” I said.

  He looked at me and started to speak and decided not to. His pace had picked up a little. I stayed with him.

  “Ollie DeMars spilled the beans,” I said.

  “Ollie DeMars?”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t believe I know him.”

  “You do,” I said. “You were in Allenwood with him. Six months ago you called him and hired him to harass April Kyle. You told him don’t kill anybody. And don’t hurt April but keep on her case until you say to stop.”

  “He’s lying,” Farnsworth said. “Who’s April Kyle?”

  “I don’t think he’s lying,” I said.

  “He is,” Farnsworth said. “Are you going to believe some ex-con felon like him?”

  “As opposed to an ex-con felon like you?”

  “That was a mistake,” Farnsworth said. “I was innocent of any wrongdoing.”

  “And they sent you to Allenwood why?”

  “Prosecutor wanted to make a name for himself.”

  “By putting a high-profile guy like you away,” I said.

  “Absolutely,” Farnsworth said.

  “So you know Ollie,” I said, “after all.”

  “I remember him now,” Farnsworth said. “From Allenwood. We barely knew each other. I don’t know why he’s saying these things about me.”

  “Jealousy probably,” I said. “I have evidence, by the way, that you availed yourself of April’s expertise at least twenty times in the year before she moved to Boston, and that you always requested her by name.”

  “He told you that?”

  “No. I learned that elsewhere.”

  “Well I told you before, and I’m telling you now, I don’t know any April Kyle.”

  “Lionel,” I said. “I got witnesses who will testify that you were often in April Kyle’s company and referred to her by name. I have the stalwart Ollie DeMars who will testify that you hired him to roust April Kyle, and referred to her specifically by name when you did so. Ollie says you wired him the money every week. It’s only a matter of time before we find your bank and get a record of the transfer.”

  Farnsworth stared straight ahead as he walked. I walked with him and didn’t say anything for a while. We got to Columbus Circle and stopped for the light.

  “I’m not necessarily after you,” I said.

  Farnsworth stared up at the light.

  “I can grind you on it, or I can let it kind of slide; depends pretty much on how much you’re willing to talk with me. And what I hear.”

  The light changed. We started across.

  “We’ll go in the Time Warner Center,” Farnsworth said, “and talk.”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  28

  We sat on a leather sofa in front of a big window in the lobby area on the top floor of the Time Warner Center and looked out at Columbus Circle and the park beyond.

  “Okay,” Lionel said. “You got me. Yes, I patronized April Kyle regularly, when she was a working girl. Tell me you don’t do that.”

  “I don’t do that,” I said.

  “You married?”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  He frowned at the sort of but didn’t comment.

  “Well,” Lionel said, “I started out just because she was, you know, good.”

  I nodded.

  “But”—he shook his head in an open, man-to-man way—“it’s like some Broadway musical, you know? I fell for her.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m still crazy about her,” he said.

  “How’s she feel?” I said.

  “Same way,” he said. “We’re crazy about each other.”

  “Which is why you hired Ollie DeMars,” I said, “to put her out of business.”

  Farnsworth shook his head slowly.

  “No, no,” he said. “You don’t get it. We’re in business together. That place is just the first in a chain of what I like to call boutique whorehouses we were planning to start.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s why you hired Ollie DeMars to put her out of business.”

  Lionel shook his head again and looked at me as if I were a small boy.

  “You’d never make it in the fast-shuffle business,” he said. “You think too straight ahead.”

  “If at all,” I said.

  “We were scamming the madam, Utley. We pulled this scheme together to give her a reason to let go of the business and not require her money back. You unnerstand? Then we’d take it over, and that’s all she wrote.”

  “So this is all just a con so that you and April can steal the business from Mrs. Utley.”

  “Steal’s a little harsh. We’ll develop it,” he said, “beyond what she could imagine.”

&nbs
p; “And the mansion in Boston is your pilot program,” I said.

  “You bet,” he said. “You like the mansion concept. My idea. We’re going to call it Dreamgirl. The Dreamgirl mansions? You dig? And we’ll have a tagline. Love like a playboy. You like it? Love like a playboy at the Dreamgirl mansion in…and you fill in the city. Huh? When it’s up and really rolling, we can franchise the concept and sit back and collect the franchise fees.”

  “What if they don’t pay the fee?” I said. “Not everybody who wants to franchise a whorehouse is a fully responsible citizen.”

  “We’d provide for that. I was going to use Ollie, but I guess I’ll have to find someone else. That’s not hard. There are always Ollies.”

  “So this being the case, and you and April being closer than clams in a cozy chowder,” I said, “how come she hired me to make it all go away.”

  “Smoke screen,” Farnsworth said.

  “Not such a good one,” I said.

  “I know, we tried to get too cute. April said she could control you, and…” He shrugged. “I figured you were just another retired cop fleshing out his pension.”

  “And how do we feel about the hooker that got beat up on her way home from the movies one night.”

  “I heard about that. April was furious. Like I told her, my instructions to Ollie was that nobody get hurt. Ollie went too far, and I spoke to him about it and warned him against doing that again.”

  “Probably terrified him,” I said.

  Farnsworth shrugged.

  “I was his employer,” he said. “He followed my instructions or we got somebody else to do the work.”

  “A hard man is good to find,” I said.

  “Hey,” Farnsworth said. “That’s pretty clever. You make that up?”

  “No.”

  He thought about it for a minute, and then laughed and patted his hand on the leather couch seat a couple of times.

  “I’ll bet some hot broad made it up,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said. “That’s probably what happened.”

  “A hard man is good to find,” Farnsworth said. “That’s great.”

  “Do you have a financial position in this enterprise?” I said.

  “Sure, me and April are partners, everything’s fifty-fifty.”

  “So how much you invested so far?” I said.

  “Haven’t needed to so far. We’re sort of dining on Utley for the time. But I got some investors lined up, and when we start expanding, I’ll be bringing in a lot of money. Want to jump in?” he said. “Chance to get in on the ground floor.”

  I shook my head.

  “We’re gonna be rich,” he said. “Don’t say I didn’t give you your shot.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Maybe it should be Live like a playboy,” Farnsworth said. “Or Live and love like a playboy.”

  “Or,” I said, “how about, I’ll spend my life in litigation over trademark infringement.”

  “What copyright?” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “Just kidding around,” I said.

  We were quiet then, looking out the window past Columbus Circle, where there was still construction going on. And down 59th Street, where for several blocks it was called Central Park South. I didn’t believe everything he was saying. But I wouldn’t have believed everything he said if he told me the time. There was enough there that might be true for me to take back to April. I stood.

  “Have a swell day,” I said and turned and left him.

  For the moment, at least, I’d had enough of the egregious bastard.

  29

  The first thing April did was cry. We were sitting in her front parlor when I told her what Lionel Farnsworth had told me. I was halfway through when she began to cry. It was controlled at first, as if it were a ploy. But then it got away from her, and by the time I was through with Lionel’s story, she was into a sobbing, shaking, nose-running, chest-heaving, gasping-for-breath, flat-out-crying fit.

  “I gather I’ve touched a nerve,” I said.

  She sobbed. Her eyes were swollen. Her makeup was eroding. Except for the paroxysms of her crying, she was inert in her chair.

  “Is Lionel telling me the truth?” I said.

  She kept crying. She was hugging herself. Each sob made her body shudder as if it hurt. I waited. She cried. I was pretty sure I could wait longer than she could cry.

  I was right.

  After a time the crying slowed to heavy breathing. She sat silently for a time, then stood suddenly and walked out of the room. I waited some more. Dust motes danced in the oblique morning light. After maybe fifteen minutes, April came back into the room. She had probably washed her face in cold water and put on new makeup. Her eyes looked better.

  She sat back down in the same chair and folded her hands in her lap and looked at me.

  “In my whole life,” she said softly, “I have never met a man that didn’t betray me.”

  I wanted to claim an exclusion. But she seemed to be musing. And I thought it wise to let her muse.

  “My father,” she said. “Mr. Poitras. Rambeaux. Now it’s Farnsworth.”

  I nodded.

  “I guess I am not good at picking men.”

  “Maybe it’s not a skill,” I said.

  “What do you mean.”

  “Maybe you do what you need to do.”

  “Oh, God,” she said. “Just what I need right now, an amateur shrink.”

  “I know a professional one,” I said.

  “Fuck you,” April said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Good point.”

  “I don’t need some whacked-out therapist to tell me my life has sucked.”

  This wasn’t an argument I was going to win today. I let it slide.

  “So how much of Lionel’s story should I believe?” I said.

  She shrugged and didn’t answer.

  “Can I take that to mean all of it.”

  “No.”

  “How much?” I said.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

  I nodded. We were quiet.

  After a while I said, “Is there anything you want me to do before I leave?”

  “Leave?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You mean for good?”

  “For a while,” I said.

  “You too,” she said.

  “Me too what?”

  “You bastard,” she started to cry again. “You fucking bastard.”

  “April,” I said.

  “Bastard, bastard, bastard.”

  I went back to the waiting game. She cried a little more, but not like before. This time she didn’t have to leave the room. She stopped in maybe five minutes. Her eyes were red again. But her makeup was still okay. She sat in her chair and looked at nothing.

  “So how much of Lionel’s story should I believe?” I said.

  She was hunched forward now, looking at the floor, with her clenched hands between her knees.

  “We had a relationship,” she said. “We met when he bought a night with me, and we liked each other, and he kept requesting me. Mrs. Utley was good that way. And after a while I started to see him on my own and not charge him. That was against the rules, but Mrs. Utley never knew. I saw him on my own time.”

  Her voice as she spoke was soft and flat. She seemed to be reciting a story she’d learned by rote about someone else.

  “When Mrs. Utley sent me up here, he would come up to see me and spend the night. We talked about things. We’d lie in bed at night after and talk about going out on our own. We’d need a nest egg, he said, and he showed me how to skim some money on Mrs. Utley each day and she wouldn’t know.”

  “So you could open a place of your own.”

  “Start a chain,” she said.

  “How long did you figure it would take you to embezzle enough to do that?”

  “Not long. It was only for the down payment. Earnest money, he said. He said he was lining up investors.”

 
; “So what went wrong,” I said.

  She stared silently down.

  “He cheated on me,” she said.

  “Anyone you know?”

  “Yes. Here. One of the girls. In this house.”

  I nodded.

  “He didn’t pay her,” April said.

  “You sleep with an occasional customer,” I said.

  “He knows that and he knows it’s business. It’s not about us.”

  There was nothing for me down that road.

  “So you broke up?” I said.

  She nodded.

  “How’d he take it.”

  “He acted like nothing had happened,” she said.

  “Denied everything?”

  “Just pretended like I hadn’t thrown him out or anything. Just said he knew I was upset.”

  “And left.”

  “Yes. He tried to kiss me good-bye,” April said.

  “You hear from him again?”

  “A week later,” April said. “He sent me a bill for what he called his share of the business.”

  “Ah, Lionel,” I said.

  “I sent it back to him,” April said, “with fuck you written across it.”

  “And soon thereafter Ollie’s people showed up,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “And you came to me,” I said, “hoping somehow I’d take them off your back without finding out what had happened.”

  “I was cheating Mrs. Utley. I had fallen for another loser and gotten in trouble. I didn’t know what to do. I was too mortified to tell you the truth.”

  “And you thought I wouldn’t find that out,” I said.

  “I don’t know. I was alone, and scared, and ashamed, and you were the only person in my life who had ever actually helped me.”

  “Except Mrs. Utley,” I said.

  “I couldn’t go to her. I was stealing from her.”

  I nodded.

  “Hell,” April said. “Maybe I wanted you to find out.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  30

  Susan had occasional small fits of domesticity. They passed quickly in most cases, but now and then one fell at the wrong time and she felt the need to make dinner for us. So there she was, wearing a nice-looking apron, standing at her kitchen counter preparing food.

  “You believe April?” Susan said.

  “More than I believe Lionel,” I said.