Hundred-Dollar Baby

by Robert B. Parker

  “Sure thing,” he said.

  When he brought it I said, “You Vernon Brown?”

  His eyes flattened, as if some sort of nictitating membrane had dulled them.

  “Yeah.”

  “I need to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “Got some ID?”

  “I’m not a cop,” I said.

  I took out one of my cards and handed it to him. He looked at it, holding at arm’s length in the so-so light of the bar.

  “Oh shit,” he said.

  “A common response,” I said. “You were the bouncer in a place on Comm. Ave? Back Bay?”

  “Why you want to know,” Vernon said.

  “There’s no trouble for you in this, Vernon,” I said. “I’m just looking for information.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You know Ollie DeMars is dead?”

  The nictitating membrane lifted a little.

  “Dead?” Vernon said.

  “Yep.”

  “Natural causes?”

  “Nope.”

  “Wasn’t me,” Vernon said.

  “Nobody thinks it was,” I said. “Why’d you quit working for April Kyle?”

  Vernon puffed his lips out for a moment.

  “Ollie chased me off,” he said.

  “Himself?”

  “Him and two other guys. Stopped me coming out after work one night. Told me they wanted me out of there.”

  “Say why?”

  “No.”

  “So you quit,” I said.

  Vernon shrugged. “I’m tough enough,” he said. “But I don’t do gun work, and standing up to Ollie was going to be gun work.”

  “We all pick our spots,” I said.

  Vernon nodded. “Ollie wasn’t mine,” he said. “Not for the weekly salary they were paying me at the whorehouse.”

  “What did April say?”

  “She was mad, but what could she do. She never paid me my last week.”

  “When did it happen?” I said.

  “Few months ago, right after the big storm in January.”

  Which made it a few days before Ollie’s boys rousted the mansion for the first time.

  “You know who popped Ollie?” Vernon said.

  “Not yet.”

  “You catch him, don’t be too hard on him.”

  “Or her,” I said.

  “You think it was a broad?”

  I shrugged. “Tell me about April Kyle.”

  “She was tough,” Vernon said. “I had to call her Miss Kyle. Even so, there were times she seemed to be really friendly, sometimes, you know, like flirting with me. Other times you’d think I was a child molester for crissake.”

  “Because?”

  “She got pissed if I kidded around with the whores.”

  “You ever?”

  He shook his head.

  “No. I’m a fucking lowlife, but I’m a professional, too. I never touched one. But I liked them. They were pretty good kids. Fun. I liked looking out for them.”

  “Tell April why you were quitting?”

  “No. I guess I was a little embarrassed to cut and run like that.”

  “Live to fight another day,” I said.

  “Something like that,” he said. “I didn’t feel like explaining it to her.”

  “Know anything about the security cameras?”

  “I know they had them.”

  “You ever monitor them?” I said.

  “Nope. Only April,” he said. “There was a problem, she’d let me know.”

  “So you never saw any of the tapes?”

  He shook his head.

  “You know what happened to the tapes?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Ever have any trouble with a customer?” I said.

  “Not often, and nothing I couldn’t handle,” he said. “You look like a guy would know. You get some guy from the suburbs. Maybe works out. Maybe used to play football or something. But he ain’t used to it. And he ain’t done much of it lately. And he’s kind of scared because he’s doing something he shouldn’t, and”—he shrugged—“I used to be a cop in Everett. I been a bouncer off and on, lot of places.”

  “There’s a lot to knowing how,” I said.

  Vernon poured me some more coffee.

  “You know how,” Vernon said. “Don’t you.”

  “Thanks for noticing,” I said.

  49

  I took one last run at April. We sat in her parlor. She seemed stiff and formal. Like we hadn’t known each other since she was a kid.

  “I talked with Vernon Brown,” I said.

  “Vernon?”

  “How come you didn’t tell me about him,” I said.

  “What’s to tell,” she said.

  “Might be a connection between him leaving and Ollie rousting your place a few days later.”

  “I never thought of that,” she said.

  I waited. She didn’t say anything else.

  “Why didn’t you replace Vernon?” I said.

  “Well, I was looking around for someone, and then, after I came to see you, I kind of thought I wouldn’t need to.”

  “Do you keep the security tapes someplace?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Ollie had some.”

  “How on earth could you know that?”

  “Guy gave them to me,” I said. “Did you give them to Ollie?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Did he use them to blackmail clients?”

  “Of course not. I told you I didn’t give him any.”

  “You got them stored someplace?” I said.

  “None of your business.”

  “Could I see them?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Did Ollie use them to leverage you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Did he threaten to use them to expose your customers if you didn’t cooperate with him?”

  “Cooperate how?” April said.

  “Cut him in on Dreamgirl?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” April said. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “April,” I said finally, “what the hell is going on?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You’ve been lying to me since you walked into my office.”

  “I am not a liar,” she said. “I am trying to create something, don’t you understand that? I’m trying to create Dreamgirl.”

  “A chain of high-tone whorehouses,” I said.

  “Call it what you will,” she said. “It will be a fantasy destination for men. Elegant, exclusive, perfectly private, like a fine club, in every big city, where men can live for a few days a life they’ve only fantasized.”

  “Didn’t you get involved in a scheme not unlike that?” I said. “Some years back? Crown Prince Clubs?”

  “I wasn’t running that. Men were.”

  “There are some men involved in Dreamgirl, aren’t there?”

  “But they aren’t in charge. Dreamgirl is mine.”

  I sat for a time and thought. April seemed serene, waiting for me to finish thinking.

  “I’m one of the men,” I said.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “I’m one, Lionel’s one. I’ll bet Ollie was one. You’re paying off Tony Marcus. God knows who else is involved.”

  “What on earth are you saying?”

  “I’m saying you can’t quite pull this off without male support, and you are trying to find some that you can manipulate, that won’t take it away from you, that will protect you from other men.”

  “That’s an absurd, sexist, male-prick remark,” she said.

  There was no anger in her voice, just the serene certainty she had maintained throughout the discussion.

  “That would be me,” I said.

  She stood and put out her hand.

  “Thanks for coming by,” she said with a pleasant smile.

  “Don’t get yourself into a hole I can’t dig you out of,” I
said.

  “I can take care of myself,” she said.

  “You haven’t done so well up till now.”

  She smiled at me steadily and kept her hand out.

  I took her hand. She had a nice, firm grip…on my hand, at least.

  50

  Tony did business out of the back room at Buddy’s Fox. It was in the south end, and the neighborhood had upscaled all around it, but the clientele was still all black. When I went in, I was the only white guy.

  Junior was occupying most of a booth in the back near the bar. He stood when I came in and told me to wait and went back to Tony’s office. Then he came back and nodded me on. I went into Tony’s office. Tony was behind his desk. Ty-Bop was sitting on a straight chair against the wall with his iPod in his ear, moving to music, or the throbbing of his soul. I never knew which.

  “Junior gets any bigger,” I said to Tony, “you’ll have to buy him his own building.”

  Tony was monochromatic today. Brown suit, brown shirt, and shiny brown tie.

  “What you need?” Tony said.

  I looked at Ty-Bop jittering on the chair.

  “How much coke that kid go through in a day,” I said.

  Tony smiled.

  “’Nuff to keep him alert,” Tony said. “What you need?”

  “You kill Ollie DeMars?” I said.

  “No.”

  “You know who did?” I said.

  “No.”

  “You know anything about April Kyle that you haven’t mentioned to me?”

  “Why would I not tell you?” Tony said.

  “I don’t know. Everybody I’ve talked to has been lying. You told me what time it was, I’d want to double check.”

  Tony grinned.

  “She pay her franchise fee, on time, every month,” he said.

  “For the privilege of running a business in your market,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “How do you define your market?”

  “The six New England states,” Tony said.

  “New Haven?” I said.

  “That be in some contest,” Marcus said. “With a brother in New York.”

  “How do you do the transaction?” I said.

  “Leonard picks it up, cash, every month.”

  “Ah, yes,” I said. “Leonard.”

  “She ask Leonard a lot of stuff like you asking me,” Tony said. “Leonard’s good. He don’t talk much. But he tell me she asking ’bout what my territory be, how far I got control, do we know the people who control other markets.”

  “Do you?” I said.

  “Some. Know the brother in New York,” Tony said.

  “You know why she wants to know this stuff?”

  “No.”

  “You ever ask her?” I said.

  “No. I assuming she wants to expand.”

  “You have a problem with that?” I said.

  “Not as long as my franchise fee be, ah, commensurate.”

  “You talk good,” I said. “For a criminal mastermind.”

  Tony’s patois kept getting broader as we talked. Like Hawk, he seemed able to turn it on and off.

  “Sho ’nuff,” he said.

  “Anything else?” I said.

  “’Bout April?”

  “That’d be good,” I said.

  Tony looked at me for a long time. His face was unlined. There was just a hint of gray in his short hair. His neck was soft-looking, but it always had been. He looked healthy and rested and happy. If you didn’t see Ty-Bop jiving to his unheard melodies over by the wall, you’d think you were talking to some kind of successful professor.

  “Only time I been inside in twenty-five years, you put me there.”

  “You didn’t stay in the calaboose all that long,” I said.

  “No fault of yours,” Tony said.

  “Hell no,” I said. “Up to me, I’d have put you in there for life plus a day.”

  Tony smiled.

  “You never been a liar,” he said.

  I waited.

  “And you done my daughter some good up in Marshport a while back.”

  I waited some more.

  “A while ago,” Tony said. “She ask Leonard would he kill somebody for her.”

  “She being April,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Before Ollie got killed?” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What did Leonard say?”

  “He say he don’t freelance, so she’d have to arrange it with me.”

  “Did she?” I said.

  “No.”

  “You have any idea who she wanted killed?”

  “Nope,” Tony said. “She don’t tell; Leonard don’t ask. That’s all there was.”

  “Coulda been Ollie,” I said.

  Tony nodded.

  “Coulda,” he said.

  “Coulda been Daffy Duck,” I said.

  “Coulda.”

  “Ollie’s the only one we know got killed,” I said.

  Tony nodded some more.

  “So far,” he said.

  51

  There was no point asking April about her discussion with Leonard. On the other hand, it left with me with nowhere to go and nothing to do. All I could think of was to stake out Lionel again. At least while I was doing nothing, I’d be bored and uncomfortable, which would make me feel like I was making progress.

  Real staking out takes more than one staker. So Hawk came with me to New York.

  The morning after we arrived, we walked across the park and settled in across the street, where we could watch Farnsworth’s apartment without being obvious. It was brisk. There was a fresh snowfall in New York and it hadn’t dirtied up yet. A lot of people were in the park. Many of them women. Many of them good-looking in that edgy, New York way.

  “You seem to be studying every woman goes by,” I said to Hawk.

  “Make sure Farnsworth don’t sneak past us in drag,” Hawk said.

  “All you’ve ever seen of Farnsworth is a ten-year-old mug shot,” I said.

  “Why I got to pay such close attention,” Hawk said.

  A good-looking young woman walked past us wearing unusually tight jeans with a short fur jacket. Hawk studied her as she passed.

  “Could be him,” Hawk said.

  “It’s not him,” I said.

  “Pays to be vigilant,” Hawk said.

  We watched her as she passed us and turned into the park. As the drive south curved, she went out of sight.

  “Why there got to be two of us watching for this dude Farnsworth?” Hawk said. “At the same time?”

  “You know it takes more than one,” I said. “Even if he never takes a cab, one of us may need to take a leak now and then.”

  “A leak?” Hawk said. “Us? You ever see Superman about to bound over a tall building, stop, and say, ‘Oh gee, I gotta take a leak’?”

  “Once we spot Farnsworth and you are sure you’ll recognize him,” I said, “then we can take turns.”

  “That be him?” Hawk said.

  It was Farnsworth, who was out in front of his apartment waiting for the doorman to get him a cab.

  “Got that tracker instinct,” Hawk said, “inherited it from my ancestors tracking lions in Africa.”

  The doorman flagged a cab on Central Park West. He held the door until Farnsworth got in, closed it behind him, and the cab pulled away heading downtown.

  “Cab’s kind of a problem,” I said. “Your ancestors ever run down the lions?”

  “They could, but they usually waited for the lion to come back, see if he brought anything with him.”

  We waited. Farnsworth came back three hours later and went in and stayed there until Hawk and I hung it up and went home for the evening.

  We had driven down in Hawk’s white Jaguar, which seemed a little too noticeable for tailing someone. So the next day we got an unobtrusive rental car and double-parked, along with several others, down the street west of Farnsworth’s apartment. His stree
t was one-way east. I stayed on foot. Hawk stayed with the car. If he walked, I stayed with him. If he cabbed, Hawk followed him. We did this for three days without learning anything more than the fact that Farnsworth came and went. He shopped at Barney’s. He ate lunch with a woman at Harry Cipriani’s; he walked in the park; he met a woman for drinks at the Pierre; he bought groceries at D’Agostino’s on Columbus Avenue.

  The hotel bill was mounting, always a cause of some discomfort. But we were on an open-ended job for which no one was at the moment paying me. So that night we ate in the same coffee shop on Madison where I’d had a tongue sandwich with Corsetti.

  “How long we going to do this?” Hawk said.

  “Eat in Viand’s coffee shop?” I said.

  “Hang around outside Farnsworth’s apartment learning nothing.”

  “Didn’t you learn patience,” I said, “from your African ancestors?”

  “If they was good with boredom,” Hawk said, “they wouldn’ta been hunting lions.”

  “There’s that,” I said.

  “Can’t you think of nothing else to do?”

  “No.”

  “But you too stubborn to quit.”

  “There’s an answer,” I said. “And Farnsworth has it.”

  “You want me to ask him the question?” Hawk said. “I could ask him kinda firm.”

  “I don’t even know what question to ask,” I said. “There’s something going on that involves April, and Farnsworth, and Patricia Utley, and the late great Ollie DeMars, and I don’t know what it is.”

  “We could ask him that,” Hawk said.

  “And if he doesn’t answer and you can’t scare him into answering, we’re nowhere, and he’s been warned.”

  “I could hit him until he told us,” Hawk said.

  “Which he’d do quick. You wouldn’t have to hit him much, would be my guess. But how would we know if it was true? Everybody I’ve talked to has lied about everything I’ve asked them. I don’t want any stories. I want facts.”

  “Facts?”

  “Observable phenomena,” I said.

  Hawk was having a hot turkey sandwich. He ate some.

  “They make a nice hot turkey sandwich here,” he said.

  “Brisket’s nice, too,” I said.

  “I could kill him,” Hawk said.

  I shook my head.

  “Might not answer the questions,” Hawk said. “But maybe the questions go away.”

  “No. I’m going to find out what’s going on with April.”