Mitchell Smith

by Daydreams

“Well-you’re not in Green Bay, now, are you?” Ellie said.

  “No, ma’am,” the soldier said.

  “So-use your fuckin’ head,” Nardone said. “Wake up-watch out who you’re talkin’ to.”

  “Yes, sir,” the soldier said.

  “You have someplace to stay?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the girl said. “We have a reservation at the Mansfield Hotel.”

  “All right,” Ellie said. “You go out those doors, and turn left, and walk up two blocks to Forty-fourth Street. -O.K.?”

  The soldier and girl both nodded.

  “Then you turn right, and walk down Forty-fourth Street for three blocks, across Seventh Avenue and Broadway, and just before you get to Fifth Avenue, you’ll see the Mansfield. -O.K.?”

  “O.K.,” the soldier said.

  “If you stop at a newsstand,” Ellie said, “-you can buy a map, a guide to the city. That’s a good thing to have.”

  “Thank you very much,” the girl said, and held out her hand to Ellie to shake. “Thanks for helping us.”

  “Thanks,” the soldier said to Nardone, and shook his hand.

  “They’re just babies,” Ellie said, as she and Nardone walked to the entrance.

  “There’s another one,” Nardone said, and veered over to the center door, where a young Transit patrolman, blond and mustached, stood amid the crowd hurrying in.”

  “-You’re doin’ a real shitty job, pal,” Nardone said to him as they went by.

  The sun had almost set-bands of black cloud a mile above swung slowly east between the borders of the building tops, barred with ribs of purple, lighter reds, and gold. It was a cool evening, a gusting breeze driving trash and paper down the gutters now and then as they walked to the car. People on the street went with their heads slightly lowered before the wind.

  “That’s it for summer,” Nardone said. He disliked the cold. “You can kiss summer goodbye.”

  “I like the fall,” Ellie said. “-It doesn’t bother me.”

  A gust sent a paper cup tapping down the sidewalk alongside them for a few steps, then rolled it into the street.

  No one had disturbed the Ford, though they’d left it parked up on the dirt backhoed out of a pipeline ditch beside the site.

  “What’s going up here?”

  “Hotel,” Nardone said. “-One of those weirdo’s got a jungle in the lobby. Two hundred a night, birds shit on your head in the restaurant.”

  He unlocked the car, climbed in, and leaned over to unlock her side.

  “You remember?” he said, waiting to pull out into the traffic. “-You remember we got court appearances day after tomorrow?”

  “Oh, crap.”

  “You and me both in the mornin’, then me in the afternoon. You got Prescott; I got Siniscola.”

  :‘I forgot it came up this week.

  “Well, it did.”

  Edgar Prescott, two months before, had publicly threatened the life of Samuel Prinz—Comptroller of the city during an open session of the City Council. Ellie, escorting the visiting mayor of Delft, Netherlands—a pale, plump, tough woman with very good English-had unfortunately been standing close to Prescott, and heard his shouted threat, which had been “to get a fucking gun and put a bullet through your head, you fucking thief!” -Prescott at the time being involved in litigation over payments due from the City to his firm. He hauled garbage, privately.

  Nardone’s case was more serious, a patrolman named Siniscola being accused of entering into conversation with a thirteen-year-old boy outside Joan of Arc Junior High School, then escorting the boy behind two Dumpsters alongside the school yard to compare penises. -The case complicated by Siniscola’s older brother, a division commander for Manhattan South in Internal Affairs-who might or might not have attempted to cover the matter up. Same time tomorrow,” Nardone said, driving out into a ace in traffic vacated by a delivery van swinging in to doublepark, “—tomorrow, we got to spend some time gom, over that Gaither stuff. All the papers, her bills the print reports, the whole damn thing. Leahy’s going’ to see if we can’t get a copy of her state tax return, an’ her will out $I of probate court. -You know she had a will?”

  :‘No.

  “Well, she did. -Guess who was attorney of record.”

  “Birnbaum.”

  “Good guesser. So, we gotta go through all that shit.

  We could still get lucky talkin’ to people-but if we don’t … You want to solve that case, we’re going’ to have to dig for it.”

  The light changed, and Nardone took the right onto Forty-second.

  “I know it,” Ellie said. “I’ll read those letters tonight, and if there’s anything there, I’ll bring them in.”

  “Could be evidence, you know, honey.”

  “I won’t lose them.”

  As they drove east, the cars in traffic, the pedestrians’ clothes-all colored objects in bright or muted shades took up tints from the sunset’s yellows and reds. The same sunset colors were reflected in car windows and this and that plate glass along their way.

  “I’m not sayin’ we can’t get lucky-maybe bust it in a week,” Nardone said, stopped for the light at Madison.

  “Better be diggin’ just in case, though.”

  “O.K., but if I can see Audrey Birnbaum, I think I should.”

  “Oh, yeah-if she’ll talk to you, that’s great. That lady-whatever you want to call her-could be she knows a lot about a lot, if she wants to say something’.” Nardone reached into his right-side jacket pocket for a box of Tic Tacs, and thumbed one out as the light changed and he drove on. “By the way, Leahy talked to me up at the funeral-before you showed? He’s got another crappy checkout for us. Do you believe this?

  -This Internal guy is partners with his brother-in-law in a sailboat out in Patchogue. -An’ we’re supposed to drop everything, go out there an’

  hang around the friggin’ dock, find out who paid for the anchor, who paid for the sails, who paid for the ropes…. Came right down from Anderson.”

  “Well, fuck that,” Ellie said.

  Nardone took his hand from the wheel and reached over to pat hers.

  “That’s exactly what I said to him. -I said, ‘Fuck that.”

  “

  “What did he say?-Did he say where we’re supposed to get time for the Gaither thing?”

  “Nope. He gives me a look, that’s all.”

  “And the UN session’s coming up.”

  “That’s right. -We’re going’ to get buried in a sea of shit.” He drove across Lexington.

  the tram; you got no need to come downtown.”

  As they stopped behind a florist’s delivery truck for the red light at Forty-second and Third, Ellie saw a young woman walking, holding hands with her little boy. The little boy had light brown hair, and was wearing a green wool sweater with a smiling chipmunk’s face knitted into the front in yellow. Brown corduroy trousers. He was saying something as they walked along, his mother’s head bent to listen. His mother was pale and pretty, with long, straight light-brown hair falling free. She was wearing jeans, and her legs were short-not long and slender, as Ellie had thought they would be, glancing at her face.

  There had been a time, Ellie supposed, that Classman and his mother had walked like that, one young, one younger, pleased to be together.

  “Tommy-you don’t think Morris was happy, do you?”

  “Happy? -Hell no, I think the poor son-of-a-bitch was miserable. Always mopin’ around there, callin’ his mother.

  How could the guy be happy? -An’ he was a nut case, to boot!”

  “You don’t think he got the slows up there? You know … on purpose.

  Sort of a way to go?”

  Nardone looked over at her, astonished. “Are you kidding’ me? Jesus-I didn’t say the guy wanted to die, did I … ? He was just a miserable guy. You can be a sad person without wantin’ to be a corpse! He tried…. He gave it a good try!”

  :‘I guess so,” Ellie said. “He was so quiet.r />
  “Well … he was a troubled guy, but he wasn’t fuckin’ crazy; he wasn’t going’ to stand there and let some asshole shoot him. -Besides, I told you what could have happened up there to Classman……

  “You are going to butt out of that, aren’t you, Tommy? -No fucking around with that case … please.

  It could get us into real trouble. . . .”

  “I’m not going’ to mess with it,” Nardone said, caught the green, and made his left turn up First. “-I did all I’m going’ to do. I’ll let Leahy know what I got, and if those assholes can’t grab the brothers and get a description on those guys-then fuck ‘em. Let ‘ern explain to the papers they haven’t caught anybody on that killin’.”

  drop you up at “-And I need to know what dishes Connie is using for Sunday. If it isn’t the white and gold, be sure and have her call me-O.K.?”

  “O.K.”

  A half block south of the tram station, just short of the ramp up to the Queensboro Bridge, Nardone pulled the car over, doubleparked.

  “Listen,” he said. “Don’t worry about Classinan. Did you know Morris liked you? He liked you; he told Serrano you were a nice girl. -What about that?”

  “It doesn’t make me feel better, Tommy. I never even said anything nice to him. -I could have asked about his mother. . . .”

  “You did ask about his mother.-You asked plenty of times.” Nardone leaned over and kissed Ellie on the cheek. Spearmint Tic Tacs. “Now-get out of here, an’ forget all this shit. Go shoppin’, get yourself something’. -what’s over with, is over with. Morris isn’t worried about nothin’ anymore.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Dear Sonny, It hasn’t escaped my notice, and probably not yours either, that your nickname is a boy’s, and has been since you were a baby. I thought I’d mention that here to assure you it doesn’t mean a thing. It was just the easiest nickname out of Sonia, unless you wanted to advertise TV sets.

  When we were in Albuquerque, we talked about my sending you a letter or two about stuff you wanted to know about my not-very-exciting youth, complete with booboos, and some things about my work, and what I’ve learned from it. Truth letters about stuff that was too boring or embarrassing for us to talk about.

  I think that was a good idea, because the one great thing about my profession is that sometimes you can deal with people without using any lies at all. That means that sometimes, at least where sex is concerned, it’s real life, and not pretend life. People call it The Life, because of that. So here Wiges.

  I’ve found-I guess it’s no secrefl-that people lie all the time, they lie to themselves even more than they lie to other people, and they lie about sex and love most of all. Of course that’s not all there is to life, either, but it’s a big chunk, and it’s the part I know about.

  Let me say, right up front, that there was a time a few years ago I was as dishonest a whore as you could find, and didn’t mind betraying the people who came to me for pleasure, or out of desperation. But I caught myself turning into what I didn’t want to turn into, one of those shits that abuses pussy power, and I’ve never done that again.

  Now, I don’t lie to people about those things, and they usually don’t lie to me about them, either, so I know a few truths about sex and so forth that most people don’t know, or are scared to find out. This doesn’t make me any better than they are, or any happier either. It’s just my profession, and it means that my life is as different from most people’s as if I was living on another planet entirely. But it wasn’t always, because I, like everybody else, started my life doing a lot of lying to myself about sex and love and related subjects like friendship and money, until being a whore-which is exactly what I am-taught me to lie as little as possible to other people, and not at all to myself. I don’t recommend that you try to do the same, because it’s a hard road, and you’re not suited for it, and you don’t wind up any happier, darling, without these lies, except there’s an enormous load of shit off your back forever.

  It’s a lonely life, too, because everybody else, or almost everybody else, is pretending about those things, and if you don’t pretend with them, they get upset.

  And that’s where what risks there are in my business Fome in. So, in my life, true friends are the most important thing, except for you.

  Take a very intelligent, sensitive man in his forties, a really important person in his business, or a doctor, a complicated human being with a wonderful education, married to a charming woman for a lot of years, still loves her very much, some nice kids doing very well.

  When a man like that is sitting on the side of my bed, naked, making silly noises, his head thrown back, the veins in his neck standing out, out of his mind with pleasure just because yours truly is kneeling on the rug in her blue bathrobe sucking on his penis, when you see that, you see something about people that has to do with their not admitting what they are. And don’t get the notion that only goes for men. Some women come to me, too, some that have the courage to do it, or are so lonely they’re just about out of their minds, poor things. And they talk to me for hours, and pay me a great deal of money to sit and listen to them. They talk about their children and their husbands, they talk about everything-and then sometimes they’ll get up the nerve to ask for sex, but often not.

  “Well,” you’re saying, “Mother’s just saying that people are animals, that’s all. And she’s taking a long

  time to do it.” But you’re wrong. People aren’t just animals. People are wonderful animals, sweetheart, but they pretend not to be antinials, and that’s what causes a great deal of trouble! That’s the lie that makes all the other lies necessary, and about death and other things, too, not just sex. That’s the big lie that’s the foundation of the house of lies, but I try not to live in it.

  People come to me and pay me to spend a little while in the house of truth. In my house, they can tell me anything they want to about anything they want. They can talk about what they really like and what they don’t like. Or they can talk about how much they really love other people, or how much they hate them. For example, I spend a lot more time listening to people talk about their parents than I do getting spanked or screwed in the butt, which is the kind of thing people like to think prostitutes spend most of their time doing.

  So, as an outsider who is paid to listen to people tell the truth about what they really want, and paid to do with them what they really want to do, I found some truths that might save you trouble. The fact is, though, even after many years working, I know very little about people.

  They are all mysteries. But what little I’ve learned, I’ll tell you, and I’ll start with my boring biography, because that’s where you start, too!

  First thing is, keep in mind that for better or worse-and because of my profession many people would say it was for the better-you are an entirely separate person. You couldn’t be me if you tried, any more than I could be you. You popped out of my belly, and I loved you because I couldn’t help it by instinct or chemicals or whatever, but I don’t know if we would even have liked each other if we just met somewhere. Lucky for our relationship we didn’t just meet somewhere!

  But I’ve found in my work that a lot of people never realize they are entirely separate people from their parents, and go through life mooning over them and whining about them as if they were unfaithful lovers. And of course, 2”

  the reverse is even worse. A lot of parents, mothers particularly, have nothing to do but be mothers, so they stick to that forever, until their children are sick of it and sick of them.

  I was an ordinary little girl—skinnier and smaller than most of the girls I knew. I didn’t get breasts until I was thirteen, and then they weren’t much. I was crazy about the Cats-an’-Jammers and I was in love with Tony Creski, who was lead guitar for Infirmary, and I suppose you never heard of any of them. There were a couple of months when I would have been happy to die for Tony Creski, if I could have died in his arms with him crying and looking down at me. I used to spend a lot o
f time daydreaming, and I would use the mirror from my brush-and mirror set to look at my vagina, especially after I got hair down there. I masturbated, you bet, as I hope you have been enjoying doing. I also occasionally picked my nose and occasionally I would eat the result, which, as YOU probably know, is nothing much in the good-taste department, either way you take that.

  I never read anything I didn’t have to for school, and Chicago schools were not great then, anyway. Reading is something wonderful I found when I got sick of television.

  Your grandparents were very nice people. They weren’t drunks and they didn’t beat me up, and my dad didn’t try to get in my pants. You would like them a lot if they were still around.

  My dad was a pipe fitter in the union, and we owned half a house with a family named Quinn. Quinn worked for a specialty tire company. The Quirms were O.K., and I did play doctor with their boy, Sean, but he was too young to know what to do when we tried it, and got to be such a wimp later I didn’t want to try it again.

  You will be relieved to know, sweetheart, that your supposedly sexy mother finally did sleep with a boy when she was sixteen. He was a basketball jock named Norm Witt, and he was very, very cute, and I was crazy about him. We had first sex on his brother’s bed upstairs while his parents were out somewhere and we IL

  were supposed to be sitting for his little sister, who thank god went to sleep early that time.

  sex was good for me, and didn’t hurt me any more than getting my ears pierced. I didn’t come all over the place, but it felt very nice. The nicest thing, though, was having Norm Witt naked in my arms. I guess I just about hugged that honey to death. He was much f too skinny, and while he was working away on top o me, puffing like The Little Engine That Could, I was imagining us married and me feeding him these wonderful meals to make him stronger and show him how much I loved him.

  There was no lie about any of that; that was all truth to me. When they say men and women are different, that’s no lie, either, though it’s a troublesome truth, especially to women. But it’s the truth just the same, so if you love a man, you better love men, or you’re in for a bad time.