Skin Trade

by Reggie Nadelson

She starts talking again. “I went to the massage parlor on December twenty-ninth, a few days after we got to London. The next day is Saturday. I decide to get my hair done for New Year’s, only Richard, where I’ve been going for years, is away, so I think I’ll just go to one of those cheap places you can walk in off the street. There’s one near Notting Hill Gate, so I go in and it’s pandemonium. Women getting dolled up for New Year’s, guys waiting for them, picking them up, kids yelling, the staff running around like crazy. The girl who’s washing my hair does that thing they all do, asking stupid questions – been on holiday yet? – but I don’t pay attention.

  “So I’m sitting in the chair and the guy is about to dry my hair when someone says to him, ‘Phone call for you,’ and he says, ‘I’ll be right back,’ and he disappears.

  “After a while I begin to think, Jesus, he must be talking to Mars this is taking so long, but someone brings me a glass of Champagne, and I’m reading Hello magazine, and thinking: man, this is the life. I begin to doze. Then I feel it.

  “Someone’s behind me. I look in the mirror and it’s not the guy who’s doing my hair. It’s the man I saw the day before at the massage parlor. The thug with the baby-blonde hair and doughy face. He just stands there looking at my reflection in the mirror. No one notices because the place is so busy. Then he puts his hands on my hair. He plays with my hair.” Lily stops, visibly shaken.

  “He puts his hands on my hair. I feel his fingers on my neck. It gives me the creeps worse than anything I ever had happen, these thin, oily fingers on my neck, only he doesn’t do anything or say anything, he just plays with my hair. It takes maybe ten seconds, then he’s gone. All I can feel afterwards for hours are those fingers on the back of my neck.”

  Lily puts her hand up to her forehead and wipes away the sweat.

  “I don’t tell anyone because it sounds insane, like I’m in a nightmare. Afterwards I go into a pub to meet Artie, I’m late. I don’t tell him. I know he’ll stop me. Later, I ask him about the case he’s working for Keyes, he says someone forged a check on a dead guy’s bank account. But that’s after New Year’s Eve. I see him again New Year’s Eve, the creep who put his hands on my neck.”

  In spite of myself, I said to the screen, to Lily’s image, “Where? Where did you see him again?”

  She says, as if she’s answering me, “I see him on the London Eye by the river.” Lily pauses. “You can turn it off now, Marti,” she adds, and the tape stops.

  “They took it like a scalp.”

  Martha held the picture of Lily close to her face. The tape had ended, and she was crying.

  “They hacked off her hair.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You showed me the picture. She left here with long hair and a few hours later, just like you figured, someone chopped it off. Her hair. Like they did it with a knife.”

  “Where?”

  Martha switched off the TV and pulled out the tape. I tried to take it out of her hand, but she shook her head and said, “It’s mine.”

  I said, “Lily thought something would happen to her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “Because I promised. She didn’t want you to worry. She wanted it between us.” Martha picked up the vodka bottle and poured some more into her glass.

  “I wanted to solve this my way, I wanted to help her.” She held out her hands, palms up. “I came up empty. I let her down.”

  “Did Lily mention any names? Did she know the name in the case I’m working?”

  “No. She said you never told anyone the names or put them in the file until you finished.”

  “What about a thug named Zhaba? Serb, probably.”

  “I don’t know. There’s a ton of them out there. Who is he?”

  “I think he’s the guy who threatened Lily in London and beat her up here.”

  The dope, the vodka, Martha was spacy now, affectless. I had to keep the talk going. She was holding back. She knew something and she wasn’t saying.

  To give her some time, I changed the subject. “You ever hear of a guy named Eric Levesque?”

  “Who?”

  “Eric Levesque.”

  “Yeah, I knew him, so what?”

  “You knew Levesque?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “You talked about that with Lily?”

  “It didn’t come up. Why would it?”

  “You didn’t tell her?”

  “I told you, why would I?” Martha fumbled with her glass. “She asked me about the prostitutes, so I told her what I knew. She wanted to see where I work, I told her I’d show her. She never made it. Because of me.” She looked up. “Or you. She got interested in your case and someone wanted to warn her off. It’s your fault.” She sucked an ice cube. “Is that brutal?”

  “Pretty brutal. What’s Levesque?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “What else?”

  “He was an investment guy. He owned stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I got up. “You want me to take off?”

  “He owned a model agency.”

  “You’re telling me this didn’t come up with Lily? Come on, lady. Your friend is dying.”

  “Am I speaking English? Christ, I told you. It didn’t relate. Levesque’s agency was a real one, not a front. Lily was only interested in the prostitutes, the whores, the bitches.”

  “So how come you knew Levesque?”

  “One of the girls who worked there left his agency. She was doing crack, she went on the street and ended up at my shelter in real bad shape. It’s a long time ago.”

  “You met him?”

  “Yeah, he came to see me when he heard about her. He didn’t live here. The business was an investment.” She took another slug of vodka. Her tone changed. “Honey, it was really strange.”

  “Strange how?”

  “I expected some real scum-bag, you know. And he was very nice. He lived in California most of the year. He was this gallant guy who was horrified by what happened to his girl. He wrote me a huge check for the shelter more than once. The best guy I ever met, pretty much. We kept in touch. He came out at night to help when he was here. He spent all kinds of money getting the girls fixed up. He got them doctors. He even got one her papers.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Nice.”

  “How old?”

  “Your age. Fortyish, or would be now.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He went down in some plane crash off the West Coast. Bodies were trapped in the fuselage, but he was there, he was on the passenger list.” Her eyes filled up. “What’s your interest?”

  “The case I’m working involves Levesque.” I added, “You were more than friends?”

  She wiped the snot off her face and stopped crying. “We were only friends. He liked pretty women.”

  “You wanted more?”

  “I only met him a few times. I don’t have great luck with guys, honey.” Martha smiled ruefully.

  “You said you were married.”

  “Long time ago. A nice French boy I met in college. It was pretty romantic stuff in America. Then we got to France, turned out he wanted me to be a nice French wife, a petite bourgeoise, you understand what that is? The right number of courses for lunch and a yogurt after supper. I left New York and ended up in the suburbs of Rouen. You can imagine.”

  “You have a picture of Levesque?”

  She pushed herself off the futon and found the big leather bag. From it, she pulled out the pack of photographs she’d produced at the restaurant. She took off the rubber band. She seemed obsessed with the pictures.

  “It’s not here,” she said.

  I kept my mouth shut. She was distracted. She searched her bag. She rummaged through her drawers. She was nuts for this guy and the picture was all she had.

  “I can’t find it,” she said.

  “H
e ever talk about his wife?” I was rummaging for information now.

  “A little. Not really. They got married as kids. Then divorced.”

  “It wasn’t Levesque running the whores?”

  “He was an innocent. Like I said, he was about as good as there is. What’s that?” She suddenly looked at the door.

  “What’s what?”

  “Someone’s outside,” she said. “These doors are like paper. Someone’s out there. Someone’s been listening to everything we said.”

  I got up from the beanbag, switched off the lights, reached into my pocket for the gun, peered through the peephole in the door. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “There’s someone there.”

  I unlocked the door and opened it very slowly.

  “There’s no one,” I said and shut the door.

  “Maybe I’m paranoid. This thing with Lily.” She picked up the photographs and put them back in her bag. “I wish I could show you. Eric, I mean. Levesque. You’d see right away.”

  “See what?”

  “The resemblance, honey.”

  “Resemblance to who?”

  If getting Martha to talk meant playing these games, I’d sit here and play them all night, but time was running out, I could hear it drain away, hear the suck and gurgle.

  “You want me to stick around tonight, Martha?”

  She smiled. “Best offer I’ve had in years. I’ll be fine, honey.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She hesitated. “I’ll be OK. You want me to call you a cab?”

  “I need air bad. I’ll find one in the street. Anything else we should talk about?”

  She looked at me. Extracted the snapshot of her and Lily.

  “You take it. You should have it.”

  I put the picture in my pocket. I kissed her on the cheek, pulled on my jacket and said, “Tell me who Levesque resembled.”

  She opened the door. “Honey, he looked like you, and he was the nicest man I ever met. Artie?”

  “What’s that?”

  “This piece of shit who hurt Lily?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m thinking the Iron Curtain, I’m thinking the middle of the middle of old Europe, you know?”

  “Like where exactly?”

  “My daddy was in the army, you know that, Artie? He was a colonel in the US Army.” She saluted.

  Martha was off her rocker now; she was rambling, imitating her father. “Anyone who messes with my country, he’d say, anyone who does that, I will mess right back with them. They call it a Cold War, kiddo, but it’s hot, all right. He talked a real lot of crap. He was stationed in Berlin when I was a little girl. He used to show us the Berlin Wall. They call it the Iron Curtain, he’d say, it runs down through Germany, Czechoslovakia, Vienna, Slovenia, all the way down, and he’d tell us about the bad people who were called Communists.”

  “Go on.”

  “So the border now, you know, it’s right where that fucking Iron Curtain used to run, right across Europe.”

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “So you cross over, and you’ll see them. The whores. Everywhere. Bars, hotels, along the side of the road. Try crossing over, OK? You got that?”

  “Where? Where do I cross?”

  “It’s all I have. I swear to God. It’s all she told me.”

  “Lily told you?”

  “Yeah. She told me. So remember, Artie, it’s a hot war, honey. Real hot.”

  16

  It was almost dawn when I got to the rue de Rivoli. The building where Lily was attacked was silent, the room where the concierge lived still dark. I was so tired, I stumbled out of the cab.

  In my pocket were a couple of credit cards; I slipped open the front door with one. It was dark in the hallway. I moved carefully to the stairs, up the two flights to the apartment where they found Lily. The cops were gone. No one bothered me. From an apartment somewhere I heard a puppy whine. Otherwise, it was very quiet.

  The door opened easily. I closed it behind me.

  I didn’t know what I was looking for, but there had to be something that told me why they beat her up here, in this place. It was Tuesday morning. It was a week since they’d hurt Lily. Raped her.

  Say it, I said to myself. Raped her and hacked her hair off.

  I felt my way through the place in the dark, hands on the walls, feeling the pebbly surface of the plaster. In the living room, I could make out a stain on the floor where they found her. The rug had been removed. Some forensic lab somewhere in Paris was laboring over it. Pointless stuff. Trying to match blood samples, but who to? Some Serb hood named Zhaba? The man on the wheel in London? The creep who fingered Lily’s hair at the salon in London? I was pretty sure they were the same bastard. I crawled around the floor, desperate.

  Lily comes to Paris because of me, first because of something she sees in the Levesque file, then because she feels threatened. She makes a date with her old friend Martha Burnham who works with battered prostitutes; a few hours later, she’s beaten, raped, out cold in this apartment. Who called it in? I shivered. I was so strung out, I never asked. Was she really out? Was she conscious? Who made the call?

  As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see the long narrow corridor that led from the living room. Off it was the kitchen with an old stove, rust-stained linoleum on the floor and cracked green paint on the walls. More doors. More rooms. I checked the doors. Two bedrooms. A bathroom. The floorboards creaked.

  A shadow crawled over the wall as a car passed under the street light. I looked at my watch. Almost five.

  God, I was tired. I slid down against the wall in the hallway for a minute. Adrenalin kept me barely awake. The boards creaking again, I scratched at the floor, looking for anything, a pin, a cigarette butt, a scrap of paper. On the cold floor, there was only more dust.

  In one of the bedrooms, I reached under the metal frame of the bed, with its bare mattress folded over double. The room smelled musty, shut up, dead. My fingers touched something cold and metallic stuck between the floorboards. It came loose. Another car went by outside. Its headlights flashed into the room and I saw I was holding a coin. It was a Czech crown. Did Martha mention Czechoslovakia? Did Momo?

  Martha Burnham was half cracked. This was only a coin. I ran my hand along the floor again, felt something, raised my hand close to my face so I could see what it was. On my hand were tiny cuttings of hair. Red hair. Lily’s hair.

  A light flashed from the living room. Someone was here. Someone had followed me to the apartment. I took the gun in one hand.

  The concierge held open the door. It was the same sullen woman I’d met before, only now she was furious because I’d messed with her building when she was in charge. Behind her were Tolya Sverdloff and Momo Gourad.

  I got up off the floor, the coin in my hand.

  “How the hell did you find me?”

  Gourad was pissed off. “How? Very difficult, you know.” He tapped his head sarcastically. “I use my little gray cells, you know? I knew you’d come here. I knew you’d have to see for yourself that there is nothing to see.”

  “Who found her, Momo?”

  “I did.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s classified.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Momo said, “You’re way off limits. The minute you come through the door, you fuck with the crime scene.”

  “No one else is fucking with it. No one else is doing anything, isn’t that right, Momo?”

  “Your satirism is not great.”

  “Sarcasm,” I said.

  “I put myself on a limb for you.”

  I turned to Tolya, whose tux was a mess, the jacket rumpled, wine stains on the shirt. “What are you doing here?”

  “You disappear from the club without telling me, I go looking for you at that dump you’re staying in, I run into Gourad who’s also looking for you.”

  “Now you found me.”

  Gourad said, “I ca
me to the hotel because my chief is asking about you. He doesn’t like you running around Paris. He sent some idiot to talk to you the other night, you weren’t there, he was sending a bigger idiot today. I was going to warn you to stay the fuck away from anything to do with this case for a few days.”

  “That’s it?”

  “It’s fucking serious, Artie.”

  “You know and I know that Lily was beaten up here, she was raped here, they hacked off her hair here. Tell me something, Momo.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Who called you? How did you know Lily was hurt?” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “Tell me.”

  “The concierge heard something.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “Someone banging on the floor.”

  “Who was it?”

  “It was Lily.”

  “She was conscious?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you found her?”

  “Semi-conscious. Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “You took pictures of her lying there.” Numb, I rubbed my eyes. “And she was still conscious?”

  The concierge stood by, mute. Tolya said to Gourad, “I’ll take him back to my hotel.”

  “All right. But sit on him.”

  At Tolya’s hotel I left him in the lobby and went to the bathroom. When I got back, Tolya, the black coat over his shoulders, was talking to someone. His back was to me; I couldn’t see who he was talking to. Then he shifted to the left. It was Joe Fallon. Tolya was talking to Joe Fallon.

  Joe looked up and put his hand out. “Hey, how are you, Art? I’ve been thinking about you. I was just going for breakfast. Couldn’t sleep.”

  “You two know each other?” Tolya said.

  Joe said. “We knew each other back when. We met up again recently. How’s it going, Artie? How’s Lily doing?”

  “She’s conscious.”

  “Good. Great. I’ll be in the office all day. You have that number? Call me. Or we could have some lunch. Or I could call you.”

  I picked up a pen off the concierge’s desk and wrote my number on the back of a hotel brochure.

  “Fine.” Joe shook my hand again, nodded at Tolya and went out of the door, looking for coffee.

  Tolya said, “What the hell are you doing with Fallon?”