Ceremony s-9

by Robert B. Parker

  I went back to work Sunday afternoon. At four o'clock I was having a drink with Hawk at J.J. Donovan's in the North Market.

  "You want me to come along and keep you from getting mugged?" Hawk said. He had white wine. I had beer.

  "No, I'll risk that alone," I said. "I want you to look into things from the other end."

  "Tony Marcus?"

  "Yeah. '

  "That's the top end."

  "True." I said. "You start there and I'll keep rooting around down here at the bottom. Maybe if I work up and you work down we'll meet somewhere and know something.-"You care how I do it?" Hawk said. He sipped some wine.

  "No. You know Marcus. You know the people around him. See if anything is up. All I want is the kid."

  Hawk nodded. He sipped some more wine. "You going back and look around the Zone again."

  I nodded. My beer was gone. The bartender drew me another.

  Hawk was looking at me. "You know Marcus," Hawk said.

  "Yeah."

  "You know if something is up, it is something very heavy."

  ..Yeah."

  "There be a lot of weight to take," Hawk said. "I don't mind. But you sure you ready?"

  "What's bothering you, Hawk?" I said.

  "This thing is queer," he said. "Since Friday I been asking around-a few pimps, a few hookers, some people I know. Everybody tight on this. Everybody don't know a thing. Everybody changes the subject. Everybody awful careful about some sixteen-year-old high school kid going home to her mommy."

  "See what you can get from Marcus," I said. "And try not to make him mad."

  Hawk smiled his antediluvian smile and left. I paid the bill and headed for the Zone.

  It was jumping on a late Sunday afternoon, glowing like rotten wood. Somebody had said that about the English court once. Raleigh? I couldn't remember. I drifted south along Washington Street looking for a young white whore. I saw some, but they weren't April. Near Stuart Street I saw a white Jaguar sedan that might have been Trumps's. I felt the weight of my gun in its hip holster. A pleasing weight. Comforting. The Jag pulled away from the curb and disappeared in the traffic. I saw the black whore with the crescent-shaped scar that I'd seen with Trumps my first night in the Zone. She was standing in front of a club that advertised ALL BOTTOMLESS on several cardboard signs in the window. She was wearing a white dress with a fluffy white fake fur collar. She spoke to a man walking past. He shook his head and walked faster. I stood beside her and said, "How much for the night?"

  She looked at me and opened her mouth and then closed it. "I know you," she said.

  "To know me is to love me," I said. "How much?"

  "No deal, mister. Just stay away from me."

  "Two bills," I said. "We'll go to my place."

  "Trumps would kill me," she said.

  "He doesn't need to know. I'm just across the Common. We'll spend a couple of hours and then you're back. He doesn't have to know. Two hundred bucks."

  She shrugged. "Sure, why not," she said.

  We caught a cab at Boylston Street. It was maybe a ten-minute walk to my place, but she was wearing three-inch heels and could barely stand. In my apartment she checked herself in the hall mirror and looked around.

  "You want a drink?" I said.

  "Gin and Seven-Up," she said. I controlled a shudder.

  "I don't have any Seven-Up," I said. "Gingerale?"

  "Sure."

  I went into the kitchen to make her drink. When I came back she had taken off her dress. She had on scanty rayon underclothes. K mart erotica. "You like to undress me or you want I should strip all the way?" she said.

  "I just want to talk," I said. "I'm very lonely."

  She shrugged. "Long as I get the bread," she said. "You gonna give me the bread?"

  I handed her the gin and ginger ale, put my bottle of Rolling Rock extra pale on the coffee table, took out my wallet, and extracted two hundred-dollar bills. That left me $5, but I didn't let her see. I held them out. She took them, folded them over, and slipped them inside her underpants. Then she sat on the couch, put her feet on the coffee table, leaned back, and took about a third of her drink.

  "Talk," she said. "Tell me about your life."

  There were bruises on her ribs.

  "I'm interested in finding this kid, April Kyle," I said. She drank some more of her drink. Her face was empty. "That's nice," she said.

  "There'd be a good reward."

  "Uh-huh."

  "What harm if I find her? Who cares? Why not help me?"

  Her drink was gone. I got up and made her another one. When I came back she was looking at the picture of Susan on the bookcase.

  "Yours?" she said, and pointed her chin at the picture. "Yes."

  "Married?"

  ` No." "That why you just wanna talk?"

  "One reason."

  "What else, I don't turn you on?" "Oh, yeah, you get my attention sitting around with your ass sticking out.

  It's just that I'm working, and I sort of need to concentrate on that."

  She nodded. "And you don't like paying for it none, either."

  "Not too much."

  "How you know somebody like Hawk?"

  "We used to fight on some of the same cards a long time ago," I said:

  "Hawk ain't nobody to mess with," she said.

  "How do you know I know Hawk?"

  She took a long swallow. "I heard," she said. "I heard you was with him."

  "Trumps give you those bruises?"

  "Uh-huh." She finished the drink and held the glass out. "This is an easy two hundred, honey."

  I brought the gin and ginger ale and ice out on a tray and put them on the coffee table. I fixed her a fresh drink.

  "Not too much ginger ale, honey. Don't want to spoil the gin."

  "So how come nobody wants me to find April?"

  She smiled and drank and smiled again and shook her head.

  "What's your name?" I said.

  "Velma," she said. "Velma Fontaine."

  "Pleased to meet you, Velma. I'm Lance Cartaine."

  She squinted at me a little. "Your name's Spenser."

  "Well, maybe."

  "You jiving me?"

  "Just a little, Velma. It's a bad habit of mine. I tend to jive almost everybody."

  She drank some more gin and ginger ale. She liked it. I thought it would gag a skunk, but I never had any skill with gin anyway.

  "You jiving with the wrong people now," Velma said,

  "Like who?"

  She smiled again. And shook her head again. I was beginning to think better of Trumps for whacking her.

  "You know where the kid is?"

  "Maybe."

  I drank another sip of Rolling Rock.

  "You don't believe me?" Velma said. Her glass was empty. She leaned over and made herself another drink.

  I shrugged.

  "She ain't anyplace you'll find her."

  I didn't say anything. Susan says that's my best conversational ploy. Velma drank her drink. It was mostly gin, one ice cube, a splash of ginger. "She been bad."

  I nodded.

  "Stupid little bitch. She had it easy and she fucked it up. Then you come poking around and now she in real trouble." More gin. "She fixed up in a nice house, nice call job, no street hooking, and she couldn't handle it. So Red gets her."

  I smiled slightly, encouraging, Yes, yes, my dear, tell me all about it, nondirective.

  "You ain't gonna find her."

  "Probably not," I said. Sad. Defeated. Winsome and childlike. "You know why you ain't gonna find her?"

  ..No." Velma smiled again. " 'Cause she ain't even in the city," Velma said. "You got any cigarettes`'" I shook my head.

  "There's some in my dress, you want to get them for me, honey-Lance." She laughed, a bubbly choked laugh, as if she had a bad cold. I got up and found a package of NOW menthol 100's in her pocket and a book of matches. I took out a cigarette and lit it and handed it to her. She'd better be drunk if she was going to
go for that one. She was. She did.

  "Hey, Lance. You got a lot of class, honey."

  The taste of the cigarette was still in my mouth. How the hell had I ever smoked them? They were as bad as gin and ginger ale.

  Velma took a long drag on the cigarette, a big pull at her drink, swallowed, and let the smoke ooze out through her nostrils.

  "Providence," she said.

  "Providence."

  She smoked some more, another long drag that made the end of the cigarette glow. "You know what a sheep ranch is?"

  "No." She was quiet. She smoked. She drank some gin. She refilled her glass and drank some more gin. She was older than 1'd thought. Her thighs had thickened and there was a suggestion of dimpling to them. The line where her buttocks merged with her upper thigh had blurred. Her stomach folded a little as she sprawled on the couch.

  "Sheep ranch for people like it kinky. You a whore and you bad, you end up there."

  "And April's at a sheep ranch in Providence?"

  "I never said that," Velma said.

  "You know where there's a sheep ranch in Providence?"

  "Never been there," Velma said. "Never been nowhere. Never been out of Boston." Tears filled Velma's eyes and spilled over and traced down her face. Her voice thickened. "Never been nowhere," she said. "Never going." She sprawled lower onto my couch, her legs sprawled across my coffee table. She spilled her drink and didn't notice.

  "There an address for the sheep ranch?" I said.

  She didn't answer. She was crying and snufing and mumbling things I couldn't understand. She slipped down farther and closed her eyes and stopped crying. She snuffled for another minute, then she was silent. Then she started to snore. I got up and went to the kitchen and got another bottle of beer and brought it back and sat down and stared at Velma while she slept.

  It was two hours before she woke up, and when she did she was unfriendly. I got her dressed and into a cab and went back upstairs to drink beer and think about sheep ranches.

  Chapter 14

  Providence is an hour south of Boston on Route 95. It has Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design and a good-looking State House and a civic center and Federal Hill, a recycled Italian neighborhood with concrete arches at the entrance on Atwell Avenue.

  I didn't go to Federal Hill this trip. I went to the Biltmore Plaza on the square by the railroad station and checked in.

  "Where can a guy get a little action in this town'" I said to the bellhop when he showed me my room. I was wearing a white wash-and-wear shirt, red and white checked polyester jacket, and maroon double-knit flarebottomed slacks with white loafers and a white belt. I had spent nearly $100 on the outfit at Zayre's. When I go undercover I spare no expense. I wore a maroon tie with many small white horse heads on it, loosened at the collar. I had a pinky ring with a zircon set in onyx, and I reeked of Brut.

  "We have music in our lounge, sir."

  I folded a five and tucked it into his hand. "Uh-huh," I said. "You don't follow my drift. I mean action, broads, huh?"

  "Sorry, sir," he said. "I really wouldn't know about that. He smiled and backed out and shut the door. I hung up my garment bag and went out to the front of the hotel and caught a cab.

  "Ride down Dorrance," I said. "I want to look over the town."

  "Yes, sir," the cabby said.

  "I'm looking to have a little fun," I said. I had another five folded between my fingers and I tapped it on the back of the seat as I leaned forward to talk with him. "Anyplace in this town a guy can have a little fun?"

  The cabby glanced back at me. "What kind of fun, mister?"

  "You know-wine, women, and song." I grinned. Man to man. "And I could do without the song, if I had to.

  The cabby was a middle-aged black man with short graying hair and a salt-and-pepper mustache. "You looking for whores?"

  "You got it, man. You got my message. Can you help me out?"

  The cabby shook his head. "I'm not a pimp," he said. "You got an address, I'll take you there."

  "I was hoping you'd know." I flourished the five a little. "Nope." He pulled over at a corner. "Whyn't you try another cabby."

  I got out without saying anything and he drove off. I flagged another cab and we went through the routine again. I rode around Providence in a succession of cabs for about three hours with the worst collection of prudes I'd ever seen. It was twenty minutes to four when I finally scored. The cabby I scored with looked like a toad.

  "I might be able to put you in touch with a guy," he said. He was fat and short and he seemed to have settled seatwards from years of driving a hack. He didn't turn around as we drove along Fountain Street past the Providence police and fire headquarters. In Providence the cops wore brown uniforms and drove brown-andwhite cruisers. I was pretty sure you could never solve a crime wearing a brown uniform. Maybe it was in honor of the university.

  "Appreciate it," I said. "There's a sawbuck in it for you." I had upped the ante after hour two.

  "Cost you twenty dollars for me to put you in touch with this guy," the cabby said. "Plus the fare."

  "Just to meet a guy? Hey, that's pretty stiff."

  "Take it or leave it." The cabby had a hoarse voice. The folds of his neck spilled over his collar.

  "Aw, what the hell," I said. "It's only money, huh? You can't take it with you."

  The cabby put his hand back over the seat without looking. I put two tens in it. He tucked it into a shirt pocket, turned right, and in two minutes he pulled in at the curb on Dorrance Street in front of the Westminster Mall. Without looking back he said, "That'll be three- eighty." I gave him a five and he put that in a different pocket.

  I said, "How about my change."

  "Tip," he said. Then he handed me back a plain white sheet of paper. "Roll that up in your left hand and walk down the mall," he said. "Guy's name is Eddie. He'll find you."

  I took the paper, made a tube out of it, and got out of the cab. The toad pulled away. To my left was the flossiest Burger King in the world; ahead stretched a paved pedestrian way among a bunch of stores in the process of restoration. Some very classy fronts were mixed in with some very sleazy ones, but the place had the nice live feel that open city space has if a lot of people are bustling around in it.

  I started up the mall. A squat red roan horse was tethered to an information booth in the middle of the mall and a Providence cop was in getting warm with the civilians. Near a soon-to-be-rented-but-not-fullyrestored storefront a guy in a down vest said, "How ya doing? I'm Eddie."

  I said, "Hey, how are ya?"

  He walked along beside me. "What can I do for you?" he said.

  "Fella in a cab told me you could find me a little action," I said.

  Eddie nodded. He had pale blond hair parted on the left and gold-rimmed glasses and pale skin. Under the down vest he wore a plaid shirt. "Sure," he said. "What kind of action you looking for''"

  "Well"-1 scowled and looked embarrassed-”I hear you might have something a little different around here." Eddie stopped with his hands in his back pockets and looked at me.

  "Unusual?"

  I spread my hands, "Yeah, a little kinky, you know. Sometimes you like a change."

  "What kinda bread you ready to pay?" "Oh, I got money. Listen, that's not a problem. I can pay." Eddie nodded again. Then he nodded and winked. "Yeah, I can fix you up. Cost you two bills-one to me, one to the manager of the place. You got that?"

  "Sure."

  "After that it depends what you want, you understand. You want more than one broad, that's extra, you want S and M, that's extra. Get the idea?"

  I nodded.

  "And you want to tip any of the broads, that's between you and them."

  I nodded.

  "Gimme two hundred," he said. "I'll drive you up."

  I took a hundred and five twenties from my wallet and gave them to Eddie. He counted them and. put them away and led me down a narrow cross street to a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. We got in and headed up the
hill toward the university. We went past the School of Design and Brown University, past some of the most elegant Victorian houses anywhere. In ten minutes Eddie parked the Trans Am on Angell Street near the corner of Stimson, in front of a deep blue three-storied Victorian house with a vast mansard roof. Over the windows was an ornamental sunrise design in yellow and black.

  "This is it," he said, and got out of the car. I followed him. We went up three wide wooden stairs and across a deep veranda and Eddie rang the doorbell. A husky young man wearing a green Lacoste sweater over a white shirt opened the door. He had a health club tan, a bushy mustache, and dark hair blown dry.

  Eddie said, "Fella to see Mrs. Ross."

  The man nodded. Eddie gave him my hundred-dollar bill. The man smiled at me and said, "This way, sir."

  He showed me into a high-ceilinged living room with a marble fireplace and bow windows on two walls. I sat on a hard sofa with claw-and-ball feet, and the man went away. In maybe a minute a woman came in. She was a small woman, middle-aged, with her gray hair in a frizzy perm. She wore a black turtleneck sweater and a pleated red plaid skirt and black boots. There was a gold medallion on a chain, and large hoop earrings, and rings on most of her fingers. She came in and stood in front of me. She had no makeup except for some red color on her cheeks that stood out against her white skin.

  "Good afternoon," she said. "I'm Mrs. Ross. We have ten girls here. What kind of arrangement would you like to make?"

  "I heard your girls do specialty stuff."

  "Anything you want," she said firmly.

  "All of them'?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Maybe I better meet them," i said.

  "Of course," she said. "Two are busy at the moment, but I'll ask the rest to come in and say hello. Would you care for a drink?"

  I shook my head. "Not right now."

  Mrs. Ross nodded. "Certainly. I'll get the girls."

  She went back out and down the corridor and I sat quietly in the nineteenth-century room. Students on bicycles went by on

  Angell Street outside. I heard Mrs. Ross's boot heels tapping briskly along the hardwood floor of the corridor, and then she came through the archway. Behind her came eight young women. Four were white, three were black, and one was Oriental. The third one through the door was April Kyle.