Ceremony s-9

by Robert B. Parker

  The eight girls stood in an informal semicircle, staring blankly into the middle distance the way models do at a fashion show. They had each their own expression, and it didn't change. It was their stage face, I realized. The oldest was maybe nineteen, the youngest fourteen or fifteen. They were all dressed young, too, with a kind of buttons-and-bows little-girl look that must have been calculated. April, for instance, was wearing a white blouse under a green plaid jumper with black knee socks and penny loafers. Her blond hair was caught back on one side with a barrette. The fun-loving Bobbsey. "Your choice?" Mrs. Ross was not a dawdler, nor did she encourage it in others. I wondered if I ought to check their teeth.

  "That one," I said.

  "Fine," Mrs. Ross said. "April, show the gentleman to your room." The other seven girls went out of the living room and April stepped toward me, put out her hand, and said, "My name's April, what's yours?"

  "Alley Oop," I said.

  She smiled without warmth or meaning. "Okay, Alley, want to come with me?"

  "Hey," I said with a big hearty smile, "I'd follow you anywhere, honey."

  She took my hand. In the hallway there was a wide stairway that turned halfway up. We went up the stairs hand in hand-with wand'ring steps and slow, I thought -turned at the landing, and continued to the big second-floor hallway. There were no rugs on the floor and no furniture. It was as if by the time you got here you were sold, and they didn't need to impress you. April's room was at the end of the hall on the right. We went in.

  Chapter 15

  The room was Spartan. There was a good mahogany double bed and bureau. The window in the wall opposite the bed was covered with red drapes. Behind the entry door was a door that I assume led to a closet. April sat on the bed, letting her legs fall carelessly open. Unless she had a lot of self-control, she'd be fat when she was forty. Right now she was pretty in a pink-cheeked, almost plump way. Her mouth was pouty and her teeth were white and even. There was something theatrical about her movements when they occasionally became unrestrained, as when she had flopped on the bed.

  I opened the door that I took to be a closet. It was. There were a few dresses hanging in it. There were also various leather restraints hanging from hooks and a wooden paddle that was too long for Ping-Pong and too short for canoeing. On the floor were a pair of sneakers and a pair of sling-back spike-heeled pump.s Apparently she had more than one image. There was nothing else in the closet.

  I turned back toward April. She had hiked the jumper skirt up over her thighs so that I was aware that she wore nothing beneath it. She looked at me with her stage look -pouty innocence, Lolita, Debbie Does Dallas. Probably practiced her look in the mirror between tricks.

  I parted the drapes on the window. Under the drapes the window was secured with thick wire mesh. I let the drapes drop back in place. I looked over the rest of the room. There was no other way out. I didn't see any signs of a bug, though that didn't mean there wasn't one. On the top of the mahogany dresser was a radio. I turned it on. Loud.

  On the bed April was naked except for her knee socks. There were dark bruises on her buttocks that had begun to yellow, her wrists were chafed red. I remembered the time when a girl her age would have excited me. But it was a long time ago-when I was her age. Now it was like looking at a naked child.

  I lay down on the bed beside her and put my arm around her and held her close against me and whispered, "My name is not Alley Oop, it's Spenser, and your parents hired me to find you." Her body went rigid and she tried to pull away. I held her against me. I said, "You won't have to do anything you don't want to do. But if you want out of here, I'll take you out."

  April was perfectly rigid and silent. I had my mouth against her ear. "I don't know if there's a bug in here, but there could be, so we'll whisper and leave the radio up loud."

  "A bug'?" "A microphone for listening to us," I whispered.

  "I don't know."

  "Now, you want out of here?"

  She was silent.

  "I think you do," I said. "It couldn't have been fun getting those bruises on your backside."

  "Don't you want to fuck me?" she said.

  "Nothing personal, but no, I don't. I want to take you out of here and buy you dinner someplace and see what our next step is."

  She was still.

  "Get dressed," I said, my mouth still against her ear, my arms around her, holding her against me.

  "They won't let me go," she said.

  "I'll take care of that," I said. I let her go and sat up on the edge of the bed.

  "Angelo," she said, still whispering.

  "That the disco prince downstairs?"

  "Yes."

  "He the bouncer?"

  "Yes," she said. "He has a gun."

  "But is he pure of heart?" I said.

  She had slipped her blouse on. She stopped, half dressed. "They won't let me."

  "Any other bouncers?" I said.

  "During the day just Angelo. He gets off at seven and Monte and Dave come on for the night."

  I looked at my watch. Five past five. "Good," I said, "we got them outnumbered."

  She had her jumper on now, and her knee socks. She slipped her feet into the penny loafers. "What are you going to do with me after''"

  "Buy you dinner, maybe some underwear. First we'll depart."

  "Angelo's got a gun," she said again. Always she spoke in a whisper and never did she sound like anything much mattered. Angelo and his gun were a source of anxiety, maybe. But not much.

  "I got one too," I said. "Let's go."

  We went out her door and down the corridor to the stairs. We were on the landing where they turned when Angelo appeared at the foot. Mrs. Ross was with him. April stopped.

  "Come on, babe," I said. "Nobody with blow-dried hair ever gave me trouble." We went down.

  At the foot of the stairs Mrs. Ross said, "Through so quickly, sir?"

  Angelo stood in front of the door, looking at me carefully. He was obviously a body builder and he was big, but I was bothering him a little. He frowned.

  "Ms. Kyle and I are going to dinner," I said. "You know-wine, candles, a little romance. Things are too commercial nowadays, I say."

  "I'm sorry," Mrs. Ross said briskly, "the girls are not allowed to date customers. April, go upstairs."

  April took a half-step back and I put my hand behind me and stopped her.

  "Let's not dick around here," I said. "April's coming out with me and Angelo isn't good enough to stop us."

  I hadn't bothered Angelo enough. He underestimated me. He put his left hand flat against my chest and shoved, the way he would have some guy in town for a convention. I took his wrist in my left hand and yanked his arm straight out across my body. I put my right hand against his elbow and levered him sprawling against the stairs. I kept hold of his wrist as he fell and turned his arm up behind him. Then I got hold of his hair with my right hand and dragged him back up to his feet and held him with his arm bent up and his head pulled back.

  "Open the door, April," I said.

  "No," Mrs. Ross said, and April froze.

  I took a deep breath. "Always the hard way," I said. I shoved Angelo away from me and into Mrs. Ross. They both went down, Mrs. Ross backward, Angelo on top of her. By the time they got straightened out, I had my gun pointing at them and the door open for April.

  Angelo's breath was rasping in and out.

  Mrs. Ross said, "You dumb cocksucker, you've gotten yourself in really big trouble. You don't know who owns this place, but you'll find out." Her voice was hissing as she spoke.

  I gestured at the door with my head. "Come on, babe, let's go."

  April didn't look at Mrs. Ross. She walked straight out the door without looking at anything.

  I said, "If anybody sticks a nose out this door, I will put a bullet into his or her sinuses."

  Mrs. Ross was working on her theme. "Dumb motherfucker," she hissed.

  I backed out, closed the door, took April by the arm, and dragging
her with me, ran like hell up Angell Street.

  Chapter 16

  It took about a half hour for us to walk back to the Biltmore Plaza. It was cold and April had no coat. We couldn't find a cab, so I had to give her my jacket. That left the .38 in its hip holster out in the open air and several people looked at me askance as we went by. When we got to the lobby I retrieved my coat and covered the gun.

  It took me a half hour to pack, check out, get my car, and head for home. In that time April had said not a word, but she stuck close to me. When we were heading up Route 95, I said "Dinner in Boston, okay?"

  "Okay,'.

  "Ever been to the Warren Tavern?"

  "No."

  "It's in Charlestown, good place. Old. Food's good." She didn't say anything. I wasn't too worried about Mrs. Ross and the friendly folks who owned the sheep ranch. It was probably connected, and Angelo was probably a mob watchdog. But they didn't know who I was, and they probably had a good supply of teenage whores. I checked the rearview mirror occasionally, but no one had followed us, and no one was following now.

  "You going to take me home?" Her voice was louder than it had been in her room but not more animated.

  "If you want me to."

  "What if I don't?"

  "I won't."

  "They hired you to make me come home."

  "Actually, to find you."

  "You'll make me go home."

  "hope.'

  "I won't stay."

  It was dark now. We crossed the state line into Massachusetts at Attleboro. "That bad at home?" I said.

  She was quiet.

  "Worse than the sheep ranch?"

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see her shrug.

  "How'd you get those chafe marks on your wrists?" I said.

  "Lots of guys like to tie you up when they do it," she said in her small monotone.

  "And the bruises on your butt?"

  "Some guys like to paddle you."

  Route 95 had a wide dividing strip. The cars heading south were barely noticeable and not many cars were heading north. There was just the two of us in the small car, talking in the dark.

  "And home's worse than that?"

  "When you're not working, they leave you alone."

  "Except you couldn't leave," I said.

  "They left you alone. And…" Her voice stopped. "You like the life?"

  "Sure. Nobody hassles you. Nobody tells you what to do."

  "Except occasionally some stranger ties you up and hits you with a 'stick."

  "Yeah. They do other stuff too."

  "I imagine," I said.

  "You want to hear about it?"

  "If you want to tell me."

  She struggled again. "Some guys like to hear about it."

  "I'm not one of them," I said. "If you want to talk about it, I don't mind hearing."

  She shook her head. I was watching the road and looking at her in quick peeks. She was slumped still in the seat of the MG. Her feet were out straight in front of her.

  "How'd you end up in Providence?" I said.

  "Red sent me down here."

  ..Why?" She shrugged again. It was a hard conversation to follow if you were driving.

  "How'd you meet Red?" I said.

  "You a cop?"

  "No." "How come you had a gun?"

  "Private cop," I said.

  "Umph." "Everybody is thrilled like that," I said. "How'd you meet Red?" She shook her head. "Red had you on the street before?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "That's a tough work. Classy girl like you, I would think he, might set you up in a call operation."

  She didn't comment.

  "Weren't you a call girl first?"

  "Yeah."

  "So how come you got demoted?"

  "Red ordered me around too much. I don't like being ordered around."

  "So you were on the street and then Red sent you down here?"

  "Yeah."

  "You getting punished again?" I said.

  "No. I didn't give him any trouble. He just drove me down to Providence and said I had to work there."

  "When?"

  "Last week?"

  "When last week?"

  She made an impatient gesture with her head. "I don't know, last week sometime."

  "Today is Monday," I said. "How many days ago did you arrive?"

  She was looking down at her knees, her feet pushed out straight in the low leg well of the sports car. It was dark, but I could see a sulky set to her shoulders.

  "Come on, April, how many days?"

  She shook her head in disgust and took a long exasperated breath and made a considerable show of thinking and counting on her fingers. She was overacting badly-I was already willing to believe that thinking came hard for her. "Five days," she said. "Thursday," I said. "I guess so." "What time of day?" "Jesus, mister, what difference does it make? Get off my ass, will you?" "What time?" "I don't know, late in the day." "Was it dark yet?" "It was just getting dark." "Red put on the headlights?" "Not at first." "Four maybe," I said. "Four thirty?" "Sure," she said. "And you weren't having any trouble with Red?" "No. When I started I got a little out of line maybe, and Red slapped me around and said I'd have to work the Zone for a month." "How long did you have to go?" "Two weeks." "And you weren't getting out of line?" "No." "So why'd he send you to the sheep ranch?" "I don't know." "Isn't it usually a place they send troublemakers?" She nodded. "You a troublemaker''" "Just that one time, honest to God. I only did it that once time." "What did you do?" "I got a call and I didn't go. You know? I said I was going, and I went out and everything, but I didn't go. I went to the show instead. And Red finds- out and he's pissed, right? And he beats the shit out of me and makes me work the Zone. But I was good after that. I didn't do a goddamned thing. I wanted to get back on call, you know? Guys take you to nice hotel rooms. You can sleep over, in-room movies sometimes, breakfast in bed, take a shower, everything, right? I wanted to get back on that. So I didn't give anybody any trouble."

  "Everybody's gotta have a dream," I said.

  "Just that one time," she said. "Only time I ever did anything bad."

  We were quiet then. She dreaming heavily of in-room movies and room service, me thinking about how she seemed to have been shipped to Providence shortly after I talked to Amy Gurwitz, before I spoke first with Trumps, and long before Red told me the Chandler Street address.

  April said, "Can you pull over a minute? I gotta go to the bathroom."

  "Want me to pull off at the next exit and find a gas station?"

  "No, I gotta go real bad. Just stop here and I'll go in the woods. Please, I gotta go bad."

  I pulled over onto the shoulder and April got out as soon as the car stopped moving. She ran down the small gully along the road and up the other side and into the dark trees. It took me maybe ten minutes to realize I'd been had. I waited another ten and got out and walked into the woods and yelled. Beyond the reach of the headlights on Route 95 the woods were opaque. I couldn't see anything, and I was pretty sure that by now there was nothing to see.

  Chapter 17

  I'm not a man who quits easily. I had planned on the Warren Tavern and, goddamn it, I went to the Warren Tavern. Susan went with me. "The old pee-in-the-bushes trick," Susan said, her eyes bright, "and you fell for it."

  "The price of chivalry," I said.

  Susan sipped some white wine. "At least we know her situation."

  "We did," I said. "And we can speculate that her new situation won't be a big improvement."

  Susan nodded. She was wearing a violet-colored knit dress and diamond earrings. Her dark hair was shiny, and she smelled of expensive perfume. I hadn't seen her since Saturday and it seemed a year. The waiter brought duck for me and scrod for her. The duck had a pecan stuffing beneath it. "Rolling Rock, a duck, and thou."

  I said, "under the timbered roof."

  "Poetry," Susan said. "Everything you say is poetry." "And in action?"

  "Epic," she said. "What are
we going to do about April?"

  "We can remember April and be glad," I said. "She doesn't want to come home."

  "She told you that?"

  "Yes. She was happy to get out of the sheep ranch in Providence, but she wanted nothing to do with me."

  "Do you have a thought on where she'll go or what she'll do now?"

  "Red, maybe. Her job skills are limited and she's gotta eat."

  Susan nodded, thinking. I spent a lot of time trying to decide whether she was more spectacular when she was serious or when she laughed. The energy level didn't change and in both cases the charge of her presence made breathing harder. I had never decided and maybe I wouldn't. The fun was in thinking about it.

  "She'll be back in some kind of setting like that, I imagine," Susan said.

  "The forces that made her become a whore probably haven't changed. The things she hated about her home and her school and her town and herself presumably remain, whether or not she spent time in a -what do they call it?"

  "Sheep ranch," I said. "You know-because it's kinky."

  Susan ate some scrod. "In a way it must be a kind of perverse belonging."

  "To what?" I said.

  "To the pimp, to the other girls who are no better than you, to"-Susan had her fingers cathedraled and tapped her upper lip-"to a world where she's desirable enough for people to pay."

  "A way to be valuable?"

  "Yes," Susan said, and smiled. When she smiled I always expected people to turn and stare. "You're quite intuitive for a man with a seventeen-inch neck. It's a way to be valuable, even if only as a commodity, a product."

  I washed down a bit of pecan stuffing with a swallow of Rolling Rock. The bottle was empty. I gestured at the waitress and she went for more. Susan's glass was still half full. It was one of her few serious flaws.

  "She's valuable to the customer," Susan said, "because he's willing to pay for her, if but briefly. She's valuable to the pimp in that she generates income, she's rental property."

  The waitress brought my beer. I drank some.

  "And-I'm right, am I not?-the pimp takes care of her. Sees that she's paid, gets a bail bondsman if she's arrested, sees that she's not maltreated by the customer -at least, to the extent that she can't generate income?"