Miss Match

by Leslie Carroll

  Suddenly, Kathryn felt a tug on her arm. She was being pulled away from Eddie by a short, squat, pug-nosed, blonde officer. Her name tag said Swaggart. Emerging from her hiding place, Kathryn almost turned her ankle rising to her feet on her stilettos.

  Officer Swaggart jerked Kathryn’s arms behind her back in one practiced, deft move and slipped the cuffs on. It was surreal. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you can’t afford an attorney, one will be provided to you . . .”

  My God, she’s Mirandizing me, Kathryn realized. “Wait—do you think I’m a hooker?” she squealed, barely finding her voice, as she was pushed head-first into a squad car with other entrepreneurial ladies of roughly the same age and unfortunately similar attire. “Eddie, say something!” she yelled to him, trying to reach past her companions in the back seat.

  Eddie was on the verge of a fistfight with a belligerent uniform. He reached into his jacket pocket, when the officer shoved his 9mm Glock in Eddie’s face. “I was going for my badge, you overeager son of a bitch! Jesus! I suppose if I was black, I’d be dead by now!” Kathryn heard Eddie growl. He was livid, literally red in the face. “Detective Eddie Benson. Undercover. Vice. Midtown South, asshole!”

  The rookie backed off, caught between embarrassment and confusion. Locked in the squad car, Kathryn watched the totally befuddled young cop try to fit the pieces together. “Hey, dickhead, you’re so dumb I can smell the wood burning when you try to think,” she shouted at him. The hookers in the backseat laughed. “You go, girl!” one of them exclaimed and made a loud, smacking kissy sound in Kathryn’s direction. Great, now we’ve all bonded, Kathryn thought.

  Eddie noted the rookie’s name on the kid’s rectangular badge, repeated it aloud, committing it to memory. Then Benson went ballistic. “Now let my date out of your goddamn car, you scumbag! Does your mother know you’re out this late, Davis?” But as Eddie lunged toward the car, past Officer Davis, who was too green to be out on the street, the siren blipped, then blared and the squad car lurched away.

  Chapter 8

  How am I going to tell Ellie I was strip-searched and my date wasn’t even there? Kathryn wondered, as she sat on a hard wooden bench at the Midtown North precinct on West Fifty-fourth Street, in a holding cell with industrious women of several ethnicities, varying shapes, and attitudes ranging from high dudgeon to white-hot fury to sullen indifference.

  Well, at least I wore nice underwear. She shook her head, laughing silently. Not that the matron cared. In fact, the exorbitantly priced black lace teddy reinforced the prison matron’s belief that Kathryn was lying about her line of work. She was on the wrong turf, that was all. “Uptown,” “Brünnhilde” had snorted to herself when she saw the La Perla lingerie. Actually, the stalwart-looking Valkyrie prison matron was wrong. Kathryn was in an “honest profession,” if you could call teaching anything to a bunch of randy adolescents “honest.” Kathryn knew that a few high-end call girls lived in her sister’s uptown high-rise. Maybe that’s where Eleanor had gotten the notion to outfit her from La Perla.

  “I never seen you before. Where you work, baby?” asked a RuPaul wannabe in a beehive wig the color of moonlight, “her” Adam’s apple poorly concealed by a chiffon scarf in a garish leopard print.

  “I’m uh . . . not in the Life,” Kathryn replied.

  “Oh, honey, we all say that from time to time,” cooed the hooker. “But denial is not just a river in Egypt.” The transvestite extended her large hand, manicured with inch-long nail extensions enameled in black and pewter. “The name’s Liquid Silver,” the hooker said. She ran her tongue over her glossed lips. “But my friends call me Lick.” What’s your name, sugar? You as sweet as pep’mint candy.”

  “Kathryn—Kitty.”

  “Kitty. Tha’s nice.”

  “At least her name’s not ‘Pussy.’ ”

  “Oh, shut your ugly face, Carmencita,” Liquid Silver sassed back at Kathryn’s detractor. “You so obvious, girl!” Lick turned back to Kathryn. “I like your hair, sugar. That nat’ral?”

  “Yup.”

  “What you use?”

  “Aveda. The shampoo and the conditioner that’s specially formulated for redheads.” Here she was trading beauty tips with a transvestite hooker. Well, at least Lick was more verbal than Eddie.

  “I was a redhead last month for a spell. It was Buster’s idea. My man.” Liquid Silver sighed dramatically. “But it don’t suit my nature. I’m not a fiery woman. I’m like . . . a cooler customer. Philadelphia mainline. That’s where I was born.” Lick primped a little. “Sides, I used to have a Barbie doll that had hair jus’ like this and I wanted to grow up to look zackly like her.”

  “Well, I think it was a good choice. The platinum is very striking,” Kathryn said helpfully. “And it sets off your complexion beautifully.”

  Lick blushed under her mahogany skin. “Girl. You make my day.” She shifted her butt on the hard bench. “I gotta move these bones, or I’m gonna get some spread-ugly looking ass. Who all wants to play a game?”

  “I’m up for it,” Kathryn said. It certainly would help pass the time. Who knew when she might be sprung. This could be fun. “Any other takers?”

  “You know me, Lick,” purred another transvestite hooker. “I can be up for anything. Tell you what,” the streetwalker then said to Kathryn. “You pick the game and”—she pointed to herself—“Shemale Warrior Princess will go along for the ride.”

  “Okay. Who knows how to play charades?” Kathryn stood up and all of a sudden she found herself switching into drama teacher mode. “You get your butts off these hard benches and your imagination going at the same time.”

  She was a bit surprised to find a relatively enthusiastic audience. Kathryn explained the rules and demonstrated the pantomime shorthand for movie, book, play, and other subjects that would work for the game.

  “They gonna wonder why it’s so quiet in here,” Lick laughed, “if I’m not supposed to talk. Hey, mama,” she called to the prison matron, “wanna play, too?”

  To Kathryn’s shock, “Brünnhilde” sort of smiled and checked the corridor outside the holding cell to see if anyone might be watching who could write her up if they caught her fraternizing, as it were, with her charges.

  “Okay, I got me a title!” Lick announced excitedly. “It’s a movie! Oh, shit, I wasn’t supposed to say it. Okay, you didn’t hear that, ladies.” She pantomimed the correct sign for movie and the game was underway.

  “Five words!” called the matron, guessing correctly.

  “Fourth word . . . a little word . . . uh . . .” Carmencita puzzled out.

  Lick tapped her manicured talon on the tip of her nose, to indicate that Carmencita’s correct guess was “on the nose,” but the Latina just looked confused.

  “I got it? Wait, what did I just say? Uh . . .”

  Lick continued to touch her nose furiously.

  “A,” Kathryn reasoned. “The fourth word is a. Something something something a something?”

  Liquid Silver nodded her assent to Kathryn. She then indicated she was going to dramatize the first word. She pretended to take out a pistol and fire it.

  Random guesses flew from the cellmates. “Shoot?” “Kill?” “Assassinate the motherfucker so he don’t walk no more?”

  Lick made a “sort of ” gesture with her hand. Then she pretended to shoot herself, writhed in mock pain, and fell to the floor in an agonizing, tortured heap.

  “Die!” Kathryn called out.

  Lick made the “okay” sign with her right thumb and index finger. She indicated she was moving right on to the second word, then grabbed her crotch as an illustration.

  “Die snatch?”

  “Shemale, sometimes you are so stupid, girl. Oops,” Lick said, coquettishly putting her hand over her lips. “No talking,” she added coyly. “Well shut my beautiful mouth.” Lick then made a power gesture with her fist.

>   Blank stares from the cell. Then she pounded on the cinderblock wall and the wooden bench, trying to illustrate the second word of the film title. More confused faces. She returned to her crotch and began to graphically mime an erect penis.

  “Ohhhh,” Shemale cried, experiencing nothing short of an orgasmic epiphany. “Hard!”

  Lick tapped her nose and jumped up and down triumphantly. Then she rapidly went through a series of pantomimes of shootings, stabbings, strangulations, stompings, and anything else she could think of.

  “Die Hard with a Vengeance!” Kathryn yelled, maybe a little too loud. The matron gestured to indicate that someone was coming.

  “Coño, you are too good at this, Kitty,” Carmencita marveled. “I couldn’t do this for shit. I was thinking about doing Survivor but I wouldn’t have no idea how to get you all to guess it.”

  A world-weary sergeant poked his head in the door. “Kathryn Lamb?”

  Kathryn looked up. “That’s me.”

  “You can step outside, Ms. Lamb. You’re free to go.”

  “You take care of yourself, girlfriend.” Lick said, hugging Kathryn. “And any time you want to change your . . . circumstances, you just come ’round looking for Lick. Buster’ll get you set up nice. Save on shoe leather, if you know what I mean,” she whispered. “I can fix it so the men come crawling to you, sugar, ’stead of walking yo’ cute l’il tootsies off looking for them.”

  “Thanks. I’ll . . . keep that in mind,” Kathryn said, hugging the statuesque transvestite. “And you keep yourself . . . okay?”

  Eddie was standing outside the door, looking harried and sad.

  “I’m sorry, Kathryn.”

  “You should be,” she mustered, trying to make a joke out of her predicament. It was impossible, given the circumstances. Good God, she’d been jailed.

  “I shoulda told you I was a detective,” he said, shuffling his feet. “But even if I had, it wouldn’t have prevented us from getting caught in what went down tonight. Vice in Midtown North and Midtown South are working on a joint task force in Hell’s Kitchen. The uniforms in North don’t know me. Vice, undercover, we don’t let too many people outside our department know what we do. A week or so ago, we got a report there’s a snitch out there, and someone on the street tonight recognized me.”

  “I was arrested, Eddie.”

  He looked truly miserable. Kathryn somehow found herself feeling sorrier for him than she did for herself. “We got that taken care of,” he said. “Don’t worry about that. Swaggart didn’t write anything down yet, so she won’t be writing anything down, ever.” He reached out to stroke her cheek. “Jesus, kiddo, I wish I could take you home, but I got some paperwork here to fill out, plus on account of what went down tonight, I gotta go back to my own precinct and take care of some business. I’m sorry I can’t see you home.” He lowered his voice and leaned in toward Kathryn’s ear. “I’d like to take you out again sometime, though.”

  He looked like a basset hound. Kathryn couldn’t blame him for what had happened that night, but she couldn’t see herself dating an NYPD vice detective. “You’re a very nice guy, Eddie,” she began.

  He shuffled his feet, and tossed his head a bit, giving her that “where have I heard that before?” look.

  “It does sound that way, I admit, and I’m sorry,” Kathryn continued. “But . . . well . . . your lifestyle is a bit action-packed for me.” It was the truth, but not all of it. She couldn’t envision herself carrying every conversation for the duration of a relationship. “Again, I’m sorry. You are a very nice guy.”

  He shook her hand. “I really liked being with you, Kathryn. I’m sorry, too.” Eddie swallowed hard. “Well, I hope you enjoyed at least part of the evening.”

  “I’m having a hard time deciding whether it was the humorless lesbian comedy, the crossfire, or the strip search I liked best.”

  Eddie nodded his head. “I guess it was sort of a dud all around, huh?”

  “No, Eddie. It really wasn’t. The burger was lovely. And meeting Little Willy was an experience I will long remember. Thanks.” Kathryn was feeling the need to change the subject. Any more pity for her date, and she’d be home making red sauce for his penne as soon as she was sprung from the pen. Which reminded her. “By the way, I get a phone call, don’t I?”

  The detective smacked his head the same way he’d hit the ketchup bottle. “Jesus, I’m sorry.” He looked around. “You’re not under arrest. You can make as many calls as you want. But I don’t see an empty office; the place is crawling with cops.”

  “I guess you get that in a precinct.”

  Eddie laughed. “Yeah, right. You do.” He gestured toward a grimy pay phone screwed into the gray-green station house wall, then fished for something in his pocket, handing her a quarter. “It’s the least I can do,” he said goofily.

  “You’re swell, Eddie.”

  The narc shuffled his feet again and looked down at the ground, changing the subject. “Ya know, if you ever get a parking ticket or something . . .”

  “I appreciate the gesture,” Kathryn said tensely, taking his hand, “but I don’t drive.”

  “Well . . . if you ever get a car . . . I mean, look me up, sometime, ya know?”

  Why do I feel guilty about this? Kathryn wondered. They shook hands again, and Eddie rounded a corner and disappeared into one of the tiny, overcrowded offices. Kathryn slipped the quarter into the pay phone, took a business card from the billfold of her wallet and dialed a number. Be home, she prayed. Be home. She sighed with relief when a voice answered on the other end, then immediately went into a tailspin of anxiety over what to say. She realized her hands were shaking.

  “Bear? It’s me, Kathryn. Are you busy?”

  Chapter 9

  “You’re where?!” Kathryn heard him say. She tried sotto voce to explain her predicament until the disembodied voice of the operator warned her that her time was about to expire. Kathryn rattled off the address of the precinct and asked Walker to fetch her, then hung up, wondering if he would think her stupid for not just taking a cab or a subway home.

  Wait a minute. Who the hell cares if he thinks I’m stupid? I was entitled to a phone call. It’s really Bear who got me into this mess. Eddie was—is—his client. He owes me.

  Twenty minutes later, Walker strode briskly into the station, took Kathryn’s hand, and turned around without breaking his pace. “C’mon, let’s go. Meter’s running,” he said as he steered her into a waiting taxi, then climbed in beside her. Kathryn spent the ride downtown recounting the evening’s events to Walker, rattling them off at breakneck speed, as though she were calling the Preakness. “You owe me, Walker Hart,” she kept repeating during their ride home. “You owe me.”

  Still, she had surprised herself by not crying yet. Kathryn managed to keep it together as they walked into their apartment building. “Buenos noches, señor. Señorita,” Carlos said, tipping them a wink, which both Walker and Kathryn elected to ignore. “Evening, Carlos,” they said, almost in tandem.

  After they stepped into the elevator, Kathryn finally lost control. She started to tremble, then to cry, backing herself against the wall of the elevator. Walker came over to her and pulled her into his arms. Kathryn tried to wriggle away, but he held her tightly. “Shhh,” he soothed, “It’s okay.” She accepted his permission to weep uncontrollably, shaking as he held her. “Of course you’re a wreck, Kitty, you were almost killed. You’re supposed to feel something.”

  Now she felt something. Something wonderful when she snuggled against his chest. Walker moved his hands from her back up to her shoulders and gave them a friendly squeeze. “Good God, you’re in knots, woman. You’re coming with me.”

  There it goes again. That magical, electrical shiver. “But this is my floor,” she protested, as the elevator slowed to a stop on nine. “I feel gross. I need a shower or two or three.”

  “I’ll take you home in a little while. First, you need some cognac and a massage.”

&nb
sp; Kathryn realized she was pretty content where she was, and gave up with no further struggle. “That’s right neighborly of you, sir,” she said, half crying, half laughing.

  They arrived at the penthouse, and Walker reached for his keys and opened the door without letting go of Kitty. He led her to that dreadfully ugly, severe-looking black leather couch and seated her. “Be right back,” he assured her, kicking off his shoes on the way to the liquor cabinet. He poured two fingers of Martell X.O. into a snifter and handed it to Kathryn. She took a grateful sip. “Better?” he asked solicitously. She nodded. He patted her knee. “Good.” He padded toward the bedroom. “Be right out.”

  Kathryn buried her nose in the glass and inhaled its rich aroma, then swirled the amber liquid around, watching the “legs” slowly trickle down the insides of the glass. She could hear Walker singing from the bedroom, while he seemed to be making all sorts of thudding noises with paraphernalia in there. “If you’re ever in a jam, here I am. If you’re ever in a mess, S.O.S. If you ever feel so happy, you land in jail, I’m your bail. That’s friendship, friendship, just a perfect blendship. When other friendships have been forgot, ours will still be hot . . . Ka-yadda, yadda, yadda, ching, ching, ching . . .”

  “You always know just what to sing,” Kathryn called in to him.

  “Just a major Cole Porter fan,” he grinned defensively, lugging a large padded object into the living room.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “My massage table.”

  “Hold it. You weren’t kidding.”

  “Of course I wasn’t kidding. Did you think I was bringing a defenseless woman—not to mention a client of mine—who has just been shot at, falsely arrested, then jailed, up to my apartment for the purposes of seduction?”

  The thought crossed my mind, Kathryn contemplated, crossing her legs.

  Although the thought did cross my mind, Walker mused.

  “I’m not letting you touch my back,” Kathryn said, placing her drink on the amoeba-shaped coffee table, using last month’s copy of Sports Illustrated for a coaster.