Strega

by Andrew Vachss

  "Marijuana is against the law, lady," I told her, my voice toneless so the audience could get the sarcasm without the evidence to go with it. "If you have any illegal substances or objects on your person, I insist you remove them from this vehicle."

  "Who're you trying to kid? After what you did in the…?"

  "Shut your fucking mouth!" I snapped at her. "You really want to talk, you'll get your chance, okay? You want to make some tapes for the federales, you make them someplace else. Got it?"

  She got it. Her face got hard again, like I'd insulted her, but she didn't say another word. Two hard dots of red stood out on her cheeks—not her makeup.

  The big Plymouth worked the city streets the way it was created to dopassing through traffic as anonymously as a rat in a garbage dump, eating the potholes, smoothing the bumps, quiet and careful. The tinted windows were up on both sides, the air conditioner whisper–quiet, watching the streets.

  I spotted the first bunch of working girls on 37th. Business was always slow this time of day, but the girls who worked the trucks and cabs for a living had to try harder than their sisters across town. On Lexington Avenue, the girls wore little shorts–and–tops outfits—over on the West Side, they worked the streets in bathing suits and heels. Even that was more subtle than you'd find elsewhere in the city—over in Hunts Point, they work in raincoats with nothing underneath.

  Nothing but hard–core pros over here—black women who hadn't been girls since they were twelve, white ladies too old or too out of shape for the indoor work. The pimps kept the baby–faces for the middle–class trade farther east—the runaways worked Delancey and the Bowery or strictly indoors. I love the words some of the jerkoff journalists use in this town…like "call girls." The only thing these ladies ever used a phone for was to call a bail bondsman.

  I slid the Plymouth to the curb. A tall black woman with a silky wig swivel–hipped over to the window, wearing one of those spandex suits, the green metallic threads shimmering in the sun. Her bright smile never got near her eyes.

  "Looking for something, honey?"

  "For someone. Michelle. She around?"

  "You her man, baby?" the whore wanted to know, casting a sly glance at the Plymouth—it wasn't exactly your standard pimpmobile.

  "Only if someone gets stupid with her," I told her, just so she'd know.

  "Honey, I'm out here in this heat about some money, you understand?"

  "You find her and bring her back over here, I'll pay one trick's worth—deal?"

  "I don't work blind, man," she said, all business now.

  "Tell her Burke needs to talk with her."

  She seemed to be thinking it over—looked past me to where the princess was sitting, nodding her head like she understood what was going on. Traffic was slow—her sisters strolled the sidelines, bored but watchful. It had been a long time since they'd seen anything new—or anything good. Finally, she made up her mind. "I get a half–yard for a trick, baby. That's the price for bringing Michelle around, okay?"

  There was no trick in the world this woman could get fifty bucks for, but insulting her wasn't going to get the job done.

  "I'll pay you your piece, okay? Let your manager go look for his commission someplace else. Fifty–fifty, right?"

  She flashed me a quick smile and swivel–hipped her way back to the other girls. No car–trick whore splits fifty–fifty with a pimp, but letting her think I believed that myth was worth the discount—for both of us. It's a sweet life out on the stroll in this city—every street–whore has a guaranteed time–share in the jailhouse. And the emergency ward is her only pension plan.

  I pulled the Plymouth through a wide U–turn into the mouth of the construction site, reached in my pocket for a smoke, and got ready to do some waiting.

  22

  THE REDHEAD wasn't good at waiting like I was— I could tell her life hadn't been like that. Too fucking bad. I let my eyes roam around the flatlands, watching the whores work, checking for any backup the redhead might have brought along. It's easy to tail a car in the city, but anyone following us would have to be some distance away or I'd have spotted them by now.

  She shifted her hips on the bench seat, recrossed her legs. The silk–on–silk sound was smooth and dry to my ears. Like a gun being cocked. "I've never been here before," she said. "What do you call this neighborhood?"

  "After you talk to my friend, I'll talk to you, okay?"

  "All I asked…"

  "Don't ask me anything. Don't talk to me. When I know it's just me you're talking to, I'll answer, you understand? I'm not going to tell you again."

  I was watching her face when I spoke to her. If she was wired and the backups were out of eyesight, she'd want our location to go out over the air—and I wasn't having any. Her face told me nothing—nothing except that she wasn't used to being talked to like that and she didn't like it. Well, I didn't like any of this, but if Julio was turning into a public–address system, I had to find out why. Everybody has rules they live by. Mine were: I wasn't going to die. I wasn't going to go back to prison. And I wasn't going to work a citizen's job for a living. In that order.

  I spotted my bird–dog whore before I saw Michelle. She walked quickly over to the Plymouth, holding the wiggle to a minimum. She wanted to collect from me before a new customer took her for a ride.

  "She'll be here in a minute, honey. You got my quarter like you said?"

  "Right here," I told her, holding a twenty and a five in my left hand where she could see it.

  The whore said nothing. I believed her that Michelle was coming—I'd had too good a look at her face for her to pull a Murphy game on me. That is, if she had any sense. But if she had any sense, she wouldn't be out here tricking.

  Then I saw Michelle. The tall, willowy brunette was wearing pencil–leg red pants that stopped halfway up her calves—spike heels with ankle straps—a white parachute–silk blouse, the huge sleeves billowing as she moved. A long string of black beads around her neck and a man's black felt fedora on the back of her head. Like all her outfits, it would have looked ridiculous on anyone but her. That was the point, she told me once.

  I released my hold on the bills and the whore flashed me a quick smile and moved back to her post. The redhead wasn't missing any of this, but she kept her mouth shut. I got out of the Plymouth and moved over to Michelle, my back blocking the redhead's view. I didn't have to watch her—Michelle would do that—she always knew what to do.

  She put her left hand on my shoulder, reached up to kiss me on the cheek while her right hand snaked inside my jacket to the back of my belt. If there was a gun in there, she'd know the person inside the car was bad news. If I stepped to the side, the passenger would be looking at my pistol in Michelle's hand.

  Michelle patted my back, whispered in my ear, "What's on, baby?"

  "I'm not sure," I told her. "The redhead in the car braced me outside the courthouse. She's related to that old alligator—Julio. She wants something—I don't know what yet. The old bastard gave her some information about how to find me. She made it clear she was going to stay on my case until I talked to her."

  "So talk to her, honey. You didn't drag me away from my lucrative profession to be your translator."

  "I want to see if she's wired, Michelle."

  Michelle's impossibly long lashes made shadows against her model's cheekbones; her fresh dark lipstick framed her mouth into a tiny circle.

  "Oh," is all she said. Michelle's life must have been hell when she was supposed to have been a man.

  "I'll pull over around the corner behind the trucks, okay? You get in the back with her—make sure she's clean. I'll check her purse.

  "That's all?"

  "For now."

  "Baby, you know I started the treatmentsbut they didn't do the chop yet. Just the shots. And the psychiatrist—once a week. It's not cheap."

  "You definitely going through with it?"

  "If I was gay, I could come out, you know? But like I am, I have to
break out. You know."

  I knew. None of us had ever asked about Michelle, but she gradually told us. And the Mole had explained what a transsexual was…a woman trapped in a man's body. Even before she started getting the hormone injections and the breast implants, she looked like a woman—walked like a woman, talked like a woman. The big thing was, she had the heart of a woman. When you go to prison, the only people you could count on to visit you were your mother or your sister. I didn't have those people—it was Michelle who rode the bus for twelve hours one way and then walked through the ugly stares and evil whispering to visit me upstate when I was down the last time. She still worked the same car tricks—all she needed was her mouth. I knew what was in her purse— a little bottle of cognac she used for a mouthwash after each time. And the tiny canister of CN gas the Mole made for her.

  "I don't have a price for this job, Michelle. It may not be a job at all, okay? But if she's got anything in her purse, we'll see about a donation."

  "Close enough," she said, "but if she's got no cash, you take me to the Omega to hear Tom Baxter before he leaves town. Deal?"

  "Deal," I told her, and she climbed into the back seat behind the redhead.

  I found the dark spot in the shadow of the trucks and pulled in.

  "Get in the back seat," I told the redhead.

  "Why?" she snapped.

  "Here's why," I told her. "I don't know you—I don't know what you want. My secretary back there is going to search you. If you're wearing a wire, out you go. It's that simple. She's here because I can't search you myself."

  "I still don't see why…"

  "Look, lady, you asked me to talk to you, okay? This is the way we do it. You don't like it, you take whatever business you have and you shake it on down the road."

  The redhead softly scratched her long nails across one knee, thinking. I didn't have time for her to think.

  "Besides," I told her, "haven't you had enough experience with men telling you to take your clothes off?"

  Her eyes flashed at me, hard with anger, but she didn't say a word. I looked straight ahead, heard the door open, slam, open and slam again. She was in the back seat with Michelle.

  "Toss your purse over the seat," I told her.

  "What?"

  "You heard me. My secretary's going to check your body; I'm going to check your purse…for the same thing."

  The lizard–skin purse came sailing over the back seat and bounced off the windshield. I picked it up, unsnapped the gold clasp. Sounds from the back seat: zippers, the rustle of fabric. The purse had a pack of Marlboros, a gold Dunhill lighter, a little silver pillbox with six five–milligram Valiums inside, a tightly folded black silk handkerchief, a soft leather purse with a bunch of credit cards and a checkbook—joint account with her husband—and three hundred or so in cash. In a flap on the side I found thirty hundred–dollar bills—they looked fresh and new, but the serial numbers weren't in sequence. No tape recorder. Not even a pencil.

  "She's clean," said Michelle from the back seat. I heard the door open and slam again, and the redhead was next to me.

  "So…?" I asked Michelle.

  "All quality stuff. Bendel's, Bergdorf's, like that. The pearls are real. Very nice shoes. But that underwear is just tacky, honey. Nobody wears a garter belt outside a motel room didn't your mother tell you that? And that perfume…honey, you need some heavy lessons in subtle."

  The redhead snapped her head around to the back seat.

  "From you?" she asked, trying for sarcasm.

  "Who better?" Michelle wanted to know, genuinely surprised at such a stupid question.

  "How much do I owe you?" the redhead asked Michelle in the same voice she would have used on the man who tuned her BMW.

  "For what?"

  "Well, you are a prostitute, aren't you? I know how valuable your time is."

  "I see. Okay, Ms. Bitch—the hand job was on the house, but you can give me a hundred for the fashion advice."

  The redhead reached in her purse. She never touched the new bills. She put together a hundred from the other supply and tossed it into the back seat. Michelle was dismissed.

  She floated around to the redhead's open window, winked at me to say goodbye. Then she spoke in a soft voice to the redhead. "Honey, I may be a whore, but I'm not a cunt. Think about it." And she was gone.

  23

  "WHAT NEXT?" the redhead wanted to know, in a voice meant to tell me she was just about out of patience.

  "Now we drive someplace else, and you tell me your story," I said, throwing the Plymouth into gear. We drove over to the West Side Highway in silence. I turned south, looking for a safe parking place near one of the abandoned piers on the Hudson River. I wheeled the car off the highway, pulled up to the pier, and backed in. From that spot, I could see every piece of traffic except the boats. If the redhead had friends with her, I'd know soon enough.

  I hit a switch on the dash and both front windows opened. Another switch locked her door, just in case.

  I lit a cigarette, leaned way back in my seat so I could watch her and watch the street too. "Okay, lady, what is it you want?"

  The redhead shifted her hips so she was facing me on the seat, her back to the window. "I want you to find a picture for me."

  "A picture like a painting?"

  "A photograph—a photograph of a kid."

  "Lady, will you just tell me the whole story? I don't have time to drag it out of you piece by piece, okay?"

  "This isn't an easy thing to talk about."

  "Then don't talk about it," I told her. "I didn't ask you to show up. I'll drive you back to your car and you find somebody else, okay?"

  "No! It's not okay. Can't you give me a fucking minute to get myself together? It took me a long time to find you."

  "Yeah. But you did find me, right? When you see Julio, tell him I'll remember this."

  "Don't blame Julio. All he gave me was that phone number…the one the Chinese lady answers.

  "I got your messages."

  "So why didn't you call me?"

  "Because I don't know you. I don't speak to strangers on the phone."

  "That's why I had to find your car. Vinnie told me what you looked like—and your car. One of Julio's crew saw you at the courthouse this morning and he called me."

  "Vinnie?" I said, thinking that I'd have to get the car painted and some new license plates.

  "The guy who delivered the money to you from Julio."

  "I don't know what you're talking about, lady."

  "I told Julio why I needed to talk to you. He said it was none of his business—not family. He probably knew you'd never return my calls. So I told Vinnie to ask you for me.

  "Nobody asked me anything."

  "I know. He told me you wouldn't talk to him."

  "I don't know what he told you. I don't care. I don't like people threatening me."

  "Vinnie threatened you?"

  "I don't know any Vinnie. You threatened me. In the parking lot, right? Either I talk to you or you keep hounding me."

  "I didn't mean to threaten you."

  "You're threatening me with this whole conversation. Julio's got his people on the street looking for me? Very fucking nice."

  "Julio doesn't know anything about this. Vinnie did me a personal favor—and so did the guy who spotted you this morning."

  "People like to do you these favors?"

  She moved her lips in something between a smile and a sneer. "Men like to do me favors. You find that very surprising?"

  "If this Vinnie is your idea of a man, no."

  "You don't like any of us, do you?"

  "Who's this 'us' you're talking about? An old man with a loose mouth? A punk kid? A woman who threatens me?"

  "Us Italians."

  "I don't like people who don't mean me any good, okay?"

  "Okay," she said in a quiet voice, "but now that I went to all this trouble—now that we're here—will you listen to me and see if you're interested?"

&n
bsp; "And if I'm not?"

  "Then that's your decision. I won't bother you anymore.

  "On your word of honor, right?"

  Her eyes narrowed in on me. I thought I saw a tiny red dot in each one—it must have been the reflection from her hair. "You don't know me," she said.

  "I don't want to know you," I told her.

  She reached in her purse, fumbled around with her hand. Her eyes never left my face. "I'll pay you five hundred dollars to listen to what I have to say—why I want you to work for me. You don't take the case, you still keep the money. Okay?"

  I took a minute to think about it. If I listened to her story and told her I wasn't interested, there was at least the chance that she'd go someplace else. And there was a filly pacer running at Yonkers that night that I just knew was going to break her maiden with a big win. She was due to snap a long string of losses. So was I.

  "Okay," I told her.

  The redhead. ran her fingers through her hair in an absent–minded gesture. The diamond flashed on her hand. "My best friend has a…"

  "Hold it," I told her. "Where's the money?"

  "You listen to me first."

  "No way."

  "I thought only lawyers got money up front. You're only a private detective."

  "Lady, you don't have the slightest idea what I am," I said, "but I'll give you a hint. I'm a man who's going to listen to your story—after you put five hundred dollars on the table."

  Her hand darted into her purse. Out came five new century notes. She fanned them out—held them up. "Is this what you want?" she snapped.

  "It's half of what I want."

  "You mean you want a thousand?"

  "I mean I want you to tell me your story and then get out of my life—like we agreed," I told her.

  She released her grip on the money. It dropped to the seat between us. The street was still quiet—plenty of people around, but no problems. I picked up the money and pocketed it.

  "So?" I asked her.

  "My best friend, Ann–Marie. She has a little boy, only two years older than my daughter. He was in like a nursery–school thing during the day. Someone there did something to him. A sex thing. And they took pictures of him. We didn't even know about the pictures until the therapist. explained it to us. But the boy, Scotty, he keeps saying they have his picture. Like they have his soul."