Revenge of the Cootie Girls

by Sparkle Hayter

  But, damn, the statute of limitations had expired on that too, long ago.

  The Vincent loomed ahead. My legs were going towards it, but my heart and brain were hanging back.

  Every year you read a wire story about how a whole family was killed, one right after another, by deadly, odorless methane gas which had built up in a closed manure pit. In almost every one of these stories, the first person goes in and doesn’t come out, the second person wonders where he is and goes in to see what’s going on and he doesn’t come out either, so the third guy goes in … and so on. Up to five people have been killed this way. You’d think, after three guys had gone into a manure pit, not responded to calls, not come out, the next guy would think, “Wait a second. Maybe I shouldn’t go in there. Maybe I should get help.”

  I felt like the fourth guy, about to go blindly into the manure pit.

  After hours, you have to get buzzed into the Vincent, unless a man in a tuxedo ahead of you gets buzzed in first and holds the door for you, as happened to me. The key from the envelope Sally had given me had no tag, so I stopped at the desk and asked the night clerk if someone had left something for Robin Hudson. He handed me a little piece of paper which bore only the words “Doug Gribetz’s birthday”—which was July 21, 7/21—and another from the housekeeping staff, confirming that the guest had requested no housekeeping service until the next afternoon.

  I looked back casually to see if Claire had arrived. She wasn’t there.

  “When was this room rented, when was check-in?” I said to the clerk, who was reading a skin mag and absent-mindedly swatting flies.

  The clerk looked it up. “Yesterday evening.”

  “Do you remember a dark-haired woman …”

  “I wasn’t working here yesterday evening,” he said, in a please-leave tone of voice.

  “If a woman in a dog costume comes in, or one looking like Marilyn Monroe, please tell them I’ll be in 721,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said, and went back to swatting flies.

  Seven twenty-one was in a little cul-de-sac of rooms. I knocked. When there was no answer, I put the key in the lock and opened the door, shut it quickly behind me, then bolted it and chained it.

  A very old woman was fast asleep in the double bed, next to an empty wheelchair.

  “You must be Granny,” I said softly.

  On top of the dresser was a note on stationery from Metro Home Nurse, “your temporary home nurse specialists.”

  Dear Ms. Winston,

  I have bathed, fed and given the medication you left for your grandmother. She should sleep through the night. She was very disoriented and confused and at first refused to go to bed. I did get her into bed. As per your instructions, I left at midnight. The morning nurse will be here at 6 A.M.

  She gave emergency numbers and signed it “Frances Johnson, R.N.”

  I poked the old woman to make sure she was alive, and she snorted and fell back to sleep.

  There was a flash outside the window. I looked out. A moon, partially obscured by clouds, shone between the pink neon hotel sign and a black water-tank on spindly legs on a roof across the street. Dry lightning cracked about.

  Well, now I guess I wait for Claire and the cavalry. I sat down in the wheelchair and opened the envelope Julie had left for me on the desk, taking out a thick sheaf of papers. On top was a typewritten note that said, inexplicably, “Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

  Underneath were some photocopied pages from a book called Mob Myths: New York Mafia Legends 1925–1995, written by a longtime New York Post crime reporter, and a computer printout that looked to me like a bunch of financial transactions. The computer printout was pretty meaningless to me, but I suspected it would interest the feds.

  The first photocopied section from the book was the story of a mob enforcer, F., who had been assigned by a high-ranking capo in a small but powerful family to knock off another high-ranking capo in the family, J., who was married to the eldest daughter of the don. The family was undergoing a power struggle while the don, G., was on his deathbed. The intended victim, J., was tracked to a midtown bar, where he believed he’d be meeting with a colleague. The “colleague” was supposed to take him out and kill him. Unbeknownst to the “colleague,” J. caught on to the plan and tried to get away through the men’s room, which also opened into the hotel that housed the bar. The hit man/colleague followed him into the john and insisted on escorting J. out.

  But on the way out of the john, the intended victim saw two girls, and invited them to have drinks. He used these two nice girls from the Midwest as a shield all evening, refusing to let the hit man go and luring him, finally, to a spot where the hit man could be grabbed by two of the intended victim’s henchmen. The hit man was taken off and killed, but it wasn’t until a decade later that his bones were found in the Dunes in Bedford-Stuyvesant, near the old Brooklyn dump.

  Jesus H. Billy was Frankie the Fish. We’d blundered into a hit that night! Fuck. Billy, or Frankie, whatever his name was, had been killed that night. Julie and I had saved Johnny Nostrils’s life, and cost the other guy his. Julie had done it, really. Every time Billy suggested that he and George had to go meet some business colleagues, Julie insisted we keep going, even to the point of grabbing Billy by one arm while I grabbed the other, all of this with George’s encouragement. What was Billy going to do, pull a gun on us in public?

  And when we held Billy/Frankie at Cafe Buñuel, we gave Johnny Chiesa a chance to use the pay phone by the john, call his cohorts to come get Frankie the Fish.

  God, we were lucky we didn’t get offed along with Johnny Nostrils. The mob was bad, but they did have a code of honor that precluded the murder of innocent bystanders. Partly this was because innocent bystanders brought the swift wrath of the cops and the media, especially when said innocent bystanders are dead tourist girls. Only after most of the Mafia was broken did sloppier, more ruthless gangs move in and kids and other innocents get killed from stray bullets in gang crossfires and drive-bys.

  After that excerpt was a story about Godmother G., mother of the dead don G., who was said to be the brains behind the family until a head injury resulting from a fall in 1989 left her daft. Before the head injury, she had been the meanest woman in the Mafia, believed to be responsible for the mysterious disappearance and presumed murder of two women with whom her husband had long affairs. As soon as her ailing husband slipped into a coma, the mistresses vanished.

  Godmother G.’s son Don G. had four daughters, the eldest married to the man, J., who took over the family after the Godfather died.

  Shit. I looked over at Granny. She looked so sweet and harmless now. You could hardly even tell she was a murderess.

  Where was Claire? I wondered if I should call the feds. What if the room phone was tapped or something? What if the feds showed up before I got Kathy and Tamayo back? How would the Perrugia sisters call me now that my cell phone was dead? I looked for the room phone. There was none. Someone had removed it.

  Granny was snoring loudly away. In between snores, I heard pounding at the door. Quietly, I crept to the peephole, looked out, and saw someone in one of those cheap, over-the-head skeleton costumes.

  “Who are you?” I said. “Show your face.”

  Two delicate hands rose, with identical movements, and pulled the front of the costume up over the top of her head.

  It was Mary MacCosham, and did she looked pissed. More than pissed. She was wild-eyed, like she was manic, or on something. Evidently, Mary had gone off the deep end.

  “Open this damn door,” she said. “Or I’ll shoot it open.”

  17

  IN THE MOMENT before I opened the door, there was, like, an atomic explosion in my head.

  Mary’s middle name was Anne. Her mother’s maiden name was something like Winston. Anne Winston. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I guess I was thinking in a different groove.

  Mary was involved with charity. Mary had tried to buy her way u
p through society with charity fund-raising work. She seemed the type to have tasteful Park Avenue decor. Hell, she was a Park Avenue trophy wife, in a small-time way, until her divorce.

  Not only that, but she’d come back to New York with Julie—she no doubt knew a lot about our itinerary. Had she and Julie hooked up with George when they were here? Maybe that photo of Julie and George was taken during their trip. Maybe they’d gone to some of the same places.

  Shit, yes! The handwritten note from Julie that was included with the cootie catcher I was given at Joy II was dated August 7, 1979, after our falling out. Apparently, it was a note to Mary MacCosham.

  That explained the lame alias.

  But why was she fucking with me? Was this part of her motherfucker of a midlife crisis? Some settling of old scores?

  So—where was Julie? Hell. I’d been chasing her all night, and she was probably a happily remarried housewife in New Mexico, asleep in her bed tonight, ignorant of all this.

  Boy, I had to give Mary credit. Mary was a little cleverer than I had imagined, not as clever as Julie, but pretty clever.

  I didn’t have any weaponry with me. I tried to pick up the lamp on the bedside table, but it was bolted down. There was nothing, so I just opened the door, and, going purely on instinct, popped Mary right in the nose, three times, very quickly.

  “This one is for me, this one is for Julie, and this one is for making Mabel eat her own Barbie,” I said. This was the rare instance where a punch in the nose was better than a sturdy Anglo-Saxon word.

  Mary MacCosham dropped to the floor.

  Somewhere, doors were opening.

  I pulled Mary’s body into the room and slammed the door.

  She was out, but not dead. Thank God. The last thing I needed now was a dead crazy socialite mob moll on my hands. At her side was a gun, but a toy, not a real one. Quickly, I dumped her purse out. Among the contents were expensive cosmetics, a bottle of Midol, a handkerchief, which I placed over Mary’s bleeding nose, a brown envelope folded in half and containing what looked like a lot of money, a vial of what looked like coke, and a typed letter.

  It was the second page of a note—or made up to look that way, with the number 2 up in the corner—that read:

  photos. As you know, these photos could ruin your chance to regain custody of your kids. If you want them back, go to the Hotel Vincent, and wait for the redhead in 721. Bring $10,000 in unmarked bills. Go to the cops and it’s over for you.

  It was signed “Putli Bai.”

  That fucking Julie had set us both up. Julie tricked me with those Mary MacCosham clues. Or had I just jumped to the wrong conclusion, because of her nice furniture, when I saw Mary at the door? Or all of the above? Julie must have faked the note dated after our falling out, then thrown in the photo with the September date, and the lame alias to lead me astray. If only Rubik had known Julie.

  There were no photos for Mary among the things Julie had left here, so I assumed Julie had totally faked Mary out with that bit. Maybe she knew something about Mary, maybe she didn’t. Knowing Mary’s weak points, she could have pushed her buttons very easily by bluffing.

  I filled a paper cup with water from the tap and dumped it on Mary. She moaned a little, but didn’t come to. I shook her slightly and her eyes opened.

  “Aieaie … ooooh,” she moaned.

  “Long time no see, Mary,” I said.

  She tried to get up but couldn’t.

  “Sorry I had to bean you. I misunderstood.”

  “Do you have the photos?”

  “As far as I know, there are no photos.”

  “No … but … Who are you? You look vaguely familiar.”

  “Robin, Robin Hudson.”

  “Robin?”

  “Yeah, Mary.”

  She held the handkerchief over her bleeding nose and said, weakly, “Who’s the old woman?”

  “It’s a long story. Julie Goomey set us up,” I said, and I gave her the capsule version while I flushed her coke. I was expecting Claire any minute, possibly with cops, and I didn’t want Mary getting busted on a possession rap. I had a feeling she’d been through enough.

  When I was finished, all Mary could say was, “Why? What did I ever do to her?”

  “Whatever,” I said. “Listen, are you okay now? Can you get up? Because I need you to help me.”

  I held my hand out to her and she grabbed it, hoisting herself to her knees. When she’d stabilized, she pulled herself to her feet.

  I gave her Special Agent Jeff Walter’s card. “Call this guy. Tell him where I am. Tell him—this is very important, let me write it down.” I wrote a short note, explaining that the Perrugia sisters were holding my intern and my friend hostage, that I had their granny and I needed to effect an exchange discreetly so nothing would happen to Kathy and Tamayo. I put down my room number.

  “After you make this call, go to the front desk and tell them the phone is missing in this room and I need a phone immediately.”

  “I don’t know,” Mary said. She was looking at me with deep suspicion. “How do I know this isn’t one of your jokes?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Why did you send the Dumpster salesmen to my house? Or write the letters at Camp Hapalot? Or send me on all those wild-goose chases?”

  “I didn’t. Okay, I sent the Dumpster salesmen to your house—that was my idea—but those other things were Julie’s ideas, not mine.”

  “Really? Because a long time ago Julie told me … she blamed you …”

  She was still groggy.

  “Just call this guy, please,” I said. “He probably knows a lot of stuff I don’t know and he can explain it better. Just do it. Lives are at stake. No shit.”

  After she picked up her purse, with none of the urgency I wanted her to display, she turned to me, and said, “Why did you flush my coke?”

  “Please call this guy.”

  Mary just looked at me. Then she left. I hoped I could trust her.

  I sat down. The voices in my head were all clamoring for attention. I held my head between my hands, thinking maybe, if I just steadied my head, the right voice would squeeze through. Somehow, I had to make contact with the Groucho women. Before I could figure out how, there was another knock at the door. I looked out the peephole and saw a big dog-face staring back at me.

  “Good timing!” I said, quickly unlocking the door so she could slip in without whoever else seeing her. “Claire, jeez, what took ya. You will never believe …”

  Immediately I realized what was wrong. But immediately was too late. There was a gun in my chest. Jojo the Health and Safety Dog backed me into the room and the door slammed behind us.

  The dog head came off. Underneath was a pretty, dark-haired woman with a very unpleasant expression on her face. She put down a drawstring bag, which fell open to reveal a green wig, Groucho-nose glasses, and what looked like a mask of some kind. I couldn’t tell what it was, but I guessed that she had changed masks at some point, or gone unmasked, to avoid detection while following me.

  “Expecting me? Sorry for the delay. I ran into a big dog,” she said. I recognized her voice. It was the head wig-wearing woman. “Give me your purse.”

  I did. She opened it, saw nothing of value, and threw it into the far corner, out of my reach.

  After glancing at the documents Julie had left, she scooped them up into her bag.

  “Sit down over there,” she said, walking backwards towards the old woman.

  She poked the old woman. “Granny, wake up.”

  The woman just snorted and fell back to sleep.

  “She’s out. She was given something,” I said. “There’s a note on the dresser.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. She picked it up and handed it to me.

  “Read it to me,” she said.

  I did.

  “Where’s Julie?” she said.

  “I don’t know. Rio, probably. But you have your granny and you have those documents. I think I’ve lived up t
o my end of the bargain.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” the woman said. She pulled out a cell phone and dialed carefully, pushing a number, looking up at me, pushing another one, looking up at me again.

  “Hello? It’s me. I’ve got them, Granny, the redhead, and a whole pile of spread sheets.”

  A beat.

  “No, she’s not here. I don’t know if we’ll get the money back. Well, what did you expect? At least we have Granny and the documents. Maybe we can recover some of the money.”

  Pause.

  “I’d rather not kill anyone here unless I have to. I had to ask the clerk for the room number, so I’ve been seen. You want me to leave a body here? Besides, this isn’t a very good silencer.”

  Kill anyone? Jeez. She was talking about me. Where were the fucking feds?

  “Get Granny’s van and then get right over here. It’s the Hotel Vincent. We’ll take them out together. How long will it take you? Okay. We’ll be down in front in fifteen minutes. Don’t make me wait too long. And send the boys to pick up a blonde in the utility closet on the seventh floor. I knocked her out.”

  That had to be Mary. Knocked out twice in one night. Damn. Now she wouldn’t be able to call Special Agent Jeff Walter.

  A pause.

  “She’s fast asleep but otherwise she seems okay. Julie had the decency to hire a nurse to look after her until midnight. Okay. Right. Okay.”

  She hung up.

  “Where’s Claire?” I asked.

  “Which one is that?”

  “The black woman?”

  “We got her outside the hotel. One of my sisters took her. You think we didn’t see you with her? We got the Chinese girl outside Neon Hand.… We grabbed the bald woman there too. And now we have your blond friend. That’s what you get for being mixed up with Julie Goomey.”

  “They weren’t mixed up with her. They don’t even know her. And I didn’t want to be mixed up with her,” I said. “I haven’t seen the woman in almost two decades.”