“Yessir. You right, sir.”
“You’re a good woman, Marie. You’re a credit to your heap. Now, go into the bedroom and wait for me. I shouldn’t be too long. At least,” he winked at Marty Blanks, “not as long as the ones you’re used to.”
Marek waited until the prostitute was gone before he began his report. “There’s good news and bad news,” he said quietly. “We’ve got thirty-five empty apartments. Nearly halfway there. On the other hand, the dealers you set up in 4B took off a few days ago. They were chased out.”
“This I know already,” Blanks replied. “I saw one of the guys in the neighborhood the next day. He says it was a cop that put the heat on, but he didn’t actually see a badge. Anyway it don’t mean shit. In fact it’s better for us.”
“Tell me how.” Najowski, settled down to business, showed no trace of the friendly worker. His investment was much larger than Martin Blanks’, especially considering how long it would take him to replace it should the deal go bad. Their goal was empty apartments, but empty apartments don’t pay rent. They’d be operating in the red within weeks.
“I made a mistake when I spoke to them personally. Lucky for us the cop was too stupid to ask how they got there in the first place. He washed the dope down the sink, busted up the furniture and slapped them around, but he never asked who set them up. From here on in, I’m gonna go through other people. And not even the same people all the time. Meanwhile, I need seven apartment numbers. I got people set to go in. Squatters, alkies, dopers, crazies—you name it, it’s gonna be livin’ in Jackson Heights.”
Najowski smiled for the first time. “How’d you do this so fast?”
“Don’t worry about how I do my end of the deal. You asked for pressure and that’s what I’m gonna deliver.”
“I’m not trying to pry,” Najowski said sharply, then immediately softened his tone. “You think these people will stay? What if the cop tries to drive them off?”
“That’s the best part. The guy who’s leading them in, Kricic, is political. He’s been involved with squatters all through Hell’s Kitchen and the Lower East Side and nearly came in his pants when he heard about empty apartments in a middle-class neighborhood. Anybody tries to evict is gonna have to do it in front of a TV camera.
“And this man, Kricic, is bringing dealers with him?”
“No. He’s only bringing two families. But when he gets there, he’ll defend everyone. At least until he figures out what’s goin’ on. It don’t matter, anyway, ’cause you’re gonna serve ’em all with eviction notices in a couple of weeks. It’s gonna be like a revolving door, with more comin’ in than goin’ out. Now, how ’bout you tell me your end.”
“I had the lawyer, Bill Holtz, go through the leases with Rosenkrantz. They picked out twenty tenants they think might run and served them with eviction notices. Little things—late payments, failure to keep the property up, failure to allow the landlord access. Nothing that’ll hold up in court, but we’ll get postponements, refuse to accept rent, claim we weren’t paid. A lot of these people don’t speak English very well. They come from countries where cops make people disappear forever. Some of them will run.”
“We losin’ money yet?” Blanks changed the subject.
“Not yet. But next month’s receipts won’t cover the bills.”
“You got credit lined up?”
“Holtz has an Arkansas S&L willing to keep us going. As long as we stay on schedule.”
“We’re ahead of schedule right now and I haven’t even started putting on the pressure. What about the tenants’ association?”
Najowski shrugged. He didn’t like being questioned, but Blanks’ commitment to the project was more than welcome. “They got some kind of patrol going, but they weren’t able to organize the building. Mostly due to Rosenkrantz. That guy could sell tanning oil to a Negro.”
“Enough with the jokes. My boys’re waitin’ for me in the car and they’re probly gettin’ restless. I wouldn’t wanna miss my ride.”
“The attack on the old Jew, Birnbaum, will bring some of them into Sylvia Kaufman’s circle. She’s the one who organized the tenants. But that doesn’t mean they won’t run. The Pakis are almost completely cleared out. A bunch of Koreans went with Park and the rest are getting ready to fly. The spics are too macho to be intimidated. They’ll probably go over to Kaufman.”
“Only until I get some blown-out rapo to fuck one of their daughters up the ass. I’m workin’ hard on that right now. And I got a little surprise for the tenants’ association, too.” Blanks stood up and went to the closet for his coat. “But enough is enough,” he announced. “Everything’s goin’ smooth. I don’t think them faggots’ll hold out for more than a couple of months.” He shrugged into his coat, then turned back to his partner. “And, by the way, next meetin’, how ’bout you come to me? The traffic gettin’ out here is murder.”
TWELVE
MARIE PORTER HATED DOING the Freak. That’s the way she thought of him, even though all her clients were freaks; even though everyone in the life called them freaks. Even though what she did was shows for the freaks, performances, and the only limits professionals like herself were supposed to put on the freaks involved pain, both giving and receiving. The saddest part was that Marie usually thought of her customers by their first names. She liked her clients, but the Freak was the Freak and always would be.
Not that she’d outright refuse him. That would disappoint her pimp, George Wang. George Wang was her savior. He’d spotted her when she was working Madison Avenue, too dark to play the ingénue despite being sixteen years old.
Marie had begun her street life as a throwaway: her mother had locked her out of the family apartment when she was fifteen. For a year, she’d lived with relatives, attended school, struggled to stay alive. Then an uncle had introduced her, first to the serenity of heroin and then to what all prostitutes call “the life.”
Within a month she was the property of a pimp named Hector Cortez. Hector, called Poppy, specialized in teenage flesh, male and female, and kept his workers diligent with the lit ends of Marlboro cigarettes. In his estimation, teenagers were prone to run off unless properly terrorized.
Marie, who was more than properly terrorized, had seen no way out, and thus George Wang’s coming had been nothing short of miraculous, though many in the life would have thought it a routine piece of business.
“I see you on street and I think you very beautiful.” He had been very elegant in an off-white, double-breasted, linen suit with matching tie and Marie had been properly impressed. With his narrow eyes and thin drooping mustache, George Wang looked as if he’d just walked off the set of a 40s gangster movie. “Got wonderful body—no fat, but not too hard. Very smooth skin. Very pretty. Then I think this girl in wrong end of business. This girl very dark skin. Customer think she just another black whore. They mostly want blond virgin from Iowa. You know this true?”
Marie had laughed, sipping at a cup of coffee. They were in a diner near the Triboro Bridge, in Astoria. Far from Poppy Cortez. “Man, I’m tellin’ ya…Them Johns all look for that baby-white pussy. Balder the better. White bitches shave the pussy, then flash the trick. Can’t say as I blame ’em. If the trick think you near to bein’ cherry, he comin’ up with fifty like puttin’ a quarter in the phone. Me, I gotta fight for a twenty-dollar blow-job. And I’m still young. What’s gonna happen when I’m thirty?”
“Good.” George Wang had taken Marie’s hand and pulled it toward him, stroking the jet-black skin. It didn’t seem possible for flesh that black to be so reflective, yet her teenage body glowed with vitality. “Exactly so. You understanding make my job very easy. I have customer alla time ask for black-skin girl. They think dark girl exotic. Pay plenty. You never get this from street pimp. My customers all scared of street pimp. They think old Chinaman very safe.”
Marie had withdrawn her hand, placing it firmly in her lap. “You nice, pops, but don’t handle the merchandise, ‘less you buyin.’ N
ow tell me what I gotta do before these rich ‘customers’ part with the big bucks.”
“How many way you can fuck?” George Wang had asked. “Once you do sex in three holes, you finished. No more place to put it. Street whore sell all three holes, so why street whore get forty dollars and my whore get two hundred? Secret is not in fucking at all. All extra money earned before fucking start. You understand this?”
“Shit, pops, my man say, ‘Get ’em in and out as fast as you can.’ He believes in volume.”
“Pimp is correct. If you only getting thirty dollar, you must do many tricks. But what if you get three hundred dollar? Then you no have to rush. Then you take your time. My girls all performer. Fucking is shortest part of way they turn trick. If you want, I give you apartment uptown. Ninety and York. Doorman building. First three months you only go out with other girl maybe one time each week. I train you to become actress. Customers all want fantasy. You must learn to give them fantasy the way you give pussy on street. As long as customer pay, you never hold back. You think you can learn this?”
Marie had nodded solemnly. “I can learn, pops. But what’s in it for me?”
“My name ain’t ‘Pops,’ you little asshole. My name is George Wang and that’s what you’ll call me.”
Marie looked into the pimp’s black eyes, catching a glimpse of the iron will sitting patiently behind the frail exterior. “What happened to your accent?” she asked lamely.
“What’d I tell you before? About the customers and their fantasies? The accent is for the assholes. There’s nothing these stockbrokers like more than having a chinky sell them pussy. They think it’s cute, something to brag about at Harry’s Bar after work.” He paused to let the point sink in. “We split everything fifty-fifty, but I guarantee you’ll make a grand a week after three months. If you don’t get it off the customers, I make up the difference. You on dope?”
“Yeah,” Marie had admitted. “But it’s just a chippy. I ain’t strung out or nothin’.”
“I get you dope and needles. Good quality. Reliable. I don’t give a shit about your personal life, but if you get too fucked up to work, you’re out on your ass. In fact, that’s the penalty if you break any rule.” He sipped at his drink, waiting for a question or a protest, but Marie, utterly amazed by his transformation, kept her mouth shut. “The rules are very simple. You take a job, you make the customer happy. That means you show up on time and make the customer believe his fantasy has come to life. All your assignments come from me. You do private business and I throw you out. You even take a phone number and I throw you out. That’s the rules: make the customer happy and don’t fuck me over. You accept, I’m gonna make you rich.”
As it turned out, many of her customers were women. Rich white women. They virtually always went the same way. She played a maid (a maid wearing blazing red bra and panties under a translucent black uniform) who seduces her mistress. And seduce them she did; she took them in the bedroom, the kitchen, the laundry room, the attic, the bathtub (they went nuts when she soaped their backs, her hand slowly dropping, dropping…). She did them with vacuum cleaners, broom handles, scrubbing brushes, towels, washcloths—anything that came to hand. And she did them until they couldn’t take any more.
They were marvelously easy, so into the fantasy they shivered when she brushed against them and cried when they came. Then, of course, they’d pull her back onto the bed, pushing her legs up into her chest, devouring her. Curiously, none, no matter how inept, ever failed to bring forth Marie’s deepest, loudest, most professional orgasm.
The men, on the other hand, usually wanted humiliation. Wanted her in leather and stainless steel, cursing them, forcing them into one demeaning act after another. They’d get so hot. Begging her to get them off. And she would, finally. After they’d proven themselves worthy, she’d run her fingers down the length of their bellies, take them in her hand. It was all they needed.
These days, George Wang always referred to Marie as “my best.” Even when she was working with another girl. And Marie was perfectly willing to allow the pimp to think of her as property. What counted was that he never touched her, that she could walk out whenever she wished, that her money was in a bank in her own name. A pro, as George Wang had explained on many occasions, helps the tricks retain their fantasies and George Wang, though she was infinitely grateful to him, was Marie’s ultimate trick.
The only dark shadow in Marie’s career (besides the Freak) had been her drug habit. Initially, her habit had kept pace with her economic success. But after a year of expansion, she had realized that dope, if left unchecked, would drive her back onto the streets (and into the hands of another Poppy Cortez). She was too tough for that. Too accustomed to being her own woman. With George Wang’s encouragement, she enrolled in a residential treatment program at Barclay Hospital in a rural corner of Albany County. The doctors at Barclay put her on a thirty-day methadone withdrawal program. The first day, they gave her enough methadone to satisfy her craving for heroin. The second day, they gave her a little less. She was ready to climb the walls on more than one occasion, but it never became impossible to bear and by the time the program was completed, her habit was gone.
And that’s the way it stayed. In control. Just like her life was in control. Marie was able to see her prostitution as a kind of scam, a hustle she was putting on the trick. In a way, sex was her ultimate triumph. Except for the Freak. The Freak got the better of her. Whenever Marie left his apartment, she felt cheated, even though George Wang assured her that the four-fifty they were getting was proper compensation for the services she provided.
“You forgot about the customers who scream ‘Nigger’ while you whip them? You forgot about the customers who say the same thing while they whip you?”
“They don’t hurt you. All they want is to get off.”
“How does Marek hurt you? You serve dinner, you fuck him, you go home. Where’s the hurt?”
“It’s not that easy. I go there in rags. I play the part of his slave. He ridicules me in front of his friends.”
“They don’t touch you, do they? We’d have to get more money for that.”
“The laughing is worse than being touched. I’m not even allowed to look up. I have to keep my eyes on the damned carpet. Have to say ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, sir.’ Serve his shitty dinner. He gives me long lectures about ‘Negroes’ and the crimes they commit and the drugs they use. He tells me the whole country is standing on my back and he keeps me around to remind him of the bottom. He keeps me around for inspiration.”
“Make sense, Marie. I send you to a house where you scrub the toilet on your knees, then give head to a sixty-year-old white woman. That doesn’t bother you at all…”
“Mrs. Blum loves me. After we finish, she serves me pastries and coffee. Tells me about her wicked grandchildren. You’re a smart man, George Wang, but you don’t know shit about tricks.”
“Don’t say ‘trick.’ ” He waved a long bony finger. “Trick is a street word. You’re not on the street. You call them customers. Then maybe you’ll understand. Look, if you were selling lettuce, you wouldn’t give a shit about the character of your customers as long as they didn’t threaten you with violence. It should be exactly the same when you sell pussy.”
“Well, the Freak could hurt me,” Marie insisted. “I have no doubt the Freak could hurt me. The Freak wears five-hundred-dollar sport jackets, but he has the eyes of a mugger. Redneck eyes that hate everything they see.”
George Wang threw up his hands. “You’ve been with him more than thirty times and he’s never laid a hand on you. He doesn’t even go with other whores. In fact,” George Wang grinned, “I think Marek’s in love with you. You should be flattered.”
Marie sighed impatiently. “I never minded when other tricks called me a nigger or a black whore, because they were in a fantasy and the fantasy was no truer than their ordinary polite lives. But…”
“Too much college,” George Wang interrupted. He considered
himself an expert at appraising a customer’s potential violence and he found the Freak perfectly acceptable.
“Just let me talk for a while. All right? You listen, for a change. The Freak isn’t in a fantasy. He’s not pretending, either.”
“But did he ever hurt you?” George Wang was getting sick of the conversation.
“No. He pinches me, shows me his strength, but never quite hurts me.”
“Look, if you’re determined to give him up, I’ll back you on it. You know that, Marie. I’m only asking you to give it a little while longer. After all, the smart response to a repulsive trick is to up the ante. We’re getting four-fifty out of him. Let’s increase it a hundred bucks and see what happens. I mean if you look at him the right way, you’ll see that he’s just a poor slob who has to buy his pussy. Like every other John in the trade.”
THIRTEEN
“I DON’T BELIEVE THIS,” Moodrow said, waving his hands at the empty road in front of him and his girlfriend, Betty Haluka. “It’s six o’clock in the afternoon and the road’s empty.”
“Mike Birnbaum wasn’t your fault,” Betty replied. She was sitting close to him, one hand laid casually on his knee.
“I wasn’t talking about Mike Birnbaum,” Moodrow snapped. “I was talking about the damned road; I figured an hour and a half for the ride and we’ll be there in fifteen minutes. On the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. It’s unbelievable.”
“It’s not unbelievable,” Betty insisted. “It snowed this morning.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“If it snows in the early morning, the commuters take the subway. Then the snow melts and the evening rush is easy. I thought everybody knew that.”
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