Super in the City

by Daphne Uviller

But that was this morning, before the party at the St. Regis had ballooned into an event that seemed destined to cause me no end of regret. As I cursed Tag yet again, I watched the rage in Ferdinand’s face flicker to confusion and settle on—could it be?—fear.

  “What you doing here?” he rasped in heavily accented English. Just as well he’d kept silent during our first meeting.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I retorted, panicked by the thought that he’d been tailing me since the St. Regis. Maybe Underhill and Mulrooney had seen him following me and assumed that he and I—

  “Carajo!” he bellowed, echoing my own sentiments. “Caaa- raaaa- joooo!” Ferdinand fixed me with a searing stare of such loathing that I stopped in my tracks, my foot crunching a shard into smithereens. Roxana slumped down on the couch and began weeping.

  “Silencio!” Ferdinand raged, whirling around. I jumped between them, afraid he was going to strike her. It was as useless a move as a driver whipping a hand in front of her passenger as she slams on the brakes.

  Ferdinand pulled a gun from his leather jacket and pointed it at me.

  Over the years, especially while toiling over the cancerous guts of my med school cadaver, or listening to Abigail gripe about the pressures of being a highly sought- after academic superstar, I had found myself fantasizing about changing the course of my life in a single, unplanned moment—imagining a shortcut, really, to figuring out who I was: I happened to be near City Hall just as the mayor’s toddler son raced into the street. I would grab him and roll us to safety, rending my garments and sustaining a slight but camera- pleasing cut on my face. I became a hero, touted on the front page of all the dailies for my quick wits and bravery. Sometimes, I even broke a bone or two during the rescue.

  Other times, I chased down muggers and sat on them until help came, or I wrestled back a despondent subway- track jumper, thereby saving a life and preventing thousands of New Yorkers from being late to work.

  But when the moment actually arrived, I discovered as I looked into the nostril of Ferdinand’s gun, it turned out that I was utterly unprepared to face a person who was contemplating killing me. All my fantasies plus every Charlie’s Angels rerun I’d watched as a kid had amounted to nothing.

  My right eyelid went haywire. My bladder twitched and threatened to throw in the towel. I slowly raised my arms in surrender pose, trying out half a dozen responses in my head, afraid to utter any of them.

  Ferdinand’s hand was shaking and his eyes grew even wider.

  “Mierda, mierda, MIERDA!” He puckered up his lips and spat on Roxana, a nasty gray loogie that landed on her cheek. He turned to me and I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for either a wet missile or a metal one.

  “PUTA!”he screamed. When nothing hit me, I opened my eyes in time to see him backing out of the apartment, still brandishing the gun. When he bumped into the door frame, he turned and disappeared down the stairs.

  I stood frozen, my hands still in the air, irrelevantly marveling at my fluency in gutter Spanish. Fuck, shut up, shit, whore: I’d understood everything Ferdinand had said.

  Roxana jumped up and slammed the door shut, bolted it with three different locks, and threw her arms around me. It felt like a gerbil was hugging me—a nearly weightless form practically hanging from my neck. I had never felt like more of an Amazon in my life. I brought my hands down and embraced her. Her frail body was shaking and I realized she was much thinner than I’d realized, far beyond envy- inducing Frenchwoman thin.

  “Roxana,” I croaked, at a loss for where to make inroads. “Why was he … here?” I cast my eye over the ransacked, half-packed apartment, while another part of my brain wondered whether Roxana had planned to give thirty days’ notice.

  “I wus tryeen to get out, once James wus gone,” she wailed into my neck. “I taut it wud be easier, but he said if I didn’t keep it go- een he wode keel me. Tank got you came, Zepheer! He wus go- een to keel me!”

  It. Keep it going. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to know what she was talking about. I couldn’t focus. I pulled Roxana’s arms from me and pushed her gently onto her couch.

  “Just hold on a second,” I said. “Stop talking.” She nodded vigorously and for a moment, I mourned the departure of the self- assured Gaul Gal. Apparently, I was in charge now, and I did my best to step up to the plate. “I need something to drink,” I told her, heading for her kitchen. My knees still shook with adrenaline.

  The kitchen was also in disarray, with plates and glasses stacked all over the counter, but what surprised me most was the kitchen itself. Bright Italian tiles lined the counter and backsplash, where before I knew there had been butcher block, just like in all the other apartments. The sink was smooth soapstone, and there were antique sconces on either side of the window. I ran the water until it grew icy cold, wondering at the copper swan’s- neck faucet. Ask about the guy with the gun first, I reminded myself.

  I brought two glasses of water out to the living room, my hands shaking. Roxana looked at me imploringly as I sat down beside her.

  “I am so so sorry, Zepheer! I never meant to hurt you or your family. You hif all only ever been so kine to me.” Her face turned bright red as she tried to hold back another flood of tears. “I dunt know what to do. I am so skerd. He said he wode keel me,” she said, starting to sob again. “If I doan keep it go-een, he will keel me!” She was wailing now, her face in her hands.

  It. It. My brain turned somersaults trying to catch up with her. Ferdinand was in love with Roxana, and James had shown him the pictures and now he wanted to keel her. A crime of passion. That still didn’t explain why Ferdinand had been at the St. Regis. Or how James would know Ferdinand. Or much of anything, really.

  Okay. I thought desperately as Roxana started gasping for air. Ferdinand was undercover FBI and he’d had to pull a gun on me to keep Roxana thinking he was … whoever he wanted her to believe he was. Roxana was doing something illegal on eBay and he was going to bust her, but he’d fallen in love with her. He was actually a buddy of Underhill’s and Mulrooney’s and was headed to the nearest bar to cry into a pint of beer with them and admit he’d strayed from his line of duty.

  I was quickly going crazy right here on Roxana’s Danish modern couch.

  I gulped the rest of my water and my eye fell on a box stuffed with bolts of cloth. One of them looked very familiar. Very pink and satin and familiar.

  Roxana was the madam of a brothel being run out of my very own beloved house. Mini- Dolly was for hire and James was the pimp. He had built the secret staircase so clients could come in through the alley—where they tossed their cigarette butts—and not through the front door. His own handcuff- and-condom- filled closet served as storage space, providing easy access to paraphernalia necessary for business. When he was arrested, the johns had begun entering through the front door—so to speak—but Roxana had decided she wanted out of the business. A lot of people were angry with that unilateral decision, including clients, like Senator Smith, and hookers who needed the money, like Mini- Dolly Ferdinand was a member of the Pelarose family, which made money off of brothels, and he had come to threaten Roxana to keep it going or he would kill her. He wode keel her.

  My glass slipped out of my hand and shattered on the floor. Beside me, I felt Roxana jump.

  I leaned back on the couch and carefully placed my hands on my lap, stunned. I was right. I was aghast at the facts, the sordid truth, sure, but much more confounded that something in my real world was more exciting than anything I had ever been able to imagine. Or rather, something I’d imagined was turning out to be true. And I was smack in the middle of it.

  Roxana watched me, red- eyed and rigid. I reached for the photos, which I’d dropped on the floor during my brief skirmish with death. I didn’t want to move too quickly, afraid I’d shatter the fragile mosaic I’d pieced together in my head. I pulled the prints out of their envelopes.

  “Are these … clients? With …” I was new to the terminology of the fie
ld. “With your women? Did James take these?”

  Roxana glanced at the photos and nodded mutely, rubbing her gaunt cheeks. I was right! I was right! She knew what I was talking about!

  I bit my lip. “For his own viewing pleasure or for blackmail ammunition against the”—I was going to say “johns” but it sounded absurdly late- night movie, even if it was accurate. “Against the men?”

  She nodded again.

  “Extortion,” I said, as a new shot of adrenaline lurched along my limbs. Roxana looked at me with despair and I reminded myself that this was a doozy of a predicament for her, not just an exciting day for me. A day that had begun with humiliation in front of Hayden and an entire courtroom, and gone on to include false accusations by federal agents. My stomach turned over.

  I was the only person who knew about the link between the Spanish mob and this brothel operating right over my head. If Underhill and Mulrooney hadn’t asked me about the prostitutes after I gave them James’s name and my address—if that hadn’t made them slap cuffs on me this morning—then that must mean they didn’t know about this. I was the only one who could place Ferdinand at both the St. Regis and in a den of iniquity, otherwise known as my home. The Pelarose family was into art fraud, murder, and prostitution. I pictured myself reviewing the job offers that would come from my hard—okay, lucky—work as a detective. I’d be asked to go undercover for the NYPD or the FBI, maybe even the CIA.

  “We have to call the cops!” I jumped up and dug my fingers into my scalp, as if I could order my thoughts by pressing down hard.

  “Non. Absoluement!” Roxana cried. “They’ll keel me.”

  “No,” I said, “not if you cooperate. You’ll cut a deal and get protection.” My dad was going to be so proud. I wondered if I could just xerox my law school applications and resubmit them.

  “Zepheer, you dunt unnerstan! If I do zat, zay will keel James! I have no choice. I haf to keep it go- een.” She tossed the photos on the floor and set her shoulders straight.

  “He’s in prison. They can’t hurt him there,” I said, but what I was thinking was: No, actually, you won’t keep running a brothel out of my house.

  She shook her head at me pityingly, which I found offensive given that I was exhibiting skills on par with a Pinkerton.

  “In prison, hees the easiest target of all. Zey know egg-sackly war he ees.” She stood up and started pulling knick-knacks out of a box.

  “Roxana!” She stopped what she was doing. “Why the hell do you care what happens to James? The man enslaved you.”

  “Oh, Zepheer. Zepheer.” She straightened up and looked at me pleadingly. “I luf heem. He ees zuh love of my life.”

  I looked at her dubiously. James with the saggy tool belt and the misbuttoned plaid shirts? The man who hoarded Marmite? The man who took photos of her having sex with other men?

  But all I said was, “So was he British?”

  “He’s nut dead! Dunt refer to him in zee past.”

  “Sorry. Is he British or Brooklyn?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I raised my eyebrows at her. “Um, well, all these years, like, ten years …” I began. Was she putting me on? Was this some complicated double hoax I couldn’t see through? I forged ahead, “… he’s always spoken to me in a British accent. But when he was arrested, he was shouting in a New York accent. You know, baby, Brooklyn.” I pursed my lips and affected the accent for the last sentence.

  “James ees duh feef cousin of zee Duke of Curnwell,” she said, offended. “I haf niver heard him speak in anysing uzzer zan a perfect English accent.”

  I hardly thought Roxana was a reliable judge of English accents.

  “Okay, so you’re in love with James,” I said, stalling while I tried to digest this. Downstairs, I heard James’s door slam shut, and Sandra’s sharp voice made its way outside and down the stoop. I thought of the Italian tiles in Roxana’s kitchen and guiltily wondered how much I could get for her place.

  “Is he the one who upgraded your kitchen?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she said, emptying another carton. “He liked me to have nice tings, and I wanted to run a classy beeznees.”

  More questions I didn’t have time to ask right now sprang to mind.

  “So,” I said, tracing the pattern on her Turkish rug with my boot. “You can’t go to the police because then Ferdinand and his family will kill James. And if you don’t, then they’ll make you continue this … line of work against your will, or, I assume, kill you.” I tried not to sound like I was having too much fun.

  “Who ees Ferdinand?” She furrowed her bony little brow.

  The first job of a good investigator, I would write in my best- selling insider’s account, is to learn real names instead of inventing them.

  I coughed. “Sorry, the name of the man who just left?”

  “Alonzo?”

  I preferred Ferdinand.

  “Alonzo, okay.” I shivered, remembering his gun and the fear in his eyes. He had been just as surprised by our reunion as I was. Good Lord. He probably thought I was FBI. After all, I showed up everywhere he did. And the FBI thought I was with the mob because I showed up everywhere the Pelarose family did. Everyone had a reason to put me on their shit list, unless I cleared things up fast.

  “Here’s the thing, Roxana. I’m telling the police.” When she started to wail in protest, I cut her off sharply. I liked her, but I wasn’t going down for her. “I will help you. Protect you. My dad’s going to help, too,” I added, wondering whether he would or even could.

  “Oh, Mr. Zuckerman! He has been so luffly, I cannot tell you how terrible I feel zat I had to do zis in hees building!”

  “Had to?” I felt a shameful flicker of irritation. “Roxana, why did you do this?”

  She looked at me, hurt. “Eets nut like I wunted to do eet. I had to.” She sighed, and I waited. “I had a husband once.”

  “He died,” I prompted.

  “Non. He leff me. He took all zee money and he leff me. In a new country, wis no friends, no family, nussing. I really did try to do zuh eBay, but eet wus nut enough. I could not even make enough to fly home.”

  “Don’t you have family who could have helped?”

  “Zay tole me nut to marry heem.” She shrugged. “Pride. In zee end, eet was nut worse keeping, I suppose.”

  “Were you running this”—don’t say “whorehouse,” Zephyr— “business the whole time you were living here?”

  She nodded, not apologetically enough, I thought.

  “I could not have afforded zees luffly place uzerwise.”

  I thought guiltily about the four grand I was so eager to separate from Sandra Oh. I was partly responsible for Roxana’s predicament. Every high-charging landlord in New York was. We all had blood on our hands. Not blood exactly. Semen, maybe? I shud dered.

  The intercom buzzed, startling both of us. My heart clenched. What if it was Ferdinand/Alonzo coming back to finish us off? I looked around for a phone to call 911. The door buzzed again. Roxana looked at me.

  “Answer it,” I instructed.

  Rubbing her arms briskly as if she was cold, Roxana picked her way through the boxes.

  “Yes?” she croaked into the speaker.

  “I’m here for Yvette,” said a gruff voice.

  Roxana looked at me again and spread her hands, palms up. I shook my head. She put her finger on the lever to speak.

  “I… I’m very surry. We are out of girls right now.” She flicked the lever up to listen. I acted casual, like I was used to listening to the discussions between a madam and her clients.

  “Fuck.” Pause. “You free, Roxana? I’ll pay extra.”

  It was an effort to keep my eyes from popping out of my head.

  “Surry. Eet’s nut a goot time. Tomorrow, meh- bee.” I shot her a look.

  “Fuck,” the voice said again. I darted over to the window in time to see the top of a balding head bouncing down the stoop. At the bottom, he looked right, then tur
ned left. Where the hell was he going now? How many buildings on this block were pandering to this prick? I felt a surge of anger toward Roxana.

  “Jesus,” I muttered. “It’s one in the afternoon. Don’t these people have jobs?”

  Roxana stood in the middle of the living room, staring at her boxes. If she stayed, she was going to have to find another source of income. If she left, where would she go?

  “Roxana,” I said suddenly, “I want to see the rest of the apartment.” It wasn’t a question. She nodded silently and gestured for me to follow her.

  The layout was the same as James’s, up to the bedroom. At the end of the hallway, there were two doors where downstairs there was only one. Roxana slid her palm into her jeans pocket and fished out two keys. The two locked rooms Gregory hadn’t been able to spray.

  She pushed the first open, flipped on a light, and stepped back.

  Oh, for a sweet pink staircase.

  Inside, the tiny room was filled almost to the walls by what looked like a jungle gym. There was a small plastic swing, but where there would have been gymnastic bars were instead handcuffs dangling from chains. Leather straps and buckles hung from a third bar, and a side table—a nice Danish piece, I noticed, that matched the living room sofa—held whips and spiky instruments that looked like meat tenderizers. The walls were painted black, and a red light cast a hellish hue over the whole mess.

  “So there’s quite a demand for bondage?” I said weakly.

  Without answering, Roxana opened the door to the other room and I braced myself. But when I peered inside, I saw only a modest bedroom, tastefully decorated in pale greens and yellows. It was half its original size, thanks to James’s skillful handiwork.

  “Is this your room?” I asked, spotting the closet door that led to the staircase.

  She nodded. “And for customers.”

  “You don’t have a bedroom that’s just your own?” I asked, alarmed. The idea was too depressing.

  Roxana shook her head. I stared across the room at the closet door, as if it were alive and taunting me. I pounced on it and flung it open. There were the silky negligees and the feathery mules. I pushed them aside to confirm that I hadn’t imagined the secret doorway. There it was, looking worn and exposed, drained of mystery. My eyes lingered for a moment on the carpeted floor and I allowed myself a brief shudder of pleasure at a memory that I was now prepared to shelve forever. I slammed the door shut.