Claudine

by Barbara Palmer

  With a final lick of mascara on her lashes, she got up and walked over to the full-length mirror to check her outfit. Her breasts strained against the close-fitting, sleeveless lambskin bodysuit, so tight it made her crotch sore. It was cut high enough to show the plump rise of her buttocks. She added leather wristlets with studs, black silk stockings, knee-high platform boots. She stood back and gave herself a final, critical look, amused at the irony of a courtesan role-playing a hooker.

  The club district on Roosevelt Avenue belonged to the chicas. Although the city had tried to put a stop to it recently, young boys still passed around flyers advertising the girls’ charms. Most of the action took place inside the clubs, but a few streetwalkers lingered outside club entrances. Hostile glances greeted Claudine when she invaded their territory. Girls still in their teens with bright lipstick, small breasts jutting out from spangled tops, miniskirts barely covering their bums tottered on three-inch platforms in lime, hot pink, carmine. A woman with purple hair and thin, needle-tracked arms huddled against a wall and gave Claudine a blatant once-over. She couldn’t loiter long; her presence would not be tolerated for more than a few minutes before they drove her off. A mile-deep canyon divided her privileged existence from theirs.

  She scanned the street and spotted her stalker emerging from a doorway about a quarter of the way down the block. His back was turned to her. The red sweatshirt he wore with the hood pulled up had a Latin Kings insignia on the back, a five-pointed crown in black and gold and the letters ALKQN. He was a tall, stocky man with a barrel chest. Something about his figure struck her as familiar. She reached back into her memory and then she had it. His body type and the way he moved was the same as the man caught on video breaking into her San Francisco hotel room. They had him in their sights now.

  Claudine quickly glanced around. Although she couldn’t see Andrei anywhere, she trusted he had his eyes on her. She swallowed her fears and followed the hooded man.

  She stayed about seventy feet behind him, but he never once glanced back. They turned the corner onto a secondary street and then another. He was drawing her farther away from the lights and activity of Roosevelt Avenue into an area most pedestrians abandoned at night. A squad car prowled past her. The cop flicked on high beams, illuminating the hunched figure of the man she was following as if a spotlight had been trained on him. She quickly turned her face away. This was Trainor’s district, and although he wasn’t a beat cop, she was terrified she might come face-to-face with him.

  Her target stopped at a run-down building and took something out of his pocket. He allowed himself a quick backward glance to make certain Claudine was behind him, then he pushed open the door and went in.

  Nervously, she checked the street again. Still no sign of Andrei. He gave her strict orders to stay visible at all times, but where was he? She didn’t want to wait too long and alert Thorpe to a trap, so she stepped just inside the door to a hallway. The walls were gray with mildew, and rickety stairs rose straight ahead. The place smelled of old piss and the sweet zing of marijuana. A light glowed at the top of the stairs.

  She had no intention of going any farther. She waited. Andrei should be here by now. Was he holding off until his men secured the back of the building? The door creaked open. She heard his quiet footsteps behind her. “Thank God you’re here,” she said, turning around.

  “Not who you think, bitch.” The purple-haired prostitute with the scarred skin held a small pistol aimed straight at her head. “Your trick’s waiting for you upstairs.”

  Claudine’s stomach pitched. She didn’t move.

  “I said get the fuck up there.” The woman gave her a hard push, and Claudine bumped into the lower step, almost falling.

  She raised her hands in surrender. “All right. I’ll go.” She climbed the steps at a snail’s pace, fear rising in her throat, the clack of her boots on the battered hardwood steps like bullets ricocheting off stone. She reached the first-floor landing and peered through the partially open door. It was pitch-black inside. She waited a moment.

  “Move it,” the woman said, right behind her.

  She ventured a few feet inside the room. The woman was so close behind her that Claudine could smell her cloying perfume. A light clicked on. The room was bare of furniture save for a stained mattress, an old pressed-back chair and a small table. The man in the Latin Kings jersey sat cross-legged in the chair, a knife lying on the table beside him. He nodded to the purple-haired woman.

  Claudine heard the door lock behind her but didn’t take her eyes off the man. He’d shrugged off his sweatshirt. She was surprised to see that he looked more like he belonged in an executive boardroom than on the rough streets of the neighborhood. He wore glasses, a designer shirt and dark trousers. If he’d once been a client, she had no recollection of him. From the look on his face, she knew there was no point in pleading—nor was it in her nature to play the victim.

  “Before we do anything, tell me how you knew about the orphanage.”

  He laughed. “That’s my secret.” He reached down and unzipped his fly. His cock, a fat pink worm, was repulsive, still soft; he pulled at it to make it stiffen. Without Andrei to help her, her only choice now was to find a way of turning his lust against him. She plastered on a saucy smile. “I see you’re not quite ready for me.” She unzipped her jerkin to show him her bare breasts, then pulled the zipper all the way down. “Well, you wanted it. What’s keeping you, Mr. Thorpe?”

  His eyes bugged out at the sight of her. He shuffled off his pants and got up. His penis wagged grotesquely as he approached her. She skittered away out of his reach. He lurched toward her, missed, teetered and fell on one knee. Her eyes found the knife and she launched herself at it. He rose from the floor, swaying like a dazed boxer, but he reached her in moments and slammed her into the wall. She yelped when the back of her head cracked the rough stucco. He pinned her so hard she could hardly breathe. She clawed his skin with her long nails. It had as much effect on him as a dressmaker’s pin pricking an elephant’s hide.

  He slurped at her earlobe. “You a screamer?” She shook her head. His elbow pressed into her throat. “No? You will be when I fuck you.” He bit her breast hard. Claudine yelped and flailed her body to shake him off, but he was much stronger than she’d expected. Panic began to overtake her. He ripped her stockings down to the tops of her boots, scratching her leg, and thrust his hand roughly between her legs. “Already juicy down there,” he said, laughing.

  He wrestled with her suit, trying to yank it down while he fumbled with his penis. She scissored her legs to stop him when he attempted to stuff it inside her.

  The door burst open. In three strides Andrei crossed the room, spun the man around and punched him hard in the face. Blood spurted from his nose. Andrei rammed him up against the wall and delivered body blows in quick succession. Thorpe slumped to the floor.

  Claudine staggered out of the way. She was about to chew Andrei out for not finding her sooner—until he turned and she saw his face.

  CHAPTER 20

  Andrei’s jaw was red and swollen and his shirtsleeve ripped and bloody. He limped. Behind him, two men with iron-hard muscles and tattoos approached her attacker, who’d managed to sit up and was cowering in a corner.

  “You all right?” Andrei asked, his voice gentle.

  “A few scrapes, that’s all.” She turned her back to zip up her bodysuit. “What about you?”

  But Andrei had already returned to Thorpe. He pressed the heel of his open hand against Thorpe’s neck. The man swore and struggled limply. Andrei increased the pressure until Thorpe toppled over in a dead faint. He gave his friends orders in Russian and jerked his head toward the taller of the two. They heaved the man up and, supporting him between them, shuffled out the door and down the stairs.

  “What are you going to do with him?”

  “Take him to a secure place. Let him sweat it out until tomorrow.”

  “What happened to you?” Maria touched the side of hi
s face. He winced.

  “I left the other two in the van to monitor the street while I followed you. I watched you go inside, and then I got hit from behind. While I was out, someone must have gone to town on my face. A good thing I had the others with me or I’d be dead right now. The guys who attacked me ran away when they saw my men coming. They took off on motorbikes so we lost them. I was too worried about you to chase the hooker. She’ll be easy enough to find later anyway.”

  “I’m sorry. I never should have insisted we go through with this.” A wave of guilt washed over her. Her stubbornness had nearly cost Andrei his life.

  Andrei gave her a wry grin. “What are you talking about? We caught him.”

  Maria’s knees suddenly buckled; shooting stars dimmed her vision.

  “You’re hurt,” he said propping her up.

  She touched the sore spot on her scalp. “He cracked my head against the wall, that’s all. I’ll be okay.”

  “Let’s get you out of here.” Andrei kept his arm around her down the stairs. His two friends had dumped their quarry into the back of the van and waited, parked behind a nondescript beige rental car. Andrei gave them the thumbs-up and they pulled away from the curb. He helped Maria into the passenger side of the rental car, got behind the wheel and buckled up.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, slurring her words.

  “To the hospital. You’ve got to get checked out.”

  She tried to raise her voice but only managed a weak reprove. “No hospitals. We can’t report this. I’ll be fine.”

  He gave her a worried look but said nothing. Instead he pulled out his phone and punched in some numbers, keeping one hand on the wheel. He spoke a few words in Russian before he clicked off.

  “I’m taking you to Brighton Beach, then—my place. A doctor will come see you there. Until we’ve got everything we need out of that guy, it’s not safe at your apartment.”

  Little Odessa stretched for several miles south of the elevated subway line bisecting Brooklyn. Brighton Beach Avenue ran underneath it. Through the tinted sedan windows, she could see the bright lights of grocers, bakeries, pharmacies, clubs and restaurants. Most had signs in Russian. Even at this hour, the street hummed.

  Andrei turned left off the avenue and stopped in front of a high-rise with a redbrick façade and balconies formed by ornamental white cement squares. A young man waited at the building entrance to park the car. Andrei threw him the keys and helped Maria into the building. As they walked toward the lobby elevator, she stumbled and grabbed his arm for support. “I’m all right, just a bit woozy,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

  “No, you’re not.” He let her rest against him as the elevator rose to the fifth floor. The adrenalin flooding through her system during the fight with Thorpe had subsided, leaving her cold and weak. Leaning close to Andrei, she began to warm up and feel safe again.

  They got out of the elevator and Andrei reached into his pocket for his keys. When he opened his door she let out a little exclamation of surprise.

  A vestibule opened into a spacious room with a shining floor of black oak. A large Persian carpet on it looked antique. One entire wall was lined with bookcases. At a guess, Andrei owned more books than she did. Most of the paintings, original and contemporary abstracts, were of the best gallery quality. An old upright piano of painted white wood stood against the far wall. The room was lightly scented, sandalwood or myrrh, something exotic like that.

  “What do you think?” He said this a little shyly, as if he worried she might regard it as far too modest a place.

  “It’s lovely, Andrei. You have great taste.”

  That seemed to satisfy him and he eased her down on the plush sofa and arranged cushions behind her back to keep her comfortable. “Let me take off those boots,” he said, his baritone a little gruff. “I don’t know how you can walk in them anyway.”

  “Lots of practice.” She giggled. Immediately the dull ache in her head ramped into searing pain. “Oh God,” she pressed her hand to her temple.

  “Lie still. Don’t try to talk; I’ll be right back.” Andrei went into the adjoining kitchen and opened the fridge. He returned with an ice pack wrapped in a dish towel. “Hold this to your head.”

  She did as he asked. She sank back against the pillows, clamping the cold pack to her temple. “Can you hand me my bag? I have some Tylenol in there.”

  “You can’t take anything like that. Not until the doctor’s seen you.” He perched at the end of the couch, unzipped her boots and slid them off. He gently massaged her feet for a few minutes. Maria watched his lean tanned hands, the tight muscles of his arms as he bent over her, and felt a tingle of desire. A dramatically different response than she had to Lillian’s energetic kneading and pummeling.

  She felt a cold nose on her leg, looked down and saw a large dog with rough brown fur and floppy ears. It licked her knee.

  Maria reached out to pet him. “What’s he called?”

  “Tramp.”

  “You named him after the Disney cartoon?”

  “No.”

  “Oh!” Maria laughed.

  “No, it’s not what you think. I found him when he was a pup, a couple of streets away, rooting around a Dumpster. He was so thin his ribs stuck out from his chest like wooden barrel staves. And he does like the ladies.”

  “Takes after his master, then?”

  Andrei’s smile must have hurt him. He touched his jaw gingerly before answering. “Certainly does. Got to get something else. Be right back.” Tramp’s tongue lolled with pleasure as Maria petted him. She took another look at the paintings. One resembled a Chagall. Must be a print, she thought. Coming here gave her a rare look at Andrei’s private side. She liked what she saw.

  He returned with a first-aid kit and a hand-embroidered quilt in bright colors. “One of the few things I have left from home. My mother made the quilt.” He ordered Tramp to the kitchen.

  “We just got here and now you’re banishing him?” she joked.

  “I set out his dinner. He won’t mind at all. Stretch your leg out a bit.”

  He dabbed some liquid from a bottle in the first-aid kit onto gauze and wiped it over the scratch, cleaning off the crusted blood. “Sorry. It will sting for a minute or so.” It did hurt, but the tingle she felt before now reappeared as a delicious sensation in her groin when his fingers brushed her thigh. After he finished, he tucked the quilt around her legs.

  “Thank you. You take such good care of me.” She could feel her eyes drooping. “I’m so fatigued. I’d like to sleep for a while.”

  He shook his head. “You can’t yet. We don’t know how bad your head is hurt. I’ve got to keep you awake until the doctor comes.” As he walked over to the glass doors leading to the balcony, he was limping again, and she reminded herself that he’d been hurt too. He slid the doors open. “This is the best time to be here, when the beach has quieted down at night. Maybe the breeze will help to stave off your drowsiness.”

  A soft wind blew in, carrying with it the murky scent of salt water. From the light of the apartment building’s windows, Maria could see a plain of golden sand stretching to the water’s edge, a rim of white where the waves hit the shore and a flare of orange. “What’s that light?”

  “Some kids started a bonfire.”

  Now that he mentioned it, Maria could smell a faint hint of smoke in the air. She began to feel as though she could stay in this comfortable cocoon forever. Andrei leaned with his back against the cement squares of the balcony, ambient light from the room playing over his fit form. He’d combed his hair, changed into jeans and a sharp-looking black tee when he went to get the quilt.

  “The hurricane dumped huge amounts of sand right up to our building,” he said, as if from far away. “A giant piece of the boardwalk got torn out and thrown against the outside wall by the waves. There was a ton of debris. Afterward, kids used some of it to slide down the mounds like they were tobogganing. It was really treacherous here. We’re one of t
he areas that got the worst of it. You could smell gas everywhere. At one point it felt like a tsunami, as if the storm was going to sweep the whole place away.”

  “I remember trying to get ahold of you through all that. You didn’t answer your cell for three days. I was so worried.”

  “Yeah. I stayed awake the entire time. We had no power, and a lot of the older folks in this building were huddling in their apartments, terrified. Some of us got together and moved them to a community center.”

  They heard a quiet tap at the door. Andrei checked through the peephole and let in an older man with a full head of woolly white hair and a plump florid face. They spoke in Russian. “Dr. Levkin,” Andrei said to her by way of introduction.

  Andrei got a kitchen chair for the doctor to sit beside her. The doctor spent about twenty minutes checking her vision, mobility, temperature and blood pressure. Asking her questions.

  “She probably has concussion but she must have X-ray, best is MRI. I can’t tell much about how injured she is without that.”

  Andrei raised his eyebrows at her.

  “I’ll go tomorrow morning,” she said.

  The doctor clearly disapproved. “You should go right now. If you stay, you have to be waked through the night. Once every hour.” He spoke to Andrei again and then bid her good-bye.

  “What about you?” she said. “Shouldn’t you be getting checked out too?”

  “I’ll do that tomorrow when we get you to the hospital. Think I’ll survive tonight.” He laughed.

  Andrei gave her a clean white T-shirt, long enough to reach midthigh. While she changed out of her leather bodysuit, he brewed some tea in the kitchen and brought it out in a glass, piping hot. He wrapped a napkin around it and handed it to her. “An old herbal recipe; it will help the pain.”

  She took it gratefully. “Where’s Tramp?”

  “Asleep in his bed. It’s long past midnight, you know.”