“You’re awful quiet for a reporter,” said Mrs. Baldridge. “I didn’t think they came in a thoughtful model, except when it comes to dreaming up un-American lies for the editorial pages. How long have you been in the racket?”
“A long time.”
“It can’t be that long. How old are you, honey?”
She didn’t wait for me to answer.
“I’d figure about eight or ten years younger than me,” she said.
I didn’t argue.
“Okay, so it’s imperative for me to ask, do you find me attractive?”
“Of course I do.”
The situation wasn’t getting any easier.
“For an older woman?”
“You’re a very attractive woman—period.”
Sexy would have been a better way of putting it, but I could live with attractive.
“Fuckable?” she said. “I mean, let’s not beat around the briar patch.”
Now the woman was reading my mind. I struggled to free myself from the clutches of the metaphorical tar baby and hang on to my objectivity, but couldn’t find a way.
“I would have to say so,” I admitted.
“You’d think my husband would notice that,” said Mrs. Baldridge, “wouldn’t you?”
“He’s blind if he doesn’t.”
“He doesn’t even look at me anymore,” said Mrs. Baldridge. “Okay, he looks at me, but he doesn’t see me. I get undressed and I put on a nice negligee, and he doesn’t see that I’ve hoisted my signals.”
She burst into tears again—sobbing this time—grabbed my right hand in both of hers, and crushed it to her bosom.
“Easy, girl,” said the driver to her pony.
It took Mrs. Baldridge quite a while to pull herself together, during which time her chest heaved fetchingly, and she moved one hand to my thigh.
“Listen,” she said, “here’s the deal. You know that trashy weather girl on Kip Lester’s newscast? The one with the cat eyes and the big boobs—though they’re kind of droopy, aren’t they?—and the lisp that’s supposed to be sexy?”
“Breeze Daniels?”
“Bweeze Daniels, my ass. Bwidget Danichevski from Astowia. They call her Bweeze because it’s a bweeze to get into her pants. When she bothers to wear any.”
It didn’t take much detective work to figure what was coming next.
“Don has been screwing the little cunt. He met her when he was at the studio to do an interview with Kip. The bitch had on one of those teeny-weeny miniskirts that she wears, and she flashed her pussy at him, like it’s saying, ‘Here I am, come and pet me…’ He actually came home and told me about it—pretended to laugh the whole thing off. ‘I just thought I’d share this amusing anecdote with you, darling. Can you imagine this little whore thinking I’d fall for such a crude attempt at seduction? What does she take me for? A Kennedy Democrat?’ What he forgot to mention was that he’d already fed his teeny wiener to her sweet little pussy. To make things that much choicer, they had been getting it off in a rental apartment in a house belonging to me—down by Gramercy Park—which happened to be empty except, conveniently, for a queen-size bed. How do you like those latkes? I found out about this fooling around a couple of months ago, and he swore it was over. Then today, I discovered he was still fucking her. That’s your story, pal. Take it to your editor, and tell him to do what he likes with it. But first, you owe me.”
There was no ambiguity about what she meant. She hitched up her dress, and I saw that she was wearing not the ubiquitous baggy panty hose of that bygone era, but old-fashioned stockings, held up by garters, worn fetchingly with slinky black lingerie. When she dressed that evening, she had not been thinking of hurrying home to watch reruns of The Honeymooners.
“You can see I was going to be generous to someone tonight, sweetheart. I owe that much to myself. You turned out to be the lucky party.”
She took my hand again, and placed it on her crotch. They fit together nicely, and I was glad I had clean nails, but a decision had to be made. My libido pointed out, quite forcibly, that I hadn’t fucked anybody but my ex-wife in close to three months, while at the same time, my conscience warned me that my honorary membership in the Philip Marlowe Hardboiled but Strictly Ethical Order of Investigative Chivalry was on the line. I was like some Looney Tunes character with a devil perched on one shoulder and an angel on the other, fighting it out. The devil was armed with a pitchfork, while the angel had only a halo to defend her honor.
Reluctantly, I removed my hand from Mrs. Baldridge’s underwear.
“You better hear me out,” I told her. “Here’s the bottom line. I’m not a reporter. There’s not going to be any story in the papers tomorrow. I’m here under false pretenses.”
Mrs. Baldridge stared at me for a long moment or two then slapped me hard across the face.”
“Good girl,” said the driver, urging her pony to a canter.
“If you could drop me at Columbus Circle,” I said, “that would be convenient.”
Mrs. Baldridge seethed for a few seconds, then grabbed my hand and bit it hard before replacing it on her lingerie, which had a therapeutic effect.
“I didn’t come this far to be ditched,” she said. “You owe me, and maybe I owe you because you’ve saved me from making a total fool of myself. My God, you could have been a real reporter, then nothing would’ve spared me from a humiliating future as the pathetic bitch whose ex married that trashy weather girl—the one who’s now first lady of New York City. I’d have to move to New Rochelle to escape the shame.”
She closed her eyes and sighed, as if the specter of exile in Westchester County was overwhelming.
“What are we waiting for?” she asked, biting my ear this time.
I bit her back, but not on the ear.
“That’s more like it,” said Mrs. Baldridge. “Take your time,” she called out to the girl driving the carriage, “and we’ll take ours.”
EIGHT
When we got back to the hotel, Donald Baldridge was standing outside with a gaggle of politicos and their wives lined up for taxis and limos. Mrs. Baldridge waited till she was sure that he had spotted us, then gave me a long, rather sloppy kiss, and straightened my tie before she stepped down to the sidewalk, where she paused to studiously tug at her skirt before walking up to her husband and giving him a peck on the cheek. Only then did she turn toward me and call out, for the benefit of the assembled Republican dignitaries, “Call me soon, babe. I’ll be waiting.”
The carriage driver, who had been well paid and entertained, took me to the garage where I had left the rented car. I drove to my apartment, and found a parking space half a block away. My luck was turning. I half-expected to find the mysterious blond girl waiting for me, but there was no one around except Eartha, a six-foot-four drag queen who had once had a tryout with the Knicks, and was now an unrestricted free agent plying her wares along the waterfront. She was propped up on my stoop, smoking.
“My arse is sore,” she said, affecting a British accent, “these ’eels are killing me, and this is my last faggy.”
I gave her half a pack of Gauloises and went inside. I took a shower, which made me feel a bit better, and rolled a joint. I had been avoiding dope since the IRT incident, but now I needed a hit. It had been just over twenty-four hours since I met with Kravitz. In that time I had been shot at, almost pushed into the path of a subway train, presented with a gun in a Bloomingdale’s shopping bag, raided by the police, haunted by a blond girl who might or might not be Lydia Kravitz, made the acquaintance of Lydia’s succulent mama, and fucked Jerry Pedrosian’s sister while riding in Central Park. None of which got me any closer to knowing what the hell was going on.
And then there was Andrea, who had gotten under my skin despite a display of bad manners.
I fell asleep on the sofa and woke at a little after one. I doubted I was going to have much luck if I tried to go back to sleep, so I reheated the coffee Janice had brewed that morning, drank a cup, put
on some jeans and a leather jacket, and walked down Hudson to a bar that had jazz till three in the morning. The combo that night was a piano-bass duo—bebop veterans who had played with Bird and the heavy dudes. I caught the last half of a set, and that invigorated me, so I went back to the car and drove to my office.
Walter was on duty again. I asked him if any more pretty blondes had been asking for me. No such luck, he told me. When I stepped out of the elevator on my floor, I was surprised to find a light on in the office of Olga the masseuse. She must have heard me, because she looked out.
“Mr. Detective,” she said. “You’ve had a busy day.”
She had on tight black leather pants, black patent boots with stiletto heels, and a low-cut black leather bustier that reminded me she had lovely shoulders.
“You’re working pretty late yourself,” I said.
“Like Mayor Lindsay keeps telling us,” she said, “these are difficult times. I work when the client can get away from whoever or whatever he’s getting away from.”
A male voice inside her suite called out, “Are you coming back, for Chrissakes? I don’t pay you to leave me dangling like this.”
Olga shrugged.
“Remember,” she said, “that offer of a free trial still stands.”
Inside my office, I turned on the answering machine. A bill collector and an angry message from Gabriel Kravitz demanding to know what was going on. That was followed by a female voice so faint I had to play the message several times before I could understand any of what was being said, except for the first words, which were clear enough.
“Please help…”
The voice was young and frightened. Or maybe it was trying to sound frightened. After the request for help, the tape became unintelligible for several seconds, scrambled and distant. Then I could make out the words “maybe too late…” which emerged from an ocean of static. My guess was that the call was from a radio telephone. I had had some experience with these when I was undercover with the DA’s office, and I knew that the service was highly unreliable in Manhattan because of the high-rise buildings. Whatever the case, there was another stretch of indecipherable interference before the words “top floor” followed by a fragment of what may have been an address. I could definitely make out the number—137—and was pretty sure the street name was Lazy Lane or Ladies Lane. Those didn’t mean anything to me, so I checked them out in my A to Z. No Lazy Lane anywhere in the five boroughs, but I found a Ladies Lane in SoHo, a blip on the map that ran a single block from east to west, just north of Canal. I must have passed it dozens of times without noticing it.
When I got there, I saw why. It would be difficult for a street—just an alley really—to be more anonymous. It was badly lit, and barely wide enough for a single truck to pass through. The majority of structures in SoHo are six or seven stories tall, but here they were only three and four stories high. It was hard to make out much detail at 3:15 in the morning, but I could see that they were brick, rather than cast iron like the bulk of the district, and probably older than the typical SoHo property. Later, I learned that the street owed its name to the fact that in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was at the center of the red light district, though before that the buildings had been fashionable shops. Whatever architectural charm they may have had was compromised by the fact that they had been retrofitted at some point with clumsy fire escapes. Ladies Lane had been there when Charles Dickens made his first visit to New York in 1842, and it still possessed a distinctly Dickensian air.
I had parked the Datsun on Wooster, and I took a short stroll just to be sure everything was quiet. That part of town was kept free of garden-variety crime by the mob families who ran protection for the parents and paisanos who kept pigeons and hung out laundry in the neighborhood, but there was always the possibility of running into a couple of soldatos setting fire to a garbage truck owned by a rival family, or dropping off a body in the trunk of a stolen Eldorado with Jersey plates. That spring night, though, the area was as quiet as a morgue, and deserted except for rodents and the feral cats that darted from one bale of rags to the next.
The building at 137 Ladies Lane was much like the others on the alley, three bays wide, free of adornment. To the naked eye, it appeared empty—as abandoned as the houses in the Bronx I’d driven by a few hours earlier. I was in pretty good shape in those days, but the hinged ladder attached to the lowest platform of the fire escape was out of my reach unless I had something to climb on. I thought about driving the Datsun underneath the fire escape, and getting access by way of the vehicle’s roof, but that was too risky. Blocking a narrow alley like that, the car was likely to attract attention. All it would take was some Barney in a passing patrol car to spot it, and I’d be in trouble. Then I noticed that there was a length of rope hanging down from the ladder. I hadn’t spotted it at first because it was half-hidden and in a pool of darkness, but there it was, almost like an invitation. I couldn’t quite reach it from ground level, but the loft district served as a communal garbage dump, and I was quickly able to locate a battered filing cabinet that provided the leg up I needed.
I pulled on the rope, and the ladder swung down noiselessly. I had expected some kind of rusty creak, but the fire escape appeared to be well maintained. I reached the first platform, hoping to get a glimpse into the building, but the windows were covered with old-fashioned roller blinds pulled fully down. That was par for the course around there because artists were often living illegally, and were careful to protect their turf from housing inspectors and other licensed predators. The blinds were pulled down on the next two floors, too, but on the fourth floor, the blinds on one window had been left open a few inches. I peered in, and gradually, my eyes adjusted to the faint light that was provided by the glow from a television set on the floor. It had been left on, and its screen danced with static. I could make out an open space with very little furniture. There was a big table with some objects on it that I could not decipher, a few kitchen chairs, the television set, and not much else that I could see. I was pretty sure that there was no one in that room, though that didn’t mean there was nobody in some adjacent space, or on another floor. The fact that the television had been left on, though, was probably a good sign. At least, that’s what I told myself.
I risked trying the windows, but they were all locked. Then I noticed that below one of them there was an opening provided for a room air conditioner. No air conditioner had been installed, and the opening was crudely blocked with plywood that I was able to remove without difficulty. I listened at the opening for a while. No noise inside. No snores or whispers, just the hiss of the TV. I took off my leather jacket, pushed it through the opening, then squeezed in after it. I used the baby flashlight I carry to take a quick look around. Not much that I hadn’t spotted from outside, except for a couple of mattresses in one corner, a little table with an electric coffeemaker, and some shelves with a few books on them. It was the big table or, rather, what was sitting on it, that caught my attention. There was a radio telephone mounted in a briefcase, presumably the one that had been used to call me. An open carton, originally intended for some Heinz product, contained four .38-caliber Ruger semiautomatic pistols, just like the one in my office safe. Another one lay on the table, next to the carton. Also on the table, along with half-empty containers of Chinese food, was a submachine gun—an Uzi—plus a high-powered sporting rifle fitted with a telescopic sight, and clips of ammunition of various gauges.
I was beginning to wonder why I hadn’t armed myself for this expedition.
Who would need this much firepower, and for what? I thought it might be interesting to check out the books on the shelves. I suspected that they were not likely to be on the New York Times fiction best-sellers list. It was at that moment, as I took a step toward the shelves, that my brain was napalmed. Someone had whacked me at the base of my skull with something blunt and solid. I somehow clung on to consciousness, and tried to turn to see my attacker, but a cloth soaked in somet
hing sweet and sickly was pressed against my face.
What happened next was almost pleasant at first. I was rushing through a cartoon desert on a rocket sled, saguaro cactuses flashing by. I’d been through this before when I was thirteen years old, and had my appendix removed. I knew what to expect. I’d seen my share of Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner movies, and felt strangely fulfilled as I shot off the edge of the cliff and fell endlessly into the canyon below.
NINE
When I came to, my head felt like a hockey puck after a date with Bobby Hull. I was flat on my back on the floor in a pool of sunlight. Someone must have raised the blinds, probably on purpose, knowing it would be like throwing acid in my face. I squeezed my eyes shut, but it didn’t help. The light burned through my eyelids. I wondered why I wasn’t dead. If someone wants to inflict that kind of misery, why don’t they just chill you and be done with it? Either these people were sadists or amateurs.
The events leading up to my condition came back slowly. I managed to sit up and feel the back of my head. My hair was matted with blood. There was a bump on my forehead, too. I must have hit it on the edge of the table as I fell. I clenched my teeth and tried to check out my surroundings. One of my molars was cracked. Every muscle in my neck and shoulders screamed for mercy, and I saw that the room—which was slowly spinning—was now completely empty. Everything had gone: the guns, the ammo, the telephone, the table, the chairs, the television, the books, the coffeemaker, even the mattresses. I guess whoever it was that zapped me didn’t want me to get too comfortable. But he or she or they had folded my leather jacket neatly on the floor beside me, and nothing was missing from my wallet.
I lay on my back some more, using the jacket as a pillow, and tried to will some life back into my body. Eventually, I was able to stand up and move around. I checked out the space on foot. There was a door at the back, which opened onto a little bathroom containing a sink and a toilet. There was nothing in there either—not so much as a toothpick or a Kotex—but at least I could splash water on my face, wash some of the blood out of my hair, and relieve myself. Then I headed downstairs, checking out every floor as I went. None of the doors were locked. All of the rooms were empty. It was as if someone wanted to be sure that I got a good look at the whole building so that I could see that it was as clean as a whistle.
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