by Norman Green
Hey, Stoney thought, take what life gives you. Hard, though, not wanting more.
There are a lot of diners in north Jersey, every little town seems to have at least one, usually owned by Greeks, but not always. The buildings they are in look like they all came from the same Prefabricated Diner Factory: chrome and glass, stone facade, interiors finished with a lot of wood that seems to be designed to look as much like plastic as possible. They may have named it the Westwood Pancake House, but it was still a diner.
He sat at a table in the smoking section and fed his nicotine habit while he waited for her. He was the only person in the place who was smoking, even though there were ashtrays on all the tables in his half of the place. Some old crow looked at him cross-eyed when he lit up, he returned the stare until she looked away. Fuck you, bitch, he thought. Plenty of empty tables over on the other side.
He wanted to stand up when he saw Donna come through the doorway, he wanted to smile, throw his arms around her, ask her to dance, something, anything. He didn’t do any of those things, though, he stubbed out his cigarette, closed the red folder, and waited for her to come over and sit down.
“Good morning.” She smiled at him, sat down. She looked at the red folder on the table, but she didn’t ask what was in it.
“Good morning.” He watched her face as she read her menu. He apologized again. “Sorry about, you know, last minute and everything. I’m not getting you in trouble with your boss, am I?”
“No.” She shook her head. “That woman is so disorganized, she hardly ever notices what’s going on. Do you believe she hadn’t been able to find a hairdresser around here that she liked? She knew this woman in London, though, she found her when she was over there on some kind of conference, so she’d been flying over there once a month just to get her hair done.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Scout’s honor.”
“Damn. So, you’re like her personal assistant? You find her someone over here?”
“Yes, I am, and yes, I did. That was the least of it, Stoney. Her whole life is like that. You wouldn’t believe the money she throws away on stupidness.”
“Sounds like you’re enjoying what you’re doing.”
She looked at him then, thought about it. “I am,” she said, after a minute. “It feels good, especially after I was so afraid, you know, leaving my little cocoon, and all—”
The waiter came then, interrupting them. They ordered, sat there in silence for a minute after the waiter was gone. She looked at him, not at the red folder. “So,” she said, leaning on the table. “I assume this is about Marisa.”
He had forgotten, for a few minutes, what it had been that had occasioned this meeting. “Yeah,” he said, and he pushed the folder across the table to her. “I don’t know what she told you, but this is what I got.” He’d gone through it earlier, removed all of the pictures but one. He was still fearful, though, there was no other word for it. He was afraid that this was going to be the last straw, not what their daughter was doing so much as the fact that he’d hired someone to snoop on them.
She sucked her breath in when she saw the picture, went pale, then shook her head and exhaled. “That girl,” she said. “God, you know, I could have sworn she was going through something, but I never thought…” She put the picture facedown on the table, picked up the top page of the report, scanned it for a few seconds, then looked at Stoney. “What made you…how did you find this out?”
He had known that question was coming, had his story ready. “Friend of a friend,” he said. There was no way he was telling her the truth about this. “I guess the guy saw her, said, you know, isn’t that what’s-his-name’s girl, told his buddy about it, and his buddy got word back to me. I was afraid to ask you, you know, I didn’t want to get something started, especially if none of it was true. So anyway, I hired a someone to look into it.”
She stared at him for a few seconds. He couldn’t read her expression, couldn’t tell if she was buying his story or not. She looked down again, glanced at a few of the other pages. “Who did this?” she asked. “Who was this guy you hired? I don’t see his name on this anywhere.”
He didn’t correct her. Let her think it was a man, he thought. Probably safer that way. “He was just a guy. He came highly recommended.”
“A guy. Doesn’t he have a name? A letterhead or something?”
“I’m sure he does. I think he figures I am going to do something rash about this. He didn’t want his name on it any where. That copy you’re looking at is the only one there is.”
“You?” she said, in mock surprise. “Do something rash?” Then she added, almost under her breath, “Where is my husband, and what have you done to him?” She shook her head. “Do you mind if I read this?”
“No,” he said. “Go ahead.”
She had surprised him again. He hadn’t known what to expect, so he’d expected the worst, but Donna seemed to be taking the whole thing in without hysteria. Their food came while she was reading, and Stoney was astonished to see her begin to attack her breakfast while she read. She stopped once, looked over at him, shook her head. “Unbelievable,” she muttered, then went back to the report. She must have gotten to the part about the escort service, Stoney thought. That got a reaction. It had certainly gotten one out of him. Funny, though, how she would toss her cookies over the slightest thing, sometimes, but then something big goes down, she takes it in stride.
There was an address for Perfect Angels, the escort service, plus a phone number and some names, but no pictures. There was also a description of the nature of their business, mercifully brief. Role-playing, fantasy fulfillment, fetishes, shit like that. Stoney hadn’t told Benny about the escort service, he still held out on the guy sometimes. Maybe Benny would have had the same opinion about it, maybe he would have given Stoney the same advice. To Stoney, though, the escort service was in a whole different category. Yeah, all right, she did what she did in the strip club, if he could get her to walk away from that, fine, but that other thing was some sick shit. Guy had to know she was underage, sent her out there anyway, Stoney was not about to let that go.
Donna finished the report and her breakfast at about the same time. She put the pages down and looked over at him. “You didn’t eat,” she said.
“You’re taking this very calmly.” He speared a piece of French toast and put it in his mouth.
“Me?” She looked at him in disbelief. “Me? You have got to be kidding. Why aren’t you raving and throwing things? Why didn’t you call me from the Hackensack Annex?”
The Annex was the common term for the Bergen County jail. “Benny talked me down. Him and Tommy.”
“I see. And when did that happen?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
She stared at him. “I’d love to meet this guy Benny someday.”
“Anytime.”
“You know, I would have expected one of two reactions out of you. The most likely would have been—” She stopped for the space of three breaths. “Off-the-wall,” she finally said, and then she said it again, in a quieter tone. “Off-the-wall. The second would have been for you to dump this all in my lap and walk away. Make it my problem.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he kept quiet.
She stared at him, he could feel her measuring him. “What are you going to do about these places where she worked? I am truly surprised to see you sitting here talking about this and not…” She shivered. “How come you haven’t blown up? How come you’re not off hitting the guy who owns Perfect Angels in the head with a hammer or something? Honestly, Stoney, sometimes I’m not sure I know you anymore.”
If she only knew, he thought. If she knew that Marisa let me think you were sleeping with Prior…He thought about how to answer her, looked up to see her waiting. “All right, I won’t lie to you, I am going to have a conversation with whoever is calling the shots at Perfect Angels. But the more immediate question is what to do about Marisa.” He rais
ed one hand in a gesture of helplessness, then wiped his face. “Benny says…” He noticed the change in her expression, but he continued anyway. “Benny says that overreacting would just drive Marisa away from us. He said, if I, you know, go making threats and shit, she’d just be more likely to get pissed off, maybe go back to doing this stuff just to get back at me. To show me, you know, be independent and all that. I mean, I don’t know what to say about Marisa. Or to her. But she has to know, this shit’s gotta stop.” He looked down at his plate. “Other than that, I don’t know. I mean, yeah, I’m gonna deal with this escort-service guy, I ain’t having that. But I don’t know if that will have any effect on Marisa, or on what she does from here on out.”
Donna was not all that interested in the escort-service guy. “Well, your friend Benny is right.” He could tell she didn’t like saying that. “We don’t want to drive Marisa away. She’s jeopardizing her future over a, a, a silly experiment, but she probably doesn’t really appreciate that. Marisa does understand reality. Sometimes better than I do.” She picked the picture up, looked at it again. “Is this the only picture?”
“No,” he said. “But it seemed like enough.”
“Were the other ones worse than this?”
“Worse? Oh, I get it. No, not really. In Jersey, the girls aren’t supposed to take off more than what you see there.”
“And you know this because…”
How did we get back around to me? he wondered. “I asked.”
“So you don’t go to these places.” He could hear the skepticism in her voice, and the challenge. He looked at her, counted to ten before he answered.
“I never wanted anybody but you.”
She stared back, leaving him to wonder what she was thinking. “Can I keep this picture?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, his heart sinking.
“All right,” she said. “We are going to have a talk with Marisa. Let her know that this is unacceptable behavior.” She pursed her lips in distaste. “You should probably let her know that if it continues, you aren’t going to pay her tuition. She’s a smart girl, she’ll recognize how much she’s risking.”
She still hasn’t gotten over that, Stoney thought, she’s still hung up on the money thing. “All right.”
“What comes next? What do we do about Marisa? Aside from just talking to her, I mean. Do you think she’s in any danger from these people she’s been around at these places?”
“It’s possible.” He still wasn’t sure he wanted to tell her about Prior. “I had Tuco tailing Marisa for a day or two. He’s watching the house now.”
“I was wrong about Tuco,” she said, doubtful. Tuco had never been one of her favorite people. “I’m glad he was there, yesterday morning. Marisa is a different person when he’s around. Can he handle…Can he…”
“Tuco is very capable. I’m coming over, late this afternoon. Marisa and I can discuss her future. You can speak to Tuco, if you want. Address whatever concerns about him you might still have. And you can do whatever you want with Marisa. Ground her until she’s thirty, or something. Is that okay?”
“Fine.” She glanced at her watch. “I really have to go,” she said. She stood up, picked up the picture, glanced at the image one more time before she put it into her bag. “Eat your breakfast,” she said.
THIRTEEN
Hard to believe that people went through this shit every day. Stoney was sitting in his car in the southbound lanes of the Palisades Parkway, which runs down the western side of the Hudson River to the George Washington Bridge. The road was one of the nicer-looking highways in the area, lots of trees, hills, grass, and very few buildings or houses visible from the roadway until you got near the southern end, down by the bridge. It was hard to care about that, though, because the line of cars he was in crept glacially forward. Stoney watched as drivers got into the lane for the service station and parking lot which occupied a long stretch of the median strip, drove past the pumps and the parked cars, and got into the clogged lane that exited back onto the highway, all in an effort to gain a fifteen or twenty car-length advantage. The frustrated drivers in the left lane of the road apparently felt like they were being screwed, and they dueled with the cars coming back onto the highway from the service area, trying to freeze them out. The air carried the noise of bleating horns, frustration, and testosterone in Stoney’s direction. This is all I needed, he thought. The delay to the bridge was at least another hour, and then he still had to get across, fight his way downtown, and find a place to park the car.
He fished out his cell phone and called Benny. It was against the law, they had a rule against driving and talking on a handheld phone at the same time, but you could hardly call what he was doing driving, and besides, there were no police cars in sight, and no way for a cop to get to him unless he was on horseback, or walking.
Benny was home.
“Hey, Benny.”
“Hello, kid. How did it go?”
“She was rational, Benny, she was so calm it was fucking scary.”
“You tell her about the P.I.?”
“Yeah, well, sorta. I gave her one of the pictures, and I let her read some of the pages that were about Marisa. I let her think I hired someone just to do that.”
“She believe that?”
“Who the hell knows. I’m not sure. Maybe. If she had any doubts, she kept them to herself.”
“All right. So now what?”
Now I’m gonna find the scumbag that runs the escort service I didn’t tell you about, and I’m gonna strangle him with his own guts. “I don’t know, Benny. Donna says she’s gonna have a conversation with Marisa, all about unacceptable behavior and all that shit. Plus, Marisa keeps it up, no tuition money. Hopefully, if guilt doesn’t work, self-interest will.”
“Sounds good so far. What about you?”
“I don’t know, Benny. I don’t know what else I should do.”
“You’ll know what the right thing is when the time comes, Stoney, people usually do, they just don’t want to face up to it. They’d rather concentrate on getting what they want. But what I meant was, how are you doing?”
“I’m all right, Benny. I’m still sober, I haven’t picked up anything over this. Not yet, anyhow.”
“Good. Nothing is so bad that you can’t make it worse by getting fucked up. You going to a meeting tonight?”
“I’m not sure. I will if I can, but I got this thing I gotta do out here in Jersey.”
“Yeah?” Stoney heard the note of amused skepticism in Benny’s voice. I can’t fool this guy, he thought. He knows I didn’t tell him the whole story. “All right, kid. Call me anytime.”
Stoney flipped the phone shut, ending the call, and inched his car forward. He’d made about twenty feet while talking to Benny. He looked at the back of the hand that held the steering wheel, remembering something he’d read about one of the Indian tribes of the Great Plains. The first person you met after you died, according to one of their legends, was an old woman called the Hag. One of the Hag’s functions was to eat your scars, sending you clean into the next world, but if you didn’t have any scars, she would eat your eyes instead, and you would live your next life blind. I’m safe, Stoney thought. The skin on his palms was soft and clear, but his knuckles were covered with a fine lacy network of pale white lines. There were other scars, too, hidden from view, pale reminders of mishaps past, miscalculations, and the price he’d had to pay to achieve his objectives. I’ve got plenty for the Hag’s appetite, he thought. Wherever I go from here, I’ll be able to see….
It came to him, how he might productively spend an hour or two. He turned the thought over in his mind a couple times, and it felt right. It was another half mile to the next exit, but now the wait didn’t seem so pointless.
Perfect Angels was run out of a second-floor suite in a red-brick building on Main Street in Lodi, New Jersey. Stoney could not remember ever being in Lodi before, only knew the name of the town due to the periodic flooding of the Pas
saic River, which occasionally put part of Lodi underwater and earned the place a mention on the six o’clock news. It was a blue-collar town, houses and small industrial buildings mixed together and jammed close, with shared driveways, postage-stamp lawns, and potholed streets. Stoney wandered around for a while before he found the right address. The red-brick building looked like it might have once been a mill or a factory, it stood back off the street behind a large parking lot. Stoney found a space and parked in the far corner of the lot.
There were some retail stores on the ground level of the building, a donut shop, nail salon, karate studio, convenience store and a place that dealt in electronic equipment, along with a few empty storefronts. There was no sign for Perfect Angels, but the address was right, so Stoney got out of the car and walked through the door that led to the upper floors. He checked the row of mailboxes in the entryway, and there was no mention of Perfect Angels on any of those, either, but the mailbox stamped with the right suite number had a label stuck to it that read P.A. INC. Gotta be the place, Stoney thought, and he walked up the stairs.
The second-floor hallway was paved with a shiny brown carpet that looked like it had been beaten into submission by decades of dirty shoes. Flimsy pale brown wooden doors fronted each of the office suites. A few had light and noise leaking underneath them into the hallway, but the crack under the door to P.A. Inc was dark. Stoney tried the knob on his way past, but it was locked. The place was in the front of the building, though, and if the offices had windows, they should front onto the parking lot. Stoney walked to the end of the hallway and looked out, trying to orient himself so he could be sure which windows would belong to P.A. Inc. After a minute he gave up and cracked the hallway window with his elbow. Ought to be able to pick it out now…
Back downstairs, he stopped in the donut shop for a couple of cups of coffee, went back across the lot to sit in his car and wait. “You’ll know what to do.” That’s what Benny had told him. We’ll find out, he thought, we’ll find out soon enough if I know what the right thing is, or not.