Under Water

by Casey Barrett

  “I thought you said cops were the enemy?” asked Pete with a desperate croak.

  “No,” said Cass. “My partner said cops were the enemy. He has always had problems with authority. I’m sure the two of you can relate. However, I have dear friends who are members of the NYPD. How do you think I was able to get these crime scene photos?”

  Pete slumped back into the couch. He held his drug-filled backpack tight to his chest like a bullied fifth-grader. He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose. “What do you want from me?” he asked quietly.

  “Last time you saw her, at Clem’s, what did she buy?”

  “Whole bunch of stuff. Like six bags of blow and a bunch of molly. I think the chick got some H too. Must have been a big night.”

  “Big night for you too,” said Cass. “What did all that cost her?”

  “It was a bunch. Let’s see, hundo each for the blow, that’s six. I think it was like three bills of molly. And a few bags of the H. A little over a grand, I’d say.”

  “You must have been thrilled, selling all that to an eighteen-year-old addict,” she said. Then she stepped forward and slashed the dealer across the face with her sharp red nails. Blood sprang from his cheek in jagged lines. He cried out, grabbed at his face and fled head down for the door.

  “When we find her,” she called, “you better hope she’s not dead.”

  Chapter 17

  You might think that a professional dominatrix falls into an alternative category of prostitution. Cass would be quick to explain the distinction of her craft. Yes, it is sexual in nature, and money changes hands. And sure, the client is often naked. But a dominatrix is more a well-dressed therapist than prostitute. She is never penetrated and never ever touches the client’s cock. Release, as they say, must be manual—if the mistress permits it.

  The role gives her a unique perspective on the sex industry. It allows her to see it from an informed remove, yet also up close, viewing the types of men who will forever line up to pay for the fulfillment of their needs. The murdered escort her outreach group was named for, Veronica Life, was a one-time mistress who made the leap. She had spent a short stint at the Chamber with Cass. Veronica was a young, gorgeous Latvian girl who was sending much of her income home to mother and sister each month. Mistresses earn a fraction of what well-paid escorts can take in; she hadn’t wanted to go that far, but the offer came and she needed the money. Then along came that murderous Russian john who left Veronica strangled with his leather belt on a hotel bed. He was seated in first class, flying somewhere over the Atlantic, by the time the maid found her.

  Cass was reminding me of these things again as I prepared to leave for Clem’s and the makeshift studio across the street. She is disgusted by porn, thinks it’s a sickness of society, the voyeurism of prostitution; says it destroys honest interaction between the sexes: this from a woman who will tie you down and clamp your body in clothespins, if that’s your honest pleasure.

  “Angela Jones, that vile bitch,” she said, examining the blood under her nails. “Do you have any idea how many girls like Madeline she’s lured in, gotten hooked, and used up? Eighteen-, nineteen-year-old party girls—that’s her target. It’s criminal.”

  “There’s also a large market for it,” I reminded her. “ ‘Teen’ must be the most searched word in porn.”

  “I realize that,” she said. “Penises will always be the true problem, the things that make them hard. But women like Angela, the ones who facilitate it in the worst ways—there’s a special circle of hell reserved for those cunts.”

  She shook her head and checked her phone. “Shit, I have a session in an hour, I gotta run.” Cass pushed Elvis from her lap and tossed her leather bag over a shoulder.

  I felt sorry for the poor guy. He didn’t know what was in store for him behind those padded dungeon walls.

  “Keep me posted,” she said.

  I watched her slam the door and stalk off through the window. I remembered a story about the Old West, about the white man’s battles with the Native Americans. I read that the worst punishment a captured cowboy could receive did not come from the Natives he was battling out on the plains. It came from their women. That was the torturous fate reserved for the true white devils. When the most vicious, painful retribution is required, pray that they don’t hand you over to strong women.

  I swallowed down three vikes with a last gulp of beer, then brewed some coffee for clarity and took Elvis out for a quick evening walk around the block. Despite the violence and the madness of the previous days I found myself almost giddy over what lay ahead. The prospect of that porn studio, the evil madam, the opiates already working their way into my brainpan, all of the illicit thrills on the horizon. There were worse ways to earn a living. Returning home, I unleashed the hound, tossed on a sport coat over my pitted t-shirt, and moved back out into the dusk, headed for the L train.

  The stench of self-conscious hipness hits you as soon as you walk up the subway steps at Bedford. The young masses of Williamsburg have it all figured out. Scrawled alongside the subway exit it read “Now it’s bridge and tunnel in reverse.” This borough needed to get over itself. When Sinatra sang about making it here, he wasn’t talking about fucking Brooklyn.

  I moved among them until I traced my way to Grand and Roebling. It was an ugly block, for decades a fringe neighborhood of lower-income immigrants. But no longer: now those same cheap railroad apartments were rented for five grand a month by graphic designers and tech kids, and your occasional enterprising porn entrepreneur.

  Clem’s, at least, was trying to rise above the hipster-ness. The crowd was older; dads slouched over whiskeys under the high copper ceiling. This wasn’t a place that catered to the kiddies. An attractive Asian bartender was staring up at a Premier League soccer game on the TV in the corner. She approached without taking her eyes off the screen and set down a cocktail napkin in front of me. I asked her for a Bulleit, one cube, and she poured it without acknowledgment. The pills were starting to kick in. I turned on my stool and watched the building across the street through the blinds of the bar’s long windows. Not a bad spot for a stakeout.

  I was finishing my third drink, feeling the rush of the vikes, when the bartender decided to speak to me.

  “You been staring out that window for some time,” she said. “You waiting on someone?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Looks like you been stood up.”

  “Not sure she knows I’m waiting.”

  “You some kind of stalker?”

  I turned to her. She had a kind, wide face with full lips and a smirk to her thin, dark eyes. “You know what goes on over there?” I asked.

  “Over where?”

  “Where I’ve been watching for the last hour,” I said.

  She reached for the whiskey bottle, refilled my glass. “This one’s on me,” she said.

  I let her drift away and make her rounds, pouring more drinks for the growing crowd. I had resolved to downshift to beer by the time she returned.

  “You looking for work?” she asked. “Over there, I mean.”

  She made eye contact for the first time. Her smirk was gone.

  “More like looking for someone who works there,” I said.

  She glanced down the bar at a few raised arms looking for refills. I wouldn’t have her attention for long.

  “Looking for a missing girl,” I said. “Tall, athletic eighteen-year-old. She’s done some work over there.”

  “Likely story,” she said. “Look like a stalker to me.”

  I turned in my seat, pulled up the side of my sport coat and shirt. Showed her the bullet scar just below my ribs, where my spleen used to be. “See that?” I asked. “A stalker gave me that a few years back. Shot me point blank. I’d like to think I’m on the non-creep side.”

  She looked from my scar to my battered faced. I let her size me up. “Hang on,” she said.

  When she returned, she was holding a felt pen and a cockta
il napkin. She leaned before me on the bar and scribbled something down, then folded the napkin and pushed it over to me. “Ask for Angela,” she said. “Give this to her. Tell her you’re interested in work. She’ll like you. Apartment 3C.”

  I opened the napkin. It read “Enjoy!” in red ink that leaked through the thin layers. It was signed with a K and a winking smiley face. Time to go apply for a job.

  My legs were unsteady beneath me as I stepped out into the warm night. The vikes filled me with a sense of gauzy fearlessness, an invincible cloud around my consciousness. I approached a rusted entry gate alongside a graffiti-covered garage door. Before I could reach for the buzzer, two girls came tripping and giggling out of the building. They were dressed in little but their tattoos and just enough cloth to count for public decency. The brunette had a high beehive hairdo that needed tending. Both arms were covered in tat sleeves. When she lit her cigarette, her smeared lips sucked down a mighty drag. Then she coughed it out and shared the lighter with her friend, a waif of a redhead with translucent skin and a high air about her.

  “How’s it going, girls?” I asked.

  “Rad,” said the redhead. She turned her back to me, and the brunette rolled her eyes.

  “Hey, I was just going up to see Angela,” I said. “It’s 3C, right?”

  This got their attention. Both turned and examined me up and down like a pair of art appraisers. “You know Angie?” asked the brunette.

  “No, not yet, I mean. My friend put us in touch. I was gonna look for some work.”

  The redhead laughed, took a drag, placed her hand against my chest. She moved in close and peered up at me. Her eyes were glazed as a Dunkin’ donut. Definitely high. “You’re a big boy, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Settle down, Juli,” said the brunette, slapping her friend’s narrow ass. “Excuse her,” she said to me. “She’s in heat.”

  Both girls laughed and sucked down the rest of their smokes. Then Juli grabbed my hand and buzzed the apartment. “C’mon,” she said. “Come with us.”

  If not for the collection of video equipment positioned across the living room, the apartment was your average crappy one-bedroom: small open living space with kitchenette against one wall, bedroom and bath behind cheap drywall. Two muscled red-faced guys in boxers lounged on the leather couch, sipping at Coronas. Another pair hovered over a cutting board by the sink. They were schlubby, bearded, and dressed—the ones operating all that equipment. One was slicing limes, the other lines of coke. They looked up as we entered. The room tensed as all eyes fell to me.

  “Yo, where’s Ang?” asked Juli, now holding my hand.

  “The fuck is that?” asked the one cutting the limes.

  “Where’s Angie?” asked beehive.

  “Bedroom,” yawned one of the dudes on the couch. He was young, ripped, and blond, with the look of an off-duty construction worker.

  Juli dropped my hand and rapped on the bedroom door. A husky voice called, “Hang on,” and took her time about it. Beehive looked over at the little man busy with the coke. “Hey, Marco, you better save me one,” she said.

  “And why should I do that?” he asked.

  She leered at him. “I think you know why.”

  The bedroom door opened, and I was presented with the ample Angela. She was rubbing the inside of a fat forearm. Perhaps a performer a decade and a hundred pounds ago, Angela had now filled out to roughly the size and shape of a newborn elephant. She was wearing a dark gray dress with a black sash wrapped around her wide waist. Her black hair was swept back in a ponytail, presenting a puffy face that had reeled in the years. She gave us a sleepy look before her eyes settled on me and stayed there. She waited for some explanation.

  “So, like, this guy was coming up to see you,” said Juli. “He says he was referred by a friend.” She squeezed my arm and snuggled in close. “Can I work with him, Angie, please?”

  “What friend?” asked Angela.

  “The bartender across the street,” I said and handed her the folded cocktail napkin.

  She took it, read it, and smiled. “Please step into my office,” she said, stepping back from the doorway. Then, to her performers outside, she called: “You guys ready to go again?”

  “Damn right,” said one. The other just grunted and swallowed back his beer.

  “All right then, Marco, Eddie, you guys know what to do. Girls, look alive.”

  Juli and Beehive nodded their heads, then moved fast for the lines on the cutting board. They’d be looking more than alive in no time. Angela waved me into her room and shut the door.

  It was a small space that the elephantine woman filled at the foot of an unmade queen bed. The wall behind the headboard was spray-painted with an abstract black-andred mural that I recognized from Madeline’s past performances in this room. Angela reclined on the bed. She propped herself up on an elbow and bent a leg like a side of beef. “You’re a friend of Kim’s, huh? She does like those finder’s fees.”

  The bartender’s willingness to share was starting to make more sense. I felt myself squirming before this large, lascivious mass.

  “So, let’s see what you’ve got,” said Angela.

  “What I’ve . . .”

  She motioned to my belt buckle. “Off,” she said. “Need to see the equipment. Don’t worry if you’re not hard yet. Even if you’re a grower, I’ll be able to see what we’re working with.”

  “Listen, do you mind if I ask you a few questions first?”

  Angela sighed. Her mouth turned down in reproach. “Baby, if you’re not willing to drop ’em without a thought, then what are you doing here?”

  Thanks be to the vikes for my fearlessness. “Okay, fair enough.” I reached for my buckle. “But can I ask you some questions after?”

  “Honey, if you meet my approval, you can ask me anything you like,” she said.

  Before I could feel shame, I closed my eyes and dropped my pants. I stood there swaying with my hands on my bare hips. I felt Angela examining me in silence. The bed creaked and groaned as she climbed across the mattress toward me. She cupped me in one hand, lifted and tugged with the other. When the violation was complete, she exhaled and slapped my ass. I felt her hot breath against me. “Okay,” she said. “You pass. On the small side for this biz, but you’ll do.”

  I opened my eyes and leaned down and pulled up my jeans. “Thank you,” I muttered.

  “You sure you want to do this?” she asked. “You don’t seem too eager. But I wouldn’t worry. Little Juli will get your blood racing. She can’t wait to get with you. A live one, that little redhead.”

  “Listen, about those questions,” I said.

  “Shoot.”

  “I was wondering about a girl who’s done some work here. Tall, young, only been eighteen for a few months. Likes her drugs.”

  “Honey, you’re describing every girl who walks in here.”

  I removed her picture from my back pocket, the one of Madeline posing with James Fealy at Bowery Ballroom. Showed it to Angela. “Name’s Madeline, though she may go by something else here.”

  Fat fingers snatched it from me. She glanced down at it and handed it back. “Oh right. Maddie. Aka Charlaine Black. The lips on that one—made for this biz. Loaded with talent too, if she can keep her shit together. Likes to party, you know? What do you want with her?”

  “I was just hoping to talk with her. You know how to reach her?”

  “Why?”

  Dropped trou or not, Angela was starting to get suspicious.

  “Friend of a friend,” I said. “I heard she was up . . . for anything.”

  “Well, anyone who’s seen her work knows that,” she said. “Tell you what, you shoot a few scenes with us, we get to know you a little, and next time Maddie comes calling, I’ll make sure to introduce you two. Sound good, solider?”

  “I was hoping to . . .”

  “Good, settled then. Let’s go see how they’re doing out there.”

  “Actually, no good.
I need to find her.”

  Angela held my gaze. A crooked smile played on her mouth like a crocodile at the water’s edge. “Let’s see how it’s going out there,” she said again. Then she hefted her bulk from the bed and moved past me to the bedroom door.

  Sounds of slapping and soft moans were audible from the living room. I hesitated there alone in the bedroom, considered a retreat back to Clem’s for more fortification before I joined Angela on the makeshift set. As I crossed the threshold those sounds of pleasure turned to sharp pain.

  “Ow, fuck!” shouted one of the male performers. “Fucking bitch! What the—”

  I came into the room to find him grasping at his crotch, blood visible between his fingers. He looked wild-eyed across the couch at Juli, who was wiping a smear of blood from her chin like a rabid vampire. The rest of the room was frozen in suspended disbelief. Angela was the first to snap out of it.

  “Juli,” she said calmly. “What the fuck?”

  Juli was off the couch now, grabbing for her things. She pulled on a tank top, shorts, tossed a pink purse over her shoulder. Tears spilled down her pale cheeks. “I’m out of here,” she cried. “Fuck all of you.”

  No one blocked her path as she fled for the door and slammed it behind her. Instead of tending to the wounded man on the couch, all eyes turned to me. It appeared my arrival had sparked some bad energy on the scene. It was time for me to go too. I met Angela’s eyes. “See you soon,” I said. Then I raced out, down the stairs and outside in pursuit of Juli.

  She was halfway down Roebling, walking fast in bare feet. Her high heels dangled from the straps in her left hand. Her right arm was half raised as she searched down the street for a passing cab. I called out her name, and she picked up her pace. I caught up to her at the corner of South 1st Street. My hand touched her bare shoulder. She spun around, flung her shoes against my side.

  “Not now, man, okay? Not now.”

  “Hold up,” I said. “What happened back there?”

  “Fucking prick,” she said. “I can’t believe he said that shit.”

  “Said what?”