52 Pickup (10 page)

“We'll give you till tomorrow. First payment, ten grand, to show your good faith.”

“Where do I send it?”

“I'll call you tomorrow, let you know.”

“What time tomorrow?”

But the voice was no longer there.

Mitchell hung up. “Now what?”

“You're sure,” O'Boyle asked, “you've never heard his voice before?”

“Not before last night.”

“Could he be somebody who used to work here?”

“I don't know, I guess so. The guy knows more about me than my accountant. So what do we do?”

“Eventually,” O'Boyle said, “we'll probably have to go to the police.”

“You're kidding.”

“You want to give them a hundred thousand dollars?”

“I want to give them two feet of pipe across the head.”

“Let me work on it,” O'Boyle said. “I'll talk to a guy I know in the prosecutor's office and find out the procedure.”

“Not like drawing up a contract, is it?”

“I'll admit it's been a while since I've done any criminal work.”

“Just suppose,” Mitchell said, “what if I pay them and forget about it?”

“You know better than that. If you pay they won't let you forget about it. You'll pay forever.”

“But if I don't, then people find out.” Mitchell saw his wife on the patio in her housecoat. She always looked good. In the cold morning light she looked good.

“Let's wait and see what happens.”

“I guess I ought to tell Barbara.”

O'Boyle, getting fifty dollars an hour for his advice, thought about it a moment. “Mitch, I wouldn't say anything that you don't have to. Not yet, anyway. These guys could chicken out for some reason, get scared, change their mind. The whole thing could blow over like it never happened.”

“The clouds break and the blue sky appears.”

“Mitch, no one ever got in trouble keeping his mouth shut.”

That was all the advice he could buy for one day. Some encouragement, but not much. Maybe there was something he could do about it himself. He wasn't going to sit here thinking about it.

IT HAD BEEN A SPORTING GOODS STORE AT ONE TIME
—Mitchell remembered it because he had stolen a baseball glove from the place when he was in the seventh grade and his dad was working at the Ford Highland Park plant. It was on Woodward six miles from downtown in a block of dirty sixty-year-old storefronts. The showcase windows of the sporting goods store were painted black now and whitewash lettering four feet high read, nude models.

The girls sat around the lobby in aluminum porch furniture with green-and-yellow-plaid cushions. They weren't bad-looking, they weren't especially good-looking. They were girls in their early twenties who could have been waitresses or countergirls at a dry cleaner's. On the walls were nude photos of girls, but not of any of the girls who were in the room now. A customer walked over to a secondhand office-desk, paid the man in the swivel chair fifteen dollars, rented
a Polaroid for five more if he wanted to or if there were any cameras working or any film available, and then would pick a girl and go down the hall to one of the eight-by-ten cubicles, or studios, as the girls called them.

The first time Mitchell came here he rented a camera and picked Cini right away, though without giving any indication that he knew her. He remembered being very self-conscious walking into the place and paying the fifteen dollars. Cini grinned but didn't say his name until they were in the room and she was taking off her sweater and jeans. She didn't wear anything under them. It was the first time he had seen her naked. She smiled again and asked if he was really going to take pictures. He said he thought that's what you were supposed to do. She said most of the guys just sat in the chair and stared at her boobs and crotch. Sometimes they'd ask her to lie down on the cot and put her legs apart, but very few of them ever brought a camera or rented one. Mitchell asked her if the guys ever tried anything. She said yes, sometimes; but most of the guys were creepy; they were nervous and mostly just wanted to look. There was a sign on the wall that read, look or take pictures but no touching.
Really? Mitchell asked her. None of the girls put out? Probably, Cini said. She never discussed it with them. It was
an easy way to make a hundred and fifty a week, part-time, and not have to worry about getting arrested. It was more than she needed to pay for school and to live on. She said she was glad she wasn't into drugs anymore and didn't have to work every day. Pretty soon, that first time, she started to play around, striking exaggerated nude-model poses. He took a half-dozen pictures that came out sharp and clear in the brightly lit room, but didn't take the pictures with him when he left. That evening they went to the Caravan Motel for the first time. Three weeks later he leased the apartment and she quit the modeling job.

Now, the second time Mitchell had come here, he was again self-conscious walking in and seeing the three girls and the guy behind the desk look up at him, knowing they were judging him: horny, middle-aged guy who had to pay to see a naked girl; dirty old man trying to act casual.

The guy behind the desk was heavy, soft-looking, with sculptured sideburns and thin hair combed carefully to the side in an attempt to cover his baldness; a thirty-year-old thirty-pounds-overweight guy in a tight mod sport shirt. He smelled of aftershave lotion and stared at Mitchell, not moving, as he approached the desk.

Mitchell said, “There was a girl named Cini, Cynthia, used to work here. Is she still around?”

The fat man, whose name was Leo Frank and was the owner of the place, stared at Mitchell another moment before he said, “We got a Peggy, we got a Terry, we got a Mary Lou, but no Cinis.”

“Nice-looking girl about five-four,” Mitchell said. “Blond hair. She was going to school at the time.”

“They're all going to school,” Leo Frank said. “These are probably the most educated young ladies you've ever met in your life. Pick any one you want.”

“Her name's Cynthia Fisher,” Mitchell said.

The fat man looked off with a thoughtful expression.

Finally he said, “Yeah, she worked here a while. Quit sometime ago. Couple months at least.”

“You haven't seen her since then?”

“Can't help you. They come and they go. They don't leave any forwarding addresses.” Leo Frank nodded toward the three girls, lowering his voice. “That Terry there, one in the middle, you want to look at some nice goodies.”

Mitchell glanced over at the girls, not wanting to stare at them. “How long she worked here?”

“About a week is all. Her and Mary Lou just started.”

“What about the other one there?” Mitchell said.

“Peggy? Yeah, Peggy's been here maybe a
couple of months.”

“I'll take her.”

“Nice goodies,” Leo Frank said. “Peggy might have a little extra going, if you know what I mean.”

Mitchell paid the fifteen dollars and walked over to the girl, not looking at the other two. All three of them were watching him now. He said, “Peggy?” The girl took her time getting up. Mitchell waited. She walked past him toward the hallway. Mitchell followed, feeling his age and the two girls watching him.

Leo Frank swiveled around in his chair, putting his back to the two girls across the room. He picked up the telephone and dialed a number. When a voice answered, Leo Frank said, “He's here . . . . Who the fuck do you think I mean? The guy. He's here.”

The girl stared directly at Mitchell as she unbuttoned her shirt and took it off. For several moments she stood there, bare to the waist, before she said, “You don't happen to be a cop, do you?”

Mitchell said, “I thought it was legal.”

“It is,” the girl said. “I was just wondering.”

“Do I look like a cop?” He was thinking that probably he did. On the force twenty years. The vice squad.

She said, “You can't tell anymore,” unzipping her slacks now and stepping out of them. She wore bikini panties. “Some of them, vice and narcos, they got long hair, mustaches, even beards. There ought to be a law they have to wear their uniforms at all times.”

“I'm not a cop,” Mitchell said. “I just like to look at bare-naked ladies.”

“That's all you do, just look?”

“That's what the sign says.”

“Would you be interested in something else?” She hooked her thumbs in the panties, like a cowboy, giving him a hip-cocked pose. “Well, would you? I'm not going to come out and say it, that's called soliciting. But I imagine you get the general idea.”

“Do all the girls who work here, are they all . . . pros?”

“Shit, you're not a cop,” the girl said, “you're a newspaper reporter. How'd you get into this? How much you make? Does your mother know you ball? Cop, you know where you stand. Newspaper reporter, he's got a dirty mind, wants you to say dirty things he can't write in the paper anyway. No, I'm sorry, I'm not answering any questions at all today about anything.”

“I'm not a cop,” Mitchell said. “I'm not a newspaper reporter. I just want to ask you if you know
somebody. Girl used to work here, her name's Cini, Cynthia. Do you know her? It's a personal matter. I'd like to get in touch with her but I don't know where she lives anymore. She moved.”

The girl hesitated. “You know where she used to live?”

“Apartment by Palmer Park. On Merrill.”

The girl said, still cautious, “She moved from there months ago.”

“I know she did.” Mitchell waited.

“She was going to school,” the girl said. “I think Wayne.”

“Not anymore,” Mitchell said. “I called. She hasn't been to class in over a week.”

“Well, you know more about her than I do,” the girl said. “I never saw her much. I didn't even know she quit school.”

Mitchell was silent, thoughtful for a moment, before he said, “Well, thanks anyway,” and started for the door.

The girl said, surprised, “Hey, don't you want to see my thing?”

Leo Frank waited until Mitchell was outside before he swiveled his back to the girls for the second time and picked up the phone. When the voice came on he said, “He just left . . . . No, he was asking about Cini . . . . What do you think I told him for Christ sake? . . . Yeah, he went in a
room, but the broad didn't know shit . . . . Right, I'll see you. Let me know.”

* * *

Alan Raimy put down the phone and came out of the cramped, cluttered, one-desk office in the lobby of the Imperial Art Theater; “Adult features—continuous 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.” He took time to check the house again, counting one, two . . . six, nine, twelve, sixteen, a couple guys over in the corner, maybe a couple more down low in the dark, somewhere in the rows of nearly empty seats. He could hear the projector throwing black-and-white images on the screen that were fuzzy, out of focus. The steam room scene. The stud is sitting there. The chick comes in. Oh, she says, isn't this the ladies' bath? The stud stands up. Her eyes lower and widen and there's the close-up of her reaction. Holy shit, mom. The twenty or so guys in the audience who have paid five each would see the stud and the chick on the massage table in about four minutes, then the group thing in the whirlpool bath shortly after. Same old shit. Slower than usual and enough out of focus to be annoying.
Alan Raimy decided if the picture didn't start to draw in a couple of days he'd sail it and bring in
Going Down on the
Farm
, they said it was grossing like crazy in Chicago and L.A.

Alan Raimy didn't own the theater, he was the manager. The owner lived in Deerfield Beach, Florida, and stayed down there from November through May; so Alan booked the features and took enough off the top to make the extra work more than pay for itself. A hundred guys come in today, only pass out tickets to half of them. It was easy to rake it off a dumb shit who lived in Deerfield Beach seven months of the year. The nice part, Alan got to see all the movies at the screenings. Alan dug movies. He was going to make one himself sometime: a good hard-core porno, but done well, with style; not just a dirty movie, a dirty
film.

He went out through the lobby to the street and began walking south along Woodward Avenue, hands in his hip-huggers, bony shoulders hunched against the damp cold, dark hair curling over the collar of his safari jacket: young guy going nowhere in particular, in no hurry, looking at the storefronts and the cars going by—until he saw Mitchell on the corner.

When the light changed Mitchell started across Woodward. He was on the other side by the time Alan reached the corner.

The pedestrian warning light flashed
WAIT
.
Alan fixed his gaze on it and was in the middle of the six-lane avenue when the light turned from red to green for the northbound traffic. He kept walking. A horn blasted close to him, to his right. Alan didn't look over until the driver yelled, “You idiot, you want to get killed?”

The front three cars were waiting for him to pass. Alan walked over to the middle car, where the guy who had yelled at him was looking out the side window, ugly-looking middle-aged guy wearing a white hardhat.

Alan said to the guy, pleasantly, “Hey, sport. Fuck off,” and kept walking. The guy wasn't going to get out, not with all the traffic behind him. Alan threaded his way through the waiting cars and got to the sidewalk in time to see Mitchell going into the Kit Kat Bar.

It was the place where he had met her and first talked to her, after Ross had realized he wasn't getting anywhere and had switched over to her friend, Donna. No, Doreen.

There were three men at the bar and another half-dozen, including two women, sitting alone, at the tables closer to the oval stage where the skinny girl with small breasts was moving to a slow rock number, her eyes closed, showing them she really felt it; or else she was asleep and doing
it by rote. The only other girl Mitchell could see was standing at the end of the bar in a blouse and sequined panties with her can sticking out.

He ordered a Bud from the bartender.
When the bartender came back and poured it and said that would be a dollar and a quarter, Mitchell said, “Doreen still work here?”

“Which one's Doreen?” the bartender said. He had been tending the bar since 1932 and looked as though he had seen most of the Doreens there were in the world.

“Colored girl,” Mitchell said. “You got more than one here?”

“Just a minute.” The bartender walked down to the end of the bar where the girl in the blouse and sequined panties was standing. She looked his way as the bartender came back.

“Doreen's off today,” the bartender said. “It's her day off.”

Mitchell nodded. He looked at his watch. It was twenty to four. He took a sip of beer and was glad it tasted good and went down easily. Maybe he'd have another one before he went home. He looked around at the skinny girl with the small breasts doing her number, eyes still closed. After a moment he turned to his beer again, finished it and left.

Alan Raimy, at the end of the bar near the door, signaled the bartender.

“You want another Fresca?” the bartender said.

Alan shook his head. “Eddie, that guy just walked out, what was he looking for, some tail?”

“I don't know what he was looking for. He asked was Doreen working today.”

Alan grinned. “No shit. Goes for the black stuff. You never know, do you?” The bartender didn't answer, and Alan said, “You seen Bobby? He been in?”

“Unh-unh,” the bartender said picking up the empty Fresca can, “I ain't seen him all day.”

The Gray Line sightseeing bus was approaching the foot of Woodward Avenue when Bobby Shy started up the aisle in his light-gray business suit and sunglasses, past the thirty-six heads he had counted from his seat in the rear. They were mostly couples, out-of-town conventioneers and their wives, middle-aged or older, almost all of them wearing glasses and name tags.