Hundred Dollar Baby (18 page)

Through the miracle of cell phones I called Corsetti. He wasn't there. I left a message for him to call me, and in an hour and fifteen minutes he did.

"You in the city?" he said when I answered.

"Yeah, Upper East Side, near the park."

"There'll probably be a sharp dip in the crime rate," he said.

"Can you trace a license plate for me?"

"Sure," he said. "Gimme something to do. We haven't had a homicide in fifteen, twenty minutes."

We followed Lionel and April to 81st Street. We lingered near the corner while the cab let April and Lionel out in front of a building with a large ornate canopy keeping the water off of the front entryway. A doorman came and opened the cab door. Nothing happened for a moment while one of them paid the cabbie. Then they got out and stepped under the canopy. The doorman closed the door and the cab took off. Lionel and April went into the building.

When they were out of sight we pulled the rental car up in front of the entrance. The doorman held the door as Hawk got out. I got out of my side, unassisted, with a roll of twenties, which I carried for just such emergencies.

"Can you hold the car for us?" I said and peeled off a twenty.

"Sure thing," the doorman said. "I'll park it right inside the garage there and get it for you when you come out."

"Excellent," I said.

We started for the door.

"I'm supposed to call up," the doorman said apologetically. "Who shall I say."

"Same place as the couple just went in," Hawk said. "We were supposed to meet them outside, and we were late."

"Mrs. Utley?" the doorman said.

"Utley?" I said.

"Yeah. She got the top two floors."

I looked at Hawk.

"They say anything to you about Utley?"

"Nope."

"Me either."

We both stood uncertainly.

"You're sure they said Utley?" I said.

"Positive," the doorman said.

Hawk and I looked at each other again.

"You know what?" I said to Hawk. "I think we ought to get back in the car and call Lionel on his cell."

Hawk nodded.

"Agree," he said.

The doorman looked sad.

"Keep the twenty," I said. "Thanks for helping. We'll take a spin around the block while I call, see what's up. Maybe we misunderstood something."

The doorman seemed cheerier.

"Sure thing," he said. "You need to come back, I'll take care of you."

He held Hawk's door while he got in, then hurried around trying to hold my door also, but it was too late. I was already in. So he closed it for me carefully.

"Thanks," I said.

Hawk pulled away and we went toward the park with the wipers working smoothly back and forth on the windshield.

Corsetti called back at four.

"You move in the best circles," he said. "Car's registered to Arnold Fisher."

"You know Fisher?"

"I do."

"Professionally?" I said.

"Arnie Fisher is a money guy for what's left of the DeNucci family."

"What's left?"

"Yeah, we busted them up pretty good about five years back. Put Dion DeNucci upstate for life. Family business been kind of floundering ever since. His kid's in charge now and not really up to it."

"Think I could talk with Mr. Fisher."

"If I go with you," Corsetti said.

"And have you a moment?" I said.

"Tell me why you're interested."

I told him. And described the two men.

When I finished he said, "That was Arnie, okay. I wonder if the other guy was Brooks."

"Brooks?"

"DeNucci, the son."

"Brooks DeNucci?" I said.

"Old man always wanted to live in Greenwich," Corsetti said.

"Can you arrange something?" I said.

"I'll call you back, again," Corsetti said.

I hung up the phone. April and Lionel came out of the building and got a cab. We followed them west across the park to Lionel's pad.

"Mob?" Hawk said.

"Maybe," I said, and told him what I knew.

"Something," Hawk said.

"It is."

We sat some more. It was overcast today, with now and then some weak sunshine. The sun had set by the time Corsetti called me.

"Tomorrow," Corsetti said, "eleven o'clock in the morning. I'll pick you up."

"Where we going?"

"Twenty-sixth Street," Corsetti said. "Between Seventh and Eighth."

"His place?" I said.

"Lawyer's."

"Courteous treatment," I said.

"This is better," Corsetti said. "I know these people, especially Arnie. You yank him in, he's like a fucking clam until he gets lawyered. It's not like I got anything on them."

"Good point," I said.

"Pick you up, ten thirty," Corsetti said.

Hawk looked at me.

"Enough?" he said.

"For today? Yeah. Let's go eat."

"Cocktails first," Hawk said

"We'd be fools not to," I said.

In the morning, I left Hawk with the rental car.

"If you have to choose," I said, "stay with April."

"You pay the ticket?" Hawk said. "I leave the car on a hydrant?"

"God forbid," I said, "a scofflaw."

Hawk went back across the park. I waited on Madison Avenue for Corsetti.

"Don't say it," Corsetti said to me as we went downtown, "but if everybody thinks you're a cop, too, it won't hurt anything."

We got downtown easy, despite some traffic. Corserri used his siren as necessary.

"I thought you weren't supposed to blow that thing," I said, "except as required by your professional duties."

Corsetti glanced at me as if I had just spoken in tongues. Then he grinned and whooped the siren again. At nothing.

"Oh," I said. "I see."

Corsetti jammed his car into a loading zone in front of a nondescript restaurant on 26th Street. I followed him into a nondescript entry next to the restaurant. We took the shabby elevator to the third floor and went into an office perfectly in keeping with its surroundings.

A fiftyish woman in a shapeless black dress said, "They're in the conference room."

She stood and led us to it and opened the door and stepped aside. There were four men in the room, two of whom I'd seen recently on Spring Street. Corsetti went in and stood in front of them.

"I'm Corsetti," he said. "This is Spenser."

He looked at a shabby guy in his sixties with bushy white hair.

"You're Galvin," he said.

"Marcus Galvin," the shabby guy said, "attorney at law."

Galvin was wearing a wrinkled gray suit and vest with a red-and-black plaid shirt and a narrow black knit tie.

"You'd be the babysitter," Corsetti said to a big, slick-looking guy in an expensive suit.

The big guy looked at Corsetti with no change in expression. Corsetti laughed and shook his head.

"How are you, Brooks?" he said to the younger of the two men I'd seen on Spring Street.

"What did you have in mind, Corsetti?" the youngcr man said.

He was a little overweight. Not huge, but soft-looking. Expensive clothes, manicure, thousand-dollar shoes. He was probably trying for a hard look at Corsetti, but all he could muster was petulant.

"Arnie," Corsetti said to the older man.

Arnie was thin and well-tanned. He had an intelligent face and a bald head, and his clothes fit him well. He was quiet where he sat, tenting his long fingers on the tabletop, tapping the fingertips gently together.

"Eugene," he said, with the stress on the first syllable.

"First of all," Corsetti said. "I got no beef with you people. I'm not looking to jam you up. I'm just looking for information on something else."

"And he thinks we're the Travelers Aid station," Brooks said and looked around the room with a big smile. The lawyer and Arnie kept their eyes on Corsetti. The bodyguard looked at nothing.

"We know you're doing business with some people named Lionel Farnsworth and April Kyle. We believe it's about the whore business. We ain't vice. We don't care about whores."

"What makes you think we know them people?" Brooks said.

Arnie glanced at him but didn't say anything.

"Your lawyer and I have already discussed this," Corsetti said. "Let's not waste time."

Brooks looked at the lawyer. The lawyer nodded.

"What do you care about?" the lawyer said.

"They're involved in another case, where somebody died," Corsetti said.

"So what?" Galvin said.

"We'd be grateful if you told us what you know about them. Might help us with the killing."

"We had nothing to do with killing nobody," Brooks said.

Nobody paid him any attention. Galvin and Fisher were looking at each other. The bodyguard remained blank.

"How grateful?" Galvin said.

"You know me, Arnie," Corsetti said. "What goes around comes around. You do me a favor, I owe you a favor."

"His word's good," Arnie said to Galvin.

The lawyer nodded. He looked at me.

"How about you?" he said.

"I'm with Corsetti," I said.

"He solid?" Galvin said to Corsetti.

"Yes."

Galvin looked at Arnie. Arnie nodded. Galvin nodded back.

Arnie said, "They're looking for money."

"Hey," Brooks said. "Why you telling these fuckers anything."

Galvin reached across the table and put a hand on Brook's forearm and patted softly.

"They want to set up a chain of brothels called Dreamgirl. National deal. They claim they already got one in Boston, and Philly and New Haven."

"They being Farnsworth and Kyle," Corsetti said.

"Yeah. "

"And they're looking for investors," Corsetti said.

Arnie nodded.

"How'd they get to you?"

"Mutual acquaintance," Arnie said. "Woman named Utley. Runs a big house in the city."

"She sent them to you," I said.

"Yeah. They said she was a partner in the deal. Reason we talked to them."

"And," Corsetti said, "you invest?"

"No."

"Why not."

"I checked with Utley," Arnie said. "She said she didn't know anything about Farnsworth being in the deal. She said she wasn't in it, either, as long as he was."

"You care who's in it?" I said.

"Nope, as long as they settle it. We're not putting money into no family feud."

"So you told them that," I said. "Down at Spring Street."

"Yeah," Arnie said. "We said for them to straighten out who was in and who wasn't. Get back to us."

"They okay with that?" Corsetti said.

"They weren't happy."

"Ask us if we care," Brooks said.

No one asked.

"What did you think of the business plan?" I said to Arnie.

He shrugged.

"Plan was good. Like boutique whorehouses all over the country. Upscale whores, you know. Part-time. Housewives, stewardesses, college girls, teachers, that sort of thing. Plaid skirts, cashmere sweaters. No fucking in the washroom, blow jobs in the backseat of your car. Unnerstand? Safe, pleasant environment. Johnny Mathis on the stereo. Like fucking your eighth-grade teacher, you know?"

"You talk with Utley?" I said.

"Not yet."

"What's in the deal for you?" Corsetti said.

"Fifty percent."

"Management?"

"We don't put a bunch of money in something, we don't get a say in how it goes."

"They cool with that?" I said.

"He was. I'm not so sure she was," Arnie said. "Don't know about Utley, if she's still in it."

"You think she might not be?" I said.

"No idea," Arnie said. "Long as we got our guy in place, we don't care who's in or out."

"Any other problems," Corsetti said.

Arnie shrugged.

"Stuff needed to be cleared up. Property acquisition in each city. Who had to be greased in each city. Sources of employees ... I mean, your average young housewife in suburban Dallas or someplace may not want to be a whore."

"Hard to imagine," I said.

Arnie shrugged. "You don't invest a lot of money in something," he said, "without knowing the answers to all your questions."

"Due diligence," Corsetti said.

"Exactly."

"How did you know where I live?" Patricia Utley said when she let me into her apartment.

"I'm a detective," I said. "What happened to your face?"

She shook her head without answering me, and we sat in her living room. Her face was swollen and bruised.

"Somebody hit you," I said.

She shook her head again.

"Would you like coffee?" she said. "A drink?"

"Coffee," I said.

She went to the kitchen. She didn't move as if she were hurt. She was steady on her feet. I looked around the livingroom. Tasteful, expensive, maybe too preplanned, maybe a little too much the look of a decorator. But nice. In a small while she came back and gave me my coffee in a big white mug with a painted red apple on it. Then she sat across from me on the sofa. She looked as pulled together as she always did, which was impressive since I had arrived in midafternoon, unannounced. Her makeup was covering her bruises as artfully as it could.

"You did not come here for coffee," she said. "What do you want?"

"What's going on among you and Lionel and April?" I said.

I felt good about "among." Spenser, gumshoe and linguist.

Patricia Utley looked at me for a while. She was too smart to think she could pretend there was nothing. She knew that I must know, or I wouldn't be asking the question.

"After I talked to you last," she said, "I called her and asked her about Lionel and the other houses. She denied everything. Said Lionel had been trying to horn in, but she had refused. Said he tried to force her and she had to hire you. She said you put a stop to it. But that you seemed somewhat too interested in the business yourself and she had to fire you."

"Always wanted to be a pimp," I said.

"I know. I was skeptical of her, and when she told me that, I knew it wasn't true and I wondered if anything she told me were true. I pressed her. She became very upset. She said she was grateful to me for giving her the chance to run the Boston house. She said that she had nothing further to do with Lionel, and the harder I pressed her on that, the more upset she became. Finally I said, 'Okay, we'll agree that Lionel is history, and that he is not now, nor will he be, involved with your business-and mine.' She agreed."