Mitchell Smith (43 page)

You don’t, by the way, have to tell Tubby my opinion on the subject. As priests go, he’s a nice guy. Of course, these days, priests don’t have any choice but to be nice guys. As His. Batten probably has already taught you in European history, there was a time they didn’t have to be so nice. And they weren’t.

Anyway, the Mothers Home could have been worse, and they got a good Catholic baby for a good Catholic family. Now, I suppose, Tony is trying to be a cop or a fireman or a ward heeler, and is watching out for blacks moving in.

And who’s to blame for leaving him high and dry?

Me. I did it because I didn’t want to be bothered with a kid, then. Not so nice, myself, was I? Am I?

I guess you want to know if I loved him. I did love him. He had an odd-shaped head; it came to sort of a point. At least it still did when I saw him, although the other girls told me it would squash back down and be 0. K.

Do I love him now? No way. I don’t give a damn about him one way or the other. He didn’t have the chance to hook into my heart the way you did. I’ve got you stuck in my heart.

All this time, Rudy Kraft was hanging around the Home, yelling up at the windows and so forth. The police came twice to take him away. I guess he saw little Tony keeping him company, so he wouldn’t be so alone without Edie. That was his wife’s name.

Now you’re thinking, “I don’t give a damn about this ancient history.

All I care about is where I came from.

I want to know about my daddy!”

Your father was Fred Pascoe. He was a short, bald man, and he was an insurance executive. I met him at the company I was working for after Tony was born and gone, and, of course, after I left the Kraft brothers’

printing business, and we dated and I didn’t particularly care for him.

After we dated some more, and really to my surprise, and I’m still surprised thinking about it, I fell in love with him. If you’re ever foolish enough to go to Chicago and meet him, you will think I was out of my mind. What I loved about Fred was that he did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. And if he did want to do something, and was scared to try it, he admitted that, too. I must have gone to a dozen motorcycle showrooms with Fred, and he would stand there in front of some mechanical beast, and really wring his hands because he knew he’d kill himself if he bought it.

“I don’t want to die,” he’d say, “but I’m dying to ride.” He was thirty-five when I met him, and was married and had a little girl. So that you won’t think your glamorous courtesan of a mother was also a nasty little shit, let me tell you that the first I heard about it was when his wife called me on the phone.

I suppose, because it is very hard for a woman to live a free and honest life, that I loved him because I envied him. He had told his wife all about us, by the way, because she asked him what he was up to, and all hell broke loose, and kept breaking loose. She was a very ladylike person and kept calling me up and telling mie she was going to get some gangsters to kill me. She’d say that, then I’d say please get them to kill Fred instead, so I’d be rid of him, too. It’s tiring to be with a man like that.

Women like to talk about excitement, or read about it, a lot more than they like to live it. She’d talk and I’d talk, and we’d wind up talking two hours on the phone about Fred. And finally and at long last I got sick of it, got pregnant again three years after I gave up pointyheaded Tony, and I got out of Chicago and had you in Binghamton. And if there was a God, I’d thank it for your company ever since, my darling, because it would be hard to live alone without lots of lying.

All right, that’s about it for the biography, except that I became a prostitute for two ‘good reasons. The first was five years spent nine-to-five sitting on my butt, word-processing in offices and watching my life drain away. The second was, the money was great. I didn’t know then what a wonderfully strange world it was going to be, where people share the secret of no secrets.

You asked me once, by the way, if there were a lot of criminals around my work. I think you were worried about it. Well, I’ve met a few hoods, of course, sweetheart, but nothing for you to worry about. They talk more business than businessmen do, but with a lot of nicknames, so unless you know what’s going on, you never know what’s going on, and I suspect that most of the time nothing is going on. They love for people to know they’re connected up, though, and if they take you out to dinner, sometimes they’ll talk about Joey or Frankie Jumps so the maltre d’ can hear them. They’re like spoiled children, greedy, like advertising people.

But I’ve never met one that was bored or boring.

They’re always up to something, always very energetic.

I think square living is just too slow, too dull for them, and that restlessness becomes dangerous.

Well, I had you, and I moved to the city, and I posed for some stills showing my everything, and I worked in two different massage parlors, which showed me some of the other side, and I found that I liked it.”

liked masturbating a man more than obeying a man’s orders in an office, and he liked it better, too. We were two human beings, then, you see, sweetheart? We were two wonderful animals exchanging close favors of money and pleasure, and I enjoyed it. Love, Your Weird Mother P.S. I couldn’t find a copy of Green Horses. Find out who published it, and we’ll write to the company and see if we can find a copy that way.

And please, please don’t hand this aging prostitute any more bullshit about not being able to do intermediate algebra. What you mean is, it’s hard for you, O.K., it’s very hard for you. All the more reason to bear down and do it, so that difficult things won’t frighten you later on.

It’s just another language, you know, and a lot simpler than French.

Just take it slow, step by step, and if you find that it starts slipping out of your head, then talk to Mr. Manning, tell him you’re losing it, and ask for help. When I come up. week after next, you poor, sad, abused child, I’m go:!,:, to go over quadratics with you, and if you can’t clo mem, you get zip for dessert at the Ferry Tavern. You can watch Joanna make a pig of herself while you sit there with tears in your ears.

Ellie folded the letter, slid it back into its envelope, and lay back on her pillows to think about it. Mayo, full of Cat Snax, was stretched beside her, asleep.

Ellie had doctored up a can of Gebhardt’s chili and eaten that. It wasn’t settling in very well. She yawned, took the other letter out of its envelope, and leafed through it. Like the first. Several first names. No last names, except for Sally’s lovers of years ago. No thorough physical descriptions. No mention of present trouble . . .

motives. . . . She reached up and turned off the bedside lamp, and lay still in the faint light shining from bedroom door. Fred Pascoe . .

and what was the small ng . . . loving him while he machines. Short, bald Fred I would be heavy if call Fred Pascoe-if Fred Pascoe was alive now, fifteen years after his little blond office girl had left him and left Chicago forever.

Supposing Pascoe was rich. Supposing his wife was dead, or was a nice woman . . . “a lady” Sally had called her, perhaps nice enough to take some slight care of Sonia, so she wouldn’t be so alone.

Sally had been a brave whore, Ellie thought, and she was trying in her letter to make Sonia strong, too. Trying too hard, maybe. Now, Sonia was as strong as she’d ever be.

“I’ll take care of her, if I can,” Ellie said to the shaded room, the sleeping cat. Then, she felt cheerful enough to get up and go to the kitchen for some ice cream, and poked Mayo with her finger in his soft white belly until he woke. “Come on, you lazy little fart,” she said,

“-and I’ll give you some.”

Ellie was standing naked, leaning against the refrigerator, eating HAagen-Dazs chocolate from the carton with a grapefruit spoon-the spoon’s serrations helping scoop the frozen ice cream out-when the phone rang. She stepped over Mayo, who was grunting small rapid grunts of pleasure as he lapped and bit gingerly at his chill portion softening slowly in a small saucer.

y The machine had answered, “This is Eleanor Klein’s answering machine when she got to the phone in the hall,-and Ellie listened for the caller’s voice before she picked up.

“Hello, Eleanor Klein’s answering machine,” Clara said, —tell your mistress that her mistress called from this toddlin’ town to say the conferencing continues, nothing is decided-and that said mistress will be back in a few days, and loves her.”

Ellie listened, but didn’t pick up. Then she went back to the kitchen to have some more ice cream.

it took her a long while to get to sleep, afterward, and she only managed it by going into the bathroom for a towel, spreading that on the sheet under her hips, tugging her Tampax out, then gently toying with the vibrator. Relaxed, her knees wide as if she were giving birth-Mayo observing, bored-Ellie thought of Clara, replaced her with the tall Stakeout man standing in his gray suit, watching her now … and hummed, groaned, cramped her feet, and came.

She slept, and dreamed she was shopping for a new car in a showroom that had every kind of vehicle in it. “-I want a plane,” she said, but the salesman, a pleasant man, said she must be kidding. Then she dreamed something else, but forgot it.

Ellie woke because she was sleeping on her side, her left breast pressed against her upper arm, and it was hurting her. She woke, or almost, and rolled onto her back. Just that movement made her breasts hurt a little; they were very tender. -Big ones must hurt worse, she thought, and went to sleep again.

Toward morning, when the traffic sounds across the river rose from whispers to conversation, Ellie dreamed she was taking a shower, and soaping herself with English lavender soap in the steam and hiss of falling water.

She heard a soft, clicking sound behind her, turned under the spray, and saw Sally Gaither wired to her folding chair, staring up at her with cooked eyes, her lips drawn back like a snarling dog’s, her small bared teeth clicking softly together as she stared up at Ellie. Oh, don’t be angry, Ellie said, and Sally put her spoiling head to one side, like a wet dog’s, and still watched Ellie. Then her tongue came lolling out.

“You’re runnin’ a half hour late, today,” Serrano said.

“Listen-would you like to have some lunch around here?

You know, go out for just a bite?”

The black girl said, “How many coffees?”

“You got to have a little time, middle of the day. We could go over to Jerry’s, maybe have a sandwich and one beer. That wouldn’t hurt.”

“You want five coffees?” the black girl said. She still wore her long hair sculpted and stiffly set down to her shoulders. When he was a boy, Serrano had had to do EL

with a black prostitute, once, who’d warned him harshly not to touch her hair.

“Five coffees. Right. ListenI’m not tryin’ to make a cheap pass or something’. I just want to be friendly. You look like a nice girl, and I’m not a bad guy.”

“What you want?” the girl said, and seemed annoyed.

“Five coffees, one tea, and I’m getting’ two prune Danish, one cherry, one cheese, and a buttered bagel.”

“Listen, man, I said what you want!”-really annoyed.

“Oh-I don’t want anything. I just thought we could go over to Jerry’s

… have a sandwich, a beer. You know. No funny stuff.”

The girl snorted and shook her head, a black and slender mare. She finished filling the coffee containers, filled the tea container with hot water, and said, “You want cream, there it is,” indicating the tiny cream cups heaped beside the box of wooden stirrers. Then she looked straight ahead into the coffee urn’s sliding reflections, and said no more.

“Look,” Serrano said, “you can’t not like me—you don’t even know me!

I’m not a bad guy”—dug around among the pastry, and finally found a cherry Danish.

The girl waited until he had his cardboard tray filled, had paid his money, then shoved the heavy cart into motion, starting past him down the corridor toward Personnel.

“Is it because I’m a cop?” Serrano said, as she went by.

“You had a call,” Medina said, when Ellie came back from the rest room.

It had been threatening to rain when she’d left the island, and she’d worn a hat with her raincoat and mussed her hair. She’d been wanting to take the time to fix it all morning.

“Who?”

” Guy named Birnbaum, said it was O.K. for anytime this afternoon. New York Hospital. -And listen, do me a favor; tell the guy you’re not extension one-four-seven, O.K.?”

“Thanks … O.K.,” Ellie said, and went back to her chair at Nardone’s desk. Their new case board was up on the wall, and almost covered with stapled Action Report copies, fingerprint reports, scene-of-crime diagrams, Major Crimes S.R.“s, witness lists, P.S. lists, a calendar page, a seventy-two-hour time sheet, and photographs of the victim-private snapshots previous to the homicide, police photographs after. Ellie had stapled a light blue file cover over the police photographs after a detective sergeant named Sutton had made a remark about steamed pussy, in passing.

“Shea?” Nardone said, leafing through a thick sheaf of canceled checks, making occasional notes as he went.

He’d come in this morning in his brown winter suit. -The summer was over.

“No. -Not that it’s any of your business, Tommy.

Birnbaum. It’s O.K. to see her.”

“That Irishman’s never going’ to show. -It was strictly funeral talk.”

“Where were we?”

“Here you go . . .” Serrano said, pausing in the aisle with his tray.

“You get one coffee, one tea, one buttered bagel. You owe me a buck-eighty.”

“I’ll get this one,” Ellie said, got up, went to her desk for her purse, and counted out the amount in change for Serrano.

To bills?”

“I have a ten.

“No, forget it, this’ll be O.K.”

She sat down at Nardone’s desk again. “All right, where were we?”

“You been through the property inventory?” He took a closer look at one of the checks, then kept leafing through.