Shot Girl (7 page)

"We can meet at the garden. How delightful." Who the hell talks like that? "How about in an hour? There are several young people I’d love for you to meet."

Yeah, and I’d probably be the fucking highlight of their day, too. I agreed and hung up, realizing it was lunchtime and I’d have to get something to eat before I met with Shaw. I picked up my bag but had one more thing to do before I left. I’d need a photographer. This could be dicey, since Ben Riordan, the photo editor, liked everything scheduled by three p.m. the day before. Unless it was breaking news, getting a photographer to actually shoot something without a formal typewritten photo assignment was like getting management to give us a ten percent pay increase.

Fortunately, the photo editor was nowhere to be seen. But photographer/miracle worker Wesley Bell was Photoshopping an illustration for the Sunday health and science page. It was obviously a story about the dangers of poison ivy, because the young woman in the illustration was shown from the back, naked except for a trail of poison ivy from her shoulder to her ass. It was pretty provocative, but at the same time pretty cool. I wondered how the public would take it while drinking their Sunday morning coffee.

"Neat picture," I said, looking over Wesley’s shoulder. "Who’s the girl?" The photographers liked to use the rest of us as their guinea pigs for these illustrations. We had a lot of fun trying to figure out whose eyes were in the picture for the glaucoma story or whose biceps were accompanying the piece about how to stay fit after the holidays.

"Intern," Wesley said, adding a few more leaves to make sure the girl’s ass crack was covered up.

The
Herald
hired college journalism students for the summer as unpaid interns. They would get class credit, but no cash for their efforts. They were like child labor, writing actual stories because our staff was so depleted because of vacations. This girl was hard to recognize, since her face wasn’t showing. Her mass of dark hair was pulled up in a makeshift bun. But the one thing that wasn’t left to the imagination was the slender body that the swag of poison ivy couldn’t disguise.

"Who is she?" I asked. "Haven’t seen her around here yet."

Wesley clicked the mouse and said, "She just started this week, but she’s only working half-time because she’s got some paying job at night. Goes to Southern. Name’s Felicia."

Chapter 8

"Felicia" isn’t one of those popular names. And a night job? Shot girls work at night.

Because I’m socially inept, Tom had to explain that a shot girl works at a bar, buying shots in test tubes at cost and then selling them independently for the same price but getting huge tips because the girls are usually attractive. They also allow the men in the bar to buy them shots, which means they get shitfaced and, ultimately, pretty friendly with their clientele. Tom also said shot girls are usually college students who can make upwards of three hundred dollars in profit every night.

Nice money if you can stand the work.

I wondered if the
Herald
’s Felicia was Ralph’s Felicia. Damn Tom and Jack Hammer for making me curious about the girl. Tom seemed to have a real reason to try to find her, but why would Jack even bring her up? What did he know? I should’ve pressed him for his phone number.

But right now I couldn’t worry about that. I had to get someone out to shoot the garden. I explained the situation to Wesley, who knit his brow in a frown.

"Not supposed to do that without an assignment," he said.

"Where’s Ben?"

"Lunch."

I had a shot. "Come on, Wesley. I just found out about this assignment, and you’d do a great job with it." I wasn’t bullshitting, either. I knew if anyone could make this interesting, he could.

Wesley sighed. "I’ve got a little time before my next assignment. I could run over there. But if anyone’s running late, I won’t be able to stay."

I had a feeling Shaw would make sure everyone was there when he said they would be. I nodded and thanked him, stopping by Marty’s desk on the way out.

"Going to meet with Shaw in an hour. Wesley’s going to shoot something."

Marty smiled. "That’s great, Annie," he said, like he was praising a goddamn puppy. "I’ll make sure to fill out an assignment sheet to cover our asses with Ben." I knew he was doing that to try to make me feel better that I was being forced into it. I wasn’t going to argue with him.

I started to leave, but then stopped. "Wesley says we’ve hired some intern named Felicia."

Jane Ferraro, one of the paper’s three suburban editors, swiveled in her chair so fast I thought she was going to get whiplash. "Have you seen her?" she demanded, but not in a bad way. I liked Jane; she’d been hired about six months before and had the type of Mary Pop-pins /no-nonsense attitude that was necessary when dealing with bureau reporters just out of college who thought they were the next Anderson Cooper and why-the-hell-did-they-have-to-work-in-this-shithole-for-nothing- wasting-their-talents. Most of them had a long way to go, and Jane was doing the best she could to bring them along and turn them into real journalists.

"I saw a picture of her naked with poison ivy on her ass," I offered. "But that’s about it."

Jane shook her head. "We need to pay these interns," she lamented. "Sometimes they show up, sometimes they don’t. Felicia was supposed to be at a chamber of commerce meeting this morning in Ansonia but didn’t show. Can’t get her on her cell, and that’s the only number I’ve got for her. I tried to find her parents in the book, but no dice."

"What’s her last name?" I asked, immediately regretting it when I saw Jane’s expression change.

"Why?"

I shrugged. "Just curious."

"Kowalski."

"From the Valley?"

Jane nodded. Figured. The Naugatuck Valley was full of people of Polish descent. At least this name was easy to pronounce and spell. Some of them, we just had to wing it. "I’m surprised her first name isn’t Sonia."

Jane chuckled. "She told me her mother named her after some character on a soap opera."

I knew immediately what she was talking about. I’d been a
General Hospital
addict for a while back in the late 1980s, and Frisco and Felicia were the new Luke and Laura when that plot got too old. But I wasn’t going to admit that to Jane—or Marty, who was listening to the conversation.

"Why the interest, Annie?" Marty asked.

I shrugged. "Someone at the Rouge Lounge mentioned a Felicia. Tom said she was a shot girl."

Jane and Marty exchanged a look I couldn’t read.

"She wasn’t involved, was she?" Jane asked.

"So our Felicia is a shot girl at night?"

Jane nodded. "Did you see her there?"

I shook my head. "No. Someone told me she knew Ralph, the manager who died."

"I thought he was murdered," Jane said.

I looked at Marty. I didn’t want to get into it. "Listen, I have to get going. I need to meet Shaw in less than an hour."

"If you hear anything else about her," Jane said, "let me know. The mayor was pretty pissed no one showed this morning. If she wants to be a reporter, she’s got to learn she can’t blow shit off just because she might have had a late night."

 
I thought about what Jane said as I pulled into a parking space on Crown Street. I needed to get a sandwich, and Katz’s on Temple served up a bowl of pickles and slaw to nosh on before lunch arrived. I ordered an iced tea and the crispy potato pancake covered in pastrami, grilled onions, tomato, and melted cheese, wondering where Felicia had actually been last night. And where she might be right now.

Halfway through the sandwich, my cell phone rang. Pulling it out of my bag, I glanced at the number.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey, yourself." Vinny’s voice was playful. "How are you?"

I told him about my "demotion" and that I was heading to meet up with Shaw. "This sucks," I said, finishing the last of my pastrami.

"You’re expanding your horizons," he suggested.

"Fuck you."

"Come on, Annie, it’s not forever."

"Yeah, I guess." I downed the last of my iced tea. "You know, there’s this girl Ralph was seeing. Tom was really interested in trying to find her, and one of those strippers last night, Jack Hammer—I think I told you about him—he said I might want to find her. I may have a lead on her. She’s one of our interns from Southern. And it seems she didn’t show up this morning for an assignment."

Vinny was so quiet I thought I lost him. "Hello?" I asked.

"I’m here. You’re sure no one’s heard from Felicia?" "No," I said automatically before it struck me. I hadn’t said her name. Just as I was about to ask how he knew it, he said, "I’ll see you around seven," and the call really did end.

Chapter 9

I tried to call Vinny back, but his voice mail picked up. I put the phone down on the table. How the hell would Vinny be involved with this? How did he know her name? The questions swirled around in my head, landing somewhere unexpected. Why had Vinny been in my apartment yesterday morning when I wasn’t there? Walter said he saw him. Even though Vinny and I had exchanged keys, we were pretty respectful of each other’s privacy.

I pushed my thoughts aside—there was nothing I could do about it now—and concentrated on where I was heading: West Rock. To get there, I’d have to go through the campus of Southern Connecticut State University, where Felicia Kowalski was matriculated. If I had time after my interview with Shaw, maybe I’d stop over at the journalism department, see if I could find Ned Winters or someone else who could shed some light on this girl. It wasn’t like I wasn’t familiar with the territory. I’d gotten my journalism degree there—two years after Ralph got his.

My mother hadn’t been too happy I went to a state school. She’d had bigger plans for me: Yale, Harvard, Princeton—even New York University would’ve been more acceptable. But I wasn’t smart enough, not in that way you needed to be to get into schools like that. My high school grades were passable, but even then I wanted to be a journalist and spent a lot of my time putting together the school newspaper rather than studying science or math.

I’m sure Vinny would’ve been happy to tutor me—he admitted he’d had a crush on me back then—but I just wasn’t interested in anything else.

I snorted. Wouldn’t you know I’d end up with some shit beat because of Ralph. He’d always outshone me. I stayed in the background, letting him be first, allowing myself to wait for my own chance, once he had his. What an idiot I’d been.

I took a deep breath, not wanting to remember. Not wanting to bring it all back. But the emotions that hadn’t come while I saw his body on the sidewalk came rushing at me now, and I knew the wounds hadn’t healed like I’d thought; maybe that was why I’d been so commitment phobic with Tom and I couldn’t use the right words to tell Vinny how I felt about him.

I should get a goddamn Ph.D. for figuring that out.

Ralph had fucked me up big-time. I was glad I’d at least had the last word.

 
The Reverend Shaw looked like his voice. His skin was a deep chestnut, laugh lines danced around his eyes, and his smooth, shaved head was unnaturally dry in the hot afternoon sun. His fashionable glasses were rectangular with red plastic frames. He wore a dirty white T-shirt, loose jeans, and Birkenstocks. I’d seen photographs of him and had placed him in his fifties, but up close, he was definitely younger. Maybe in his forties, not too much older than me. Either way, his smile was warm, convincingly trustworthy, just like his voice on the phone.

I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.

Shaw pulled off thick gardening gloves to shake my hand.

"I’ve read your articles, Ms. Seymour. You’re doing a fine job," he praised, his white teeth gleaming. He’d had money at some point for braces. No one had teeth that straight naturally.

"Thank you, but please call me Annie," I said, trying to keep my voice light, like I didn’t think he was going to pickpocket me at any second. It didn’t matter that he looked like a regular guy—that was the problem. He wasn’t a regular guy, but he wanted me to think he was.

"Your photographer is already here," he said, putting the gloves back on and waving his hand to indicate he wanted me to follow him.

I’d parked in the lot next to the Visitor Center, and Shaw had been waiting for me. We walked past the Nature House, which houses a reptile display and tanks that I didn’t want to get too close to—I’m not afraid of too many things, but I really hate snakes—and we went around the Ranger Cottage. As soon as we turned the corner, I could see the raised garden beds, and a group of six kids were up to their elbows in dirt. Wesley Bell—never without his bow tie but because of the heat he’d conceded to a short-sleeved button-down shirt with khakis—circled them, his camera hiding most of his face. He wasn’t kidding—he was going to get as many shots as he could and get the hell out of there to go to his next assignment.

"These young people are from the projects," Shaw said softly. We were just out of earshot. "They’re all from broken homes; they’re barely making it through school; drugs and guns and sex are part of their lives. I hope through this project that I can show them there’s hope."

Now, this is where my compassion should’ve kicked in. But with my experience covering the police beat, all I could see when I looked at them was a bunch of deadbeat kids who’d end up like their parents or in my police blotter, either dead or charged with some serious crimes. Even with Shaw’s charisma and example, the odds were stacked against them, and most probably couldn’t pull themselves out of the hole they were born in. But I was stuck with this, so I might as well try to get what I could.

I made some sort of
mmm
sound to indicate that I understood, sort of like the smile-and-nod you give people when you’re not really paying attention to what they’re saying.