Sinner's Ball (6 page)

“I'm here to see Martine Toussaint.”

“Got an appointment?”

“Didn't know I needed one.”

“Who referred you?”

“No one. Just need to ask her a few questions.”

“About what?”

This was getting tiresome.

I gave him my card. “Tell her I'd like a few minutes of her time.”

He glanced at the card. “She know you?”

“Just do it,” I said.

He considered that for a few seconds. “Wait here,” he finally said.

The door closed.

A few minutes later he was back.

“She'll see you.”

“Terrific.”

The reception area was small but comfortably furnished. The recessed lighting in the ceiling bathed the room in a muted glow. Shorter Guy sat on the arm of a sofa and eyed me as we passed through.

I followed Tall Guy down a short corridor to Martine Toussaint's office. The best word to describe it was
sleek
.

Hardwood floor buffed to a high shine, chrome-and-leather furniture, modern art on the walls. Martine, a dreadlocked beauty with skin the color of cocoa, sat behind a glass-topped desk dealing out a hand of tarot cards.

My first impression was that there was a hell of a disconnect between Martine Toussaint's digs and her charitable work.

She laid the cards down and stood up.

“Steeg,” she said, with a smile. “Come in.”

“You want me to sit in?” Tall Guy said.

“Not necessary, Frank. Mr. Steeg is an acquaintance. Although it's obvious he doesn't remember me.”

She was right. I didn't.

“OK,” Frank said. “I'll be out front if you need me.”

“Help me out here, Martine,” I said. “How do we know each other?”

“You're a cop in Hell's Kitchen. I was a whore in the same place. We know the same people.”

“And they would be?”

“Dawn Reposo, for one.”

I nodded. “She worked the neighborhood.”

“And all the girls envied her.”

“Why's that?”

“You were her personal Get Out of Jail Free card. Wish I had an angel on my shoulder like you.” She paused. “Seen her lately?”

“No. Think of her every now and again, though.”

“Why the visit?”

“I'll get to that. How'd you manage to wind up here?”

She gathered the cards up, shuffled them, and, one by one, laid them out on the desktop.

“Long story, Steeg. Let's just say I got righteous. And used the brains God gave me.”

“Now you're helping other girls get just as righteous.”

Her gaze drifted to the tarot cards, lingered for a few moments, and then shifted back to me.

“Doing God's work,” she said.

I looked around the office.

“He's certainly showered his bounty on you.”

“One thing I learned on the streets. He helps those who help themselves.”

“Looks to me like you helped yourself just fine.”

“Another Chance is a nonprofit organization. I couldn't have launched it without financial support from several important people who think the sex trade is an abomination.”

“Like those two worthies outside?”

“You mean Frank Ennis and John Riley?”

“The only guys out in your waiting room.”

“They work for me.”

“Doing what?”

“This is dangerous work, Steeg. Whenever a girl accepts our help, her life—my life—is in danger from pimps who just lost a source of income.”

“How many girls do you work with?”

“Anywhere from twenty to thirty at a time. We provide them with safe housing, peer counseling, drug rehab, vocational training, and money to get them started.”

“And Ennis and Riley.”

She gathered the cards together and set them aside.

“So, the reason for the visit?” she said.

“I'm working a case. Privately. Looking for a prostitute who feels abused enough to commit murder.”

“And you came here?”

“Just to develop a few leads. Hoping you might help.”

She looked down at the deck of cards and then back at me.

“My job is to protect these girls. And we do that by
promising them confidentiality. Besides, you're not going to get anywhere with them. Hookers lie.”

“So you're saying …?”

She picked up the deck, fanned it out on the desktop, and examined it closely.

“It's not in the cards.”

T
he Majestic Hotel was a relic of a time when the Bowery was the last stop on the train ride to perdition. Four stories of misery for folks who dove into the bottle and never came out.

I could have been one of them. For years I had been riding Johnny Black's one-trick pony, until it occurred to me it was better to change mounts.

A small group of the curious and just plain bored clustered behind yellow police tape watching the action. I gave a uniform my name and told him Luce Guidry was expecting me. He disappeared into the hotel. A few minutes later he reappeared and waved me in.

Luce, along with a bunch of cops and techs trying to look useful, was in what passed for the lobby—a small, dingy space sporting a counter with a Plexiglas partition,
ceiling-high gates, and no chairs for the weary. It had the pungent smell of puke and body odor.

“What've you got?” I said.

Luce wrinkled her nose and looked around.

“How do they live like this?” she said.

“Not too many options.”

“Cubicles so small they would cramp an elf. Mangy cots filled with mangier people. And vermin for bedmates.”

She gave a despairing shake of her head.

“Sometimes, Jackson, the human condition just gets me down. Anyway, I got something you might be interested in.”

“And that would be?”

“Another stiff,” she said. “Want a peek?”

I followed her through an opening in the gate and into a rear office. The lower drawer of the room's lone filing cabinet—about five feet wide and three drawers high—was pulled out. Its original contents had been scattered on the floor and replaced by a body. He looked to be middle-aged. Except for a tonsure of black hair going to gray, he was bald. Large freckles dotted his scalp.

On the linoleum just under the drawer lay an amoeba-shaped pool of blood.

“Hell of a filing system,” I said. “Meticulous to a fault.”

“Even managed to file him under the M's.”

“And why would this gentleman be of interest to me?”

“Could be one of yours.”

“You're being very elliptical here.”

“Another stabbing victim. Especially, down low. Seeing a heap of that lately.”

“And you're going to have the ME do a tox screen to see if there are roofies in his blood.”

“As soon as they get here and cart him off. Seems this is a busy day at the morgue. Shooting up in Harlem. A couple of domestics where things really got out of hand. And an old guy lost control of his car and took out a flea market in SoHo. Bodies were flying like Frisbees.”

“The day goes faster when you're busy. Have you had a chance to look at the tapes from the hotel's security cameras?”

“You're kidding, right? When you get seven, eight bucks a night, and for guests you got zombies with first-run showings of DTs playing in their heads, are you gonna put your money into videotape?”

Fair point.

“Any witnesses?”

“Yeah. Three monkeys. Hear no evil, speak no evil, and the ever popular see no evil.”

“How about the guy who runs the counter? The manager. Did he notice anyone come in with the vic?”

“He is the vic.”

“Fancy that.”

“Name's Cady. Walter Cady.”

“The clues just keep on coming.”

“And we have something else,” Luce said. “His computer. Which has already been bagged and tagged, and is
on the way to Forensics. Never know what those curious little data miners may dig up.”

“And, of course, you'll keep me posted.”

“It's what I live for, Jackson. By the way, how's Dee Dee?”

“Got a boyfriend. Justin Hapner.”

“The beginning of a lifetime of complications.”

A cop appeared at the door. He was maybe eighteen, and had the acne to prove it.

“Detective Guidry?” he said. “Hate to bother you. The body baggers are here.”

“Much as I'd like to spend the rest of the day chitchatting with you, Jackson, unlike you I've got work to do. Oh, I almost forgot. We found another one that could be yours.”

“You're kidding.”

“Found him in a room in that grubby little hotel on the West Side that's kinda shaped like a rhombus. Stabbed. In that special place.”

“Did you get his name off the hotel registry?”

“Yeah. Millard Fillmore.”

“Any witnesses?”

“In a hot bed joint? Please! But we'll run his prints and see what turns up.”

The murders were tumbling into each other. Not much space between them. It was as if the killer was working herself into a frenzy. And having a hard time keeping it together.

Luce and I parted company in the street. The crowd
outside the flophouse had thinned to just a few people waiting for the final act before they got on with their day. One of them, an old, disheveled guy with a faded tattoo creeping up his neck, disengaged himself from the small knot of people and walked up to me.

“Got a buck for an old-timer who's seen it all?” he said.

The bridge of his nose was flattened. And his eyes were hooded under two thick plates of old scar tissue that sat on what used to be his eyebrows.

I reached into my pocket and handed him a five.

“What's your name, my friend?” I said.

“They call me Sailor.”

“So, what have you seen, Sailor?” I said.

“Things that get into your head and don't let go.”

“I'm familiar with the experience.”

He grinned. “Most folks are, but don't admit it.”

I jerked my chin at the Majestic.

“You live there?” I said.

He rubbed the five-dollar bill between his thumb and forefinger. “Reckon I will tonight. Once the commotion dies down.”

“Where did you fight?”

With the pads of his fingers he gently stroked the scar tissue jutting out above his right eye.

“Wherever there was a payday,” he said. “Don't recollect much about it. Think I was good, though.” He looked at my face, and then took my hand and studied my oversized, battered knuckles. “Looks like you worked the canvas some.”

“Amateurs.”

“Counts,” he said, releasing my hand. “Hurts as much whether they pay you or not.”

I was developing an affection for Sailor.

I pulled out a card and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

“Hold on to that. If you get jammed up, I'm someone to call.”

He nodded.

“You knew Walter Cady?” I said.

“Never knew Walter had a last name. Much less one that was so highfalutin'.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“Kept to himself mostly. Invisible. Like everyone else who lives on the skids.”

“Any family?”

“If he had, he never talked about them.”

“Friends? Anyone close?”

“Ain't no one's your friend down here. Take the coins off a dead man's eyes and buy a shot.”

“Cady like to hit the bottle every now and again? Maybe do a little blow?”

Sailor rubbed his chin and thought on it a bit.

“Don't rightly know. He wasn't the kind of guy who gave much away.”

“Big with the ladies?”

He smiled as if replaying a memory.

“Not fittin' to speak ill of the dead,” he said.

He jammed his fists in his pockets and turned to walk away.

“Where're you off to now, Sailor?”

“Don't rightly know. But I know where I'm hopin' to wind up.”

“Where's that?”

“Big Rock Candy Mountain,” he said. “Sure to find old Walt waitin' for me.”

I
hopped a B train and rode it to Times Square. From there I walked over to Feeney's.

On my way, I passed Benny Kim's store. He wasn't at his usual spot stripping rose petals. Strange. I went into the store and found Mrs. Kim behind the cash register. Her face was lined with worry.

“Everything all right, Mrs. Kim?”

“No.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Go away!”

“Where's Benny?”

“In back. In office. Leave him alone. He don't want to see anyone.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. Just go.”

I went into the back. The smell of rotting vegetables hung in the air like a miasma.

Benny sat at his desk poring over receipts. His right eye was blackened, and a lump the size of a peach poked out of his forehead.

“Talk to me, Benny,” I said.

“Go away.”

“Who did this to you?”

“Karma.”

“Karma?”

“Sins in other lives jump up and bite me in the ass.”

“We've all got a lot to atone for, my friend. But it wasn't karma who did the actual punching.”

“You don't want to know.”

“Actually, I do.”

After some gentle prodding he told me.

F
eeney's didn't do much of a late afternoon business. The serious drinking started early in the morning and tapered off until the sun went down. Then it picked up again after dinner, with a vengeance.

When I arrived, the Closed sign was on the door. But I could make out the action through the window.

A heavyset guy with black sideburns and blood streaming down his face was on all fours. Nick, gripping a folding chair above his head, loomed over him. He brought the chair down on the poor bastard's back with enough force to flatten a bull elephant.

I slammed the flat of my hand against the plate glass of the door.