The Illegal (19 page)

The car dropped Rocco in a lot outside the Pit, the dining and entertainment hall next to the Bombay Booty, both of which were owned by Lula DiStefano. Lula was said to take a piece of every dollar that changed hands in AfricTown. Rocco arranged to meet the driver at the same place for a lift home.

Rocco got one of the best seats in the house, with a clear view of the stage and, beside it, a sunken wrestling ring. He ordered a salad with grilled chicken. He allowed himself one small potato. No butter or sour cream. He had sparkling mineral water instead of wine. Lula’s selection of single-malt whisky was probably terrific, but when you had the likes of Geoffrey Moore plotting your downfall, you had to stay alert. The night’s performance featured a Jackson Five look-alike group. They were good. With their afros and colourful clothes, they danced as if their lives depended on it. The lead singer—a kid who looked about eight—belted out “I Want You Back.” He wore a purple porkpie hat and vest and looked just like Michael Jackson the night he performed on
The Ed Sullivan Show
. The Jackson Five had appeared on the show the year after Rocco was born, but he had seen clips of it. Rocco wondered if the impersonators were from AfricTown. He had heard that Lula DiStefano encouraged local talent.

Next came a jazz quartet. Also very sharp. After that, a burlesque show. And then, the infamous wrestling match. Two muscular black men, naked except for tight-fitting, leopard-spotted shorts, approached each other on the edge of a giant snakepit. In the pit were rattlesnakes. If you didn’t believe it, you could walk over to the edge before the show began to see them writhing and hear them rattling. You could place bets on one or the other wrestler, who fought in the ring around the pit, trying to throw each other in. That was the object of the match. Men stood at the pit’s edge, ready to throw a ring buoy to the losing wrestler. And ready to haul him out in a nanosecond and yank off any snakes that had curled around his legs or torso. Man, what a show. The crowd turned electric when the wrestling began.

The wrestlers crouched like sumos, reaching for each other, slapping away intruding hands. Then their heads slid into place on each other’s bodies like cars parking. Their arms locked, their knees bent, and then they were pushing, grunting. Suddenly, one man grabbed the other man’s head, tripped him at the ankles and flung him into the snakepit. The winner raised his arms as the loser was fished from
the pit, and dozens of clients applauded wildly. Rocco could feel his meal turning in his stomach.

He had an ugly feeling about this evening. The PM was not paying for a night out to reward the immigration minister for a job well done. He wished that he could finish with his obligatory visit to the Bombay Booty. But he had hours to wait for his appointment. Rocco spent it watching more wrestling, standing between matches to peer down into the snakepit, and brooding about his job as “Minister of Nothing” until it was finally time to go.

Rocco walked out of the Pit and down a long hallway. When he arrived in the Bombay Booty, he paid a visit to the men’s room. Marble floors and granite countertops. Gleaming taps and faucets. On the counters, platters held soaps, razors, shaving cream, deodorant, even sealed toothbrushes, toothpaste, mouthwash bottles and condoms. Patrolling inside was a black man in tight-fitting jeans and a T-shirt. He wore white sneakers with white socks and had clean hand towels draped across his arm. He opened the toilet door for Rocco, turned on his water tap, even pumped soap into his cupped hands. Jazz played from speakers in the bathroom, and there were photos of naked men and women—all black, all gorgeous—on the walls. There was a name under each.
Harry
.
Josiah
.
William
.
Miriam. Delilah. Marvena. Doris. Darlene. Yvette.
Rocco took a second look at Yvette. The girl who had disappeared and ended up dead in Zantoroland. She looked young. Shy smile. Deep cleavage.

The attendant offered a towel, and Rocco took it and dried his hands.

Nodding at the photo of Yvette, the man said, “You can have anything from the menu except that dish.”

“Why not that one?” Rocco answered.

“Sold out,” the man said.

Rocco headed out of the bathroom. He had heard that you could swing either way in this joint. If you were coming to “fuck,” you wanted a woman. If you were coming to “buck,” you desired a man. Well-heeled white women from Clarkson also showed
up to fuck or buck in AfricTown. Yes, sir, Lula DiStefano was an equal-opportunity huckster.

Rocco approached a desk and provided a sheet of paper with the identification number he’d been given. A young black woman with a low-cut dress gave him a big smile, said her name was Emma and asked if he could just give her the briefest moment to check something. Sure, he said.

When she returned, she said that his date was in the building and would be able to see him soon.

After a short wait, he followed Emma up two flights of stairs. “I hope you are okay with stairs,” she said. He told her he was a long-distance runner, and she replied, “Oh, we do like marathon men.”

She opened a door and waved him inside a room. “You are welcome to remove your clothes if you wish. Or you can leave them on for now. There’s a shower. And there is a king bed, which you are welcome to rest in. Darlene will be with you in about twenty minutes. You’ll find reading material by the bedside. Have a lovely time.” She left and closed the door behind her.

Rocco checked out the room, which was as luxurious a bedroom as he had ever seen. It had a walk-in closet with many coat hangers, shelves above, and oddly, a large box—it looked like a garment box for moving house—on the floor. He hung up his clothes, leaving his wallet in his pants, and closed the closet door. He took a shower in the marble stall and brushed his teeth at the sink. Rather than climbing into bed naked, he put on a large, soft bathrobe and sat in a chair, forgoing the soft-porn magazine for
Sports Illustrated
and the
Economist
.

Eventually, he heard a knock and saw the door open gradually.

“May I come in?”

An attractive young black woman, perhaps twenty years old and wearing a tight shirt and hot pants, entered the room.

“Hello,” she said. “My name is Darlene. I understand we are to call you Bob.”

“Yes, Bob will be fine,” Rocco said. “Good to meet you, Darlene.”

“Aren’t you the polite one?” she said. “I like a man with manners. Emma said you were a marathon man. Say it ain’t so, Bob.”

Rocco grinned. He felt a stirring in his loins as she stood over him and placed her hands on his knees.

“Could I persuade you to remove that robe?” she said. She stood up and patted the bed. “And come join me here?”

He stood and walked to the bed. He did not remove the bathrobe, which betrayed his erection.

“I see that Marathon Man responds well to commands,” Darlene said.

Rocco thought he heard a cough coming from elsewhere in the room. “What is that?” he said.

“What?”

“That sound?”

“Sometimes sounds come from other rooms, Bob. But let me assure you that we are alone here, and that’s just the way I want it.”

Rocco excused himself to go to the bathroom. When he came out, he said, “How about if we just talk?”

A pained look crossed the woman’s face. It was clear to Rocco that he was no longer a perfect client. Now, he was weird. Only a fool came to talk instead of doing what any self-respecting heterosexual male would do with a beautiful woman in a brothel.

She straightened her shirt, got off the bed and sank heavily into a chair. “Champagne?”

“Hunh?” Rocco said. He hadn’t noticed any champagne.

She pointed to a small fridge by the wall. Rocco jumped to his feet, opened it, and removed the champagne and a can of soda water.

“Let me pour you a glass.” He uncorked it and poured it into a long, fluted glass.

“Aren’t you having champagne, Bob?”

He pulled opened the can of soda water and poured it into a glass. “I’m in training, so I can’t.”

“Training.” She snorted. “So did you win your last marathon?”

“Win? I just run for fun.”

“I’ve been hearing about another marathoner. Keita someone . . . but calls himself Roger Bannister. Man cleaned up at the Buttersby Marathon.”

“I was at that race too.”

“You give him a run for his money?”

“No.”

“How far you finish behind him? One hundred metres, maybe? Or two hundred?”

“I finished an hour behind him.”

“An hour! What’d you do? Stop for beer and have a nap?”

“I’ll have you know lots of runners finished behind me.”

“If someone put me in a race like that, I’d take the subway. Yes siree. Run a hundred metres, take the damn subway to the last block of the race, get off and run the last hundred metres. Why run if you have a perfectly good subway? But if y’all are going to run, you need to use both legs. You can’t be losing by a whole damn hour. That ain’t no race. It’s a whupping.”

“At my age, it’s not about winning,” Rocco said.

She narrowed her eyes. “What is this about, Bob? Why you go to all the trouble and money to book a room with me, if you don’t want what most guys want? Are you in the wrong room? Do you want to get bucked tonight?”

“I’m not into men.”

“You like the ladies?”

“Yes.”

She sipped her champagne and pretended to pout. “But just not me.”

“Well, it’s just . . .”

“Let me guess.”

Rocco didn’t know what to make of Darlene. First, she was all friendly. But now that there was to be no sex, she was getting familiar.

“Okay, guess,” he said. He had time. It was only half past midnight. As long as he was out by one o’clock, he’d be fine.

“You’re a college teacher, and you’re writing a study about prostitutes in AfricTown,” she said.

“I’m not a college professor.”

“You’re a cop.”

“Nope.”

“You’re too old to be a student.”

“True.”

“You want to talk about your wife.”

“God. No.”

“Are you sure you don’t have a wife who doesn’t sleep with you anymore?”

“I’m divorced.”

“Sorry, Mr. Bob. So tell me what your thing is.”

“I want to know what happened to Yvette Peters.”

Darlene sat up in her chair. Her smile disappeared. “How you know about her?”

“It’s in the newspaper.”

“Are you a journalist? A TV reporter?”

“No, I am not. Do you see a notebook? A TV crew?”

“So what are you doing in a bathrobe in this bedroom?”

“I just want to know what happened to her.”

“Can’t tell you.”

“She was a friend of yours.”

“Now you sound like a cop.”

“I swear on my mother’s life that I am not a cop.”

“Sure, I knew her. We all knew her. She was here and then she was gone. What do you want me to tell you?”

“Why was she deported?”

“Talk to the government about that. Hell. That’s it. You is government. I got you now. Don’t I? Don’t I?”

“Yes, that’s what I am.”

“So you here to arrest me too?”

“I am not a cop, and I don’t arrest people. I want to know what happened to Yvette.”

“Well, you’ll have to ask someone else. Because I can’t help you.”

Darlene stood and walked to the bathroom. Then she turned and motioned to Rocco to follow her. Did she have kinky stuff in mind? He followed her into the bathroom, where she closed the door.

“She got it on with Mr. Big, and then out the door she went,” Darlene whispered.

“Yvette did?”

“Yeah.”

“Who’s Mr. Big?”

“You’re government. Who is biggest?”

Rocco had trouble believing it. “You’re saying she slept with someone here in the Bombay Booty—someone powerful—and then she was deported? Why?”

“That’s all I can say. Who are you, anyway?”

“You’re not supposed to ask that question.”

“And you’re not supposed to pay for pussy and get an interview. On the way out, they gonna ask if you sexually satisfied. And if you say no, guess what happens to my paycheque? So you coming in here asking a lot of questions is hard on my budget.”

“Hey, Darlene, let’s get right to it. I need you to talk to me. How much would that take?”

She paused. “Five hundred dollars.”

“I don’t have five hundred in cash,” he said. “I can give you three hundred.”

“Where it at?”

Rocco stood up. His erection was gone like a groundhog into its hole. He walked out of the bathroom and over to the closet and riffled through the bills in his wallet. He fished out six fifty-dollar bills and put his wallet away. Then he returned to the bathroom and gave the money to Darlene.

She put it in her bra.

“So,” he said. “About Yvette?”

“She was gonna make some money and pay Lula to get her a citizenship card.”

“Why didn’t she have one?”

“Said she was born here, but never got one. Hey. Let me ask you something. Do you think I could be a accountant?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“I would like to hold people accountable. I reckon people have a lot of accounting to do for the things they done, to me and others.”

“Are you good with numbers?”

“I know that three hundred dollars is sixty percent of five hundred,” she said.

Rocco grinned. Perhaps he could funnel some money to her later, if she would tell him more about Yvette.

“You gotta help me, or I’m dead meat,” she said.

“Why?”

“I know too much.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something bad happened to Yvette, and it could happen to me too. If I get out of here, could you help me? I mean, help me hide?”

“What exactly are you talking about?”

“Help me hide.”

He felt for her. What could be the harm in giving her his number. “You’re good with numbers. Can you remember this?” He said his number and asked her to repeat it.

But Darlene said, “What’s that sound?”

“What sound?” he said.

“Shh!” she said.

He heard sirens. Police sirens. It sounded like a hundred of them, wailing. He whipped open the closet door and was dressed in a minute. Rocco was good like that.