Forced Entry (17 page)

Marie, who was more than properly terrorized, had seen no way out, and thus George Wang’s coming had been nothing short of miraculous, though many in the life would have thought it a routine piece of business.

“I see you on street and I think you very beautiful.” He had been very elegant in an off-white, double-breasted, linen suit with matching tie and Marie had been properly impressed. With his narrow eyes and thin drooping mustache, George Wang looked as if he’d just walked off the set of a 40s gangster movie. “Got wonderful body—no fat, but not too hard. Very smooth skin. Very pretty. Then I think this girl in wrong end of business. This girl very dark skin. Customer think she just another black whore. They mostly want blond virgin from Iowa. You know this true?”

Marie had laughed, sipping at a cup of coffee. They were in a diner near the Triboro Bridge, in Astoria. Far from Poppy Cortez. “Man, I’m tellin’ ya…Them Johns all look for that baby-white pussy. Balder the better. White bitches shave the pussy, then flash the trick. Can’t say as I blame ’em. If the trick think you near to bein’ cherry, he comin’ up with fifty like puttin’ a quarter in the phone. Me, I gotta fight for a twenty-dollar blow-job. And I’m still young. What’s gonna happen when I’m thirty?”

“Good.” George Wang had taken Marie’s hand and pulled it toward him, stroking the jet-black skin. It didn’t seem possible for flesh that black to be so reflective, yet her teenage body glowed with vitality. “Exactly so. You understanding make my job very easy. I have customer alla time ask for black-skin girl. They think dark girl exotic. Pay plenty. You never get this from street pimp. My customers all scared of street pimp. They think old Chinaman very safe.”

Marie had withdrawn her hand, placing it firmly in her lap. “You nice, pops, but don’t handle the merchandise, ‘less you buyin.’ Now tell me what I gotta do before these rich ‘customers’ part with the big bucks.”

“How many way you can fuck?” George Wang had asked. “Once you do sex in three holes, you finished. No more place to put it. Street whore sell all three holes, so why street whore get forty dollars and my whore get two hundred? Secret is not in fucking at all. All extra money earned before fucking start. You understand this?”

“Shit, pops, my man say, ‘Get ’em in and out as fast as you can.’ He believes in volume.”

“Pimp is correct. If you only getting thirty dollar, you must do many tricks. But what if you get three hundred dollar? Then you no have to rush. Then you take your time. My girls all performer. Fucking is shortest part of way they turn trick. If you want, I give you apartment uptown. Ninety and York. Doorman building. First three months you only go out with other girl maybe one time each week. I train you to become actress. Customers all want fantasy. You must learn to give them fantasy the way you give pussy on street. As long as customer pay, you never hold back. You think you can learn this?”

Marie had nodded solemnly. “I can learn, pops. But what’s in it for me?”

“My name ain’t ‘Pops,’ you little asshole. My name is George Wang and that’s what you’ll call me.”

Marie looked into the pimp’s black eyes, catching a glimpse of the iron will sitting patiently behind the frail exterior. “What happened to your accent?” she asked lamely.

“What’d I tell you before? About the customers and their fantasies? The accent is for the assholes. There’s nothing these stockbrokers like more than having a chinky sell them pussy. They think it’s cute, something to brag about at Harry’s Bar after work.” He paused to let the point sink in. “We split everything fifty-fifty, but I guarantee you’ll make a grand a week after three months. If you don’t get it off the customers, I make up the difference. You on dope?”

“Yeah,” Marie had admitted. “But it’s just a chippy. I ain’t strung out or nothin’.”

“I get you dope and needles. Good quality. Reliable. I don’t give a shit about your personal life, but if you get too fucked up to work, you’re out on your ass. In fact, that’s the penalty if you break any rule.” He sipped at his drink, waiting for a question or a protest, but Marie, utterly amazed by his transformation, kept her mouth shut. “The rules are very simple. You take a job, you make the customer happy. That means you show up on time and make the customer believe his fantasy has come to life. All your assignments come from me. You do private business and I throw you out. You even take a phone number and I throw you out. That’s the rules: make the customer happy and don’t fuck me over. You accept, I’m gonna make you rich.”

As it turned out, many of her customers were women. Rich white women. They virtually always went the same way. She played a maid (a maid wearing blazing red bra and panties under a translucent black uniform) who seduces her mistress. And seduce them she did; she took them in the bedroom, the kitchen, the laundry room, the attic, the bathtub (they went nuts when she soaped their backs, her hand slowly dropping, dropping…). She did them with vacuum cleaners, broom handles, scrubbing brushes, towels, washcloths—anything that came to hand. And she did them until they couldn’t take any more.

They were marvelously easy, so into the fantasy they shivered when she brushed against them and cried when they came. Then, of course, they’d pull her back onto the bed, pushing her legs up into her chest, devouring her. Curiously, none, no matter how inept, ever failed to bring forth Marie’s deepest, loudest, most professional orgasm.

The men, on the other hand, usually wanted humiliation. Wanted her in leather and stainless steel, cursing them, forcing them into one demeaning act after another. They’d get
so
hot. Begging her to get them off. And she would, finally. After they’d proven themselves worthy, she’d run her fingers down the length of their bellies, take them in her hand. It was all they needed.

These days, George Wang always referred to Marie as “my best.” Even when she was working with another girl. And Marie was perfectly willing to allow the pimp to think of her as property. What counted was that he never touched her, that she could walk out whenever she wished, that her money was in a bank in her own name. A pro, as George Wang had explained on many occasions, helps the tricks retain their fantasies and George Wang, though she was infinitely grateful to him, was Marie’s ultimate trick.

The only dark shadow in Marie’s career (besides the Freak) had been her drug habit. Initially, her habit had kept pace with her economic success. But after a year of expansion, she had realized that dope, if left unchecked, would drive her back onto the streets (and into the hands of another Poppy Cortez). She was too tough for that. Too accustomed to being her own woman. With George Wang’s encouragement, she enrolled in a residential treatment program at Barclay Hospital in a rural corner of Albany County. The doctors at Barclay put her on a thirty-day methadone withdrawal program. The first day, they gave her enough methadone to satisfy her craving for heroin. The second day, they gave her a little less. She was ready to climb the walls on more than one occasion, but it never became impossible to bear and by the time the program was completed, her habit was gone.

And that’s the way it stayed. In control. Just like her life was in control. Marie was able to see her prostitution as a kind of scam, a hustle she was putting on the trick. In a way, sex was her ultimate triumph. Except for the Freak. The Freak got the better of her. Whenever Marie left his apartment, she felt cheated, even though George Wang assured her that the four-fifty they were getting was proper compensation for the services she provided.

“You forgot about the customers who scream ‘Nigger’ while you whip them? You forgot about the customers who say the same thing while
they
whip you?”

“They don’t hurt you. All they want is to get off.”

“How does Marek hurt you? You serve dinner, you fuck him, you go home. Where’s the hurt?”

“It’s not that easy. I go there in rags. I play the part of his slave. He ridicules me in front of his friends.”

“They don’t touch you, do they? We’d have to get more money for that.”

“The laughing is worse than being touched. I’m not even allowed to look up. I have to keep my eyes on the damned carpet. Have to say ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, sir.’ Serve his shitty dinner. He gives me long lectures about ‘Negroes’ and the crimes they commit and the drugs they use. He tells me the whole country is standing on my back and he keeps me around to remind him of the bottom. He keeps me around for inspiration.”

“Make sense, Marie. I send you to a house where you scrub the toilet on your knees, then give head to a sixty-year-old white woman. That doesn’t bother you at all…”

“Mrs. Blum loves me. After we finish, she serves me pastries and coffee. Tells me about her wicked grandchildren. You’re a smart man, George Wang, but you don’t know shit about tricks.”

“Don’t say ‘trick.’ ” He waved a long bony finger. “Trick is a street word. You’re not on the street. You call them customers. Then maybe you’ll understand. Look, if you were selling lettuce, you wouldn’t give a shit about the character of your customers as long as they didn’t threaten you with violence. It should be exactly the same when you sell pussy.”

“Well, the Freak could hurt me,” Marie insisted. “I have no doubt the Freak could hurt me. The Freak wears five-hundred-dollar sport jackets, but he has the eyes of a mugger. Redneck eyes that hate everything they see.”

George Wang threw up his hands. “You’ve been with him more than thirty times and he’s never laid a hand on you. He doesn’t even go with other whores. In fact,” George Wang grinned, “I think Marek’s in love with you. You should be flattered.”

Marie sighed impatiently. “I never minded when other tricks called me a nigger or a black whore, because they were in a fantasy and the fantasy was no truer than their ordinary polite lives. But…”

“Too much college,” George Wang interrupted. He considered himself an expert at appraising a customer’s potential violence and he found the Freak perfectly acceptable.

“Just let me talk for a while. All right? You listen, for a change. The Freak isn’t in a fantasy. He’s not pretending, either.”

“But did he ever hurt you?” George Wang was getting sick of the conversation.

“No. He pinches me, shows me his strength, but never quite hurts me.”

“Look, if you’re determined to give him up, I’ll back you on it. You know that, Marie. I’m only asking you to give it a little while longer. After all, the smart response to a repulsive trick is to up the ante. We’re getting four-fifty out of him. Let’s increase it a hundred bucks and see what happens. I mean if you look at him the right way, you’ll see that he’s just a poor slob who has to buy his pussy. Like every other John in the trade.”

“I
DON’T BELIEVE THIS,”
Moodrow said, waving his hands at the empty road in front of him and his girlfriend, Betty Haluka. “It’s six o’clock in the afternoon and the road’s empty.”

“Mike Birnbaum wasn’t your fault,” Betty replied. She was sitting close to him, one hand laid casually on his knee.

“I wasn’t talking about Mike Birnbaum,” Moodrow snapped. “I was talking about the damned road; I figured an hour and a half for the ride and we’ll be there in fifteen minutes. On the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. It’s unbelievable.”

“It’s not unbelievable,” Betty insisted. “It snowed this morning.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“If it snows in the early morning, the commuters take the subway. Then the snow melts and the evening rush is easy. I thought everybody knew that.”

They were riding in Betty’s 1982 Honda Civic. At Betty’s request, Moodrow was driving, somehow manipulating the tiny pedals despite being twisted into his seat like a sponge in the mouth of a bottle. His head was pressed against the roof of the car, with only a narrow brimmed fedora to cushion the potholes (placed with all the wonderful randomness of a minefield) carpeting the roadway.

“I guess you’re right,” Moodrow finally answered. “That’s the only thing it could be. It was snowing pretty heavy around seven this morning. The commuters must’ve got scared off by the traffic and left their cars home. Then the snow turned to rain and now there’s nothing left. All the driving I done, I shoulda known about that.”

Betty smiled, squeezing closer. “People from Manhattan never understand about traffic in the boroughs. In fact, they don’t usually admit that there
are
boroughs. Even cops who come out here all the time. Besides, Mike Birnbaum wasn’t your fault.”

“Jesus, Betty.” Moodrow sighed, shaking his head. “We oughta let that go.”

“I think you’re blaming yourself,” Betty insisted. “There was nothing you could have done short of moving a cot into the lobby.”

Moodrow took his time answering. The Honda didn’t have much acceleration and Moodrow, who wanted to pass a creeping garbage truck, was trying to press the Honda’s gas pedal to the floor without catching the edge of his shoe on the brake, a task that was momentarily commanding all his attention. “The thing is,” he finally said, “that I don’t really
know
that I’m not responsible. It’s possible that I screwed it up. Maybe I should have been stronger with the junkies I threw out of the building. Maybe there was some other apartment I should have checked out. One thing I learned as a cop is that some of the time it
is
your fault. Especially with crimes like child abuse where the cop who goes to the scene has a lot of discretion. Sometimes they don’t make arrests when they should. Sometimes they don’t see the signs right in front of their eyes. You tell the captain that the kid looked okay when you saw him three days ago and the captain puts your bullshit in the report, even if the kid is lying in the morgue. But in your heart you know you made a mistake and that someone else paid for it.”

They were on their way to the Jackson Arms and an emergency meeting of the tenants’ association, but they were nearly an hour early. Betty suggested a coffee shop, but Moodrow asked if she’d mind driving around for a while.

“I don’t mind,” she responded. “I just thought you might like to get out of the car.”

“Driving helps me think,” Moodrow shrugged.