Hundred Dollar Baby (4 page)

"She did a lot of that before you ran off with Rambeaux," I said.

"My God, you remember his name."

"I do," I said.

"She taught me to read books, and go to shows, and follow the newspaper so I could talk intelligently. I still read
The New York Times
every morning."

"Any love interests since Rambeaux?"

"No," April said. "And she always gave me the best assignments. No creepy stuff-young men, mostly. Regular customers."

"But none you've met that matter to you."

"Oh God, you're still such a romantic," she said. "Whores don't fall in love. I learned that from Rambeaux."

"He was the wrong guy to fall in love with," I said. "Doesn't mean there isn't a right one."

She laughed. I heard no humor in the sound.

"Men are pigs," she said.

"Oink," I said.

"Except you."

"There may be another one someplace that isn't," I said. "I'm not even absolutely sure Hawk is or isn't."

She sighed loudly.

"Most men are pigs, okay?" she said.

"So what's your social life?" I said.

"Social life?"

"Yeah."

"I don't have much of a social life," she said. "Mostly I work."

"Friends?"

"I get along well with my employees," she said.

"Any free time?" I said.

"If I have free time I go to the gym. How I look matters in my work."

"Turn tricks anymore?" I said.

"Now and then, for fun, with the right guy."

"What would make him right?"

"He'd need to be interested in someone my age, for one thing."

"Anything else?" I said. "That would make him right?"

"Oh, leave me the hell alone," April said. "I almost forget what you're like. You're still working on me."

"Working on you?" I said.

"You're still trying to save me, for crissake. This is what I am. You can't save me."

"Except maybe from the anonymous caller," I said.

We paused at Clarendon Street and waited for the light.

"I guess I earned that," she said. "I came to you for help. But couldn't you just help me with that?"

"Sure," I said.

"You know something that occurred to me," I said to Susan.

"I know what usually occurs to you," she said.

"Besides that," I said. "Men, at least straight men, have no idea what other men are like during sex."

"Are you planning to ask me?"

"No," I said. "But presumably, conversely, straight women probably have very little idea what other women are like during sex."

"Are you planning to tell me?"

"No."

"Isn't it swell that it occurred to you," Susan said.

"You're not interested?"

"No."

We were sharing a Cuban sandwich at the bar in Chez Henri. Susan felt that Riesling was appropriate with a Cuban sandwich. I was drinking beer.

"Men think about stuff like that," I said.

"Women don't," Susan said.

"Are we both generalizing from our own experience?" I said.

"Yes," Susan said.

"April says all men are pigs," I said.

"Her experience may have contributed to that view," Susan said.

"Sure," I said. "But I have no way to know. Is it certain that the men she has encountered are pigs?"

"Not everyone patronizes whores," Susan said.

"And those who do so regularly," I said, "maybe have something wrong with them."

Susan nodded. She had cut a small wedge of one half of the sandwich and was chewing a small bite she had taken.

"I don't find you unduly piggish," she said.

"Wow," I said. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

She smiled and sipped her wine.

"Why are you so interested?" she said.

"I worry about April," I said.

"Probably with reason," Susan said.

"She seems so integrated, and calm," I said. "It's kind of heartwarming. And then we're walking along and I ask about her social life, and she says all men are pigs."

"Including you?"

"When I raised that issue, she said except me."

"If I may generalize," Susan said, "everyone generalizes. We just got through generalizing, you may recall."

"But this generalization seems to have cut her off from any possibility of ... love?"

"She has spent her life in circumstances where love was a commercial exchange," Susan said. "As I recall the time when she got into the biggest trouble, where you had to in a sense buy her back, she did so out of love."

"You think that was love?" I said.

"She thought it was. It didn't make her more likely to feel love again."

I ate some sandwich and drank some beer.

"When I was about twenty-two," I said, "I went with two other guys to Japan on R & R. We stayed in a hotel near the Sugamo subway stop, with some girls we had rented for the week. We took hot baths, and they cooked us food on a hibachi in the room, first time I ever had sukiyaki, and we had what seemed at the time reasonable sex in reasonable amounts. It was very pleasant. After a week we went back to war."

"Your point?" Susan said.

I could feel her eyes on me. She was becoming interested. The force of her interest was always tangible.

"We liked each other. We weren't contemptuous of them. Maybe if we were, the language barrier made it easier to hide, but I felt no disdain. We didn't feel anything for them, either. We were sort of like new pals, having some fun ... for a short while."

Susan nodded. "Yes," she said.

"It was the last time I was with a prostitute."

"Probably drank some during that week, too," Susan said.

"Absolutely."

"War, whiskey, and women," Susan said.

"The big three," I said.

"Can you say rites of passage?"

"I know," I said. "And it may look more charming in that context."

"So where are you going with this?" Susan said.

"I don't know. It's bothering me."

"April is better off than she would have been," Susan said, "if she hadn't met you."

"Yes," I said. "I think that's so. But it doesn't mean she's well off."

"That's true," Susan said. "It is also true that you are not God."

"You don't know that," I said.

Susan smiled at me with her eyes while she took another delicate bite of the small wedge she had cut off her half of the Cuban sandwich.

"After I talked with April the other night," I said, "I went home and looked up escort services on the Web. She's right, there's millions of listings. And pretty soon, as you would expect, they linked to porn sites. So I surfed the porn sites. I didn't sign up, I just looked at the marketing."

"And you always read Playboy for the articles," Susan said.

"Scan a few porn sites," I said. "After a short time, they become pretty repellent. What struck me was the contempt with which the product is marketed. It seems aimed almost entirely at people who dislike women. The women are always referred to as whores or sluts or bitches or whatever. They are voraciously eager to dangle your doop or flap your floop or whatever the site was selling. I even scanned some gay sites. Same thing. The object of desire, male or female, is treated with scorn, except for their uncontrollable willingness to bleep your bippy."

"No mutuality," Susan said.

"None," I said.

"You're not the first to notice that," Susan said.

"How disappointing," I said.

Susan smiled. "So you're saying commercial sex and porno dehumanize the object of desire?"

"And the object which desires," I said. "Works both ways."

"So perhaps pornography and prostitution are not victimless crimes," Susan said.

"Probably not," I said. "The trick is to figure out which is the victim."

"The questions are too cosmic for me," Susan said.

"But on a level where I can operate, it seems clear that April, while perhaps less unfortunate than she was, is still a victim."

One of April's girls, on her night off, was walking back from Copley Place when she was yanked into an alley near the mansion and badly beaten. Her nose was broken; a tooth was knocked out. Her face was bruised and a rib was cracked. She was out for a while and when she came to, she got herself up and dragged herself back to the mansion, where April called an ambulance.

They set her nose and taped her ribs and gave her some pain meds and kept her overnight for observation. In the morning, April and I brought her home.

"You take as much time as you need, Bev," April said. "Get better."

Bev tried a small smile, but it fell short.

"Nobody's paying anything for me the way I look now."

"You'll be fine once you recover," April said. "You need dental work, we'll get it for you."

Bev tried a nod, and that hurt, too, so she didn't do anything.

"Don't be afraid of the Percocet," I said. "Take it as scheduled, even if you don't need it."

"You ever get beat up?" Bev said.

"Some," I said. "It's important to stay ahead of the pain."

April went upstairs with her. I went in the living room with Hawk.

"So do I walk them to the movies now?" he said.

"And while you're gone they bust in here and make a mess?" I said.

"Be a good plan," Hawk said.

I nodded.

"Beating her up could have been a random act."

"Sure it could," Hawk said.

"But we both know it's not," I said.

"'Course we do," Hawk said.

"Making trouble here is much more effective," I said. "It'll ruin her business overnight."

"But I'm here," Hawk said.

"So they beat this kid up," I said. "Maybe to see if that will scare April into doing what they want, maybe in hopes you'll start escorting the girls outside, and they can come here unimpeded."

"Maybe both," Hawk said.

"We need to impede both," I said.

"We a body or two short," Hawk said.

"Maybe we should call Vinnie," I said.

"Outta town," Hawk said. "Gino's opening up something in Cincinnati. Vinnie supporting his efforts."

"How long?"

"Vinnie thinks he'll be a while," Hawk said. "He got a lot of people to persuade."

"Well, he's not the only thug we know."

"How about the little pachuco from LA," Hawk said.

"Pachuco?" I said. "Nobody says pachuco anymore."

"Or the tough fag from Georgia," Hawk said.

"Tedy Sapp?" I said. "You think he calls you the tough nigger from Boston?"

"Probably," Hawk said. "Toughest fag I ever saw."

"I'll make the calls," I said.

I talked to Chollo first.

"You know what a pachuco is," I said.

"I used to."

"Hawk thinks you're a pachuco," I said.

"We all pachucos at heart, Senor," Chollo said.

"Si," I said. "You want to come to Boston?"

"Where it's eight degrees with thirty inches of snow," Chollo said.

"I need some backup."

"Mr. Del Rio is in conflict with some gentlemen from my native land," Chollo said, "and I'm supposed to go down there with Bobby Horse and resolve it."

"In the usual way?" I said.

"Si."

"Take a while?" I said.

"Not after we find them," Chollo said. "How 'bout Vinnie?"

"He's doing something in Cincinnati," I said.

"Didn't know anybody was doing something in Cincinnati," Chollo said.

"I've had fun in Cincinnati," I said.

"Gringos have fun in Pasadena," Chollo said. "I'm sorry I can't help you out, my friend."

"Okay," I said. "Walk careful in Mexico."

"I am as stealthy as a Mexican jaguar," he said.

"I didn't know they had jaguars in Mexico," I said.

"I think they don't," Chollo said. "But if they did, that's how stealthy I would be."

We hung up and I dialed Tedy Sapp. He was where he usually was, at the Bathhouse Bar and Grill in Lamarr, Georgia.

"I need some help up here," I said, "in Massachusetts, the only state that permits gay marriage."

"Nice neutral presentation," Sapp said. "Whaddya need."

I told him.

"What's it pay?" he said.

"Haven't established a price yet."

"How's the weather up there?"

"It's up to fifteen today, thirty inches of snow. No wind."

"Will I be in danger of getting shot?"

"Some," I said.

"Perfect," Sapp said. "You want me right away?"

"Tomorrow would be good."

"Okay," Tedy said. "Can you provide me a piece when I get there?"

"Sure," I said.

"So it's freezing and snowy and I might get shot and the pay is uncertain, but you will provide me a weapon, and if I want to marry somebody up there, I can, and it'll be legal."

"Long as you stay here," I said.

"A gay boy's dream," he said. "See you tomorrow."

April and I were having coffee and watching Hawk play chess with Tedy Sapp in the front room at the mansion. They had been through a small war together out west a few years back, and, within the limits of each man's emotional range, they liked each other. In some ways they were the exact opposite. Black, white. Straight, gay. But at the core they were almost the same guy. They were smart. Their word was good. They were fearsome. And they knew it. They were both certain that they could kick any ass in the world, and it gave them a kind of ironic serenity ... even though I might wish to add a small disclaimer to the premise.

"Bev is quitting," April said.

I nodded.

"A lot of the girls are talking about quitting," she said.

"We can protect them," I said. "But. . ."

"It will put me out of business if many of them quit," April said.

She wore a black cashmere sweater with a V-neck and jeans.

"Recruiting is not easy. I can't just go buy ten surplus hookers from some pimp. These girls aren't really professional prostitutes."

"Isn't amateur prostitute some sort of oxymoron," I said.

"This is not like other places," April said. "I have graduate students. I have teachers. I have housewives whose husbands travel. I have a flight attendant. I have a woman who sells real estate. These are women of substance."