Hundred Dollar Baby (5 page)

"And they do this why?"

April shrugged.

"They like money. They like sex. They like adventure. They get a lot of money for doing what they have often done for nothing."

"Where do you find them?" I said.

"You don't have to find many. Once you start, it becomes sort of networking," April said. "But we begin by, say, answering personal ads on the Internet or in reputable publications, We send them a discreet query. Would you be interested in escort work. Or we send someone out to dating bars, pick up the right-looking woman, ask the same discreet thing."

"Eliminate those who are not ... our
kind?"

"Don't laugh at me," she said. "This is not a bunch of sweaty people grunting in the dark. This is a first-class private club. I want my girls to enjoy sex. I want my clients to be with girls who enjoy sex."

"The real deal," I said.

"Exactly. That's just the right phrase. This is the real deal."

"So why don't your clients just go and avail themselves of women like this for nothing. They are there."

"Because it's troublesome. Because they would have to go through the screening process that we go through for them. We screen very carefully."

"You do that?"

"Yes," April said. "Men come here knowing they'll have an affectionate, sexy time with attractive, intelligent, and well-spoken women."

"AIDS?" I said.

"That risk exists in any sexual encounter," April said, "unless it's a long-term monogamous one. Short of that, we take every precaution. Our girls are regularly tested. Our clients are from a level of society that is less likely to encounter AIDS."

"And the personal services?" I said.

"Well, aren't you nosy," she said.

"Part of my profession," I said. "I can withdraw the question."

"Sometimes, special circumstances."

"I think I won't explore the special circumstances," I said.

She shrugged.

"No big deal," she said. "Sometimes a client wants to fuck the boss."

"The house mother, so to speak."

April stared at me.

"Are you being shrinky with me?" she said.

"Just a thought," I said.

"Well, I know you're with Susan and all, but I don't buy any of that."

"I'm not selling it," I said.

"Sorry," April said. "I've just... I tried it for a while... Most of the shrinks I talked with were crazier than I was."

We were quiet. Tedy picked up a chess piece and moved it. Hawk studied the move. Their concentration was palpable.

"Do you play chess?" April said.

"No," I said.

"Do you know how?"

"No."

"I don't either," she said.

Hawk picked up his chess piece and moved it. Tedy nodded slowly as if he approved.

"Could you come to my office with me for a moment?" April said.

"Sure."

We left the room and walked past the concierge and down the hall to the office. The office staff was busy at their computers.

"Tell me a little more about Tedy Sapp," she said.

"What more?" I said.

"He seems, sort of, different."

"He is different," I said. "So is Hawk. So am I. We're all different. It's why we do what we do."

"But ... what's going on with the hair?"

"Too blond?" I said.

"And artificial. He looks like some sort of ridiculous wrestler or bodybuilder or something."

"Tedy's gay," I said. "He fought it for a long time. The bright hair is sort of a statement:
I'm not trying to pass."

"But can he really do what he's supposed to?"

I was quiet for a moment. There were a lot of things to say. But I didn't say any of them. I just answered the question.

"Better than almost anyone," I said.

I was at my desk, with my feet up, on the phone with Patricia Utley, who was at home in New York. Pearl was spending quality time with me, in my office, on her couch, lying upside down with her head hanging and her tongue lolling. She seemed boneless lying there, and nerveless, as if time and stress were of no consequence and eternity were a plaything.

"When you brought her to me she was a terrified child," Patricia Utley was saying. "I cleaned her up and began to train her. I didn't send her out for a year."

"Orphans of the Storm," I said.

"Well, not entirely, I am a businesswoman. But my childhood was somewhat turbulent, and I was sympathetic."

"And you're maybe softer than you pretend," I said.

"You would understand that," she said. "She was nearly grown and making good progress when she ran off with that idiot Rambeaux."

"Who was not softer than he pretended."

"Hardly," Patricia Utley said.

"Give all for love," I said.

"Give something for love, perhaps. Not everything," Patricia Utley said. "By the time you got her back to me I had to start nearly all over with her."

"She'd had a bad time," I said.

"Many people do," Patricia Utley said. "Especially in the whore business. We try to be the exception."

"We all try," I said. "You succeeded."

"Is that your imitation of Humphrey Bogart?"

"How good is it if you have to ask?" I said.

"Think about it," Patricia Utley said. "Eventually, we got April back on her feet and she became one of my most successful girls."

"So what about this business you set her up in?" I said.

"It's not a wonderful business. But it gives her a chance to run her own show and make a decent living. I did it mainly for April."

"You take back a royalty?"

"Yes. Ten percent."

"Of the gross?" I said.

"Of the net," she said.

"You are doing this," I said, "for April."

"Yes, my take is little more than seven thousand five hundred dollars a year."

"So the business is worth about seventy-five thousand dollars to April."

"Roughly," Patricia Utley said. "There is a lot of overhead."

"The house, the furnishings, the working girls, the office staff," I said.

"And the bar and dining room, and bribes to law enforcement, payment to Mr. Marcus, cleaning services, quite a large laundry bill, physical exams for the girls, clothing allowances."

"Pay the girls' salaries?" I said.

"The whores? They get an advance against earnings. If, in a relatively short time, they don't earn out, they are outplaced."

"How's it compare with your operation in New York," I said.

"For profit?"

"Yes."

"Pocket change," she said. "There's too little volume, too much overhead. I may never get my investment back."

"Has it got an upside down the road?"

"No," Patricia Utley said. "I doubt it. I have not hovered over this project, but it seems that it has as large a share of the market as it is likely to get."

Pearl
got off the couch suddenly and walked swiftly around my office until she found a dirty and badly tattered stuffed toy animal of indeterminate species. She picked it up and chewed on it so it squeaked and brought it to me.

"What on earth is that noise?" Patricia Utley said.

"Squeaky toy," I said.

Pearl
squeaked it at me some more until I took it and tossed it across the room.

"Have you ever worried that maybe you are alone too much," Patricia Utley said.

"Susan and I have a dog," I said, "and she's come to work today with Daddy."

"My God," Patricia Utley said.

Pearl
picked up her squeaky toy and shook it and looked at me, and made a decision, and jumped up on the couch with her squeaky toy and lay down with it underneath her.

"Are you going to tell me why you called," Patricia Utley said.

"Someone's trying to shake April down."

"And she came to you."

"Yes."

"Do you know who it is?"

"Not yet," I said.

"Do you have any help?" she said.

"Two men."

"So there will be some cost," she said.

"Some."

"Has April paid you?"

"No."

"She probably can't really afford to," Patricia Utley said. "When it's done, if you'll submit me a bill, perhaps I will pay you."

"Let's revisit the question when it's done," I said.

"Do you need any other help?" Patricia Utley said. "Stephen is gone. But I have resources."

"I'm fine," I said. "Sorry to hear about Stephen."

"We were together a long time," she said.

"Not long enough," I said.

"It's never long enough," she said. "Is it."

It was an ironclad rule at Susan's house that Pearl did not eat supper before five p.m.

"If you give in to her," Susan always said, "we'll be feeding her supper at noon."

This was perfectly true, and the rule made a great deal of sense. So after Pearl and I walked the four blocks back to my place in the late afternoon, I ignored her insistent stare unshakably, and didn't feed her until 4:11.

Pearl
was an efficient and focused eater. By 4:13 her dish was empty and she was topping it off with a long lap at her water dish. Then, having fulfilled her responsibilities for the day, she got up on the couch and curled up and looked at me. Susan was at a conference in Albany and wouldn't be back until tomorrow. I was in for the night. I went to my kitchen counter and made myself a drink and brought it to the couch and sat down beside Pearl. It was a tall drink, scotch with soda and a lot of ice. It had a nice, clean look to it. I drank some. It tasted like it looked. I patted Pearl.

The room was so familiar that I barely saw it. I'd been here a long time. I had first had sex with Susan in this room, on a couch not unlike this one. I would have hung on to it for sentimental reasons, maybe with a plaque. But Susan is very big on out with the old and in with the new, and it had been replaced. I got something out of it, though. We'd had sex on this couch, too. If Pearl knew that, she wasn't impressed by it. She was asleep and snoring very faintly. I sipped my drink. Pacing is important. I was never happy when Susan was away. I didn't need to see her every day. We were careful about that. Neither of us wished to be an obligation. But I liked it better when she was nearby and if I wanted to see her, I could. Even if I didn't.

I looked across the living room at the darkness outside my front window. It was the beginning of February. Football was almost over. Baseball hadn't started. Basketball was boring until the last two minutes. And the snow remained deep, dirty, and unmelting. Seven weeks to spring equinox. My drink was gone. I got up carefully, not to disturb Pearl, and made myself a fresh one. I took it back to the couch, sat back down carefully, put my feet on the coffee table, and took a swallow. Winter would pass. Pearl shifted a little in her sleep, and I shifted a little to accommodate her ... There was something really wrong with April's story.

From the start, I had felt vaguely uncomfortable. I didn't know what I was uncomfortable about. And, suddenly, I did. The mansion-class prostitution business she was running wasn't worth the energy someone was expending to get a cut of it. If Patricia Utley was right-and if she wasn't, who would be?-the business was labor-intensive, difficult to run, and generated a modest profit. Was the business worth getting involved with Ollie DeMars? Was it worth inviting trouble with Tony Marcus? Or, for that matter, me and Hawk? And who was it that they dispatched to dating bars to pick up women and recruit them? Wouldn't that have to be a guy? What guy? Of course Patricia Utley could be lying. But why would she be?

"Moreover," I said to Pearl, "since the tactics of the anonymous takeover seem aimed at putting April out of business, what will the takeover guy have if his tactics work?"

Pearl
appeared disinterested.

I felt bad about April. She was lying, and that made helping her a lot harder. Plus, what could be so bad that she wouldn't tell me?

"And," I said to Pearl, "the ugly truth of the matter is, my feelings are hurt."

Pearl
opened her eyes for a moment and stared at me. I took another swallow of scotch and looked back at her.

"Okay," I said. "I'll get over it."

Pearl
closed her eyes.

In the morning Pearl and I took a short run along the river. The footing was bad, and the wind off the river was irksome. But we got in a half-hour of running plus some loitering while Pearl performed her morning ablutions and I, responsible dog owner, cleaned up after her. It is hard to look graceful while being a responsible dog owner. But I felt I managed with considerable aplomb. We went back to my place through the back basement door of my building. I fed Pearl and got some coffee and went and stood and looked clown at Marlboro Street while I drank it. I always stood at the window while I had my coffee. I liked to watch the people going to work. A gray Ford Crown Victoria with tinted windows pulled onto Marlboro Street from Arlington and slid into a space by a hydrant across the street from my building. No one got out. The car was idling; I could see the exhaust plume drifting up behind the car. I drank some more coffee and stayed at the window. No one got out of the car. A man walking a small Jack Russell terrier went by. A woman in a short faux-fur coat and tight slacks went by. The Crown Vic did not have IV plates, so it probably wasn't a limo waiting to take someone to Logan Airport. I watched it some more. It sat. I drank coffee. My cup was empty. I got another cup. The Crown Vic still sat there, still idling. So they could run the heater. While I watched the Crown Vic, the window on the passenger side slid down and somebody tossed a foam coffee cup and a couple of napkins onto Marlboro Street. I could see that he had long hair. I recognized him. He had been in Ollie DeMars's office when I had gone to visit.

"By God," I said to Pearl, "a clue!"

Pearl
raised her head from the couch and looked at me closely to make sure I hadn't said, "Do you want something to eat." When she established that I hadn't, she put her head back down. I continued on my coffee. The Crown Vic continued to sit. I got my cordless phone and brought it to the window and dialed the mansion and talked with Tedy Sapp.