HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1) (89 page)

All that was gone, now—the sisterhood of the boarding house, the work in the nightclub, all of it.

Cops still milled around downstairs, hauling boxes and bags from Mama’s office, taking photos of the nightclub, examining the bar and stage. I glanced at another doorway, located behind the bar. That led to the other upstairs, where we’d go with customers to do the illegal business of Mama’s nightclub.

All customers had to do was pick one of us and agree to a price that Mama set, and they were free to do what they’d like with us upstairs.

Tips we made from waiting the tables in the nightclub were decent, but the sexual element was what made the real money.

It was also the reason the nightclub was getting raided. Prostitution simply wasn’t legal in New York.

Maybe selling my body was one of the things I wouldn’t miss about this place. I’d had my reasons for doing it, as I was sure so many of the other girls had, too.

I’d led many, many a customer up those stairs, to that long hallway that mirrored the one in the boarding house, opening one of the doors into a sumptuous bedroom and bathroom, turning the lights down low, stripping down to the fine lingerie set we always wore beneath our uniforms, and using my body as a means to an end.

All that was over, now, but so was the method I was using to get what I really wanted.

My treasure. My heart.

“Do you want to put your jacket over your head?” Fitch asked, glancing at me as we approached the entrance. There was still a sizeable crowd outside.

“That’s okay,” I said, giving him a small smile. “I guess I don’t really have anything to hide anymore. You don’t have to put cuffs on me, do you?”

“No, ma’am,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s my understanding that you’re the victim here.”

I puzzled over that statement as we walked outside, and into the mess. Shutters whirred and clicked as photographers documented my entrance into the fray. Reporters jostled each other just beyond the police tape, shouting questions at me. All I could notice was that the pavement was wet, as if it’d recently rained. I couldn’t make myself peer into the windows of other squad cars, trying to see how many of Mama’s girls were waiting in them. What if I locked eyes with Mama herself? I hesitated in my fear, stumbling to a stop, clutching my purse as if it were a shield. Fitch took my elbow gently and maneuvered me to a squad car.

“You’re not in trouble,” he said again, “but I am going to have to ask you to get in the back of the squad car. Standard procedure.”

“I understand,” I said, even if I didn’t. How was I not in trouble? I’d willingly sold my body. It was, at the time, my only option, the only way to work toward my end goal. I could name a couple of girls who had genuinely been victims, if anyone asked me.

Cocoa, who’d been forced to jump from the second-story window of her room to escape Mama, who was shooting at her.

Jazz, who hadn’t wanted to do anything but survive, forced to give herself to whomever Mama chose.

Many of us were just victims of our own circumstances, unable to land on our feet, having to use Mama’s nightclub as a crutch to keep hobbling along. It wasn’t a natural way to live, but we all got used to it, selling our sex. If a person spent enough time in a place, doing the same thing over and over again, she’d get used to anything.

I settled into the back of the squad car and Fitch shut the door behind me. He got in, up front, and started the car.

“A lot of people have a lot of questions,” he said. “You can, of course, choose what you want to answer. You’ll meet guys from the vice squad, guys from internal investigations. Most of them aren’t going to be nice guys.”

“I have a lot of experience with not-nice guys,” I assured him, looking out the window at the outside of Mama’s nightclub. In the daytime, it wasn’t much to look at. The windows were darkened, and there wasn’t even a sign designating what it was. Our business had been dependent on discreet word of mouth.

But at night, the place lit up. Bouncers manned the door, and a long velvet rope separated the line of people waiting to get in the nightclub. There was always a line, always people trying to get in.

Maybe I’d never lay eyes on the place again. It was hard to know how I felt about that. I knew that I would miss the other girls, but I couldn’t imagine I’d miss the work.

I supposed I’d miss the money that I was supposedly earning, even if Mama sat on it all. She’d been obsessed with it, there at the end, which was why she took to sleeping in her office. That’s where the safe was, where she kept all of our money for us. For a time, all we had to do to get money was ask for it. But recently, she’d been more and more wary of letting any go.

“We’d all appreciate it if you were as honest as possible in answering the questions,” Fitch continued, meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror before throwing the car into gear and rolling forward.

“I’ll tell you whatever you need to know,” I said easily.

Fitch had said I’d be talking to guys in vice. That was understandable. This was a prostitution ring, after all. The mention of internal investigations was telling. He’d never been one of my customers, but I’d seen the chief of police at the nightclub before. The entire NYPD was likely in upheaval over the allegations, and the media would be having a field day if they caught wind of it.

I didn’t have anybody to protect except my treasure, and he was so far from this that I was sure he wouldn’t be touched.

At least, I was pretty sure he was. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in long years.

The ride to the station wasn’t too terribly long. I probably wouldn’t have noticed if it was. I was thoroughly lost in my thoughts, trying to overcome the shock of an entire period of my life ending. I hardly noticed as the squad car rolled to a stop at the station and Fitch helped me from the back.

The media had divided and conquered, a solid contingency waiting for us outside of the station. Fitch wove us through the crowd, reporters yammering questions at me.

“Are you one of Mama’s girls?”

“Did you sell your body for money?”

“How do you feel now that you’re free?”

Free? Was I free, now?

I’d only be free once I had my heart back.

Fitch led me past all the reporters and into the station. He took me to an interview room with glass walls. I tried to ignore the fact that it felt like a fish tank, that anybody passing by could watch me with the same fascination that people might have staring at an exotic fish at an aquarium.

“Can I get you something to make you more comfortable?” he asked, his face impossibly kind. “You could be waiting here for a few minutes. The guys have their hands full with a couple of recent intakes.”

I would’ve bet my last dollar that one of those troublesome intakes was Mama. I imagined that if I listened hard enough, I would hear her curses and shouts.

“I think I’ll be all right,” I said, settling into one of the leather swivel chairs.

Fitch looked at me for a couple of moments without speaking.

“I’ll be right back,” he promised, turning on his heel and going.

I studied my surroundings—a long wooden table punctuated by several of the same leather swivel chairs I was sitting in, blinds covering the glass walls—and study my nails. The red polish was chipped, but there was nothing I could do about it. I picked at it miserably, wishing at the very least I had another bottle to layer atop the color.

I turned out my purse, not even sure what all I had in there. Loose change skittered across the table along with a tampon, my wallet, a mirror, a tube of lipstick, and some crumpled receipts. To make myself feel better, I put on the lipstick, using the mirror to guide my trembling hand. I could do this. Everything was going to be all right.

The door to the room opened again and I looked up, expecting to see a bevy of hardened investigators with whiskery jowls.

Instead, it was Fitch, bearing gifts.

He’d gotten me a couple of fashion magazines, a large coffee and a handful of creamers and sugar packets, and a bag of chips, fruit, bottled sodas, sandwiches, donuts, and other goodies.

“What’s all this?” I asked, staring as he spread everything on the table in front of me.

“A care package,” he said. “You were making coffee during the raid, so I figured you haven’t had anything to eat yet. I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I just picked up a bunch of things at the convenience store around the corner. I thought you might like to have these magazines to help pass the time. I noticed that on your door, you had a bunch of models. Are you interested in fashion?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling numb with gratitude.

It would’ve been easier to deal with all of this sudden change if I could’ve simply withdrawn into myself. I’d done it enough during various periods of crisis in my life. But Fitch’s kindness was opening me up to the possibility of good people in the world, and it was almost the most painful part of the entire day.

“Well, I hope they don’t keep you here too long,” he said. “Just holler if you need or want anything—and I mean anything.”

I could barely read the print of the magazine as my eyes blurred with tears.

I was, however, hungry, tearing into a bagel and slurping down some coffee. I liked it black because that was the way I’d learned to drink it, stealing cups of the stuff from banks and real estate offices and other businesses as a kid. There’d never been enough time to dress up my foam cup of Joe before slapping a lid on it and making a dash for the door.

My house never had enough, and coffee helped dull my hunger until I could scarf down a free lunch at school.

              I’d made my way through a good portion of the bag of food before the door opened again. I looked up from a magazine to see a pair of suits, the tailored clothing not doing a good job of hiding what these men really were.

“You keeping yourself occupied, ma’am?” one of them asked.

I nodded, pensive. I wasn’t sure what I should be expecting and I didn’t have anything to lose.

The two suits sat down across from me, and I set the magazine down on the table.

“My name’s Snyder, and this is Bash,” the suit on the right said. “We want to ask you some questions about the nightclub.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to be as polite as possible. “Are you from vice or internal investigations?”

They exchanged a glance.

“Sounds like somebody charmed Fitch,” Bash said, eyeing all the various wrappings and bottles and goodies on the table.

“Officer Fitch has been very kind to me,” I said. “I’m sorry for prying. And I’ll answer your questions to the very best of my ability.”

“Let’s start with your name,” Snyder said.

“Shonda Crosby,” I said, “but everyone calls me Shimmy.”

              There was another inscrutable glance between the two suits.

“What?” I asked. “Was that the wrong answer?”

Neither of them chose to answer that question.

“All right, Ms. Crosby,” Snyder said briskly. “How old are you?”

“I’m 22.”

“And, just for the record, you worked at the nightclub.”

“That’s right.”

“Ms. Crosby, did you knowingly sell your body for money?”

“Yes. Mama did the pricing and negotiations, but I agreed to it.”

“Why?”

A sharp look from Snyder to Bash told me that this wasn’t one of the questions they’d agreed on asking.

“Why did I start selling my body?” I repeated.

“Yes,” Bash said. “We’re trying to understand this thing from every angle.”

“Apparently,” Snyder muttered.

“Please, Ms. Crosby,” Bash said, ignoring the other suit. “Why did you start working at the nightclub?”

There were lots of reasons, really. I was desperate. I needed the money. I didn’t see any other way. There wasn’t anyone—or anywhere—to turn to. I thought I’d be good at it. I saw it as a means to an end.

But if I was being perfectly honest, which I promised I’d be, there was really only one true reason I started working at Mama’s nightclub in the first place.

“I did it for my treasure,” I said.

“Your treasure, Ms. Crosby?”

“Yes. My treasure—my Trevor. My son.”

My son.

I had been one of those girls who’d fallen in love—fast, hard, and deep—with a high school sweetheart.

Ben was the captain of the basketball team, a vision on and off the court. He had everything: looks, grades, athletics, and popularity. Everything I didn’t have.

He was sweet, too, not laughing off my advances or trying to use me, like so many other guys at our high school.

“When are you going to take me to see a movie, Ben?” I’d wheedle, leaning against his locker suggestively. Back then, I always wore the top of my hair in cornrows, which I thought made me look tough, and the rest of it loose and curly, which I thought made me look feminine. I liked mixing it up, and always keeping people guessing.

“Anytime you want me to, Shimmy,” he’d flirt back, always gracious and good-natured. Movies were well beyond my humble means, but Ben always seemed to have the latest sneakers or jeans or backpacks. Kids talked about how he was rich, but I had no idea until I went over to his home to work on a school project.

First of all, he lived in a real house. Sure, it was squished in between all the other houses on a row of fine, old homes, but it had four stories and its own front door.

“You live here?” I asked, unable to keep myself from gaping as trotted up the steps to the front door and produced a key from his backpack.

“Yep,” he said grimly, in a way that told me he often fielded such questions.

“How many other people live here?” I gasped as he opened the door. Inside, the ceilings were impossibly high, bright chandeliers dripping down like a terribly expensive leak.

“It’s just me, my mom, and my dad,” Ben said.

“Just three?” I knew I probably sounded obnoxious, but I was a girl from the ghetto. This was as good as a foreign country to me. “What do you do with all the extra space? You can’t need all this.”

Ben just shrugged. “Let’s start on the project,” he said. “We can go to my office.”

“You have your own office?” I demanded, sure that my eyes were going to bug out of my head and that I was going to trip over my own dropped jaw. Was it possible to live like this?

I tried to behave myself, but with each corner we rounded, I saw more and more marvels that I had never even thought of. Couches and chairs that looked to fine for sitting, covered in a rich gold fabric that shone under the chandelier dangling from the ceiling.

Ornate crown molding that bordered every wall, cherubs and butterflies and flowers forever preserved in the carvings that joined the wall to the ceiling.

A kitchen bristling with stainless steel appliances and a dishwasher—a real, working dishwasher. At my home, I was the dishwasher. I knew another girl who had a dishwasher at home, but it was so beyond repair that her family just used it to store dishes.

Stairs that didn’t lead to other people’s homes, but to other areas of a single family’s home. It was so strange to me to have such a simple thing as stairs belong to a person. When the elevator went out in my building and we had to hoof it up the stairs, we had to dodge around strangers and worse, sidling by in the dark corridors, footsteps echoing hollowly on the concrete steps.

Ben’s office gleamed with the latest product models that I’d only seen in magazines or in storefront windows. I wanted to moon over them, to tell Ben how lucky he was, to run my fingers wonderingly over the smooth curves and planes, but I stopped myself. Ben seemed downright miserable, and I hated being the reason for it.

“I like your office,” I said, promising myself not to gush anymore. “Let’s get started.”

Evidently surprised, he blinked at me a couple of times before smiling gratefully and pulling out his textbook. Even his school-issued textbook was nicer than mine, probably for the simple fact that he had a nicer home to store it in, and a nicer backpack to tote it around.

Maybe it was my decision to stop being a weirdo about his incredible digs, but Ben really warmed up to me that afternoon. We always had a decent relationship at school, but it never went beyond flirting. In his house that day, we opened to each other like blossoms, talking about everything and nothing under the sun. We didn’t do a lick of work on the project, instead talking about our hopes and dreams and fears.

“I want to play basketball,” Ben said, “but my parents say there’s no future in it.”

“Why?” I scoffed. I knew dozens of boys who wanted to play basketball, to be the next Jordan or Lebron or Shaq, but Ben was legitimately good on the court. “You’re good at it.”

He shrugged. “My parents say I have to go to school, and that’s final,” he said. “I’m supposed to get a business degree and focus on my studies.”

“Why can’t you focus on your studies and play basketball at school?” I asked. “Don’t you get to the NBA through college, anyways?”

“I guess,” Ben said. “But my parents would never let me. What about yours? Are they ever unfair like that?”

My parents would probably let me skip rope in the middle of the street if only for their utter lack of interest in me, but I didn’t think it’d be right to say so. My grandmother was raising me because of the fact that neither of my parents was responsible enough to raise a child. I couldn’t even remember what they looked like, sounded like, or smelled like. Gran didn’t keep any pictures around the house.

“I want to be a fashion model,” I said softly, slowly raising my eyes to meet his. My glare was challenging, defiant, daring him to say different, but he nodded solemnly instead, considering it.

“You’re tall,” he said, “and you have good skin. You like fashion?”

“I love it,” I breathed, and I loved the boy in front of me for not ridiculing me for my dream.

“You should wear prettier stuff to school,” Ben said. “It’s like you wear these ratty old jeans every day.”

I swallowed as I fingered the faded denim. These were my only jeans, and I couldn’t afford any of the fashion I craved.

“I wish I could,” I whispered, and Ben looked cowed.

“I’m sorry—”

I waved off his apology, and his pity.

“I bet I could figure something out,” I said. “All right. I’ll start wearing prettier things to school, and you start standing up to your parents and telling them that you’re going to play basketball no matter what they think.”

“I wish I could,” Ben said, shrugging helplessly.

Ben’s butler—his butler!—brought us snacks to the office, commenting on how hard we must be working even if our textbooks remained firmly shut, resting on the floor. I gobbled down little doughy pockets of pizza, handfuls of chips I could tell were name brand, and slurped soda from a can with a bendy straw.

              Shoot. I’d do anything my parents told me to do if I lived in a house like Ben’s, I decided.

It was hard to go home to my grandmother that night and the squalid apartment I’d been raised in.

Gran was kind to me, but she rarely missed an opportunity to remind me that she took me in because her daughter—my mother—and the man who’d knocked her up were hapless losers. I hated to think of what that might make me, but Gran seemed to love me well enough. I hoped she didn’t hold my dubious parentage against me.

We lived in a little hovel of an apartment on the sixteenth floor of a housing project. The walls were like cardboard, and I could hear every child’s cry, every domestic dispute, and every sexual act within three apartments on either side of ours.

I was well versed in creative cursing—as well as various sexual practices—at what couldn’t have been an appropriate age. Gran survived on her pension checks, which we struggled to stretch from month to month. Gran wasn’t in good health, and the frequent trips to the doctor’s offices took as much out of her strength as they did her wallet. There were nights when I went to bed with my stomach grumbling, but I could stand that more than I could stand the thought of asking Gran for something else to eat. She made every scrap of food stretch, and nothing ever went to waste.

              I assessed my sad wardrobe that night, taking stock of what I had in an attempt to be more fashionable, for Ben’s sake. I had one pair of jeans, which I wore every day, a skirt, which I wore whenever Gran felt strong enough to walk the three blocks to church, about four T-shirts in varying states of wear and tear, one sweater, a coat, a pair of sneakers, and a pair of dress shoes.

              There were people worse off than me. I knew this because I passed them in the street as they begged for coins and drank from bottles swathed in paper bags. But there was no way I was anywhere near to being fashionable. If only we had a little money for me to buy just one new outfit to impress Ben.

              I knew that thought was impossible. We barely had enough money to buy dinner, let alone feed my fashion hysteria.

I pored over old fashion magazines I’d found in trashcans or bought at discount from shops around the neighborhood, trying to glean ways to look good. I unbraided my cornrows and studied myself in the mirror. I had nice, tight curls, not like some of the other girls at school who had that loose, fluffy kink. I decided that I could rock a cute, hip fro and call it a throwback look to the 1970s. I snagged Gran’s scissors and did the best I could until my curls were even all around my head. It made me look older, more mature and less streetwise. I loved it.

I’d do my makeup tomorrow, I decided, going through Gran’s drawer. There was a bit of red lipstick I could use on my own full lips, and I could rub a bit on my cheeks for a little color. I tried it out for practice and liked the ruddiness it brought to my mahogany skin. Gran didn’t have anything like eye shadow or mascara, but she did have an eyelash curler. I’d simply have to make do with that.

              I left the bathroom feeling like I was on top of the world, but I was brought back down to the ground again when I thought about my wardrobe situation. I twirled the scissors on my fingers, looking at my sad choices, back and forth from my pile of clothes to the models strutting down catwalks and striking poses on street corners on the pages of the magazines.

I frowned and examined one of my rattier T-shirts critically, comparing it to a model in a fringed shirt. I could do that, couldn’t I? Take the torn hem at the bottom of the shirt and cut upward, again and again, until I had a dainty row of fringes.

I tried it on over my skirt, then looped my lone sweater over my shoulders. I modeled that look in the bathroom mirror until a knock came on the door.

“Shonda? What are you doing in there?”

              Gran was the only person who didn’t call me Shimmy, and it always made me feel funny, like I was a different person at home. Cringing, I opened the door, sure that she was going to fuss at me for cutting up perfectly good clothes and for mauling my hair.

Instead of berating me, she gasped rapturously.

“Look at my baby girl,” she cooed, pinching my reddened cheeks, “all grown up. How’d you do this, Shonda?”

Guiltily, I held our Gran’s scissors.

“You’re not mad, Gran?” I asked, hardly able to believe it.

              “If it makes you happy, it makes me happy,” she said. I hoped I wouldn’t have to soon add senility to the list of Gran’s health problems. A few short years earlier, she’d tan my hide for cutting up clothes or cutting on my own hair.

“It looks good, doesn’t it?” I asked excitedly, turning back to the mirror. The fringes swung merrily, adding a high-fashion texture and dimension to my outfit. I’d wear my sneakers instead of my dress shoes, which would be both comfortable and unexpected. That’s what fashion was all about: doing something unexpected and succeeding at it.

“You’re becoming a beautiful young woman right before my eyes,” Gran said. “I can hardly believe it. Honey, we need to have the talk.”

My insides crawled. Talk? What talk? What knowledge could Gran possibly impart that I didn’t already know thanks to the thin walls of the apartment, the terrible neighborhood, or my classmates at school?

“Don’t give me that look,” Gran said, dragging me from the bathroom and into the tiny living room that also doubled as a kitchen. There was a pot of pasta boiling on the hot plate for dinner.

“Gran, I already know everything about everything,” I said, trying to head her off before things got awkward.

“Uh-huh,” she said, her voice telling me she didn’t believe it for a second. “And do you know how to keep boys from breaking your heart?”

Taken aback, I shook my head.

“Don’t give it to them until you’re certain they won’t,” Gran said. “Don’t let boys tell you you’re pretty or ugly or fat or thin. You decide for yourself, and you stick to it. Put yourself first, Shonda, and remember that no one can bring you down but yourself.”

Gran was a no-nonsense, few-frills woman, and this kind of advice floored me. I’d always felt like she was old-fashioned, but this was hardcore feminist shit.

“And don’t just give it up for any boy you cross paths with,” Gran added, making me groan and cover my face.

“Gran,” I groused. “Please. I’m eighteen years old.”

              “And you are ripe for the plucking,” she insisted.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I’d been plucked by several different guys before this particular chat. There was one, though, who I had my eye on, the reason for my little makeover. I was falling head over heels for Ben, and I hoped that my transformation would show him I took him seriously.