Mortal Stakes (8 page)

”I beg your pardon?“

”I didn’t understand that either,“ I said. ”Look, here’s my plan. If you can get the afternoon off, I will escort you to the baseball game, buy you some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, and you won’t care if you ever come back.“

”Do I get dinner afterwards?“

”Certainly and afterwards we can go to an all-night movie and neck. What do you say?“

”Oh, be still my heart,“ she said. ”Shall I meet you at the park?“

”Yeah, Jersey Street entrance. You’ll recognize me at once by the cluster of teenyboppers trying to get me to autograph their bras.“

”I’ll hurry,“ she said.

MIDTOWN EAST SIDE in Manhattan is the New York they show in the movies. Elegant, charming, clean, ”I bought you violets for your furs.“ Patricia Utley occupied a four-story town house on East Thirty-seventh, west of Lexington. The building was stone, painted a Colonial gray with a wrought-iron filigree on the glass door and the windows faced in white. Two small dormers protruded from the slate mansard roof, and a tiny terrace to the right of the front door bloomed with flowers against the green of several miniature trees. Red geraniums and white patient Lucys in black iron pots lined the three granite steps that led up to the front door.

A well-built man with gray hair and a white mess jacket answered my ring. I gave him my card. ”For Patricia Utley,“ I said.

”Come in, please,“ he said and stepped aside. I entered a center hall with a polished flagstone floor and a mahogany staircase with white risers opposite the door. The black man opened a door on the right-hand wall, and I went into a small sitting room that looked out over Thirty-seventh Street and the miniature garden. The walls were white-paneled, and there was a Tiffany lamp in green, red, and gold hanging in the center of the room. The rugs were Oriental, and the furniture was Edwardian.

The butler said, ”Wait here, please,“ and left. He closed the door behind him.

There was a mahogany highboy on the wall opposite the windows with four cut-glass decanters and a collection of small crystal glasses. I took the stoppers out of the decanters and sniffed. Sherry, cognac, port, Calvados. I poured myself a glass of the Calvados. On the wall opposite the door was a black marble fireplace, and on either side floor-to-ceiling bookcases. I looked at the titles: The Complete Works of Charles Dickens, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill, Longfellow: Complete Poetical and Prose Works, H. G. Wells’s The Outline of History, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, with illustrations by Rockwell Kent.

The door opened behind me, and a woman entered. The butler closed it softly behind her.

”Mr. Spenser,“ she said, ”I’m Patricia Utley,“ and put out her hand. I shook it. She looked as if she might have read all the books and understood them. She was fortyish, small and blond with good bones and big black-rimmed round glasses. Her hair was pulled back tight against her head with a bun in the back. She was wearing an off-white sleeveless linen dress with blue and green piping at the hem and along the neckline. Her legs were bare and tanned.

”Please sit down,“ she said. ”I see you have a drink.

Good. How may I help you?“ I sat on the sofa. She sat opposite me on an ottoman. Her knees together, ankles crossed, hands folded in her lap.

”I’m looking for information about a girl named Donna Burlington who you probably knew about eight years ago.“ I showed her the picture.

”And why would you think I know anything about her, Mr. Spenser?“

”One of your colleagues suggested that she had left his employ and joined your firm.“

”I’m sorry, I don’t understand.“ Her blue eyes were direct and steady as she looked at me. Her face without lines.

”Well, ma’am, I don’t mean to be coarse, but an East Village pimp named Violet told me she moved uptown and went to work for you in the late fall of nineteen sixty-six.“

”I’m afraid I don’t know anyone named Violet,“ she said.

”Tall, thin guy, aggressive dresser, but small-time. No reason for you to know him. The Pinkerton Agency has never heard of me either.“

”Oh, I’m sure you’re well known in your field, Mr.

Spenser.“ She smiled, and a dimple appeared in each cheek.

”But I really don’t see how I can help you. This Violet person has misled you, I suppose for money. New York is a very grasping city.“

The room was cool and silent, central air conditioning.

I sipped the Calvados, and it reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since about seven thirty. It was now almost four thirty. ”Ms.

Utley,“ I said, ”I don’t wish to rock your boat and I don’t want anything bad to happen to Donna Burlington, I just need to know about her.“

”Ms. Utley,“ she said. ”That’s charming, but it’s Mrs., thank you.“

”Okay, Mrs. Utley, but what I said stands. I need to know about Donna Burlington. Confidential. No harm to anyone, and I can’t tell you why. But I need to know.“ I finished the brandy. She stood, took my glass, filled it, and set it down on the marble-topped coffee table in front of me. Her movements were precise and graceful and stylish. So was she.

”I have no quarrel with that, Mr. Spenser, but I can’t help you. I don’t know the young lady, nor can I imagine how anyone could think that I might.“

”Mrs. Utley, I know we’ve only met, but would you join me for dinner?“

”Is that part of your technique, Mr. Spenser? Candlelight and wine and perhaps I’ll remember something about the young lady?“

”Well, there’s that,“ I said. ”But I hate to eat alone.

The only people I know in the city are you and Violet, and Violet already had a date.“

”Well, I don’t know about being second choice to—what was it you said—an East Village pimp?“

”I’ll tell you about my most exciting cases,“ I said.

”Why, I remember one I call the howling dog caper.

The dimple reappeared.

“And I’ll do a one-hand push-up for you, and sing a dozen popular songs, pronouncing the lyrics so clearly that you can hear every word.”

“And if I still refuse?”

“Then I go down to Foley Square and see if I can find someone in the DA’s office that knows you and might put in a word for me.”

“I do not like to be threatened, Mr. Spenser.”

“Desperation,” I said. “Loneliness and desire make a man crazy. Here, look at the kind of treat ahead of you.” I put my glass on the end table, got down on the rug, and did a onehand push-up. I looked up at her from the push-up position, my left hand behind my back. “Want to see another one?” I said.

She was laughing. Silently at first with her face serious but her stomach jiggling and giving her away, and then aloud, with her head back and the dimples big enough to hold a ripe olive.

“I’ll go,” she said. “Let me change, and we’ll go. Now, for God sakes, get off the floor, you damn fool.”

I got up. “The old one-hand push-up,” I said. “Gets them almost every time.”

She didn’t take long. I had time to sip one more brandy before she reappeared in a backless white dress that tied around the neck and had a royal blue sash around the middle.

Her shoes matched the sash, and so did her earrings.

I said, “Hubba, hubba.”

“Hub-ba, hub-ba? What on earth does that mean?”

“You look very nice,” I said. “Where would you like to go?”

“There’s a lovely restaurant uptown a little ways we could try, if you’d like.”

“I’m in your hands,” I said. “This is your city.”

“You are not, I would guess, ever in anyone’s hands, Spenser, but I think you’ll like this place.”

“Cab?” I said.

“No, Steven will drive us.”

When we went out the front door, there was the same well-built black man, sitting at the wheel of a Mercedes sedan. He’d swapped his mess jacket for a blue blazer.

We drove uptown.

The restaurant was at Sixty-fifth Street on the East Side and was called The Wings of the Dove.

I said.

“Do you suppose they serve the food in a golden bowl?”

“I don’t believe so. Why do you ask?”

“Henry James,” I said. “It’s a book joke.”

“I guess I haven’t read it.”

It was only five thirty when we went in. Too early for most people to go to dinner, but most people had probably eaten lunch. I hadn’t. It was a small restaurant, with a lavish dessert table in the foyer and two rooms separated by an archway. The ceiling was frosted glass that opened out, like a greenhouse, and the walls were used brick, some from the original building, some quite artfully integrated with the original. The tablecloths were pink, and there were flowers and green plants everywhere, many of them in hanging pots.

The maitre d‘ in a tuxedo said, “Good evening, Mrs.

Utley. We have your table.”

She smiled and followed him. I followed her. One wall of the restaurant was mirrored, and it gave the illusion of a good deal more space than there was. I checked myself as we filed in. The suit was holding up, I’d had a haircut just last week, if only a talent scout from Playgirl spotted me.

“Would you care for cocktails?”

Patricia Utley said, “Campari on the rocks with a twist, please, John.”

I said, “Do you have any draft beer?”

The maitre d’ said, “No.”

I said, “Do you have any Amstel in bottles?”

He said, “No.”

I said to Patricia Utley, “Is Nedick’s still open?”

She said to the maitre d‘, “Bring him a bottle of Heineken, John.”

The maitre d’ said, “Certainly, Mrs. Utley,” and stalked toward the kitchen.

She looked at me and shook her head slowly. “Are you ever serious, Spenser?”

“Yes, I am,” I said. “I am serious, for instance, about discussing Donna Burlington with you.”

“And I am serious when I say to you, why should you think I’d know her?”

“Because you are in charge of a high-priced prostitution operation and are bankrolled with what my source refers to as heavy money. Now I know it, and you know it, and why not stop the pretense? The truth, Mrs. Utley, will set us free.”

“All right,” she said, “say you are correct. Why should I discuss it with you?”

A waiter brought our drinks and I waited while he put them down. Mine rather disdainfully, I thought.

“Because I can cause you aggravation—cops, newspapers, maybe the feds—maybe I could cause you trouble, I don’t know. Depends on how heavy the bankrollers really are.

If you talk with me, then it’s confidential, there’s no aggravation at all. And I might do another one-arm push-up for you.”

“What if my bankrollers decided to cause you aggravation?”

“I have a very high aggravation tolerance.”

She sipped her Campari. “It’s funny, or maybe it’s not funny at all, but you’re the second person who’s come asking about Donna.”

“Who else?”

“He never said, but he was quite odd. He was, oh, what, in costume, I guess you’d say. Dressed all in white, white suit and shirt, white tie, white shoes and a big white straw hat like a South American planter.”

“Tall and slim? Chewed gum?”

“Yes.”

I said, “Aha.”

“Aha?”

“Yeah, like Aha I see a connection, or Aha I have discovered a clue. It’s detective talk.”

“You know who he is then.”

“Yes, I do. What did he want?”

She sipped some more Campari. I drank some Heineken. “Among my enterprises,” she said, “is a film business. This gentleman had apparently seen Donna in one of our films and wanted the master print.”

“Aha, aha!” I said. “Corporate diversification.” The waiter came for our order. When he was gone, I said, “Start from the beginning. When did you meet Donna, what did she do for you, what kind of film was she in, tell me all.”

“Very well, if you promise not to keep saying Aha.”

“Agreed.”

“Donna came to me through a client. He’d picked her up down in the East Village when he was drunk.” She grimaced. “She was working for Violet then; her boyfriend had pimped for her before but had run from Violet. I don’t know what happened to the boyfriend. The client thought she was too nice a girl to be hustling out of the back of a car with a two-dollar pimp like Violet. He put her in touch with me.”

The waiter came with our soup. I had gazpacho; Patricia Utley had vichyssoise.

“I run a very first-rate operation, Spenser.”

“I can tell that,” I said.

“Of course, I would deny this to anyone if it ever came up.”

“It won’t. I don’t care about your operation. I only care about Donna Burlington.”

“But you disapprove.”

“I don’t approve or disapprove. To tell you the truth, Mrs. Utley, I don’t give a damn. I think about one thing at a time. Right now I’m thinking about Donna Burlington.”

“It’s a volunteer business,” she said. “It exists because men have needs.” She said it as if the needs had a foul odor.

“Now who’s disapproving?”

“You don’t know,” she said. “You’ve never seen what I’ve seen.”

“About Donna Burlington,” I said.

“She was eighteen when I took her. She didn’t know anything. She didn’t know how to dress, how to do her hair, how to wear makeup. She hadn’t read anything, been anyplace, talked to anyone. I had her two years and taught her everything. How to walk, how to sit, how to talk with people. I gave her books to read, showed her how to make up, how to dress.”

The waiter brought the fish. Sole in a saffron sauce for her. Scallops St. Jacques for me.

“You and Rex Harrison,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “It was rather like that. I liked Donna, she was a very unsophisticated little thing. It was like having a, oh not a daughter, but a niece perhaps. Then one day she left. To get married.”

“Who’d she marry?”

“She wouldn’t tell me—a client, I gathered, but she wouldn’t say whom, and I never saw her again.”

“When was this?”

Patricia Utley thought for a moment. “It was the same year as the Cambodian raids and the great protest, nineteen seventy. She left me in winter nineteen seventy. I remember it was winter because I watched her walk away in a lovely fur-collared tweed coat she had.”

The waiter cleared the fish and put down the salad, spinach leaves with raw mushrooms in a lemon and oil dressing. I took a bite. So-so. “I assume the films were what I used to call dirty movies when I was a kid.”