Parishioner (27 page)

The Regency Arms was a smallish hotel with a café that had seven round tables across the way from the registration desk. Ecks picked a seat that was partially hidden by a decorative pillar and ordered country pâté garnished with gherkins and pickled pearl onions, and a cappuccino with an extra shot of espresso. He took out his book and started reading about the decline of Rome.

No one bothered him. As long as he was quiet and ordered something every forty-five minutes or so they were happy to have his patronage.

“Hey, mister,” a young voice said.

Ecks looked up to see a slender young white girl, no older than nineteen, wearing a fake white fur, bright blue hair, and little else except stiltlike high heels. Her youth made her pretty, but Ecks could see by the lines in her face that aging would change that fact.

“Yeah?” Ecks said. He was tired of reading.

“You want a date?”

“No. You want a cup of coffee?”

“I’m on the job, mister.”

“Even a working stiff takes a coffee break now and then. Tell you what—I’ll buy you a drink and give you twenty to sit here and tell me what’s what up on Hollywood.”

“My feet
are
tired,” she said.

“My feet would break in shoes like that.”

The girl sniggered and lowered into the chair across from the Parishioner.

A waiter Ecks hadn’t seen before hurried over to the table.

“Excuse me,” he began. It was obvious that he was going to object to the girl putting her bottom on his chair.

“Bella here wants a caffe latte and a ham sandwich with the fixings on the side.”

The strength behind Ecks’s words contained a warning that the host heard clearly.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“My name’s not Bella,” she said when the waiter had gone.

“Bella means ‘very pretty’ in Italian, I’m told,” Ecks said. “And so even if that’s not your name I could call you that anyway.”

“You a pimp?” she asked easily, probing professionally, looking, as all prostitutes do, for an exit sign.

“Used to be. A long time ago and many miles from here.”

“You quit?”

“Yeah.”

“How come?” Her eyes were almost saffron in color.

“I realized that I like women too much.”

“You let ’em lead you around by the nose?”

“No, baby,” Ecks said with emphasis in lieu of a longer explanation.

“You look like you could take care’a yourself and a whole string of women too.”

“Oh, yeah. But you don’t have to do everything you can. Matter of fact, I’ve found that it’s best to hone yourself down to the one or two things you like most.”

The waiter returned with the coffee in a glass mug and a sandwich on an oval platter.

“We’re going to need this table soon,” he said to Xavier.

“Listen here, brother,” the black man said to the white one. “I’m gonna sit here and eat and drink and talk to my friend until I’m finished. And you can call the cops or maybe some bouncer you got in the back room somewhere. But if you do you’ll regret it; I can promise you that.”

Before the waiter could back away the young woman was eating her sandwich. She ate hungrily, tearing at the bread and meat with her small sharp teeth.

“You’re hungry,” he said.

She nodded and he noticed Benol Richards walking in with a tall white man in a black overcoat. She was wearing a golden dress that was a little too short and had an odd contrast with her caramel-colored skin. They were intent on their conversation and so did not notice Ecks and his date at the table behind the pillar. They walked to the elevator and she pushed the button.

“They never feed me,” the young woman said.

“Who doesn’t?” Ecks asked, still watching his quarry.

“My dates,” she said. “They always want me to drink with them. Sometimes they want me to take drugs. But you know I’d rather have a chili burger than drop Ecstasy with some fat pervert.”

The elevator doors opened. Six or seven young people came out. Benol and her middle-aged man-friend stood aside and then entered the lift. They got in and disappeared from sight. The digital counter above the doors said that they went to the sixth floor.

“Hey,” Ecks’s impromptu date said.

“Yeah?”

“Are you listening?”

“I don’t think they have chili burgers here.”

She grinned.

“My name is Pretty,” she said.

“So I was right.”

“What’s your name?”

“My name is Egbert but everybody calls me Ecks.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Ecks,” Pretty said, holding out a hand.

They shook and smiled at each other.

“You want a date now?” she asked.

“No.”

Pretty pouted appealingly, but it was obvious to Xavier that she didn’t mean it.

“You don’t like me?” she asked.

“It’s not that. You see, Bella, I’m a kind of investigator and I’m on the job.”

“You followin’ that woman in the gold dress and Jerry?”

“You know him?”

“This hotel has twelve floors. Nine are for people who rent rooms on business or vacation. The other three are split up between Roger Dees, Terra Hauk, and Jerry—the man you was watchin’. They got girls up there do just about anything. It’s cause’a the women upstairs that us outside girls cruise through the café once a night or so. There’s always guys who want another flavor after they get it on upstairs.”

“What’s Jerry’s last name?”

“What’s it worth?”

“A ham sandwich and twenty bucks.”

The young whore liked Ecks’s sense of humor. She grinned.

“Jocelyn,” she said. “Jerry Jocelyn.”

If somebody tells you that what you’re searching for is like looking for a needle in a haystack
, Father Frank was fond of saying,
then tell them that you will put on magnetized gloves and set aside an afternoon to move a great pile of hay one handful at a time
.

Ecks reached into his pocket and took out a folded hundred-dollar bill—this he handed to his makeshift date.

“There’s something else,” he said as she took the money, looking around nervously for plainclothes vice cops.

“What?”

“You ever heard of Malcolm X?”

“No. He related to you?”

“He once gave a speech saying that there were two kinds of slaves,” Ecks said. “There was the house slave and the ones that worked out in the fields. The field nigger knew that he was a slave, nothing more than a piece of property to be worked to death out under a hot sun. But the house slave thought that he was better, a part of the family. If the white master got sick the house nigger would say, ‘Boss, is we sick?’ ”

Pretty laughed out loud. She had a big laugh, a healthy laugh. For a moment Ecks missed his previous life in New York.

“Malcolm X?” she said.

Ecks nodded.

“And he was black?”

“The best book about him was the one he wrote.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
.”

“I should read that.”

“Yes, you should.”

“Because you know the girls upstairs think they’re better’n us, but the minute their clients drop they will be askin’ me for tips on how to keep from gettin’ cut and beat up right out there on Hollywood Boulevard.”

She looked at her hand under the table and then at Ecks. She hesitated, almost said something and then didn’t.

“Um,” she finally uttered.

“What?”

“You give me a hundred-dollar bill, not a twenty.”

“I know.”

“I have to go,” she said.

“I know that too.”

Pretty stood up, pushed her pale little hand into the pocket of the fake fur. She produced a turquoise business card and placed it on the table.

“In case you ever change your mind,” she said.

Pretty turned and walked away.

Ecks studied the card. All that was on it was the prostitute’s first name, certainly an alias, and an e-mail address. He put it in his wallet and imagined the earth moving through space, spinning on its axis, and revolving around the sun.

It’s always impossible
, Frank would say after explaining how one searched for the proverbial needle.
Everything is. The red ball, the bolt of lightning, that feeling in your heart when someone says your name. Impossibility is our business—our only business
.

Half an hour later Jerry Jocelyn walked out of the elevator doors. He strode forward like a man of action and certainty. Ecks wondered as Jerry passed whether he should follow him, maybe even brace him. But he was in a philosophical mood and had no desire to enter another altercation unless that action had a definite purpose. And so he satisfied himself watching the upscale pimp leave the hotel.

“Can I use the house phone?” Ecks asked the dumpy guy standing behind a small podium upon which hung a sign that read,
Concierge
. He had waited twenty-three minutes to see whether Benol would reemerge from the elevator.

“Guests only,” he said with a trace of disdain on his lips.

“I need to speak to one of your guests.”

“Name?”

“Benol Richards.”

“Ben-what?”

“B-E-N-O-L, Benol.”

The hotel man had small shoulders on top of a big stomach. He obviously wasn’t paid enough to hire a tailor, and so the suit was ill fitting, and even though it was dark blue in color Ecks could still make out various stains. The name tag over his left breast read,
Ricardo
, but he was pale skinned with light brown hair, maybe forty.

Ricardo sighed. There was a notebook computer bolted to the podium. This he jabbed at with three fingers.

“I can try her room.”

“Please,” Ecks said.

Ricardo picked up the receiver and entered a few digits. He waited while looking Ecks in the eye.

“Hello? Hold a moment. What’s your name?” he asked Ecks.

“Father Frank’s friend, Egbert.”

“Egbert,” the man said into the line. He listened a moment and then hung up.

“She said that she’ll be right down.”

Someone had taken his seat and so Ecks went to a large round sofa that was placed maybe eight feet away from the elevator doors.

As he waited Ecks wondered why he didn’t see many prostitutes and johns in the lobby. He finally decided that there was a special entrance for these patrons either somewhere on that block or maybe on the next street over.