Pleading Guilty (37 page)

"Where are you?" asked Martin when he came to the phone. "Out and about. -

"About where?" There was a new note here, a harsh tensile quality to his voice. I'd heard Martin talk like this to opponents, the man raised among tough guys.

"About where I am. What's up?"

"We need to talk."

-Okay."

"In person. I'd like you to come in."

It struck me just like that--Martin was doing me wrong. Pig-eyes was sitting there, with his smug smile, loving it as my mentor delivered the sucker punch. Then, just as quickly, I rejected the thought. After all the sewage under the bridge, I still wanted to believe in the guy. There are no victims.

"What's our general subject?" I asked.

"Your investigation. There's a document you found, apparently." The memo. He'd talked to Glyndora. He was going to posture. He was going to be magical Martin, potent and charming. However slyly, he was going to ask me to give it back. I breathed in the phone.

"No can do." Sentiment was one thing, but I wasn't going anywhere near the Needle with Pigeyes and his posse posted nearby.

"Just maintain the status quo, will you?" said Martin. "Will you promise me that?"

Without answering, I put down the phone.

I called in again at five-thirty. Brushy picked up herself. "He's ready to see you," she said.

"Don't say anything else."

"Okay. But how can I get this message to you?"

I thought a second. "Maybe you should come see me." "What about being followed?"

"You and I had lunch last week."

"Right."

"And then we went somewhere else."

"Okay." The hotel. She got it.

"Before we went upstairs, you went somewhere on your own. Remember?"

She laughed a little when she caught my drift.

"That's where you'll be? Where I went?"

"Center pew. One hour."

"0-kay," she sang. If I said so.

B. Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places, Part 2

The bar at the Dulcimer House hotel has one of those great after-work scenes where the young gals, the secretaries and bank tellers and female functionaries who are not sure if they're looking for fun or a life, go to be ogled and throw back half-price drinks while various guys, bachelors and married fellas with undisciplined dicks, line up three deep at the bar, hoping for some quick drunken action to think of tomorrow at work. As I stood in the distinguished lobby, with its wedding-cake ceiling ribboned in gold, the emanations from the bar intruded, strange as radio signals from deep space: the booming dance music, the garlicky reek of various warm hors d'oeuvres, the carousing voices hoarse with thwarted emotion and ambient lust. The restrooms were down a short carpeted corridor off the lobby. I waited outside the Ladies', which Brushy had visited as we were checking in last week. Pigeyes would never work with a female cop and he was too old-line and prudish to even think of following her in. He'd wait at the door like Lassie. I spent about five minutes in the hallway, circumspectly checking out the ingress and egress, then stopped a young lady ready to enter.

"Say, my wife's been in there awhile. Would you let me know if she's okay when you come out?"

She was back in a jiffy.

"There's nobody in there."

"No," I said. She was standing at the door, which was decorated with a buxom silhouette, and I held it with one hand and gradually slid into the vestibule, pushing shyly at the inner door. "Shirley?" I called, averting my face so I did not even peek. I turned a little more front and center, yelled in again, and heard my voice ringing off the pink tiles. The girl hunched her shoulders and went back to party.

As soon as she was gone, I stalked into the john and locked myself in the center stall. Resting my briefcase on the toilet paper dispenser, I stood up on the fixture so that no gal would see my wingtips and start yodeling. I squatted there hoping Brushy would be hasty. At 255, my thighs would burn out quickly.

I found myself eye level with two bolt holes originally meant to hold some coat hook or other apparatus. Unutilized, they could serve from this peculiar vantage as a kind of peephole. A gentleman never would, of course, but who said I was Sir Galahad? About a minute along, a great-looking gal in a black dress with tassels entered the stall next to me and I got, as usual, just what I deserved. She didn't touch her zipper or hike her skirt. Instead, she took a minute to remove her rings, then put the middle three fingers of her right hand as far down her throat as could fit. When they came out, she touched each hand to the metal sides of the stall, bucked her head deliriously a couple of times, and puked her guts out. Varoom. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The force of it all drove her down to her knees, and she shook her fine head of black curls a little bit, then cleared her throat with a crackling expulsion. A second later I peeped over the top of the stall and saw her by the sink freshening her breath with an atomizer. She tossed out her curls with her long red nails and shoved her boobs back into her push-up bra with a hand underneath each, then lingered to give herself a sizzling look in the mirror. Wednesday night and ready for fun.

I was still trying to figure out what to make of that one when I heard Brushy say my name. She rattled the door. After I closed us in together, she gave me a big smooch, right there next to the toilet bowl.

"I think this is all very exciting," she whispered. That was Brushy, part of what had led her on the world penis tour or ignited some of her interest in me: raw curiosity, the fact that she wanted to see life's every side, savor every far-flung expeHence. As I've said, I always find female bravery notable and attractive.

"So where is he?" I asked.

"Wait. Don't you want to hear how I shook the tail?" She loved the lingo, the cops and robbers. Brushy thought she was in a movie where I was going to do something smart and save us all, not run away with the money. She described a circuitous route through various buildings in Center City, a stop at a client's, and entry here through the back door of the bar. She would have eluded Joe Friday.

She was searching through her little black purse when we heard the restroom door open. I jumped back up on the bowl, so that I was basically rubbing my zipper on Brushy's nose. Being Brushy, she found this pretty amusing. I covered my lips with a straight finger, and just to let me know she cared, Brush gave my pecker a pat and took the opportunity to start unzipping my fly. I swatted her hand.

The water ran at the sink. Somebody was doing a makeover. Brushy tugged on the zipper. I scowled and mouthed various vituperations, but she loved the circumstance, me in this bondage of silence and place, and pretty soon she was down to business and getting a response. She had old J. P. out there, touch, kiss, prod, and consume, aided by some quick dancing work of the fingertips, and she might have finished if some gal hadn't pulled into the stall next door. The nearby audience diminished my interest, but the whispers and giggling and squirming around were apparently audible to our neighbor, who seemed to jump up. On her way out she put one eye to the breach between the stall door and the post and said, "Weird."

"You are," I said, when we were alone again. "Weird."

"To be continued," Brushy answered. I was in my rough tweed sport jacket, and when she saw my sour look she dug her fingers in. "Come on, Mack. This is wild. Be wild. Enjoy it."

I just shook my head and asked about Bert. She gave me th
e n
ote he had faxed: "Behind 462 Salguro. so p
. M
." Recognizing the address, I laughed.

"It's the Russian Bath."

"Aren't they closed then?"

"I suppose that's the point."

"Will you come see me afterwards?"

"They're gonna sit on your house, Brush. They might." She was funny and melodramatic. "Is this goodbye forever?" I don't think she liked the uncompromising square-jawed expression she got in response. She wanted to be lovey-dovey and lighthearted here in the bathroom stall, giddy and teenaged, as if singing a chorus or two of "I Got You, Babe" would conquer all.

"I want to see you," she said. "I want to make sure you're all right."

"I'll call."

She gave me the eye. After all, she'd followed me to Central America. So we made a plan. She wouldn't go home, because Gino might pick her up there. Instead, she'd grab a taxi, have it circle the block twice to see if she was being followed. Maybe in the movies coppers can tail somebody for days unseen, but in real life it takes four cars at least, someone to go in every direction, and if the mark knows you're there, nine times out of ten you get lost or he's flipping you off in the rearview or sending you a round when you follow him into a tavern. If she came away without company, we agreed Brushy would go to a chain hotel three blocks down. Just check in for the night. Leave a key at the desk. And buy me a toothbrush.

I told her to take off first now. I waited in the vestibule between the doors and she rapped once to signal the hallway was clear. Then I gave her a few minutes to get a lead and take any trailing companions with her. Naturally some old biddy with flossed-up beauty-parlor hair came in then and did a triple-take and a haughty who-are-you look, and I had to pirouette aroun
d a
nd play like I thought this all-pink enclosure was actually the men's room and then bow my way back out the door.

No Pigeyes in sight, none of his pals. I put on a winter hat and drew up my muffler and went out to see if I could talk a hack into taking a ride at night into the West End. I was thinking about Brushy. She had kissed me goodbye in the bathroom, a long, lingering embrace full of all her spunk and ardor, and issued fateful advice before disappearing: "Don't get another rash."

Chapter
XXV. THE SECRET LIFE OF

KAM ROBERTS, PART TWO

I got to the West End with more than an hour and a half to spare and I spent the time in a little Latin bar on the corner near the Bath where almost no English was spoken. I sat sipping soda pops, sure every second that I was going to break down and order a drink. I was thinking about Brushy and not enjoying it much, wondering what-all that was coming to, whether I wanted what she did or could give it, and as a result, I was in one of my most attractive moods, refusing to move my elbows and waiting for somebody to try to hoist my no-good Anglo ass. But the fellas here were pretty good-natured. They were watching one of those taped boxing matches from Mexico City on the bar TV, commenting en espariol, and taking peeks now and then at yours truly, figuring all in all I was too big to mess with. Eventually I got into the mood, joshing with them, throwing around my four or five words of Spanish, and recalling my longtime conclusion that a neighborhood joint like this might be the single best class of places on earth. I was more or less raised at The Black Rose, a terrible thing to admit maybe, considering the rumpot I turned out to be, but in a neighborhood of tenements and tiny homes, people longed for a place where they could expand, lift an elbow without knocking down the crockery.

At the Rose, it was all right if your wife came; there were kids running round the tables and jerking on their mothers' sleeves; there was singing and those jokes. Humans warmed by one another's company. And me, as a kid, I couldn't ever wait to get out of there, to blow the whole scene. I recollected this with chagrin, but suspected for reasons I couldn't explain that I'd end up feeling the same way if you put me back there today. Ten o'clock even, I headed out and walked down the alley. This was a big-city neighborhood where the cops and the mayor long ago installed those orange sodium lights with their garish candlepower that seemed to turn the world black and white, but the alley was still all kinds of menacing shadows--garbage cans and dumpsters, sinister alcoves and iron-barred doorways, a lot of lurking spots for Mr. S/D, Stranger Danger, to smile and wield his knife. Walking on, I had the usual dry rot in the mouth and watery knees. I heard a grating clank and stopped dead. Someone was out here waiting for me. I reminded myself that was how it was supposed to be, I was meeting somebody. When I got closer, I saw a figure beckoning. It was the Mexican, Jorge, Mr. Third World Anger, who'd questioned me the day I was down here. He stood in the alley in bathroom slippers and an iridescent blue silk robe. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets and you could see the great puffs of his breath hazing above him in a blade of light angling from the doorway behind. He chucked his face in my direction and said, "Eh."

Bert was inside, out of sight of the door. We seemed to be in a supply area behind the locker room, and he greeted me as eagerly as he had the other night. Meanwhile, Jorge engaged the dead bolt on the door and padded off. Apparently he was going back to sleep. He paused to poke his head down the hall. "When you leave, lock it. And, men, don't leave nobody see your ass. I don' want no fuckin shit here. I tole you a long time ago, hombre, you was fucked up, all fucked up." He said this to Bert, but he pointed at me. "I tole you, too."

Jorge, Bert said, had to get up at four, arrange the stone
s w
hich had been in the oven firing all night, and make the place ready for the bathers who'd begin arriving as early as 5:30 a
. M
. I wondered where Jorge stood with the outfit guys. There were a lot of them that came around here to steam off the stink of corruption and ugly deeds. Jorge, I suspected, kept everyone's secrets. But if a guy with a tommy gun or a coat hanger knocked on the front door now, Jorge'd point out where we were and go back to sleep. It was a tough life.