SK01 - Waist Deep (14 page)

”I mean in person.”

A small smile curled up at the corners of Rolo’s mouth.
“You her daddy, ain’tcha?”

“Something like that,” I said.

He shook his head, still smiling.
“Man, let me save you some heartache.
They don’t
ever
come back to their daddies.
Not once they been down here.”

I didn’t answer.
He was right about that.
They never did.
They were either too ruined by dope or too ashamed or too dead.

“What do you wanna know about her?” Rolo asked.
Now that he thought he had me figured out, he didn’t play coy any more.

“I want to find her,” I said.

Rolo just shook his head, that indulgent smile remaining on his lips.

“When did you see her last?” I asked.

“I ain’t never said I saw her,” Rolo said.

I pulled my remaining cash out of my jacket pocket.
I’d brought a hundred and fifty with me when I left my apartment.
Between the taxi rides, lunch, my “date” with Tiffany and the overpriced beer, I had fifty-seven dollars left.
I laid fifty on the table and replaced the remaining seven dollars in my jacket.

Rolo looked down at the bills with the same disdain he’d eyed my bottle of beer just a few minutes before.
“You think that impresses me?”

“It’s cash.
And it’s easy.”

Rolo snorted.
“Bitch, if I want your cash, I’ll just kick your lily white ass and take it.”
He paused a moment, then reached out and pulled the fifty bucks toward him.
“That’s a tax on you for sittin’ at my motherfuckin’ table and me not killin’ you for it.”

“Fair enough,” I said, “but let me offer you something else for that information.”

Rolo tucked the fifty dollars into his pocket.
“What’d that be?”

“Silence,” I told him.

Rolo stopped, caution creeping into his face.
The thump of bass and whine of 70s guitar faded to a hiss and the bar was quiet for another moment.

“Meaning what?”

It was my turn to lean forward.
Rolo waited, but curiosity got the best of him and he followed suit.

“Did you know she was
sixteen
when you were running her?” I whispered.

Rolo’s eyes widened slightly, but he recovered from that as quickly as he’d hidden the flicker of recognition earlier.
From the juke box,
a slow piano played.

“You some kind of cop?” he asked, leaning back.

I shook my head.
“I used to be.
And
I have a lot of friends who still are.”

“But you ain’t now.”

“No, I’m not.
But those friends of mine who might not normally be interested in what you got going on out here might suddenly get interested if they found out what you’re doing involves
sixteen
-
year
-
old girls.
This isn’t New York, after all.
This is River City, the All-American city.”

It wasn’t just that we were in River City, although that was part of it.
Anywhere in the state, simply
frequenting a juvenile prostitute is a felony.
Pimping them is a serious felony and aggressively investigated and prosecuted by River City PD.
My guess was that Rolo didn’t know she was underage and that when she said she was nineteen
or twenty
, he believed her.

Rolo’s eyes were hard as he glared at me.
“You threatenin’ me, bitch?
You threatenin’
me
?”

“Easy, man,” I said.
“I’m not making threats.
I’m offering you something of value, that’s all.
And since you’re a business man, I figure we can help each other here.”

Rolo’s glare slackened.
He glanced over at the skinny kid in the North Carolina jersey and lifted his chin at him.
The kid appeared at the booth a nanosecond later.

“Get me a paper,” Rolo told him.
“A Nickel Nik.”

The Nickel Nik was the local free paper that was exclusively classified ads.

“You going garage
saling?” I asked Rolo lightly as the kid trotted out of the bar.

Rolo shrugged at me.
“What?
A nigger can’t go pickin’ through white people’s throwaways?”

“I think the only color that matters at yard sales is green,” I said.

“That’s because you’re a white boy,” Rolo said.
“My black ass shows up in some white socialite’s driveway up north, and he’s already got the nine and the one dialed.”

I didn’t answer.
I wasn’t there to change his mind about the state of racism in our little white corner of America.

“’Course, the bitches usually runnin’ those sales?
The wives?
Some of them see m
e
come walkin’ up and they start to wonder what it might be like to catch a little jungle fever.”
Rolo chuckled, tapping his fingers lightly on the table.
He motioned over to the blonde hooker, who’d returned from the bathroom and taken a seat at the bar.
“That’s how I met Rhonda.”

I knew he was making it up, but I smiled anyway.

Rolo stopped chuckling and leaned forward a little. His voice turned low and deadly.
“I oughta dust your white ass for even thinkin’ you can sit at this table.
But thanks to Rhonda, I’m feeling all mellow and shit right now, so we’ll do it your way.
I’ll help you out.
You keep your mouth shut.
We cool?”

“Yeah.”

Rolo crossed his arms again.
“When were you five-oh, anyway?”

“A few years ago.”

“How many?
Like
exactly
.”

Why lie?
“I was a cop up until ten years ago.”

“And why you quit?
They fire your ass?”

“No.
I resigned.
”

“Why?”

“
Injuries.”

Rolo nodded.
“Injuries, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Still got those friends, though, huh?”

“Yeah.
Quite a few.”

Rolo continued to nod, working his lips again.
“All right, all right.
I guess we can do a little business here.
Whattya wanna know about the little white bitch?”

I cleared my throat.
“I know she ran with you for a little while.
Probably you didn’t know she was so young—“

“
Definitely
I did not know,” he said, punctuating each word.

I didn’t argue.

“I need to know where she went after she was with you,” I said.
“It’s that simple.”

Rolo chuckled again.
“’Simple,’ he says.
Man, there ain’t nothing simple these days.”

I waited while he chuckled some more.
The piano
on th
e jukebox was joined by slow, sad horns
.
The front door opened and an old black man that could’ve been brothers with the guy already at the bar staggered in and took a seat two stools down from him.
A brother from another mother, I mused.

Finally, Rolo said, “What’s this little girl’s real name?”

“Kris,” I told him.

“Kris,” he said, repeating it.
“Kris.
She said her name was Star.”

I felt a pang in my chest.

Rolo went on, “Anyway, her heart wasn’t in this work. She wanted to be a movie star.
She was hooked up with a white boy who does movies.”

“What kind of movies?” I asked, dread
ing the answer I knew was coming
.

“Fuck movies,” Rolo said.
“For the Internet.”

“Here in River City?”

Rolo smiled.
“What, you think this is
really
the All-American city?
That’s just some convenient lies people tell each other so they don’t have to face what it’s really like.”

“What’s that?”

“C’mon, man,” Rolo said.
“Brothers getting kept down, kids smoking crack and fucking like little white bunny rabbits, husbands fuckin’ ‘round on their wives, wives fuckin’ ‘round on their husbands, folks robbin’ the liquor store of its cash and the liquor store robbin’ folks of their lives.”
He shook his head at me.
“Open
up
your mutha fuckin’ eyes
and see it
.”

I was sorry I asked.
I wasn’t in the mood for Street Philosophy 101 taught by Rolo the Pimp.
I brought the discussion back to its point.
“So the movie guy is here in
town
?”

Rolo rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, like I said.”

“What’s his name?”

Rolo shook his head.
“Nuh-uh.
That isn’t part of our deal.
You can ask about
her.
That’s all.”

We stared at e
ach other for a long moment.
I thought about getting up and leaving then. He didn’t have any more information for me, not that he was willing to share.
Plus, he was studying my face closely and that made me nervous.

“You ain’t her daddy,” he said, matter-of-factly.

“Why do you say that?”
I picked her picture up from the table and
slipped it
into my back pocket.

“You ain’t,” Rolo said.
“I can tell.
You didn’t like hearing about the sex movies, but you sure as hell didn’t act like a daddy who just heard it.”

The door opened and a couple of people walked in.
I ignored them and
continued to look
directly at Rolo.
“No, I’m not her father.
I’m helping her father find her.
That’s all.”