The Girl From Nowhere (18 page)

“Save your breath,” she said. “We’ve got to move you, so try to be nice. I’ll be in touch later.”

As she signed off, something that smelled like a cocktail blended from rubbing alcohol, nail polish remover, and rotten fruit was sprayed onto the black hood. My knees turned to curds and whey and I landed on my tuffet. I was aware of being picked up and carried like a sack of potatoes. There were voices that sounded like they were coming from the bottom of a well, then I heard a door open and the noise of a busy street. I was placed in a vehicle of some kind, which seemed to be equipped with pothole-seeking radar. I slipped into a familiar dream in which I was fruitlessly chasing the Looney Tunes Road Runner through a desert landscape littered with old tires and pretty girls sunbathing alongside abandoned swimming pools. In this edition of the dream, all of the girls were the products of gender reassignment, but none looked the worse for it.

TWENTY

When I came
to, I found myself in the cellar of an old building with thick stone walls. The hood was gone and I was no longer tied or manacled, but the only door—which had a spy hatch in it, like the door of a prison cell—was a solid-looking job with heavy iron bars reinforcing the battens. It was bolted on the outside, and it took me about three seconds to figure out that it would require the offensive line of the Green Bay Packers, equipped with a battering ram, to separate it from its hinges. Where one wall met the ceiling there was a narrow ventilation shaft that allowed in street noises, but only a midget escapologist could have thought of it as offering any hope of freedom.

The cellar was large, but there wasn’t much room to move around because it was cluttered with crates, cartons, stacks of old newspapers and magazines, and piles of furniture. The latter included a variety of items, from office chairs to what appeared to be church pews. I suspected I might be in for another long wait, so I pulled out a broken-down recliner and made myself as comfortable as possible. I hadn’t been there for more than a few minutes, though, when the hatch on the door opened and Anthony’s ugly mug appeared. I was almost glad to see it.

“Charlie’s here to fit you,” he said, “so no fuckin’ around—okay?”

The door was unlocked and the pair of them entered, Charlie bringing my tux on a hanger, as well as shopping bags from Bloomingdale’s and Saks. The tux fit perfectly and the shopping bags contained a choice of dress shirts and bow ties, plus a selection of patent-leather shoes.

“How did you know my size?” I inquired.

“Took your fuckin’ sneakers off when you wuz snoozin’ ” said Anthony. “Put ’em back nice, an’ fuckin’ tied ’em myself, just like I was your fuckin’ mother.”

I picked a plain shirt and an old-fashioned bow tie so I wouldn’t look like Liberace. There was no mirror but I could tell I came off pretty cool, even if I didn’t feel that way. Whoever was throwing this shindig, I got the sense they’d want to make sure I didn’t overstay my welcome. This might be the last outfit I ever got to wear, but at least it would be better than making my exit in the thrift-store waiter’s suit I used to crawl into when I played weddings and bar mitzvahs with Danny and the Dingalings.

When Charlie was finished they took the stuff away, but Anthony said someone would be back for me soon.

“Don’t go anywhere without me,” he said as he locked the door.

Maybe half an hour later, the hatch opened again. This time it was Darla.

“Showtime,” she said. “We’re going to take you upstairs and clean you up.”

The door opened and I saw that the Yul Brynner stand-in was along for enforcement duty, looking pretty sharp himself in a one-button purple tux and a ruffled shirt, like the front man for some Puerto Rican salsa outfit. Better still, Darla was wearing a pastel-colored crepe number that looked like something Doris Day might have worn on a blind date with Rock Hudson
.
I followed them up a flight of stairs and into a familiar barn-sized space with Gothic windows covered with shades, though I could tell it was dark outside. Somewhere nearby there were voices, but no one was in sight.

“Know where you are?” Darla asked.

I told her I did.

“Ever take a shower here?”

“I can’t say I have. I might have peed here once or twice.”

“You can do that too,” she said. “I’ll hold it for you if you like.”

She led me to a lavishly appointed bathroom and told Yul Junior to stand guard outside.

“I’m going in to watch Lover Boy take his shower,” she told him. “I want to see if he comes as nicely equipped as you, sweetheart.”

Yul grinned.

“I guess you love your work,” I said as the door closed.

“Cut the crap and take off your clothes,” she whispered. “Let’s get that shower running so we can talk.”

That got me motivated. I pulled off my clothes as Darla turned on the faucet.

“Okay,” I said, feeling very naked but not very sexy, “so who are you?”

“Treasury Department,” she said. “This started as a money-laundering operation, but it’s turning into something very different.”

“Like what?”

“I wish I knew. Whatever it is, it’s got everybody running scared and it involves Sandy Smollett.”

“Garofolo and Sandy?”

“Garofolo’s in the mix somewhere.”

“Where is Sandy?”

“I don’t know for sure. Somewhere in the building probably, but I’m not sure.”

“Okay—this is Yari Mendelssohn’s studio. Where does he fit into the picture?”

“I’m not sure about that either. He’s a pal of Garofolo’s—I know that much—but there’s more to it than that, and Sandy’s the key. Garofolo treats her like she’s made of porcelain when she’s around, but behind her back he talks about her like she’s a total colonic. I overheard him say he wished she’d take a dive off the Brooklyn Bridge. He was talking to Shirley Squilacci, the dyke who looks after the girls. He told her, ‘The cunt is refusing to go through with the deal.’ ”

“Meaning Sandy?”

“Meaning Sandy. Shirley told him, ‘No sweat—we’ll make her see things our way.’ ”

“When was this?”

“A couple of days ago.”

“How come you never called in the cops?”

“And tell them what? You think I’m going to blow my cover because I have a vague bad feeling that something nasty might happen to some broad who has nothing to do with my investigation? Let’s not waste time—we don’t have long. All you need to know is that Joey trusts me—I worked very hard for that—and that’s why I’m here.”

“You must have some idea about what’s going down. Why are you dressed like Doris Day’s stunt double? Why have they fitted me for a tuxedo?”

“I don’t have a clue. I was given cash and told to buy myself something nice, suitable for an occasion. A hat too. All I know is that there’s a bunch of people in a room at the other end of the building. Joey’s there, and that politico type Jack Debereaux—who came to the club once, after hours—plus maybe a couple more people. I’m not sure how many. I didn’t see the others, just heard voices.”

“Debereaux’s the boyfriend of Yari Mendelssohn’s mother,” I told her.

“I haven’t seen or heard any women,” she said, “and I don’t know squat about Yari’s mother.”

“What about Shirley? Is she around?”

“I haven’t seen her, but I’d be surprised if she wasn’t. She and Joey are very tight. They’re cousins of some kind. Maybe she’s taking care of Sandy.”

There was a knock on the door, then Anthony’s voice.

“You blowin’ him or somethin’, Darla? Get a fuckin’ move on. Put him in his fuckin’ party threads.”

“Okay,” she called out. Then she yelled, “Come on, pretty boy—finish up and turn off the goddamn shower.”

I wondered if I should tell her what I now knew about Sandy, but decided it would only complicate things. Instead I asked, “You got any backup? What about the Yul Bryner look-alike?”

“There’s just me,” she said.

“And how come you were with the muscle when he slugged me?”

“I’d been sent to make sure Sandy was handled nicely.”

“Any chance,” I asked, “that you can get out of here and raise the alarm?”

“Not easy. There are lookouts posted everywhere. Something big is going down. All I can do is play things by ear.”

Once dressed in my tux, I was handed over to Anthony—also now in a tux, looking like an overdeveloped undertaker—and taken back to the cellar. It was nice to know I had at least one friend in the place, but it didn’t reassure me much. If I had been a betting man, I’d have wagered that the odds of me getting out of there alive were about a million to one. To keep from shitting my bespoke pants, I started to thumb through the magazines piled on an old school desk. They were the kind of glossies you’d expect someone like Yari to subscribe to—fashion magazines, home-and-garden publications, fancy photography quarterlies—and mixed in with them were catalogues of art shows, Japanese manga
comic books, Broadway playbills,
pornographic magazines mostly of the tranny variety, and other assorted turn-ons.

My attention was caught by a souvenir program from a Paris cabaret called Elle et Lui. Janice had taken me there on our honey moon. I didn’t realize until we got there that it was an upmarket drag show that cost the price of a kidney transplant. Janice insisted that it was the kind of thing that one did when one was in Paris. I had my misgivings, but it turned out to be one of the few successful outings we had while doing five countries in fourteen days. Sex back at the hotel was adventurous, but that’s none of your business.

That had been a while ago. This program was dated “Printemps 1968.”
It was full of elegant black-and-white photographs of the strippers—beautiful as movie starlets with long, shapely legs and delectable breasts. As I turned the pages, I had a premonition of what I was going to find—sure enough there she was, the most beautiful boy of all.

Before I had a chance to take a shot at translating the accompanying text, there was a rap on the door and the hatch opened.

“Someone to see you, Novalis.”

The door opened and Jack Debereaux stepped into the cellar. Unlike everyone else around there, he was casually dressed in a sport coat and flannels.

“I didn’t figure you for a fool,” he said.

“Big mistake,” I said. “You get yourself elected governor of New York, and you make enough mistakes that dumb, you’ll find yourself kicked upstairs to the White House.”

“You find this amusing?”

“It’s a barrel of laughs.”

“You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“But you were kind of vague.”

“I warned you that that girl was trouble.”

“Which could have meant a lot of things.”

“I think you understood me.”

“So how come,” I asked, “you find yourself here tonight? Come to visit Yari?”

“If Yari knows what’s good for him, he’s in Haiti.”

“And he’s renting the place out to Garofolo and his mob while he’s out of town?”

“Something like that.”

“And you’re here to spend some quality time with Joey?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“What
is
my business? Why did you come down here? You just wanted to take a last look at me so you can remember my mug when I’m kicking up thistles? Don’t worry about that. You’ll see me in your dreams—or your nightmares.”

“Why don’t you shut up?” he said.

“Why should I? I’ve got no reason not to shoot my mouth off.”

From his demeanor, I sensed he might be feeling out of his depth. I knew I was, but I thought maybe I could play him somehow.

“You know they’re going to kill me, don’t you?” I said.

“I wouldn’t make Thanksgiving plans.”

He looked smug when he said that, which made me think that maybe he wasn’t so far out of his depth after all.

“People ever get a sniff of this,” I said, “that’s your career down the toilet.”

“Nobody will ever tie me to this mess,” he said, scornfully, “and there wouldn’t be a mess in the first place if you’d had the strength of character to keep your pants on.”

“The strength of character routine? That’s what you came down here to tell me?”

“No—I wanted to see your face when I let you in on a secret.”