The Royal Family (2 page)

That’s easy, honey. I’m at the El Dorado on Sutter between Taylor and Jones. Sometimes I change my room, but wherever I am, I always face the street, get it? Just stand under the windows and whistle four times. Or if you’re in a car, honk four times. Do you have a car?

The loser does.

He does? What kind?

Here’s fifty bucks, Domino. I guess I’ll be seeing you.

Lying naked on that bed, playing boredly with the gold chain that lay across her breasts, she waggled her ass, hoping to interest him so that maybe she could charge him more. But he’d gotten up and was looking out the window. She sighed and got dressed.

Don’t forget me, she said in a way that showed she’d already forgotten him.

He didn’t think he would. He thought he could remember the long white track, the eye-shaped bullet scar.

The hotel had improved since the Indians took over. It didn’t stink as much, and there was no litter on the floor. Behind the white curtains stained with round brown spots like old blood, the window (which he’d opened to let the staleness out) faced a gulley walled by bricks, kindred windows, and fire escapes. From down below shouts floated up like seagulls. The windowsill smelled like urine. Tyler leaned out and saw a black man who stood smoking a cigarette, the man’s hair very black and shiny against the dun evil of the alley. —This has gotta be my low point, he muttered. What a stupid job. —He waited until Domino emerged from the hotel. When she didn’t look up, he felt oddly disappointed. She’d barely sipped her wine cooler, so when she’d gone and the black man had sauntered away, he threw the bottle out the window and listened to it smash . . .

Any luck? said Brady, whose tone implied that Tyler would never own any of that commodity.

Of course she said she didn’t know anything.

Did she say that she knows the Queen?

No, she didn’t say exactly that.

Had a Pinkerton team work for me once, chuckled Brady, opening a bottle of pills. They told me they have a rule that you’re not supposed to get emotionally or sexually compromised. But I don’t give a shit.

Tyler was silent.

I said, I don’t give a shit what you do.

Let’s keep this professional, boss.

Did you ever get the impression that she was lying to you?

Why should she lie to me?

You care to answer my question?

She said that she doesn’t give a damn about the Queen. Usually when somebody goes to the trouble to say that, that means that she does give a damn. But if that’s a lie, it’s not a very important lie.

It’s not my policy to tell you what I do or do not consider important, said Brady.

Yeah, boss, I know it isn’t.

Brady took a dictaphone from his shirt pocket, pushed the button, and intoned into it:
There were days and days of such false starts, but since this is one of those rare occasions when discretion actually serves the turn of narrative interest, I shall refrain from dragging those people and episodes into this.

That’s beautiful, boss. Are you what they call extemporaneous?

Nope. And a year from now my common stock is going to split two for one. You tag her?

Locator fluid under my thumbnail. She let me touch a scar on her leg. I worked it in good.

How good we’ll know in a minute. Anything else?

Said you were a loser.

I must be, to hire you. Well, show me.

It’s all wired up, said Tyler. Pinkerton guys were the only other private eyes you did anything with? Somehow I figured you worked in the security field. Guess I was wrong. Turn the TV to channel seven and then click the remote three times, like this. Uh huh. Now wait a minute. Okay. See that blue dot? That’s Blondie, and she’s staying on the grid. Going down Leavenworth—now see; she’s turning at Turk. Stopping for a minute, probably having a little chat with her dealer, but we’ll mark it . . . okay, now she’s coming up Jones; she’s just done three sides of a square; she’s back on her beat. And I’d guess she’s scratching her scar; that’s why the blue dot flickered there for a minute. I’d say she’s not going to lead us to any Queen. You never know, though. That’s the beauty of this job, Mr. Brady. This place she keeps going to is probably just a bar, but we’ll mark it, too. Computer says it’s a parking garage. Maybe she takes guys there to give head. Anyhow, it’s in the system. See her walking up and down the block? A slow night. But at least she got picked up by us losers.

Dark tracks of ecstasy down which slid blinking lights and fluffy lights, rays of warmness on cold tracks; these carried Tyler and Brady past brick hofbraus and pavement-holes. Ahead, a police car turned the corner. Pizza lights marked the edge. Then all the brightnesses started getting skinnier. White-lit arches launched them down long white slides
tulipped with lamps, and they passed the Peacock Club, outside of which the first whore of the evening stood fussing with her science-fiction garter belt. Whores white and black swayed in the light. Their legs shook automatically. Tyler looked steadily out the passenger window, photographing that huddle of girls with his brother’s old Minox. Expense account stuff, so gaffle me, sister. He’d thought the camera was practically invisible, but clippety-clop: three whores were running away. —Such sweet
scared
little fishies! cried Brady. —Tyler cleared his throat, wondering whether he might be catching a cold. His brain ached. They oozed down Hyde Street, waiting to breast the current of lights whose source-spring was a single rectangle of yellow high up above the corner; then there were yellow market-lights, gold lights, apartment-lights and lady-lights issuing from a hotel awning and its grating, and sex-light coming from the girl against the wall. Lonely sparks and tangents strung on hills tried to siren them away from the square rectitudes of ordinary stores. Brady would not be distracted. He stopped at an arched brick building whose scaffolding mutated against its glass. There a fat lady hiked up her skirt and pretended to masturbate, staring straight into his eyes. Through the open window Tyler said: Can you take a message to the Queen? It involves money. —Don’t start shittin’ me, said the fat lady. I’m not datin’, so you can’t haul me in for datin.’ —We’re not cops, said Brady brightly, but the fat lady only said: Uh huh, and you really love me and you won’t come in my mouth and the check is in the mail. — Winging chevrons of gratings vanished her between vertical stripes of garage-light. Dauntless Brady swung the car back into the groove of traffic, undazzled by blinking lights on metal, dazed only by the other cuntsharks. Tyler smiled gently at the square buttocks of a van just ahead. For a moment he thought of Domino. Then the nauseating glitter on fences and gratings caught him. Breaking through a yellow lurch of hotel-lights, he saw a man checking his watch on the corner. Tyler knew that the man resembled him. The man was up to something. He winked at the man, who flinched, and then they were past. Above an awning like the roof of a mouth, a whore was smiling and bending from an orange-lit window. Tyler exposed two rapid frames (no flash, 6400 ASA) and noted the location.

Might as well roll down your window at every black girl you see, said Brady abruptly.

My window’s always down, boss. I don’t care how chilly it is. What makes you think she’s black?

Just a feeling. That’s how I imagine her. Tell me how you imagine her, and don’t you dare lie to me.

Oh, I guess I could see her as one of those solarized naked blondes in an old Man Ray print. You know, with those haunting eyes. Are you into photography?

Well, I hired a guy to wire up a women’s locker room once.

I collect books on photography, admitted Tyler with a certain shyness. Brady, who prided himself on knowing people, could tell right away that here lay his hireling’s monomania, on which, given any encouragement, he’d discourse with arid learnedness, like other people on hockey, stamp collecting, their pets or children. —I collect photographs, too, Tyler was saying. It sort of goes with my profession. On Sundays I sometimes like to play around, you know, do nudes, double triple quadruple exposures . . . There’s one. You want to pull in toward the curb, boss?

A black whore was rubbing legs at the light, crunching potato chips. She wore a silver paper skirt. Tyler mouthed the word “Queen” at her and she shrugged and waved. Brady shook his head.

Pasty-faced white girls at the corner of an alley grinned as if at a party. Tyler jumped out and asked them if they’d seen the Queen.

She never comes before ten o’clock, a girl said. Why, you got something for her? You can give it to me. Honey, you can give it to me.

Lights hurt the mirror of a parked truck.

Between two dead grey towers, a girl in a sweater swung her tits like a waitress in a truck stop slamming down a plate of fried eggs. She whipped her hands at them, glaring fiercely.

That’s quite a luxuriant nigger girl, his boss said.

You from the South, Mr. Brady?

Why, do I have an accent?

No, I just wondered.

Well, stop wondering and ask her the question. That’s what I’m paying you for.

Tyler crooked his finger, but the girl only spat loudly on the sidewalk.

The Queen wouldn’t like that sort of behavior, you know, he said to her.

What the
fuck
do you know about what the Queen likes? the whore shouted. You think you’re good enough to jump the Queen?

Why? said Tyler. Are you trying to tell me
you’re
a big enough bitch to eat the Queen’s pussy? Does she let you do it on alternate Tuesdays?

I oughta cut you, the whore said. She wore silver stockings that came all the way up to her buttocks. Peering sulkily, she bent and picked something up from the sidewalk.

Find out what she grabbed, whispered Brady.

What did your friend say? cried the whore suspiciously. She came over to the car. Seeing Brady’s dark suit and necktie, she smiled, softly offering her goosepimpled thighs. — You datin’? she said. I’d much rather go wiv you than him.

Yeah, he’s dating, said Tyler. He wants to do you and the Queen at the same time.

What do you keep talkin’ ’bout the the Queen for? It’s bad to talk about the Queen.

Another girl walked past, her garters glittering like frosting and mica against the scaly diamonds of gratings. Shivering, she shot a bitter look at Tyler and shouted: Am I your only secret slave? Am I the only one you’re getting paid to practice slavery on?

Get lost, said Brady.

Look, said Tyler to the suspicious whore. A hundred bucks if you take me to the Queen.

The whore whirled and clip-clopped away in the direction that the other girl had come.

You scared her, said Brady reproachfully.

Let’s follow along, boss. We might learn something.

That’s a spurious and specious linkage, said Brady.

What?

Your assumption that because I say the word nigger I must be from the South. You’re trying to stereotype me.

We’d better follow the girl, boss.

You tag her?

Yeah, with that dime store earring she grabbed. Soaked in locator fluid. I dropped it out the window when she was yelling at me.

I don’t trust that locator fluid. If it’s so good how come the FBI doesn’t use it?

I don’t know, boss. I never worked for them.

Because you’re a loser?

Uh huh.

Are you evading me?

What would I want to evade you for, boss?

Because you’re spending my money and wasting my time.

I could try and pull some old court records, Tyler muttered, ducking his head.

Well, maintain visual. An earring, huh? That was a good one. —Brady smiled, recollecting multitudes of other girls seduced by tented alleyways sheltering cases of earrings; they slowly bent their heads in submission to that glitter. He was rich. —Come on, come on, come on.

Sure, said Tyler. We’ll just keep rolling and rolling along.

They tracked the suspicious whore through a dozen neon spiderwebs to some kind of overcast garageworks behind a grating, red car-skulls watching from beyond. Tyler sat listening to the heavy clop of that glossy-shoed girl so sour-sweet with the sweat-drops glistening from her meaty shoulders as she ran through the cold night. She’d gotten inside the grating somehow (a fat van had blocked the view), and now she vanished among the red cars.

Okay, boss. We can’t go in there now; it’s too obvious. It’s the same place that Blondie went to last night. We’ll check it out tomorrow.

Was her name really Blondie?

She called herself Domino.

Then call her Domino. Are you a misogynist? sneered his boss with a grunting laugh.

A tall black girl crossed the street with mincing clicking steps, drinking from something in a paper bag. There were frothy things on her breasts like silver spit. Other women were already smiling over her shoulder.