Ceremony (8 page)

"Sheep ranch for people like it kinky. You a whore and you bad, you end up there."

"And April's at a sheep ranch in Providence?"

"I never said that," Velma said.

"You know where there's a sheep ranch in Providence?"

"Never been there," Velma said. "Never been nowhere. Never been out of Boston." Tears filled Velma's eyes and spilled over and traced down her face. Her voice thickened. "Never been nowhere," she said. "Never going." She sprawled lower onto my couch, her legs sprawled across my coffee table. She spilled her drink and didn't notice.

"There an address for the sheep ranch?" I said.

She didn't answer. She was crying and snufing and mumbling things I couldn't understand. She slipped down farther and closed her eyes and stopped crying. She snuffled for another minute, then she was silent. Then she started to snore. I got up and went to the kitchen and got another bottle of beer and brought it back and sat down and stared at Velma while she slept.

It was two hours before she woke up, and when she did she was unfriendly. I got her dressed and into a cab and went back upstairs to drink beer and think about sheep ranches.

Providence is an hour south of Boston on Route 95. It has Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design and a good-looking State House and a civic center and Federal Hill, a recycled Italian neighborhood with concrete arches at the entrance on Atwell Avenue.

I didn't go to Federal Hill this trip. I went to the Biltmore Plaza on the square by the railroad station and checked in.

"Where can a guy get a little action in this town'" I said to the bellhop when he showed me my room. I was wearing a white wash-and-wear shirt, red and white checked polyester jacket, and maroon double-knit flarebottomed slacks with white loafers and a white belt. I had spent nearly $100 on the outfit at Zayre's. When I go undercover I spare no expense. I wore a maroon tie with many small white horse heads on it, loosened at the collar. I had a pinky ring with a zircon set in onyx, and I reeked of Brut.

"We have music in our lounge, sir."

I folded a five and tucked it into his hand. "Uh-huh," I said. "You don't follow my drift. I mean action, broads, huh?"

"Sorry, sir," he said. "I really wouldn't know about that. He smiled and backed out and shut the door. I hung up my garment bag and went out to the front of the hotel and caught a cab.

"Ride down Dorrance," I said. "I want to look over the town."

"Yes, sir," the cabby said.

"I'm looking to have a little fun," I said. I had another five folded between my fingers and I tapped it on the back of the seat as I leaned forward to talk with him. "Anyplace in this town a guy can have a little fun?"

The cabby glanced back at me. "What kind of fun, mister?"

"You know-wine, women, and song." I grinned. Man to man. "And I could do without the song, if I had to.

The cabby was a middle-aged black man with short graying hair and a salt-and-pepper mustache. "You looking for whores?"

"You got it, man. You got my message. Can you help me out?"

The cabby shook his head. "I'm not a pimp," he said. "You got an address, I'll take you there."

"I was hoping you'd know." I flourished the five a little. "Nope." He pulled over at a corner. "Whyn't you try another cabby."

I got out without saying anything and he drove off. I flagged another cab and we went through the routine again. I rode around Providence in a succession of cabs for about three hours with the worst collection of prudes I'd ever seen. It was twenty minutes to four when I finally scored. The cabby I scored with looked like a toad.

"I might be able to put you in touch with a guy," he said. He was fat and short and he seemed to have settled seatwards from years of driving a hack. He didn't turn around as we drove along Fountain Street past the Providence police and fire headquarters. In Providence the cops wore brown uniforms and drove brown-andwhite cruisers. I was pretty sure you could never solve a crime wearing a brown uniform. Maybe it was in honor of the university.

"Appreciate it," I said. "There's a sawbuck in it for you." I had upped the ante after hour two.

"Cost you twenty dollars for me to put you in touch with this guy," the cabby said. "Plus the fare."

"Just to meet a guy? Hey, that's pretty stiff."

"Take it or leave it." The cabby had a hoarse voice. The folds of his neck spilled over his collar.

"Aw, what the hell," I said. "It's only money, huh? You can't take it with you."

The cabby put his hand back over the seat without looking. I put two tens in it. He tucked it into a shirt pocket, turned right, and in two minutes he pulled in at the curb on Dorrance Street in front of the Westminster Mall. Without looking back he said, "That'll be three- eighty." I gave him a five and he put that in a different pocket.

I said, "How about my change."

"Tip," he said. Then he handed me back a plain white sheet of paper. "Roll that up in your left hand and walk down the mall," he said. "Guy's name is Eddie. He'll find you."

I took the paper, made a tube out of it, and got out of the cab. The toad pulled away. To my left was the flossiest Burger King in the world; ahead stretched a paved pedestrian way among a bunch of stores in the process of restoration. Some very classy fronts were mixed in with some very sleazy ones, but the place had the nice live feel that open city space has if a lot of people are bustling around in it.

I started up the mall. A squat red roan horse was tethered to an information booth in the middle of the mall and a Providence cop was in getting warm with the civilians. Near a soon-to-be-rented-but-not-fullyrestored storefront a guy in a down vest said, "How ya doing? I'm Eddie."

I said, "Hey, how are ya?"

He walked along beside me. "What can I do for you?" he said.

"Fella in a cab told me you could find me a little action," I said.

Eddie nodded. He had pale blond hair parted on the left and gold-rimmed glasses and pale skin. Under the down vest he wore a plaid shirt. "Sure," he said. "What kind of action you looking for''"

"Well"-1 scowled and looked embarrassed-”I hear you might have something a little different around here." Eddie stopped with his hands in his back pockets and looked at me.

"Unusual?"

I spread my hands, "Yeah, a little kinky, you know. Sometimes you like a change."

"What kinda bread you ready to pay?" "Oh, I got money. Listen, that's not a problem. I can pay." Eddie nodded again. Then he nodded and winked. "Yeah, I can fix you up. Cost you two bills-one to me, one to the manager of the place. You got that?"

"Sure."

"After that it depends what you want, you understand. You want more than one broad, that's extra, you want S and M, that's extra. Get the idea?"

I nodded.

"And you want to tip any of the broads, that's between you and them."

I nodded.

"Gimme two hundred," he said. "I'll drive you up."

I took a hundred and five twenties from my wallet and gave them to Eddie. He counted them and. put them away and led me down a narrow cross street to a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. We got in and headed up the hill toward the university. We went past the School of Design and Brown University, past some of the most elegant Victorian houses anywhere. In ten minutes Eddie parked the Trans Am on Angell Street near the corner of Stimson, in front of a deep blue three-storied Victorian house with a vast mansard roof. Over the windows was an ornamental sunrise design in yellow and black.

"This is it," he said, and got out of the car. I followed him. We went up three wide wooden stairs and across a deep veranda and Eddie rang the doorbell. A husky young man wearing a green Lacoste sweater over a white shirt opened the door. He had a health club tan, a bushy mustache, and dark hair blown dry.

Eddie said, "Fella to see Mrs. Ross."

The man nodded. Eddie gave him my hundred-dollar bill. The man smiled at me and said, "This way, sir."

He showed me into a high-ceilinged living room with a marble fireplace and bow windows on two walls. I sat on a hard sofa with claw-and-ball feet, and the man went away. In maybe a minute a woman came in. She was a small woman, middle-aged, with her gray hair in a frizzy perm. She wore a black turtleneck sweater and a pleated red plaid skirt and black boots. There was a gold medallion on a chain, and large hoop earrings, and rings on most of her fingers. She came in and stood in front of me. She had no makeup except for some red color on her cheeks that stood out against her white skin.

"Good afternoon," she said. "I'm Mrs. Ross. We have ten girls here. What kind of arrangement would you like to make?"

"I heard your girls do specialty stuff."

"Anything you want," she said firmly.

"All of them'?"

"Absolutely."

"Maybe I better meet them," i said.

"Of course," she said. "Two are busy at the moment, but I'll ask the rest to come in and say hello. Would you care for a drink?"

I shook my head. "Not right now."

Mrs. Ross nodded. "Certainly. I'll get the girls."

She went back out and down the corridor and I sat quietly in the nineteenth-century room. Students on bicycles went by on

Angell Street outside. I heard Mrs. Ross's boot heels tapping briskly along the hardwood floor of the corridor, and then she came through the archway. Behind her came eight young women. Four were white, three were black, and one was Oriental. The third one through the door was April Kyle.

The eight girls stood in an informal semicircle, staring blankly into the middle distance the way models do at a fashion show. They had each their own expression, and it didn't change. It was their stage face, I realized. The oldest was maybe nineteen, the youngest fourteen or fifteen. They were all dressed young, too, with a kind of buttons-and-bows little-girl look that must have been calculated. April, for instance, was wearing a white blouse under a green plaid jumper with black knee socks and penny loafers. Her blond hair was caught back on one side with a barrette. The fun-loving Bobbsey. "Your choice?" Mrs. Ross was not a dawdler, nor did she encourage it in others. I wondered if I ought to check their teeth.

"That one," I said.

"Fine," Mrs. Ross said. "April, show the gentleman to your room." The other seven girls went out of the living room and April stepped toward me, put out her hand, and said, "My name's April, what's yours?"

"Alley Oop," I said.

She smiled without warmth or meaning. "Okay, Alley, want to come with me?"

"Hey," I said with a big hearty smile, "I'd follow you anywhere, honey."

She took my hand. In the hallway there was a wide stairway that turned halfway up. We went up the stairs hand in hand-with wand'ring steps and slow, I thought -turned at the landing, and continued to the big second-floor hallway. There were no rugs on the floor and no furniture. It was as if by the time you got here you were sold, and they didn't need to impress you. April's room was at the end of the hall on the right. We went in.

The room was Spartan. There was a good mahogany double bed and bureau. The window in the wall opposite the bed was covered with red drapes. Behind the entry door was a door that I assume led to a closet. April sat on the bed, letting her legs fall carelessly open. Unless she had a lot of self-control, she'd be fat when she was forty. Right now she was pretty in a pink-cheeked, almost plump way. Her mouth was pouty and her teeth were white and even. There was something theatrical about her movements when they occasionally became unrestrained, as when she had flopped on the bed.

I opened the door that I took to be a closet. It was. There were a few dresses hanging in it. There were also various leather restraints hanging from hooks and a wooden paddle that was too long for Ping-Pong and too short for canoeing. On the floor were a pair of sneakers and a pair of sling-back spike-heeled pump.s Apparently she had more than one image. There was nothing else in the closet.

I turned back toward April. She had hiked the jumper skirt up over her thighs so that I was aware that she wore nothing beneath it. She looked at me with her stage look -pouty innocence, Lolita, Debbie Does Dallas. Probably practiced her look in the mirror between tricks.

I parted the drapes on the window. Under the drapes the window was secured with thick wire mesh. I let the drapes drop back in place. I looked over the rest of the room. There was no other way out. I didn't see any signs of a bug, though that didn't mean there wasn't one. On the top of the mahogany dresser was a radio. I turned it on. Loud.

On the bed April was naked except for her knee socks. There were dark bruises on her buttocks that had begun to yellow, her wrists were chafed red. I remembered the time when a girl her age would have excited me. But it was a long time ago-when I was her age. Now it was like looking at a naked child.

I lay down on the bed beside her and put my arm around her and held her close against me and whispered, "My name is not Alley Oop, it's Spenser, and your parents hired me to find you." Her body went rigid and she tried to pull away. I held her against me. I said, "You won't have to do anything you don't want to do. But if you want out of here, I'll take you out."

April was perfectly rigid and silent. I had my mouth against her ear. "I don't know if there's a bug in here, but there could be, so we'll whisper and leave the radio up loud."

"A bug'?" "A microphone for listening to us," I whispered.

"I don't know."

"Now, you want out of here?"

She was silent.

"I think you do," I said. "It couldn't have been fun getting those bruises on your backside."

"Don't you want to fuck me?" she said.

"Nothing personal, but no, I don't. I want to take you out of here and buy you dinner someplace and see what our next step is."

She was still.

"Get dressed," I said, my mouth still against her ear, my arms around her, holding her against me.

"They won't let me go," she said.

"I'll take care of that," I said. I let her go and sat up on the edge of the bed.