Sabrina’s eyes met mine in the mirror. “The repercussions were severe. Just three days after we were married, I discovered that my husband not only believed he had a
right
to beat his wife, but that it was his favorite form of entertainment. I spent half my honeymoon—and eight hideous months after that—holed up in the Carlyle Hotel bridal suite, then our Park Avenue apartment, waiting for various cuts and bruises to heal. As soon as one black eye got better, he’d give me another one. I was ashamed to show my face in public.”
“Why didn’t you leave him?”
“I was too stupid and confused—and too proud to let my family know that they’d been right about Ramón all along. I kept hoping that things would get better, that he’d wake up and realize what a good life we could have together.”
“But that didn’t happen.”
“Not by a long shot.” She put down the hairbrush and began cleansing her face with cold cream. “Things got worse, not better. Ramón started drinking too much and gambling too much and staying out all night. He’d come home in the morning, slap me around for a while, and then force me to have sex with him. After that, he’d pass out and sleep for the rest of the day. He didn’t even
try
to get a job.”
“So you were paying all the bills,” I said, gazing into the mirror, watching her wipe the cold cream off with a tissue.
“Yes, and Ramón racked up a
lot
of them.” She looked more embarrassed than angry, and she wasn’t acting snooty anymore. “So when I finally came to my senses and left him—which was the day Charlotte and I were released from the hospital—there wasn’t much money left. I had enough to rent a suite at the Gramercy Park Hotel for a few weeks and to put a deposit on this apartment, but I knew my life of leisure was over for good. I had to go to work, or start a business, or find
some
way to make a living, and I had to do it
fast.
”
“So that’s when you started the escort service?”
“Right,” she said, wadding the gooey tissue up in a ball and tossing it in the wastebasket.
“And it was successful right away?”
“Beyond my highest expectations.”
“But what gave you the idea, and how did you know what to do? How did you get the operation up and running so quickly?”
Sabrina powdered her face and applied a little rouge to her cheeks. “I got the idea from Charlotte. Her hair-raising tales about the way prostitutes are treated by their pimps and johns led me to imagine a different kind of sex service—where the girls would be managed by a considerate, fair-minded woman and dealt with as professionals; an agency that would screen all potential clients and accept only the best. It was a can’t-fail concept, I thought, which would be as beneficial to others as it would be to me.
“And it required virtually no capital outlay,” Sabrina went on. “I put a HELP WANTED ad in the paper, offering ‘after-hours employment for attractive young ladies in the city’s most elite escort agency,’ then sat back and waited for the phone to ring. Which it did—off the hook. Within a week I had signed up sixteen beautiful, polite, and articulate young women who—for reasons too numerous and diverse to discuss—were willing to perform sexual favors for discreet, well-mannered gentlemen in exchange for money.
“Then, after Charlotte filled me in on the rules, regulations, and going rates in the trade,
I
got on the phone and called all my male acquaintances from my debutante and socialite days— men I knew to be respectable, successful, rich, and horny. I told them about my new venture, described all my high-class and high-
priced
call girls, then began arranging the supply to meet the demand. By the end of my first month in business, my clients were as happy as clams, my girls had earned more income than they ever thought possible, and Charlotte and I were comfortably settled on Gramercy Park East.”
“You make it sound so easy,” I said, marveling at Sabrina’s vision, ingenuity, and fortitude. Prostitution was a filthy business, but her enterprise seemed almost clean.
“It was a simple two-step,” she said, smiling at her reflection in the mirror. “Charlotte showed me the ropes, and I pulled the strings.”
Chapter 21
SABRINA’S REVELATIONS WERE INTRIGUING, TO say the least, and they gave me a deeper understanding of her character as well as the overall situation. But I had to admit that her confessions probably wouldn’t—as Sabrina had so fiercely contended—help me identify the killer of Virginia Pratt. If I was ever going to reach that goal, I realized, I’d have to get tough and press for the hard answers.
“I’ve asked you about this before, Sabrina,” I said, “and so far you’ve refused to respond. But now I’m demanding a full disclosure. Why did Virgi—I mean, Melody—become a call girl?”
Sabrina stood up from her dressing table, crossed her arms over her chest, and turned to face me head-on. “You won’t give up, will you? It’s not enough that you’ve dredged up the most painful secrets of my past, and also Charlotte’s, but now you won’t rest until Melody’s saddest and most closely guarded secret is exposed! I’ve told you repeatedly it has nothing to do with her murder! Why can’t you leave this one alone? Why can’t you just accept the fact that I’ve told you the truth?”
“Because secrets have a way of
hiding
the truth—maybe even from you.”
My words must have touched a nerve or exhumed another distressing memory, because the next thing I knew, Sabrina lunged across the room, threw herself facedown on her big, unmade bed, and started crying.
I was shocked to the core. This was a side of Sabrina I had never seen—and had never expected to see. “What’s wrong?” I yelped, jumping to my feet and darting to the side of the bed. “What’s the matter? Why are you so upset? Was it something I said?” I felt confused, concerned, and responsible. Had I pushed the poor woman to the breaking point?
Sabrina didn’t say anything. She just buried her face deep in her pillow, smudging rouge on the lavender pillowcase and muffling her heartrending sobs in the mound of feathers.
I didn’t know what to do, but I felt I had to do
something.
“Please don’t cry,” I said, sitting down on the side of her bed. I leaned forward and gave her an awkward pat on the back. “I’m so sorry, Sabrina. I didn’t mean to—”
“No,
I’m
the one who’s sorry,” she said, suddenly raising herself on her forearms, turning her crying jag off like a light. Her eyes were still red and wet, but her shoulders had stopped shaking. “You don’t have to apologize, Paige. It’s not your fault. You’re just doing your job, and I’m acting like a crazy woman. I’ve got to pull myself together.” Putting her weight on one elbow, she drew her knees up to her chest, swung her legs over the edge of the bed, and slowly pushed herself up to a sitting position.
We sat in silence for a few seconds, not looking at each other, slumped side by side on the edge of the bed like two strangers on a park bench. I waited for her to say something, but she didn’t, so I finally asked, “What happened just now, Sabrina? What got you so upset?”
“It wasn’t any one thing,” she said, sighing heavily. “It’s the whole goddamn bloody mess. I’m devastated about what happened to Melody, and it’s all my fault. I fixed her up with a homicidal maniac! Can you imagine how that makes me feel? She was like a daughter to me. She trusted me. I was supposed to protect her, and I failed. Miserably.” A final tear slithered down her cheek, and Sabrina swiped it off with the sleeve of her robe. “And now you want me to betray her trust again,” she went on. “You want me to tell you why she joined my escort service, when I swore to her I would
never
reveal that secret to another living soul.”
“But things were different when you made that promise,” I said. “And if you could talk to Melody
now,
I believe she’d release you from that vow. In fact, I think she’d
want
you to give a full account to anybody who’s trying to bring her killer to justice.”
Sabrina turned and gave me a grave but compliant look. “I know you’re right, Paige. I’ve known it all along. And I was planning to tell you everything, anyway. I was just trying to put it off as long as possible. I guess I needed to have a mental breakdown first.”
I smiled. “A perfectly normal reaction, it seems to me.” I felt I was finally meeting the real Sabrina—a classy woman with a big heart. A shady lady with shiny morals. A woman I could actually like.
AFTER A SHORT BREATHER, SABRINA STOPPED putting me off. “This won’t be easy,” she said, standing up and returning to the lavender-and-white-striped armchair she’d been sitting in before. She resumed her seat and pulled her robe tight over her knees. “And it’s a long, complicated story, Paige, so you might as well come sit over here and be comfortable.”
I took her advice and moved from the bed back to my chair.
“I’ll tell it straight from beginning to end,” she murmured, “as succinctly and quickly as I can. These are painful memories for me, and I don’t want to dwell on them. So I’d appreciate it if you could just sit still, listen carefully, and refrain from interrupting me. Think you can do that?” Her tone was genial, not snippy.
“My lips are sealed,” I said, smiling.
Sabrina nodded, and rested her head against the back of her chair. “Melody came to me to apply for an escort position two and a half years ago,” she said, gazing ahead and upward as if watching a movie from the first row. “She had just turned eighteen. She was the most beautiful applicant I’d ever interviewed, but so young and inexperienced, I was reluctant to hire her. I gave in, though, after she broke down in tears and told me why she needed the money.
“Melody had a twin brother who was severely retarded. She was a perfect child, but he was defective in every way. The parents were so ashamed of the boy that they kept him hidden away in a back bedroom with a nurse, never spending any time with him, or taking him outside, or even discussing him with their friends and neighbors. Melody loved her brother very much, though, and spent as much time with him as her parents would allow—which was a lot, since they went to their country club every night of the week and left both children in the nurse’s care.
“Melody played with her brother and took naps with him when they were young, and later, as they grew older, she sang to him, and tried to teach him how to eat and speak and dress himself. He never made much progress, but Melody refused to give up hope. She dreamed of becoming a famous singer when she grew up so she could earn enough to support them both. She wanted to buy a beautiful house for them to live in together, far away from their parents’ rejection and repression.
“But one day, during her senior year in high school, Melody came home after school and discovered that her brother was gone. Her parents had packed him up and shipped him off to a New York State mental institution without ever telling her of their plans. Melody became hysterical and begged them to bring her twin back home to Vermont, but they wouldn’t listen to her plea, or even tell her where in New York he’d been sent. They had washed their hands of him. They wanted him out of their lives for good.
“Melody was desolate. She felt like half a person without her twin, and she vowed they would be reunited someday, no matter how long it took her to find him. Therefore, shortly after her graduation, she convinced her parents to let her move to Manhattan, where she took a room in a women’s boarding-house, went to work at her uncle’s accounting firm, and— without the knowledge of anyone in her family—launched an all-out search for her brother.
“Six weeks of sleepless nights and countless phone calls later, she found him. He had been committed to the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island under his real name. Melody went to see her brother the very next day, and was horrified to discover that Willowbrook was more of a prison than a school—a penitentiary for the mentally retarded. The enormous stone-walled facility was cold, overcrowded, and deplorably filthy, and many of the residents showed signs of physical abuse. Disease—most commonly hepatitis—was rampant.
“Melody wanted to take her brother home with her that day, but the school authorities refused to release him. They said the parents would have to give their permission in person, or in a witnessed and notarized letter sent by certified mail. And such an occurrence was highly unlikely, they insisted, since her brother had been legally committed to the institution for the rest of his natural life.
“Melody didn’t know where to turn. She knew her parents would be furious if they learned of her desire to take her brother out of Willowbrook, and she couldn’t ask her uncle for help, for fear he would inform her parents of her intentions. She also knew she couldn’t take care of her brother by herself. He didn’t remember who she was, and during the seven months he’d been institutionalized, he had regressed to a near feral state.
“In desperation, Melody concluded that the only way she could save her brother’s life was by making a lot of money. If she had enough money, she reasoned, she could bribe the Willowbrook officials to release her brother to her, and then she could put him in a private establishment—a place with clean, decent living conditions and humane, round-the-clock supervision and health care. A nice place close to the city, where she could visit him every week.
“First she tried earning the money by singing, but after two weekends working for pennies at one of the Village cafés, Melody realized it could take her a lifetime to raise the kind of cash she needed. That’s when she came to me.” Sabrina paused for a moment, sat up straighter in her chair, raked her fingers through her hair, and went on. “She had seen my ad in the paper, and even after I explained to her what working for an escort agency really meant, she begged me to take her on.
“At first I flatly refused. She was a
virgin,
for God’s sake! But after she broke down in hysterics, and told me why she had to have the money, and swore she’d become a prostitute for somebody else if I didn’t hire her . . . well, I was forced to rethink the matter. I couldn’t, in good conscience, let her fall into the hands of a pimp like Charlotte’s. I agreed to handle her on one condition: that she let me start her off slow and easy—with a certain client who couldn’t afford to pay top dollar but who I knew would be a gentle lover and teacher. She accepted my terms, we sealed the bargain with a cup of tea, and then I advanced her enough money to pull her brother out of Willowbrook and put him in a reputable private facility in Brooklyn.