Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy (18 page)

I remembered lunch with Nino and his possibly taking
me there. "Not up to me. The one to call is Lieutenant Holt. Try
him tomorrow and he’ll probably okay it."

"So long as I can get in by the weekend. I want
this all . . . all cleaned up by then."

"I can understand that. Did Theresa ever talk
with you about her clients?"

"No. I know she had a guy managing for her. She
took up with him after she had the trouble in Salem. And there were a
couple of other girls working with her for him. But I don’t
remember their names." She half laughed. "Probably only
heard their street names anyway."

"You said she got into trouble where you work?"

"Where I . . . oh, no. Not up there. Salem,
Massachusetts. She got arrested, for soliciting I guess they call it.
But that was a long time ago. I was just, what, maybe thirteen."

"Anything happen from it?"

"I don’t think so, but I was kind of young to
really understand, and she didn’t exactly talk about it at the
dinner table, you know?"

"She ever talk about leaving, about finding
another line of work?"

The half-laugh again. "Not exactly. She always
wanted to be a movie star. Even when she did go to school, she never
really studied, just came home and read the fan magazines. She
thought she looked like a young Natalie Wood. That was how she said
it too, ‘a young Natalie Wood.' She kept thinking that somehow
she’d be able to get into movies through somebody she’d meet. How
she thought that was going to happen for her when she lived here
instead of out in California someplace . . ."

We’d made a circuit of the block and were drawing
even with her parents’ driveway.

She said, "Any more questions for me?"

"Not for now. I’m really sorry about Theresa."

Sandra kicked a stone off the sidewalk and onto her
father’s lawn. "Save your sympathy for Teri. She’s the one
who died Monday. Theresa I lost a long time ago."

She turned away from me
and walked resignedly back up the path to the house.

* * *

"John! Christ, I haven’t seen you in, what,
five years."

"More like seven, Ed."

I grew up in South Boston with Ed. He’d wanted to
attend college and law school, but his steady girlfriend’s
pregnancy intervened. Starting out as a night janitor in the South
Boston courthouse, he slowly moved up the chain to an assistant
clerk’s job. He’s active in court administration across the
Commonwealth and knows everybody.

"What brings you back to God’s Little Acre?

Oh, shit," he said, striking himself on the
forehead with the palm of his hand. "I forgot about Beth. I’m
sorry."

"No need to be sorry. I’m here officially.
Sort of."

Ed leaned over the counter and looked in every
direction before saying, "What’s the trouble?"

"You know the killing over at the Barry?"

"Just what I read in the Herald. A hooker and
her john, right?"

"Right. My gun was found at the scene, and I
need some information I can’t look up for myself."

"Christ, John. A double murder, that’s pretty
heavy stuff. How deep are you in this?"

"I didn’t do it. Somebody mugged me and took
my gun to frame me."

"The paper just said something about
‘unidentified’ weapon." _

"Yeah, but it’s not the weapon I’m
interested in. It’s the hooker."

"I don’t get it."

"I’m told she was in some legal trouble a
while back."

"And that surprises you?"

"No, but I can’t go through the cops for the
story."

"I don’t know, John. All that shit is tied up
by the privacy statute. The records, I mean. She processed through
here?"

"No. Salem District Court."

"Salem! Christ, John, the chief judge of the
whole fucken system works outta Salem."

"Ed, you’ve shaken every hand ever stamped a
paper in this state. All I need is some noncontroversial information
about her."

“
Like what?"

“
One of the suspects is a lawyer from Marblehead
who used to do a lot of criminal work. I want to see if she was
involved in the case."

"Why—never mind. I don’t wanna know."
Ed bothered his teeth with his tongue for a while. "I don’t
know, John. How long ago was all this?"

"Eight years, give or take."

"Oh, John, all the stuff from that far back’d
be on the micro." He made a rude noise. "Okay, I’ll give
it a try. But I’m gonna have to bury this with some other kinda
requests, and God save the sailor if anybody ever notices who was
asking about her."

"I really appreciate it, Ed."

"Name?"

"Street name was Teri Angel. Real name, and
probably the one Salem would have, is Papangelis, Theresa."

"Spel1 it for me."

I spelled it. "Age back then about nineteen. The
lawyer’s name is Felicia Arnold."

"Gimme a couple days. I’ll call you."

"Thanks, Ed."

"Christ," he said walking away. "Guys
lose their pensions like this."
 

SEVENTEEN
-♦-

La Flor was tucked between a mom-and-pop grocery and
a dry cleaner’s on the lower end of Sommer Street. I parked two
doors down from the cleaner’s and watched the front door of the
restaurant for a while. Two construction workers in bandanas, boots,
and nonmatching hard hats came out, chewing thoughtfully on
toothpicks. Not seeing anybody else by 1:30, I got out of the Fiat
and walked into the place. There were twenty small tables crammed
into the bowling alley space that reminded me more of New York than
Boston. The tables were draped in clean white cloths, a fresh-cut
carnation in a clear glass vase centered on each. An elderly couple
were finishing lunch near the window. She wore a plain print dress,
he a fifties sharkskin suit. They were holding hands and toasting
each other with small port glasses. Nino waved to me from the back of
the room. He sat on one of three stools at a tiny bar, behind which a
fat man was drying glasses with a towel. Immediately in front of Nino
was a table for four with two women eating across from each other.
One had a badly bleached ponytail draped across her near shoulder,
the other long raven black hair. They both glanced up at me, the
blonde following me with her eyes as I walked toward them, the other
just returning to her plate.

Nino slid off the barstool. The women both looked
about thirty. Given their working hours, they could have been
anywhere from seventeen to forty. The blonde was tall, even sitting
down, and heavily made up. The other slumped in her chair and wore no
cosmetics at all. As I reached the table, the blonde smiled at me in
a practiced way, the other paid no attention.

Nino said, "John Cuddy, I have the pleasure of
giving you Maylene and Salomé."

The blonde said, "I’m Maylene, honey."
She had a south of Kansas twang in her voice. "I show it, I
shake it, and I share it."

Salome, out of the corner of her mouth, said,
"Jesus."

Nino said, "You and me sit here and here, John.
You know, boy, girl, boy, girl?"

I sat down, Maylene to my left, Salomé to my right.

"Has Nino told you why I wanted to talk with
you?"

Maylene said, "Yeah. It’s about the Angel."
She laid her hand over mine and gripped tight.

"God, I was terrified when I heard."

Salomé seemed awfully bored. Her attitude reminded
me of the bare tolerance an experienced cop shows when paired with a
rookie. I put Salome nearer forty, Maylene nearer seventeen.

Nino said, "Hey, John, you making some
impression here. I think Maylene want to swallow you pride."

Maylene took her hand off mine and gently slapped
Nino on the shoulder in that limp-wristed way some women use to show
tenderness. Nino took it playfully. Salome broke off another piece of
bread from the shallow basket in front of her and sopped some gravy
from her dish.

"Nino, I’d really like to talk with the women
alone, okay?"

He shook his head, but he stood up. "You really
think they tell you something they don’t tell me after you leave?"

"Who can say?"

Nino picked up his drink and said, "I order you
the arroz con pollo and some white wine. The chicken and rice the
spec-i-al-ity of the house." He looked from Salome to Maylene
and back again. "You ladies tell this man anything he want to
know."

Maylene said, "Yes, Nino." Salome finished
her hunk of bread while Maylene struggled to lift her handbag onto
the table. Made from natural cowhide, it had outlandish fringes, the
kind of present Dale Evans might have bought Buttermilk for Mother’s
Day.

Waiting till Nino resumed his seat at the bar, I
decided to start with Maylene. I figured Salome would know more that
would help me, but I doubted she’d talk until she’d become fed up
with Maylene.

"How close were you to Teri Angel?"

Maylene frowned, as though that wasn’t the question
for which she’d prepared an answer. "I wouldn’t say close.
The Angel didn’t want anybody to be close, I don’t think."

"Why was that?"

Maylene took a pack of cigarettes from her bag. Her
hands were big and rough, almost manly. "I don’t know. She
really wouldn’t let any of the girls get to know her. Not like
Salome and me."

Salome avoided laughing by taking a swig of wine.

"You ever meet anybody with her?"

"You mean like a date or something?"

"Yeah."

"No. Really, we don’t . . . didn’t see her
that much. Just here and other places for lunch once in a while."

"Why is that?"

"Well, Nino sets us up through these hotel
people he knows, so we’re mainly on with convention types in the
afternoons and maybe some traveling executives like at night. We just
do one-ons."

"One-ons?"

Salomé groaned and said, "She means
one-on-ones. No parties or group gigs."

"Oh."

Maylene said, "That’s why we wouldn’t see
her except at lunch here sometimes. We just weren’t together when
we were working. We weren’t . . .aren’t even supposed to say hi
to each other if we see a girl in the hotels or anything?

"Because of their security people?"

"Right."

The fat man came toward us, carrying my chicken dish
and a half-carafe of wine. Given the timing, I was pretty sure La
Flor didn’t exactly cook to order. I tried it. Not bad.

"Did you know any of her free-lance clients?"

Salome laughed. "You don’t know a hell of a
lot about the life, do you?"

"No."

"Well, I got a client expecting my Dance of the
Seven Veils in about an hour, and I gotta get painted and changed by
then, so let me save you some time, okay?"

"Okay." I took more chicken.

"You’re in the life for a while, you got two
choices. Get out, or get your own."

"Your own prostitutes?"

"No. Oh, that too, yeah. If you can stand
dealing with pompom girls."

Maylene said, "Sal! You promised never to tell
any--"

"So let’s say you don’t want to be Nino the
Second. You gotta get your own book of clients. Free-lance, okay?"

"Got it," I said around my chewing.

"Now, you get the right book of clients, you can
be pretty well set. Lots of these guys are just looking for somebody
reliable, you know?" Salome cranked up her tempo, an
enthusiastic broker describing a property with potential. "Somebody
who’ll do the things for them that the wives won’t without
gagging and bitching about it. They find a girl they like, they’re
loyal like fucking football fans about it. They stick with the same
girl for years. God, I know a girl has the same three lawyers for
fifteen years. Fifteen fucking years. They all know each other, but
nobody knows they’re all doing her except her. She covers all her
overhead on those three guys alone, and that’s just twice a month
each."

“
So?"

Salome slowed down. "So, a girl gets a good
freelance, she ain’t about to spread that information around to her
competitors, follow?"

"I thought you said the free-lance clients were
loyal?"

"Yeah, but they ain’t perfect. If they were,
they wouldn’t be clients to start with."

"So you never saw her book?"

"What book?"

"Her book of free-lancers."

"Jesus. I didn’t mean she had a book. That’d
be stupid."

"Because they call her, not the other way
around. Besides, if you did have a book, you couldn’t carry it with
you, because the cops’d grab it, and you couldn’t leave it at
your place, because your pimp would read it."

I looked over at Nino. Maylene said quickly, "Oh,
Nino wouldn’t do something like that."