Taming a Sea Horse Read online

  By a quarter of seven I was giving some thought to eating my Utica Blue Sox hat, and maybe would have but for the stunningness issue. Two bagels don't cover you into the evening. At ten of seven Rambeaux came out. He had on a vanilla-colored double-breasted suit and a dark shirt open at the throat and carried a black trench coat over his arm. He went up toward Second Avenue. If he caught a cab there, I'd follow in the car. He didn't, he went on across Second. I left the Toyota on the hydrant and followed him on foot. He was walking. If he were going uptown, he'd have caught a cab on First. If he were heading crosstown, he'd have hailed one on the corner. At Lexington he went into the subway and I followed him. He put a token into the slot and I did too. I always got a few tokens when I was tailing someone. Be prepared. I got on a car behind the one Rambeaux got on, and watched him sort of obliquely through the connecting doors. The subway wasn't jammed, but there were enough people so blending in was easy. We got out at 42nd Street and walked west. I stayed on the other side of the street and kept my head down, but Rambeaux wasn't nervous. There was a spring in his step and he made no attempt to evade a tail. He had no reason to think there'd be one. He never looked around. When we crossed Fifth Avenue past the library and began to move toward Times Square the spring in Rambeaux's step seemed to increase. At Sixth Avenue he seemed barely to touch the ground, and by the time we got to Times Square he was clearly in a New York state of mind. Times Square is the Parthenon of sleaze. And Rambeaux seemed right in his element. He moved easily among the porn theaters and shops that sell ghetto blasters and martial arts equipment. He paused, spoke to a black woman in a red leather miniskirt and a blond wig, moved on, talked to a young girl in a black leather miniskirt and white mesh stockings, moved on and stood in the doorway of a store that sold adult novelty items, his arms folded, a look of benign pleasure on his face. He bobbed his head slightly, probably listening to the lullaby of Broadway. A chunky white man in a three-piece suit stopped to speak to him. Rambeaux smiled and shook his head. The man walked on. Rambeaux's eyes ranged across the square and then he arched his back in a stretching movement, and moved out and walked uptown along Broadway. He paused, traded a low five with a burly black man in a safari jacket, talked for a moment, took a cigarette and moved along toward 44th Street smoking. At the corner of 44th Street he spoke with two women, both in miniskirts and boots, one of them wearing a squirrel jacket, the other coatless, wearing a scoop-neck sequined blouse. One woman was white, the other oriental. He took the hand of the oriental girl and held it for a minute. I saw her face tighten in pain and realized he was squeezing it. Then he dropped her hand and smiled and kissed each of them on the cheek and drifted on up Broadway. Rambeaux was the home office. He was making a field inspection.

  At 50th Street, Rambeaux crossed and worked that side of Broadway back toward 42nd. He smoked several cigarettes. He talked with whores, occasionally spoke with a colleague. As the evening cooled he slipped on his black trench coat, cut fashionably large, with a belt around the waist. There were fastfood joints and I was in danger of malnutritive hallucinations, but anything cooked in Times Square would probably give you rabies.

  By ten I knew what I needed to know. Rambeaux was a pimp and he had a string of streetwalkers. Who the young ladies were he'd dined with uptown was not yet clear. But I knew what was happening here. I revisited two or three of the girls on my own and made sure I'd recognize them. Then I walked over to Sixth Avenue and caught a cab up to 77th Street and retrieved my car. The Hertz Corp. had gotten a ticket. Serves them right, parking on a hydrant. I put the ticket in the glove compartment and returned the car and went to the St. Regis with visions of the room service menu dancing in my head.

  6

  Times Square at eight-fifteen in the morning is as sleazy as it is at night. And as busy. The whores were out getting an early start on the daily quota. Several winos had managed to get drunk already. Everywhere the industrious among us were up and at it. Me too. I was talking with the youngish whore in the black miniskirt and white mesh stockings I'd seen talking last night to Rambeaux.

  "What are you interested in?" she said.

  "Baseball, English landscape paintings, beer. How 'bout yourself?"

  She shook her head. She was tired and even my lyrical wit didn't seem to brighten her face.

  "You want action or not?" she said.

  "I want to buy you breakfast and talk with you," I said.

  She shrugged. "It's an hourly rate," she said. "What you do with your time is up to you."

  "Okay," I said, and paid her. "Now you're mine until nine twenty-five."

  "Sure thing, sugar. Where we going?"

  "How about the HoJo," I said. "Across the square."

  "Sure."

  We crossed Broadway and Seventh where they intersect and walked up to the Howard Johnson's and sat. in a booth. I had black coffee. She had scrambled eggs and sausage patties, two strips of bacon, and home fries, buttered toast, and a Coke.

  "Take care of any cholesterol deficiency you might be suffering," I said.

  "Sure," she said. "What you want to talk about?"

  "What's your name?" I said.

  "Ginger." She used a toast triangle to push some scrambled eggs onto her fork.

  "How long you been hooking, Ginger?" She shrugged while she swallowed her eggs. "Long time," she said.

  "Always with Rambeaux?"

  She stopped eating and stared at me. "You know him?"

  "Sure," I said.

  "You and him ain't friends," she said.

  "True, but I know him."

  "You a cop?"

  "No."

  "The hell you ain't," Ginger said.

  "I'm not a cop. I'm not going to arrest anybody. I'm looking for information."

  "You're a fucking cop," Ginger said. "You think I don't know a cop."

  She ate some more of her scrambled eggs. It didn't bother her a hell of a lot if I was a cop. Cops were just another itch to scratch. If I busted her, the pimp would bail her out and she'd be back at work tomorrow.

  "You want to shake Robert down?" Ginger said.

  "No. I want to find out a little about him."

  "How come?" She finished her eggs and sausage, and was nibbling a limp bacon slice in her fingers.

  "Girl I know is in love with him. I want to see if he's reliable."

  Ginger put down her bacon slice and wiped her fingers on a napkin. She sat back in the booth and stared at me.

  "Reliable?"

  "Yeah," I said, "reliable."

  She smiled briefly. "You can rely on Robert," she said. "You can rely on him to make every dime he can off your body and never let go of it until he can't make anything more. He's reliable as hell about that."

  "That's sort of what I was afraid of."

  "What do you think he's like. He's a pimp. You think pimps are reliable?"

  "How'd you meet him?" I said.

  Ginger ate the rest of her bacon. I waited while she did. I still had forty minutes left on the meter and I could always buy another hour. A waitress filled my coffee cup. Ginger sat back in the booth again and sipped her Coke.

  "I was working in a house in Boston."

  "And?"

  The waitress came back and put the check down.

  "I'm sick of sitting here,"' Ginger said. "Let's get out of here."

  I paid the check and we were on the street again. The weather was pleasant. Warm enough for Ginger's skirt and sleeveless sequined top.

  "Anywhere you want to go?" I said

  "Someplace else," she said.

  "How about the zoo?" I said.

  She glanced around Times Square. "How different can it be," she said.

  I got us a cab and we rode in silence to Central Park. The cabbie dropped us at Columbus Circle and we walked across the park, east, toward the zoo. Ginger's costume looked less appropriate in the park, but no one seemed to notice. New York offers the gift of loneliness, E. B. White had said once.

  We were standing in front of
the polar bear cage when I said again, "And?"

  Ginger seemed startled. "And what?" she said.

  "And you met Rambeaux, what then?"

  She looked at her watch. "You gonna pay, me some more?"

  "Yes," I said. "Just leave the meter running. I'll pay you for all the time it takes."

  She nodded. She looked at the bear. "You think he likes it in there?"

  "No," I said. "I think he'd rather be up on the polar ice cap hotfooting it after a seal. What happened after you met Sweet Robert?"

  "I came to New York with him."

  "Because?"

  "Because I came."

  "Better money?" I said.

  She was watching the bear. "Something like that," she said.

  "Was it that?"

  She still watched the bear. I watched him too. He had a beer keg in the water with him and he mauled it and rolled over it, taking it under and letting it pop up. It wasn't much but what the hell else was there to do?

  After a long time, Ginger said, "No."

  "It wasn't money?"

  "No."

  "It was love," I said.

  "I'm sick of looking at this fucking bear," she said.

  "Sure."

  We moved toward the monkey house. In front of a cage full of capuchin monkeys Ginger turned and leaned her fanny on the railing and said, "Yeah. It was love."

  "Better reason than money," I said.

  "Bullshit," Ginger said. "Men think shit like that. Women don't."

  "Hard to generalize," I said. "What happened when you got to New York?"

  "He put me on the street."

  "Now, that's love," I said.

  Ginger looked past me at the monkeys in the cage across the aisle. She didn't say anything.

  "Sorry," I said.

  She looked back at me silently and nodded. "So you were on the street."

  "Robert was studying music and he needed time and so I split my money with him."

  "And what did he contribute?"

  "I thought he loved me," Ginger said. "And he was protection."

  "Against what?"

  "Whatever. He'd hang around in case the john was freaky. Or tried to rip us off. Make sure I came out when I was supposed to. Stuff like that."

  We walked toward the lions. On the other side of the pit was a guy selling popcorn. "You want some?" I said.

  "Sure," Ginger said.

  I left her leaning on the railing looking at the lions and walked over to the popcorn cart. When I came back two teenage Hispanic kids were talking to her. The heavier of them made a kissing sound with his lips and rubbed his thumb across his fingertips. He had on a yellow silk jacket. I handed Ginger the popcorn. And looked at the two kids.

  "She wit' you, man?"

  I nodded.

  "We thought she was alone, man." Both kids were much shorter than I was and I was looking down at them. Always effective. I kept looking. The kid in the yellow jacket shrugged and he and his pal swaggered away.

  "I'm impressed," Ginger said.

  "At what?"

  "You. You must be fairly scary. Kids like that aren't normally scared of anything."

  "They are, they pretend they're not," I said.

  "With you they didn't pretend. They must have seen something."

  "They probably sensed I am pure of heart," I said. "What happened? How come you're not in a classy call house? Why'd he turn you out on the street?"

  She shrugged again. In the strong sunlight there were small wrinkles around her eyes. Her makeup looked harsh.

  "He says I'm shopworn," she said. I raised my eyebrows.

  She nodded and ate some popcorn. She held the box out toward me. I shook my head. "So Rambeaux moved you down scale."

  "Un huh. A lot less money per trick."

  "So more tricks," I said.

  "Robert's tuition payments didn't drop," she said.

  "They never will," I said.

  "Tell me something I don't know," Ginger said.

  "And when you get a little more shopworn?"

  "There's a place in Miami," she said, "where the girls never get out of bed. Guys get fifteen minutes, by the clock, then a bell rings and they gotta get off, and the next guy gets on."

  "A little short on foreplay," I said.

  "It's a living," Ginger said.

  "No," I said. "It isn't."

  7

  We were in a place on Seventh Avenue called Freddy's, sitting at the bar. Ginger was drinking a Tequila Sunrise.

  "Robert doesn't check me during the day," Ginger said. "He has an idea how much I should average, I don't come up with it and he gets sort of nasty."

  I had a draft beer. I took a small sip. It was only two in the afternoon. I had a long day ahead.

  "So he don't care. I'll give him a nice take for today. He don't care if I earn it fucking or talking."

  "Except about him," I said.

  Ginger's eyes got rounder and she stared at me. "He won't know that," she said.

  "Not from me," I said.

  She drank some more of her drink, and looked at the bartender. He nodded and brought her another one.

  "He can be awful mean," Ginger said.

  "Musicians are sensitive," I said. "They're easily upset."

  "Shit," Ginger said. There was a big purple bruise on her upper right arm. But she had that kind of pale northern European skin that bruises easily and she may have earned the bruise in plying her trade.

  "You like this work, Ginger?"

  She laughed silently. "You from Social Services?"

  "So it's a corny question. I still want to know. You like the work?"

  Ginger examined the surface tension on her Tequila Sunrise. She took a deep breath, and let it out. "I used to," she said. "I'd turn maybe ten tricks a day. Okay guys. Clean. Wives out in the suburbs. No trouble."

  "Good money?"

  "Yeah, great. Fifty to a hundred thousand a year. A lot of the tricks were party stuff. Guy wanted to get it on with two of us. Guy wanted to do some coke, drink some booze." She motioned to the bartender for another Sunrise. "Sometimes they'd get so blown away they couldn't even get it up." The bartender brought the drink. I stayed with my beer, a sip at a time. "Lot of them couldn't get it up even sober. Want to watch a couple of girls french each other. So okay, fine with me. Dough's the same whatever I'm eating, you know?" Ginger finished her drink and picked up the new one. The bar was quiet in the midafternoon, dark and cool and full of the dull gleam of bottles and mahogany and brass and Naugahyde.

  "You got a cigarette?" Ginger said.

  "No, but I can buy some."

  "Yeah. Marlboros in a box."

  The bartender gave us the cigarettes. Ginger took one out. The bartender lit it for her and left the matches. Ginger took a long drag. "I only smoke when I'm drinking," she said.

  "It might be nice with something cool," I said.

  She nodded, looking past me toward the window where the light from Seventh Avenue filtered through the tinted glass.

  "A lot of them like to be chained," she said. "They'd crawl around and bark like a dog and get off in their pants." Ginger snorted a humorless kind of snort. "Assholes," she said. "They'd want you to spank them." She shook her head, listening to herself talk. Not paying me much attention. "Not many good bodies. Mostly fat, white, lot of them had hairy backs." She looked at me. "You probably got a good body," she said.

  "Schwarzenegger," I said. "Think Arnold Schwarzenegger."

  "You scared hell out of those two spick kids," she said.

  "You still like the work?" I said.

  "It's work," she said. "What the hell else can I do?"

  "Tend bar," I said.

  "Big deal. Slopping drinks to a bunch of fucking lushes. At least I got someone looking out for me. Who looks out for you when you tend bar?"

  I shook my head. "Robert's looking out for you?"

  She laughed again. "He's looking out for him."

  "So how much is he looking out for you?"
>
  "He needs me. He takes care of business."

  "If you tended bar," I said, "I suppose you'd have to look out for yourself. You and the union."

  "That shit's okay if you're a man," Ginger said.

  I nodded. A middle-aged man came into the bar wearing brand-new cowboy boots, and Sergio Valente jeans, with his hair blow-dried and his shirt collar carefully smoothed out over the lapels of his suede sport coat. His wife's jeans were tucked into her boots. The jeans were too tight and plainly revealed the spandex undergarment that compressed her butt. The mass of black hair piled on her head seemed to dwarf her face. Visitors in the big city. Up from Orlando, maybe. Or in from Wilkes-Barre, or Worcester.

  "What did you do before you started hooking?" I said.

  "Nothing." Ginger made a kind of shivery motion. "How come you want to know all this shit?"

  "I don't know much about whores and this kid I'm interested in is one. I thought I'd better inform myself."

  "Why don't you ask her?"

  "She doesn't know what you know," I said.

  "She will."

  "Maybe not," I said.

  "You gonna save her?"

  "Maybe," I said.

  Ginger laughed her joyless laugh. "Why?" she said.

  "Why not?"

  "You gonna save me?"

  "Maybe," I said.

  Ginger was still for a moment. Then she said, "Shit," and drank her Tequila Sunrise.

  8

  From the window of my room at the St. Regis I could see Fifth Avenue. It was early evening and the crowd on the street was on its way to early dinner, or late shopping. The sky beyond the skyscrapers to the west was still light, but down in the city it was dark and the streetlights were on.

  I turned from the window and looked at Ginger. She was sitting on the edge of the bed eating a cheeseburger and drinking beer. The room service table was in front of her with a pink tablecloth and a rose in a glass vase. "What about Robert?" I said.