Mortal Stakes s-3 Read online

  “I’ll go,” she said. “Let me change, and we’ll go. Now, for God sakes, get off the floor, you damn fool.”

  I got up. “The old one-hand push-up,” I said. “Gets them almost every time.”

  She didn’t take long. I had time to sip one more brandy before she reappeared in a backless white dress that tied around the neck and had a royal blue sash around the middle.

  Her shoes matched the sash, and so did her earrings.

  I said, “Hubba, hubba.”

  “Hub-ba, hub-ba? What on earth does that mean?”

  “You look very nice,” I said. “Where would you like to go?”

  “There’s a lovely restaurant uptown a little ways we could try, if you’d like.”

  “I’m in your hands,” I said. “This is your city.”

  “You are not, I would guess, ever in anyone’s hands, Spenser, but I think you’ll like this place.”

  “Cab?” I said.

  “No, Steven will drive us.”

  When we went out the front door, there was the same well-built black man, sitting at the wheel of a Mercedes sedan. He’d swapped his mess jacket for a blue blazer.

  We drove uptown.

  The restaurant was at Sixty-fifth Street on the East Side and was called The Wings of the Dove.

  I said.

  “Do you suppose they serve the food in a golden bowl?”

  “I don’t believe so. Why do you ask?”

  “Henry James,” I said. “It’s a book joke.”

  “I guess I haven’t read it.”

  It was only five thirty when we went in. Too early for most people to go to dinner, but most people had probably eaten lunch. I hadn’t. It was a small restaurant, with a lavish dessert table in the foyer and two rooms separated by an archway. The ceiling was frosted glass that opened out, like a greenhouse, and the walls were used brick, some from the original building, some quite artfully integrated with the original. The tablecloths were pink, and there were flowers and green plants everywhere, many of them in hanging pots.

  The maitre d‘ in a tuxedo said, “Good evening, Mrs.

  Utley. We have your table.”

  She smiled and followed him. I followed her. One wall of the restaurant was mirrored, and it gave the illusion of a good deal more space than there was. I checked myself as we filed in. The suit was holding up, I’d had a haircut just last week, if only a talent scout from Playgirl spotted me.

  “Would you care for cocktails?”

  Patricia Utley said, “Campari on the rocks with a twist, please, John.”

  I said, “Do you have any draft beer?”

  The maitre d’ said, “No.”

  I said, “Do you have any Amstel in bottles?”

  He said, “No.”

  I said to Patricia Utley, “Is Nedick’s still open?”

  She said to the maitre d‘, “Bring him a bottle of Heineken, John.”

  The maitre d’ said, “Certainly, Mrs. Utley,” and stalked toward the kitchen.

  She looked at me and shook her head slowly. “Are you ever serious, Spenser?”

  “Yes, I am,” I said. “I am serious, for instance, about discussing Donna Burlington with you.”

  “And I am serious when I say to you, why should you think I’d know her?”

  “Because you are in charge of a high-priced prostitution operation and are bankrolled with what my source refers to as heavy money. Now I know it, and you know it, and why not stop the pretense? The truth, Mrs. Utley, will set us free.”

  “All right,” she said, “say you are correct. Why should I discuss it with you?”

  A waiter brought our drinks and I waited while he put them down. Mine rather disdainfully, I thought.

  “Because I can cause you aggravation—cops, newspapers, maybe the feds—maybe I could cause you trouble, I don’t know. Depends on how heavy the bankrollers really are.

  If you talk with me, then it’s confidential, there’s no aggravation at all. And I might do another one-arm push-up for you.”

  “What if my bankrollers decided to cause you aggravation?”

  “I have a very high aggravation tolerance.”

  She sipped her Campari. “It’s funny, or maybe it’s not funny at all, but you’re the second person who’s come asking about Donna.”

  “Who else?”

  “He never said, but he was quite odd. He was, oh, what, in costume, I guess you’d say. Dressed all in white, white suit and shirt, white tie, white shoes and a big white straw hat like a South American planter.”

  “Tall and slim? Chewed gum?”

  “Yes.”

  I said, “Aha.”

  “Aha?”

  “Yeah, like Aha I see a connection, or Aha I have discovered a clue. It’s detective talk.”

  “You know who he is then.”

  “Yes, I do. What did he want?”

  She sipped some more Campari. I drank some Heineken. “Among my enterprises,” she said, “is a film business. This gentleman had apparently seen Donna in one of our films and wanted the master print.”

  “Aha, aha!” I said. “Corporate diversification.” The waiter came for our order. When he was gone, I said, “Start from the beginning. When did you meet Donna, what did she do for you, what kind of film was she in, tell me all.”

  “Very well, if you promise not to keep saying Aha.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Donna came to me through a client. He’d picked her up down in the East Village when he was drunk.” She grimaced. “She was working for Violet then; her boyfriend had pimped for her before but had run from Violet. I don’t know what happened to the boyfriend. The client thought she was too nice a girl to be hustling out of the back of a car with a two-dollar pimp like Violet. He put her in touch with me.”

  The waiter came with our soup. I had gazpacho; Patricia Utley had vichyssoise.

  “I run a very first-rate operation, Spenser.”

  “I can tell that,” I said.

  “Of course, I would deny this to anyone if it ever came up.”

  “It won’t. I don’t care about your operation. I only care about Donna Burlington.”

  “But you disapprove.”

  “I don’t approve or disapprove. To tell you the truth, Mrs. Utley, I don’t give a damn. I think about one thing at a time. Right now I’m thinking about Donna Burlington.”

  “It’s a volunteer business,” she said. “It exists because men have needs.” She said it as if the needs had a foul odor.

  “Now who’s disapproving?”

  “You don’t know,” she said. “You’ve never seen what I’ve seen.”

  “About Donna Burlington,” I said.

  “She was eighteen when I took her. She didn’t know anything. She didn’t know how to dress, how to do her hair, how to wear makeup. She hadn’t read anything, been anyplace, talked to anyone. I had her two years and taught her everything. How to walk, how to sit, how to talk with people. I gave her books to read, showed her how to make up, how to dress.”

  The waiter brought the fish. Sole in a saffron sauce for her. Scallops St. Jacques for me.

  “You and Rex Harrison,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “It was rather like that. I liked Donna, she was a very unsophisticated little thing. It was like having a, oh not a daughter, but a niece perhaps. Then one day she left. To get married.”

  “Who’d she marry?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me—a client, I gathered, but she wouldn’t say whom, and I never saw her again.”

  “When was this?”

  Patricia Utley thought for a moment. “It was the same year as the Cambodian raids and the great protest, nineteen seventy. She left me in winter nineteen seventy. I remember it was winter because I watched her walk away in a lovely fur-collared tweed coat she had.”

  The waiter cleared the fish and put down the salad, spinach leaves with raw mushrooms in a lemon and oil dressing. I took a bite. So-so. “I assume the films were what I used to
call dirty movies when I was a kid.”

  She smiled. “It is getting awfully hard to decide, isn’t it? They were erotic films. But of good quality, sold by subscription.”

  “Black socks, garter belts, two girls and a guy? That kind of stuff?”

  “No, as I said, tasteful, high quality, good color and sound. No sadism, no homosexuality, no group sex.”

  “And Donna was in some?”

  “She was in one, shortly before she left me. The pay was good, and while it was a lot of work, it was a bit of a change for her. Her film was called Suburban Fancy. She was quite believable in it.”

  “What did you tell the man who came asking?”

  “I told him that he was under some kind of false impression. That I knew nothing about the films or the young lady involved. He became somewhat abusive, and I had to call for Steven to show him out.”

  “I heard this guy was pretty tough,” I said.

  “Steven was armed,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said. “How come you didn’t have Steven show me out?”

  “You did not become abusive.”

  The entree came. Duck in a fig and brandy sauce for me, striped bass in cucumber and crabmeat sauce for her. The duck was wonderful.

  I said, “You sell these films by subscription.” She nodded. “How’s chances on a look at the subscription list?”

  “None,” she said.

  “No chance?”

  “No chance at all. Obviously you can see my situation.

  Such material must remain confidential to protect our clients.”

  “People do sell mailing lists,” I said.

  “I do not,” she said. “I have no need for money, Mr.

  Spenser.”

  “No, I guess you don’t. Okay, how about I name a couple of people and you tell me if they’re on your list? That doesn’t compromise any but those I suspect anyway.”

  There were carrots in brown sauce with fresh dill and zucchini in butter with the entree, and Patricia Utley ate some of each before she answered. “Perhaps we can go back to my home for brandy after dinner and I’ll have someone check.”

  For dessert we had clafoutis, which still tastes like blueberry pancakes to me, and coffee. The coffee was weak.

  The bill was $119 including tip.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT WAS SUNSET when the plane swung in over the water and landed at La Guardia Airport. I took the bus into the East Side terminal at Thirty-eighth Street and a cab from there to the Holiday Inn at West Fifty-seventh Street. The Wiener schnitzel had been so good in Redford, I thought I might as well stay with a winner.

  The West Side hadn’t gotten any more fashionable since I had been there last and the hotel looked as if it belonged where it was. The lobby was so discouraging that I didn’t bother to check the dining room for Wiener schnitzel.

  Instead, I walked over to a Scandinavian restaurant on Fiftyeighth Street and ravaged its smorgasbord.

  The next morning I made some phone calls to the New York Department of Social Services while I drank coffee in my room. When I finished I walked along Fifty-seventh Street to Fifth Avenue and headed downtown. I always walk in New York. In the window of F.A.O. Schwarz was an enormous stuffed giraffe, and Brentano’s had a display of ethnic cookbooks in the window. I thought about going in and asking them if they were a branch of the Boston store but decided not to. They probably lacked my zesty sense of humor.

  It was about nine forty-five when I reached Thirtyfourth Street and turned left. Four blocks east, between Third and Second avenues, was a three-story beige brick building that looked like a modified fire station. The brown metal entrance doors, up four stairs, were flanked with flagpoles at right angles to the building. A plaque under the right-hand flagpole said CITY OF NEW YORK, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SERVICES, YORKVILLE INCOME MAINTENANCE CENTER. I went in.

  It was a big open room, the color a predictable green; molded plastic chairs in red, green, and blue stood three rows deep to the right of the entrance. To the left a low counter.

  Behind the counter a big black woman with blue-framed glasses on a chain around her neck was telling an old woman in an ankle-length dress that her check would come next week and would not come sooner. The woman protested in broken English, and the woman behind the desk said it again, louder. At the end of the counter, sitting in a folding chair, was a New York City cop, a slim black woman with badge, gun, short hair, and enormous high platform shoes. Beyond the counter the room L’d to the left, and I could see office space partitioned off. There was no one else on the floor.

  Behind me, to the right of the entry, a stair led up. A handprinted sign said FACE TO FACE UPSTAIRS with an arrow. I went up. The second floor had been warrened off into cubicles where face to face could go on in privacy. The first cubicle was busy; the second was not. I knocked on the frame of the open door and went in. It was little bigger than a confessional, just a desk, a file cabinet, and a chair for the face to face. The woman at the desk was lean and young, not long out of Vassar or Bennington. She had a tanned outdoor face, with small lines around the eyes that she wasn’t supposed to get yet. She had on a white sleeveless blouse open at the neck. Her brown hair was cut short and she wore no makeup. Her face presented an expression of no-nonsense compassion that I suspected she was still working on. The sign on her desk said MS.

  Harris.

  ”Come in,“ she said, her hands resting on the neat desk in front of her. A pencil in the right one. I was dressed for New York in my wheat-colored summer suit, dark blue shirt, and a white tie with blue and gold stripes. Would she invite me to her apartment? Maybe she thought I was another welfare case. If so, I’d have to speak with my tailor. I gave her a card; she frowned down at it for about thirty seconds and then looked up and said, ”Yes?“

  ”Do you think I ought to have a motto on it?“ I said.

  ”I beg your pardon?“

  ”A motto,“ I said. ”On the card. You know, like ‘We never sleep’ or maybe ‘Trouble is my business.’ Something like that.“

  ”Mr.“—she checked the card—”Spenser, I assume you’re joking and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I have a good deal to do and I wonder if you might tell me what you want directly?“

  ”Yes, ma’am. May I sit?“

  ”Please do.“

  ”Okay, I’m looking for a young woman who might have showed up here and gone on welfare about eight years ago.“

  ”Why do you want to find her?“

  I shook my head. ”It’s a reasonable question, but I can’t tell you.“

  She frowned at me the way she had frowned at my card. ”Why do you think we’d have information about something that far back?“

  ”Because you are a government agency. Government agencies never throw anything away because someone someday might need something to cover himself in case a question of responsibility was raised. You got welfare records for Peter Stuyvesant.“

  The frown got more severe, making a groove between her eyebrows. ”Why do you think this young woman was on welfare?“

  ”You shouldn’t frown like that,“ I said. ”You’ll get little premature wrinkles in the corners of your eyes.“

  ”I would prefer it, Mr. Spenser, if you did not attempt to personalize this contact. The condition of my eyes is not relevant to this discussion.“

  ”Ah, but how they sparkle when you’re angry,“ I said.

  She almost smiled, caught herself, and got the frown back in place. ”Answer my question, please.“

  ”She was about eighteen; she ran away from a small midwestern town with the local bad kid, who probably ditched her after they got here. She’s a good bet to have ended up on welfare or prostitution or both. I figured that you’d have better records than Diamond Nell’s Parlor of Delight.“

  The pencil in her right hand went tap-tap-tap on the desk. Maybe six taps before she heard it and stopped. ”The fact of someone’s presence on welfare rolls has sometimes been used against them. Cruel as
that may seem, it is a fact of life, and I hope you can understand my reticence in this matter.“

  ”I’m on the girl’s side,“ I said.

  ”But I have no way to know that.“

  ”Just my word,“ I said.

  ”But I don’t know if your word is good.“

  ”That’s true,“ I said. ”You don’t.“

  The pencil went tap-tap-tap again. She looked at the phone. Pass the buck? She looked away. Good for her. ”What is the girl’s name?“

  ”Donna Burlington.“ I could hear a typewriter in one of the other cubicles and footsteps down another corridor. ”Go ahead,“ I said. ”Do it. It will get done by someone. It’s only a matter of who. Me? Cops? Courts? Your boss? His boss? Why not you? Less fuss.“

  She nodded her head. ”Yes. You are probably right.

  Very well.“ She got up and left the room. She had very nice legs.

  It took a while. I stood in the window of the cubicle and looked down on Thirty-fourth Street and watched the people coming and going from the welfare office. It wasn’t as busy as I’d thought it would be. Nor were the people as shabby. Down the corridor a man swore rapidly in Spanish.

  The typewriter had stopped. The rest was silence.

  Ms. Harris returned with a file folder. She sat, opened it on the desk, and read the papers in it. ”Donna Burlington was on income maintenance at this office from August to November nineteen sixty-six. At the time her address was One Sixteen East Thirteenth Street. Her relationship with this office ended on November thirteenth, nineteen sixty-six, and I have no further knowledge of her.“ She closed the folder and folded her hands on top of it.

  I said, ”Thank you very much.“

  She said, ”You’re welcome.“

  I looked at my watch: 10:50. ”Would you like to join me for an early lunch?“ I said.

  ”No, thank you,“ she said. So much for the operator down from Boston.

  ”Would you like to see me do a one-hand push-up?“ I said.

  ”Certainly not,“ she said. ”If you have nothing more, Mr. Spenser, I have a good deal of work to do.“

  ”Oh, sure, okay. Thanks very much for your trouble.“

  She stood as I left the room. From the corridor I stuck my head back into the office and said, ”Not everyone can do a onehand push-up, you know?“