Читать книгу Sunset People - Herbert Kastle - Страница 12

She had taken the midnight-to-eight-a.m. shift because she wanted a rest. She’d handled too many men the past month. Tourists were fattening the customer list, and her bank account. But enough was enough.

She also wanted to read. Nice reading at the desk in front, being both receptionist and staff. Nice reading with the place quiet, the city quiet.

Nice being alone, except for the occasional customer who spotted the Grecian Massage sign while driving up Grover half a block from Sunset. Most of the Sunset Boulevard massage parlors had been closed in the recent crackdowns. Bad for other businesses, the citizens groups and police said. Brought crime and violence to a neighborhood. Same on Santa Monica and Hollywood boulevards.

Perhaps. She doubted it, but perhaps. She didn’t really pay much attention to the other girls and their men. She herself had no man, except for her customers.

And she wouldn’t have a man until she was through with this scene. And until she met someone she rather doubted existed.

She turned the page, smiling at Philip Roth’s sexist insanity, and heard the bell tinkle. She put the book down, marking her place, and glanced at her wrist-watch. Two o’clock. Only then did she look up.

The man was old: late sixties or early seventies. He was a little drunk, and very nervous. He’d once been big—tall and husky. You could see the bone structure, the sagging folds of flesh. He was now gaunt, raw-boned. He had a few gray wisps of hair, a grayish stubble of beard.

She stood up. His eyes went over her, quickly, guiltily, and he cleared his throat. She was five-five, dark-haired, full-breasted, full-bottomed, long-legged, serious and pretty and dressed in a mini toga, a pale pink wisp of nylon with matching bikini panties from Fredericks of Hollywood. Arthur insisted all his girls wear the same outfit.

“I’m Diana,” she said, smiling easily. “Would you like a massage?”

He cleared his throat again, and laughed. His laugh was very deep. His voice, when he said, “Yes, a massage,” was a basso’s, suiting what had once been an impressive physique.

She liked that. She liked his suit, a blue pinstripe, a good suit, even though his jacket was rumpled and his tie pulled awry and his shirt wilted at collar and cuffs.

She walked around the desk, which brought her close to him. He smelled of alcohol and tobacco, and while she neither drank nor smoked herself, she didn’t mind it in some men.

She took his hand, something she didn’t always do. “This way, please.”

She took him all the way to the back, even though the other three booths—little alcoves, side by side, holding a massage table and chair, separated one from the other by curtains—were empty and closer to the front where she could hear the bell. Only the back booth had solid walls and a solid door. It was the one the girls used when they thought they saw a full trick—coitus—shaping up.

She didn’t see that, though it could be. She only wanted the privacy that would relax him.

She opened the door, throwing the wall switch. He stepped past her, glancing around. He looked at the massage table, the chair stacked with towels, the ceiling fixture.

“Why don’t you disrobe and lie down on the table? Cover your middle with a towel.” She turned to go.

“Uh . . . on my back or stomach?”

“Stomach, to start.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Just to get some lotion.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a drink here?”

“We used to serve wine, but the police and ABC used it as a means of hassling us, so we don’t anymore. I think you’ll find you won’t need it.”

He began to speak again, but she went out, closing the door behind her. She wondered how far age had gone in ruining that fine man. She hoped not too far, at least in performance, so he could come away with the victory that an orgasm represented for most of his generation.

She didn’t think of age in relation to herself, but knew that twenty-eight was no longer young; not in this business. And she felt a good deal older than twenty-eight.

She took the squeeze bottle of lotion from the locker, and the credit-card machine from the drawer. She did it this way whenever possible, reducing the obviousness of payment. In the Lotus Massage they had made her run the credit cards through at the reception desk, a distasteful operation for both her and her clients.

When she entered the room, he was lying on his stomach, face pressed into the little pillow. He had a towel across his bottom, and one across his back and shoulders too.

She put bottle and machine down on the chair and removed the top towel. He shifted weight a little.

She stroked his shoulders—broad, the bones showing through. Freckled skin and some muscle tone. Not a bad torso.

“You’re built well. Are you a police officer?”

He turned his big head and stared at her. She said, “We have to ask that of each client. To avoid entrapment.”

“Do I look like a cop?”

“Like a chief, a commissioner.”

He smiled, putting his face down again. “I’m Harold Lowndes, general insurance, retired.”

She got the machine. “Can I have a credit card, Harold? We take Master Charge, Visa, and American Express.”

He looked up. “Now?”

She nodded.

“In my jacket. Breast pocket.”

She got the wallet from the jacket draped over the chair. He gave her his card and she ran it through and explained that the charge was twenty dollars for a basic massage. “The rest is between the two of us. The free-enterprise system.”

“Let’s wait and see if I’ll want more than a basic massage.”

She put the wallet and machine away and spread lotion on his back and began to knead the flesh. Some of the girls barely stroked their clients, getting down to the genitals as quickly as possible, raising the question of masturbation, or more, for a price. The price varied with the girl, the client. You tried for as much as you thought the traffic would bear. For masturbation, anywhere from an additional ten on up. For fellatio, or “head” as the girls called it, an additional twenty on up. For coitus, if the back room was free, whatever the traffic would bear, but often the same as for head.

Diana gave head only when the spirit, and the man moved her.

She could count the times she’d laid a client.

She had lean, delicate hands. Most times the client reached orgasm before he could ask for anything more. She had a list of regulars who preferred masturbation with her to coitus with other girls. She made between eight hundred and a thousand dollars a week, working seven days most weeks. Except when she took a “vacation” on the late shift.

She was now stroking his waist, reaching under the towel to brush his buttocks. His face remained in the pillow, but he sighed a little. She pushed the towel down, and felt him tense. He had long buttocks that were still hard to the touch.

She probed them, stroked them, massaged them.

He sighed again, and relaxed.

She ran a little lotion down his legs, kneading the calves. She went back up and did the same to his arms, his biceps—big biceps, but much soft flesh before she could find strength, hardness.

She asked him to turn over, and was pleased to see that there was strength and hardness where it counted. The towel, which she’d arranged as he’d turned, tented high.

She smiled into his face. He wet his lips. “What was your name again?” the deep whisper asked.

“Diana.”

“The huntress. What are you hunting now, Diana?”

“Pleasure.”

The ruin of age was far more evident in front, despite that erection. She kept her eyes from the looseness of pectorals, the sagging of fleshy breasts, the weak flab of stomach. She looked at his face, liking it, the vestigial handsomeness of it, the questioning need of it. She slipped her hand under the towel, and lightly touched his penis. “A beauty,” she said, without artifice or whorish guile.

“So they used to tell me.”

“Bet they still would, if you gave them a chance.”

“No. My wife died last year. Don’t want her friends, my friends, those widows and old ladies. I’m a dirty old man . . .”

She grasped his penis to stop the negative talk. Also because she was curious and excited.

She bent over him, brushing the towel to the floor. She kissed his mouth, stroking his penis, a big one, perhaps eight inches and thick, though not really in full erection; not gorged and rigid with blood; not yet sensitive enough to make him lose all pain, all care.

She decided to change that. She decided to forgo the business preliminaries, the dealings. She held his organ with her right hand and touched his face with her left and kissed him, eyes closing, smelling the whiskey and tobacco and maleness, dreaming of this man as he once had been, as he might have been for her: the right man, the great love that she no longer believed in but yearned for as much as any schoolgirl.

Then she moved her mouth to his penis. She knew she was supposed to wash it first, in the hospital-aseptic manner of prostitutes, but she felt a turn-on, a passion, a need to suck it . . . and did so. The smell of him was the smell of man, of genitals. The taste of him was salt, which disappeared and left a non-taste, an erotic feel in her mouth.

When she paused, he said, “God, Diana, more.”

She gave him more. She gave him whatever she had to give, which was considerable though she wasn’t a brilliant head artist like some of the other girls.

And finally felt his hand running along her thighs, under the little toga, grasping her bottom through the panties. Felt his other hand fumbling for her breasts. And liked it.

“Can you get on here with me?” he panted.

She liked that too. She removed the panties and climbed on top of him and rode him and bent for his kisses and heard the explosion of breath and cry of near-pain that was his conclusion. She rode him a little longer for her own conclusion, which she marked by a sobbing sound vented with head back.

The first thing he said was, “It really happened for you?”

She was off and heading for the bathroom. “Yes.” She pointed at the ledge under the table. “There are moist towelettes.”

She took her time douching, wondering what he would do. He could rush and leave. It would save him money.

But when she returned, he was waiting, fully dressed, sitting on the chair.

“It was great,” he said, voice quiet now. “What do I owe?”

She could say a hundred. It had gone that well.

She shrugged. It had gone too well. She couldn’t price it. “Do you live in town?” she asked.

“No. New Mexico. I’ll be here another three days. I’m staying at that little motel a few blocks east on Sunset. I forget the name. I forget most things lately. Don’t seem important. But I’ll remember Diana.”

Which made her smile, though it was all over and her natural cynicism, her need to withdraw, was on her.

He handed her a bill. It was a hundred. He wasn’t that well off if he was staying at the Sunset Strip motel. A hundred was important to a retired insurance man from New Mexico. It put a seal of truth to his words.

She walked him to the door. She said, “Come back,” and had to add, “I can’t promise it will be as nice again,” because it never was.

When he’d gone, she returned to the desk and her book. The Breast seemed frantic and thin now. But it would fit right in with the world in an hour or so, when the glow wore off.

She had another customer, a young Oriental, who carefully reviewed the prices and dickered for a “hand job” for ten dollars over the twenty. She said, “Why not?” and gave him a leisurely massage, concentrating on brushing his testicles and penis for perhaps five minutes. Then she grasped his organ and with a few quick strokes brought him to climax.

He was disappointed at not lasting longer. A lot of young men were, which was why she’d been especially certain to get payment in advance. He hung around, asking if she was available “for functions.” She said no, she worked only here. She began to read, and after a while he was gone.

She’d enjoyed him. He’d been quite beautiful: a small, lean-muscled youth with a waist narrower than hers and a rigid little penis that tilted back toward his naval. And lovely tan skin that was no more yellow than her own. And a voice that would do credit to an altar boy.

Physically, there was much to be said for men.

The doorbell tinkled. She closed her book, checking the time. Four-ten. Seven customers since midnight, which was busier than usual for this shift. Of course, it was Friday night, Saturday morning.

She looked at the man in the doorway: in his thirties. Tall and hard-looking in his work-a-day gray suit. Faded blond hair cut medium-short; less-faded mustache worn medium-full.

She couldn’t be wrong about this one. She’d seen them come in flashing badges too often.

She didn’t have to ask the question.

“I’m a police officer. Are you Diana Searls?”

She was surprised. Unlike some of the other girls, she had no record to speak of, and wasn’t known by sight. “Yes.”

“Did you have a sister named Carla Woodruff?”

Woodruff was their real name, which she’d dropped in order to keep it out of the parlors.

“Yes. Is there anything wrong?” (And he’d spoken of Carla in the past tense and she began to fear . . . but most cops were such illiterates.)

He came inside. He didn’t answer her.

“I haven’t seen any credentials,” she said, fear for Carla growing. She knew what this world was. She knew what it could do.

He showed her a badge and card. She read the card aloud: “Lawrence Admer, lieutenant. What about my sister?”

“She was in the same business as you, right?” His eyes flickered over her body.

(The past tense again.) “Wrong. She works in a dress shop.”

“Only she lost the job and was looking for new employment, on the street maybe eleven, maybe twelve tonight, right?”

“Not right. She didn’t work weekends. You can check with her employer. Did you bust her for prostitution because she was walking along the street? Did she give me as a reference?” (She hoped, hoped, and didn’t believe.)

“Why? Has it happened before?”

“Never!” She sat down, knees suddenly weak. “Is she outside in your car?”

“No.”

“Then why all the questions, the implications that she’s a hooker?”

“Because someone killed her and it fits the pattern of pimp justice or hooker haters.”

He was looking around.

“What?” she whispered.

He moved to the small plaster Venus near the rear curtain and began examining it closely. “I’m sorry,” he said. “She was found dead, gunshot wound, on a side street off Sunset, not far from here.”

He lifted his eyes to the curtain and reached out as if to pull it aside; then turned and met her stunned gaze. He said, “It’ll help us find whoever did it if we get the nonsense about her profession out of the way. Get us talking to the right people . . .”

“Goddam you!” And having nowhere to go with her agony but at his bland, blond, uncaring face, she lunged up and around the desk, reaching with her nails.

“Take it easy,” he said, grabbing her wrists, finally showing some emotion. He was angry.

“You asshole!” she shouted, hating him.

“What the hell, lady! I’m not responsible.”

She stopped struggling. “Oh yes you are. God, are you ever.”

“Now how do you figure that?”

She tugged her wrists, and he freed them. She went to the closet, got her clothes, and turned to the curtain.

“You’re not going to run out the back, are you?”

She was thinking of Carla and trying not to cry and she kept going.

He followed her. He examined the toilet before allowing her to enter.

When she came out, he was using the desk phone. “Local call,” he said.

She released the automatic snap-lock on the door, and went out to the parking lot. She saw the other cop leaning against a dark, four-door sedan, the only car there besides her Fiat. She walked over, and he nodded, and she opened the door and got in back.

He was a short, powerfully built man, older than the other, and he got in front and turned to her, smiling. “Hey, honey, you’re pretty. You gonna help us?”

She looked out the side window, away from him.

Which was when his attitude changed radically. He lunged over the seat, grabbed her arm, and jerked her toward him. “I’m speaking to you, cunt!”

She kept her face turned away.

And the other detective was there, looking in at them. “Marv, it’s the deceased’s sister.”

“So the dead whore’s got a live whore for a sister. So when I speak to her I expect an answer.” He shook her savagely.

“And when I speak to you,” Admer said, opening the driver’s door, “I expect you to remember who’s the lieutenant and who’s the sergeant.”

“Shit,” the short detective muttered, but he flung her arm away and turned in his seat.

Admer got behind the wheel.

Diana didn’t cry. Not until she had to identify her baby sister at the morgue.