Читать книгу All White Girls - Michael Bracken - Страница 7

CHAPTER 3

“Care for a drink?”

“No,” Rickenbacher said as he straddled a red leather and chrome stool at the far end of the bar. He’d never finished the beer he’d ordered the previous night. “Thanks.”

“On the wagon?”

“That’s twelve steps to hell,” he said as he dropped a slim file folder on the worn and stained wood before him, still remembering how his head had felt that morning. “I’m just not in the mood.”

Carlos, the Muff Inn’s regular bartender, shrugged and continued cleaning with the dirty towel he’d pulled from his belt a few minutes earlier. He jerked one thumb over his shoulder at the runway stage behind him and said, “The girls don’t start until noon.”

“Didn’t come for the show.”

“No skin off my nose.” Carlos lifted both hands in mock-surrender. His English was good, but not his green card, and he didn’t need any trouble with the big man.

Rickenbacher sat in silence for almost twenty minutes, watching as the now-mute bartender rearranged bottles, refilling nearly-empty name-brand fifths from generic gallon containers. Finally, a slightly overweight woman in her early forties entered the joint and made her way toward Rickenbacher. She hefted herself onto the stool next to him and ordered Jack Black straight up in a frozen shot glass, her sensuously low and throaty voice completely at odds with her appearance.

She had a temporary beauty, applied carefully each morning, then scrubbed off each night with Noxema and a cosmetic sponge. Beneath all the make-up existed one of the homeliest women Rickenbacher had ever met, but she could do things with her mouth and her tongue that most men couldn’t even imagine until she did it to them for twenty bucks. Colette had semi-retired from the street and made most of her living describing sexual intercourse to lonely men who dialed a 900 number and paid $2.50 a minute to masturbate to the sound of her voice. A hooker with a heart of gold is a fiction perpetuated by television cop shows, but Colette was the next best thing.

She owed Rickenbacher a favor.

Rickenbacher pushed the slim file folder toward Colette. She lifted the cover and carefully examined a series of grainy black-and-white contact proofs. Two of them had been circled with orange grease pencil, and Colette’s eight-year-old niece, her thin lips wrapped around the fat head of a rubber dildo, stared up at her from each of them. Then Colette thumbed through the strips of 35mm negatives used to create the proofs, assuring herself that all were accounted for. When she finally closed the cover, Colette griped the folder so tightly it began to crumple and her knuckles turned white.

When her drink arrived a moment later, Colette wrapped one handful of ring-encrusted fingers around the sweating glass. Before she lifted it to her lips, she said, “I saw this morning’s paper.”

“Yeah?”

“Poor Mr. Johnson did a nose dive into the sidewalk outside his office.” Colette lifted the shot glass to her heavily-painted red mouth, pressed the rim against the poorly-camouflaged cold sore on her bottom lip, and tilted her head backward as she lifted the glass upward. The auburn liquid disappeared down the back of her throat. When she finished, she said, “I figure I have you to thank for that.”

“He tripped.”

Colette turned to consider Rickenbacher. The brim of his baseball cap shadowed Rickenbacher’s eyes and she could read nothing in them. He slid a copy of Katherine Cove’s high school graduation photo from his shirt pocket and laid it face-up in front of Colette.

Carlos eased down the bar with a bottle in one hand and tried to refill Colette’s shot glass while she stared at the young woman’s face. She waved him away. “One’s enough, honey.”

“Ever seen her?” Rickenbacher asked.

“Seen dozens like her,” Colette said. “They come and they go. They just don’t come too often in my neighborhood.” She laughed at her own joke, but the sound disappeared when she realized she laughed alone. “Haven’t seen her.”

Rickenbacher slid the photo down the bar toward Carlos. “You?”

Carlos shook his head.

Rickenbacher told them both, “You do, you’ll let me know.”

“Honey, come up to my place some night and I’ll give you something you’ll never get from some young pussy.” She smiled.

Rickenbacher pushed himself off the stool and towered above Colette for the moment it took him to adjust his baseball cap securely over his bald spot. Then he headed toward the door.

“Hey, Big Dick,” Colette called to his back. “You know how I’m gonna die? Hearing aids!” she shouted. “From all you pricks who think oral sex means talking about it.”

Carlos stood behind the bar laughing quietly. He refilled Colette’s glass with imitation Jack and told her the drink was on the house. She watched Rickenbacher until he stepped through the door, then she upended her drink on the file folder. She reached into her purse for a disposable lighter, flicked it to life, and held the flame to the corner of the folder.

“Jesus, lady!” Carlos swore as he swatted at the burning folder with his bar towel. “You trying to burn the place down?”

The folder, the contact proofs, and the negatives had turned to ash and melted plastic before the bartender put the fire out. He managed to save only the photo of Katherine Cove, and he slid it under the cash register.

* * * *

Rickenbacher had never actually cruised the information highway himself. Instead, he traveled the back alleys and side streets, where information cost him a five spot, a drink, or a favor, and he wore out more shoe leather than RAM. Throughout the day, he reached out to people who might have seen Katherine if she had fallen from grace, and made connections with people who just hung around keeping their eyes open. Unlike the big agency Cove had initially hired, Rickenbacher preferred to do the work personally, ensuring that every base was covered, every angle considered, every resource used.

After he left Colette at the Muff Inn, Rickenbacher dropped five spots and sprang for drinks at a dozen different clubs, strip joints, and newsstands. Some days were better than others and when he finally stopped for dinner at a fast-food joint serving greasy burgers and greasier fries, he knew no more than he’d known that morning.

* * * *

The sun had already slid down the evening sky leaving a trail of tainted smog when Lieutenant Castellano reviewed the preliminary reports. Uniforms had canvassed the neighborhood where Jane Doe 43 had died, interviewing bartenders and bouncers, hookers and housewives, winos and waitresses, and had come up with nothing. No one knew who she was or how she came to die in a cheap hotel room.

He hadn’t seen Jane Doe 43’s face on any milk cartons, nor on any missing persons reports. He stood before a battered grey cabinet and thumbed through the files, looking for any indication that someone missed her and wanted her to return. Later, he phoned the country’s three largest private organizations devoted to the location of missing children, his hopes of successfully identifying her diminishing with each call until he finally gave up.

His shift ended before his patience gave out, but when it did, he sat at his desk fingering the silver locket he wore on a chain under his starched white shirt. He had a splitting headache and he wanted a beer.

Maybe more than one.

* * * *

Paul Canfield stood in the back, behind the runway stage near the door to the men’s room. Above him a neon Budweiser sign popped and fizzled as it tried repeatedly to burn itself out. He watched the anemic redhead on stage bump and grind without sincerity until the men’s room door finally opened and a corpulent salesman in an off-the-rack suit that hadn’t fit properly in years came waddling out, followed closely by the scent of flatulence, stale sperm, and cheap cologne. Canfield coughed into his fist, then pushed his way into the tiny room and locked the door.

He pressed down the handle on the faucet and a thin trickle of tepid water flowed over his hands. Canfield splashed the water on his face, then threaded his damp fingers through his hair and pushed the long locks of black and grey away from his forehead. After a moment, he tried to focus on his reflection in the mirror, but the dim light from the 40-watt bulb above him and the graffiti carved into the polished-steel sheet nailed to the wall over the sink prevented him from seeing anything more than the deep bags under his eyes. He hadn’t slept since the previous morning.

Canfield wiped the front of the sink dry with his forearm, then reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved a glass vial. He shook a small pile of cocaine from the vial onto the sink, then used the switchblade he kept in his left boot to push the drug into a thin white line along the edge of the porcelain. He leaned forward, pressed his left nostril shut with his index finger, and then inhaled the entire line.

It took a moment for his body to react to the drug and before it did someone pounded on the door. “You buy that real estate, bud?”

* * * *

After dinner, Rickenbacher cruised the stretch, stopping to talk to every young blonde hooker parading her wares, finally returning home alone that evening. Mrs. Stegmann’s annoying white poodle stood on the back of her overstuffed couch and barked at him through the window as he slowly made his way up the stairs to his apartment. As soon as he slipped his key into the lock and twisted, Rickenbacher realized he had company. He pushed the door open slowly, prepared for most anything. He’d had unexpected visitors before—too many times before—and they weren’t often friendly.

Lieutenant Castellano sat on Rickenbacher’s couch, thumbing through a two-week old TV Guide. A six-pack of Budweiser, four cans still captured in the plastic-ring carrier, sat on the floor beside the couch. The Lieutenant had already finished one beer and he held a second in his left hand. Without looking up at Rickenbacher, he said, “Didn’t figure I needed a warrant.”

Rickenbacher relaxed as he closed the door.

“Seems your friend really did trip.” Castellano closed the magazine he’d been glancing through and tossed it to the other end of the couch. “We found some loose carpeting near his desk.”

Rickenbacher nodded. There hadn’t been any loose carpeting in Mr. Johnson’s office when he’d left.

“The Medical Examiner confirmed cause of death as a broken neck, but it looks like Johnson ran into something before he fell. The M.E. said Johnson landed on his back, but his nose had been broken before the fall.”

“Maybe he ran into a door.”

“Stranger things have happened,” the Lieutenant said. “Somebody clumsy enough to fall out a window could have run into a door first.”

Rickenbacher just shrugged his shoulders.

Castellano said, “We found a few other things as well.”

“Yeah?”

“Three file cabinets filled with photos of young girls. One of the drawers had been opened and rifled.” Castellano sat silent for a moment, then asked, “How’s your hand?”

“Healing nicely.”

The Lieutenant lifted the Budweiser can to his lips and drained it. The last time he’d been in Rickenbacher’s apartment he’d put away a six of Bud and a fifth of Jack and had spent half the night driving the porcelain bus, heaving his guts out. He asked, “You working on anything these days?”

“Missing girl.” Rickenbacher tossed the folder on his coffee table. Missing girls had become his specialty.

Castellano reached down for another beer, popped it open, then reached for the folder. He opened it and spent a moment staring at Katherine Cove. “Looks like another small town dreamer. She come to the big city to find her fortune?”

“Don’t know why she came,” Rickenbacher answered. He peeled off his windbreaker and his baseball cap and stuffed them in his coat closet. Then he glanced at his answering machine and found no messages waiting. He said, “Not even sure she made it here.”

“Mommy want her little girl to come home?”

“Daddy does.”

“I got a girl just like her on ice. She’s tore up so bad you can’t tell what she looked like. Got a few good prints off her left hand, but there’s no match.”

Rickenbacher didn’t say anything.

“Dragnet’s on in fifteen minutes,” Castellano said. “Let’s watch something with a happy ending.”

“You need a wife to go home to,” Rickenbacher said. His former partner had never married. “Then you wouldn’t need to hang around here.”

“When did you become an authority on marriage?”

Rickenbacher shrugged. He found an unopened bag of pretzels in the kitchen, poured himself a large glass of unsweetened orange juice, and then sat on the couch beside his former partner. They watched old programs on Rickenbacher’s portable black-and-white television until Castellano finished the last beer, pissed, and went home.

* * * *

The woman on stage at the Muff Inn had been flat-chested until her twenty-second birthday when a plastic surgeon who’d received his medical degree from a disreputable Mexican university had stretched the skin on her chest taut across a pair of silicon bags. The make-up she used to hide the scars under her cosmetically-inflated breasts and below her pale pink nipples ran in sweaty rivulets down her abdomen to catch in the thick mat of curly black pubic hair at the junction of her thighs. The men in the audience didn’t seem to mind that the breasts jutting from her chest didn’t move naturally, nor did they care that the thin caesarean bikini-cut scar along the top of her pubic hair continued to remind her of the still-born daughter she’d had while a high school sophomore. Those who could still focus their eyes after an evening of drinking three dollar beers cared only that she might spread her legs for them in the privacy of a back room if they offered her enough money.

Canfield knew better. The raven-haired bitch on stage had been working the crowd between shows for months, but had never done more than a few quick hand jobs under the tables, pleasuring the lonely while whispering dirty words in their ears. It was a service he’d never requested.

He slapped a crumpled five on the bar and Carlos quickly replaced it with a cold bottle of Busch. “Last call, Mr. Canfield. You want I should open another bottle for you?”

Canfield shook his head. A line of coke with a half-dozen beer chasers had taken him just where he’d wanted to go.

He watched as the woman on stage spun her g-string around on her index finger, then let it fly into the audience. An inebriated Marine who looked young enough to have lied about his age to the recruiting officer, caught it and brought it to his face. His three older buddies laughed and hollered as he took a deep whiff of the dancer’s scent. Then she looked straight at him and licked her glossy red lips with the tip of her tongue, a seductive gesture that Canfield knew was just part of the show.

“She wants you, Eddie!” the Marine’s buddies shouted. They pushed him to his feet as the dancer made her way off stage and the music ended.

“Didn’t you see her?”

“She wants you, man.”

“Go back stage and slip her the pork, Eddie. You know she wants it.”

Goaded by his friends, the young Marine headed toward the dressing rooms in back. Carlos reached under the bar and flipped a switch. A red light flashed in the back hallway and Ben Kirkland, a squat fireplug of a man who stood just about as wide as he stood tall, prepared to meet the unwanted guest.

Canfield laughed a few minutes later when the young Marine returned, his uniform torn and his face bloodied.

“She didn’t want me, man. She didn’t want nobody,” he explained.

“Who the fuck did this to you?”

“She got a boyfriend back there? A bouncer?” The Marines stood, ready to extract revenge for their buddy’s blood.

“No man, there’s three or four of them back there. Don’t start nothing, man. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

“What’ve you got planned tonight, Mr. Canfield?” Carlos asked as the Marines headed for the door. He knew all about Canfield’s predilection for underage girls. “Anything special?”

Canfield shook his head. “Not tonight. You?”

Carlos smiled. One of the new dancers had promised him head if he scored a little blow for her. Blow for a blow. “Could be, Mr. Canfield. Could be.”