13
The apartment was on the second floor of a grim building on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn. It wasn’t the ugliest block on the avenue, but it was close. Fourth had been rezoned in 2003 in the hope of creating Brooklyn’s Park Avenue, with tony upscale living environments replacing body shops. Unfortunately, corners had been cut by City Planning early in the process, and the first condos to be built following the rezoning eschewed retail units and storefronts on the first floor in favor of vents and parking garages. The planners had eventually realized their mistake, but it was too late to undo the initial damage, so Fourth was now an uneasy mix of boutiques, restaurants, and urban brutalist fa?ades.
To the man checking the numbers on the building’s intercom, it seemed that the only thing Fourth had in common with his beloved Park Avenue was the traffic, every lane of it. Given the choice, he’d take somewhere on Fifth or Seventh farther up the Slope in a heartbeat. Then again, that assumed he actually had some interest in living in Brooklyn, which he hadn’t. People could talk all they wanted about how it was the new Bohemia, but he wasn’t buying, he hadn’t cared much for the old Bohemia, and everything that he needed could be found on the island of Manhattan. As far as he was concerned, the other four boroughs could be cut with a big blade and towed out up to Greenland, apart from the strip of Queens containing JFK, and they could run ferries to that. As for Jersey, that was why there was water separating it from Manhattan. In his darker moments, his proposals for renegotiating Manhattan’s relationship with New Jersey included filling in the tunnels and blowing up the George Washington Bridge before pointing big guns west, just in case those left on the other side got any ideas. Admittedly, somewhere else to dump bodies would have to be found, but into every life a little rain had to fall.
There was no camera embedded in the intercom panel beside the main door to the building, and no names beside the buzzers. He pressed the number that he’d been given, a woman’s voice asked his name, and he gave it, or he gave a name. In this business, nobody really expected anybody to use their real names – not the middlemen, not the johns, and certainly not the girls. His personal experience of such matters was limited, but through choice and orientation rather than any na?veté about the ways of the world.
He was buzzed in and took the stairs to the apartment, avoiding the elevator. Lights came on as he walked, a vague concession to eco-consciousness in a building so poorly constructed that he could almost see the signals changing outside through the joins in the walls. Most of the apartments he passed were silent. An earlier check of the building’s records had revealed an occupancy rate of about sixty percent, and there were already signs of wear and neglect on the carpets and fittings.
The apartment he sought was at the end of the corridor. He knocked at the door, watched the spy hole darken, and was admitted. The woman wore a red sweater dress over a pair of dark-blue jeans. Her feet were bare, and she smelled of cigarettes. Her hair was platinum with red streaks, as though she’d recently suffered a head injury and hadn’t got herself together enough to wash out the blood. He figured her for mid-thirties, aged by a hard life. That was the way of her business. It had worn her out, and now she had either moved up the ranks to active pimping or had taken the maid’s role for a cut of the money.
‘Hi, honey,’ she said. ‘Just through here.’
To the left was a bathroom and a closed door, but she showed him into a living area to the right. There were two more doors off the living room – one open, one closed. The first one led into a narrow kitchen. There was a pack of tortilla chips on the counter, and a half-eaten sandwich alongside a glass stained with milk. The other door was closed, but he thought that he could hear another television playing faintly behind it.
‘Are you a member of the law-enforcement community?’ she said.
‘No, I am not.’
‘I have to ask,’ she said.
‘I know how it works.’
It was a myth that an undercover cop had to identify himself as such if asked, especially as anyone with half a brain could see that such a requirement might deliver a fatal blow to the whole concept of undercover operations, but he was surprised by how many in the woman’s line of work still considered it a myth worth believing. Technically, a lawyer might argue entrapment, but equally the definition of ‘entrapment’ was somewhat nebulous, particularly in a situation like this, where the intention to commit a crime was obvious from the start. It was all moot in the end. Most criminals were dumb, and he took the view that the whole science of criminology was essentially flawed, since much of its theory was based on the study of criminals who had been caught, and were therefore either stupid or unlucky, as opposed to the study of those who had not been caught, and were therefore smart and had a little luck on their side, but just a little. Luck ran out, but smart was for life.
He produced an envelope from his coat pocket and laid it on the table, just as he had been instructed to do when he made the original call. The woman glanced inside, gave the bills a quick flick with her fingers, then placed the money in a drawer below the TV.
‘You mind if I frisk you?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘There’s been trouble in the past – not for us, I assure you, but for others in the same business. They’ve had guys produce knives, ropes. We’re concerned about safety, yours as much as ours.’
He wasn’t quite sure that was the case, but he allowed her to pat him down inexpertly.
‘Thanks for being so understanding,’ she said. ‘You’re going to have a good time.’
‘Can I see the girl now?’
‘Sure. She’s right through here. You’ll like her. She’s just what you ordered.’
He followed the woman down the hall and past the bathroom to the closed door. She knocked and opened at the same time, revealing a pleasantly furnished bedroom with low lighting. There was another TV here, with a DVD symbol bouncing around the screen. The room was heavily scented, but not enough to fully mask the stale odor of sex.
The girl on the bed was wearing a baby-doll nightdress. Even her makeup couldn’t hide the fact that she wasn’t long past owning a baby doll as well. Twelve or thirteen, he thought. Dark roots showed in her blond hair.
‘This is Anya,’ said the woman. ‘Anya, say hello to Frederick.’
‘Hi,’ said Anya, and even in that one word he could hear her foreignness. One side of her mouth lifted, but nobody would have termed it a smile.
‘Hi,’ said the visitor, but he sounded doubtful.
‘Is there a problem?’ said the woman.
‘She’s not what I ordered after all,’ he said.
Immediately, the woman’s tone changed, but she tried to stay on the right side of polite. ‘We spoke on the phone,’ she said. ‘I took down the details myself. You asked for a blonde.’
‘She’s not blond. She dyes her hair. I can see her roots.’
Anya’s eyes moved from face to face, trying to follow the conversation. She could tell that the visitor was unhappy, but no more. She didn’t like it when they started out unhappy. It usually made what followed that much harder. She pulled her legs closer to her body and wrapped her arms around them. She rested her chin on her knees, which made her look younger still. There were rubbers on the nightstand beside her, and a box of tissues.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the woman, ‘but the agreement was made. Look, once the lights go down you won’t hardly notice the difference, and not where it matters.’ She grinned lasciviously. ‘Now, if you’d like to take a shower—’
‘I don’t want a shower,’ he said. ‘I want my money back.’
All pretense of courtesy disappeared from the woman. Her upper lip involuntarily curled into a feral snarl, like a dog giving a final warning before it bites.
‘That’s not going to happen. You paid for the hour. You can play Parcheesi with her if you like, or talk about how your day has been, or you can just take a walk right back out the door and go someplace else. The choice is yours, but the money stays here.’ She made one last effort at being conciliatory. ‘Look, honey, why argue and spoil a beautiful encounter? You’re going to have a good time.’
‘You told me that already.’
‘She’s a nice girl. You’ll like her.’
‘I don’t care if she’s Miss American Pie. She’s not what I ordered.’ He took out his cell phone. ‘Maybe I should call the police.’
The woman backed away from him. ‘Rudy!’ she shouted. ‘We have a problem.’
The closed door at the end of the hall opened, and he heard the TV more clearly. There was a hockey game on. He didn’t know who was playing. He took no interest in the sport. Only white people truly appreciated hockey, and that was because they didn’t know any better.
The man who emerged was wearing track pants, sneakers, and an oversized Yankees shirt. He was in his late twenties, and gym-toned. His dark hair was neatly cut. He looked like a college student on spring break, except for the Llama tucked into the front of his pants. It had pearl grips, and a chrome finish that caught the light.
Rudy sidled up the hall, pausing at the bathroom door. He hooked his right thumb into the band of his sweatpants, close to the butt of the gun, and leaned against the doorjamb. He looked bored. The visitor figured Rudy wasn’t very bright. A bright man would have been alert for danger. Rudy was too used to hustling underage girls and overweight johns. The visitor was neither.
‘What seems to be the trouble?’ said Rudy. His eyes swiveled lazily to the woman.
‘He says the girl isn’t what he ordered. He wants his money back.’
Rudy spat out a laugh and gave the visitor his full attention. ‘What do you think we are, man, Sears? We don’t do returns, and we don’t do refunds. Now, you can stay and have a good time with Anya or you can take a cab over to Hunts Point and see if they might have what you’re looking for. The cash stays here, though.’
‘I want my money.’
Rudy changed tack. ‘What money? I don’t see no money here. This money, did it have your name on it? The Federal Reserve, they make it out to you personally? I mean, I got money, but I don’t think it’s yours. You didn’t bring no money in here. You just came to visit, have a little fun. I don’t recall no money changing hands. Bro, money changing hands for * – that’s illegal. You ought to be careful what you say. Now, your time is ticking away. I was you, I’d go colorblind for the rest of the hour and just enjoy myself. So, what do you say?’
The visitor seemed to consider for a moment. ‘I still think I should call someone,’ he said. ‘This really isn’t very satisfactory at all.’ His finger hovered over the keys on the bulky black cell phone.
The woman moved farther away from him and stood behind Rudy.
‘Prick,’ she said. ‘You’re a jerk, you know that? Coming in here and wasting our time. You deserve to get your ass kicked.’
‘I’m warning you,’ said Rudy. ‘You need to put your phone away and get out of here right now.’