Eight Million Ways to Die (2 page)

"How long were you on the street?"

"It must have been five, six months. I wasn't very good. I had the looks and I could, you know, perform, but I didn't have street smarts.

And a couple of times I had anxiety attacks and I couldn't function.

Duffy gave me stuff but all it ever did was make me sick."

"Stuff?"

"You know. Drugs."

"Right."

"Then he put me in this house, and that was better, but he didn't like it because he had less control that way. There was this big apartment nearColumbus Circle and I went to work there like you would go to an office. I was in the house, I don't know, maybe another six months. Just about that. And then I went with Chance."

"How did that happen?"

"I was with Duffy. We were at this bar. Not a pimp bar, a jazz club, and Chance came and sat at our table. We all three sat and talked, and then they left me at the table and went off and talked some more, and Duffy came back alone and said I was to go with Chance. I thought he meant I should do him, you know, like a trick, and I was pissed because this was supposed to be our evening together and why should I be working. See, I didn't take Chance for a pimp. Then he explained that I was going to be Chance's girl from now on. I felt like a car he just sold."

"Is that what he did? Did he sell you to Chance?"

"I don't know what he did. But I went with Chance and it was all right. It was better than with Duffy. He took me out of that house and put me on a phone and it's been, oh, three years now."

"And you want me to get you off the hook."

"Can you do it?"

"I don't know. Maybe you can do it yourself. Haven't you said anything to him? Hinted at it, talked about it, something like that?"

"I'm afraid."

"Of what?"

"That he'd kill me or mark me or something. Or that he'd talk me out of it." She leaned forward, put her port-tipped fingers on my wrist.

The gesture was clearly calculated but nonetheless effective for it. I breathed in her spicy scent and felt her sexual impact. I wasn't aroused and didn't want her but I could not be unaware of her sexual strength.

She said, "Can't you help me, Matt?" And, immediately, "Do you mind if I call you Matt?"

I had to laugh. "No," I said. "I don't mind."

"I make money but I don't get to keep it. And I don't really make more money than I did on the street.

But I have a little money."

"Oh?"

"I have a thousand dollars."

I didn't say anything. She opened her purse, found a plain white envelope, got a finger under the flap and tore it open. She took a sheaf of bills from it and placed them on the table between us.

"You could see him for me," she said.

I picked up the money, held it in my hand. I was being offered the opportunity to serve as intermediary between a blonde whore and a black pimp. It was not a role I'd ever hungered for.

I wanted to hand the money back. But I was nine or ten days out ofRooseveltHospital and I owed money there, and on the first of the month my rent would be due, and I hadn't sent anything to Anita and the boys in longer than I cared to remember. I had money in my wallet and more money in the bank but it didn't add up to much, and Kim Dakkinen's money was as good as anybody else's and easier to come by, and what difference did it make what she'd done to earn it?

I counted the bills. They were used hundreds and there were ten of them. I left five on the table in front of me and handed the other five to her. Her eyes widened a little and I decided she had to be wearing contacts. Nobody had eyes that color.

I said, "Five now and five later. If I get you off the hook."

"Deal," she said, and grinned suddenly. "You could have had the whole thousand in front."

"Maybe I'll work better with an incentive. You want some more coffee?"

"If you're having some. And I think I'd like something sweet. Do they have desserts here?"

"The pecan pie's good. So's the cheesecake."

"I love pecan pie," she said. "I have a terrible sweet tooth but I never gain an ounce. Isn't that lucky?"

There was a problem. In order for me to talk to Chance I had to find him, and she couldn't tell me how to do it.

"I don't know where he lives," she said. "Nobody does."

"Nobody?"

"None of his girls. That's the big guessing game if a couple of us should happen to be together and he's not in the room. Trying to guess where Chance lives. One night I remember this girl Sunny and I were together and we were just goofing, coming up with one outrageous idea after another. Like he lives in this tenement inHarlem with his crippled mother, or he has this mansion in Sugar Hill, or he has a ranch house in the suburbs and commutes. Or he keeps a couple of suitcases in his car and lives out of them, just sleeping a couple hours a night at one of our apartments." She thought a moment. "Except he never sleeps when he's with me. If we do go to bed he'll just lie there afterward for a little while and then he's up and dressed and out. He said once he can't sleep if there's another person in the room."

"Suppose you have to get in touch with him?"

"There's a number to call. But it's an answering service. You can call the number any time, twenty-four hours a day, and there's always an operator that answers. He always checks in with his service. If we're out or something, he'll check in with them every thirty minutes, every hour."

She gave me the number and I wrote it in my notebook. I asked her where he garaged his car. She didn't know. Did she remember the car's license number?

She shook her head. "I never notice things like that. His car is a Cadillac."

"There's a surprise. Where does he hang out?"

"I don't know. If I want to reach him I leave a message. I don't go out looking for him. You mean is there a regular bar he drinks in?

There's a lot of places he'll go sometimes, but nothing regular."

"What kind of things does he do?"

"What do you mean?"

"Does he go to ball games? Does he gamble? What does he do with himself?"

She considered the question. "He does different things," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"Depending who he's with. I like to go to jazz clubs so if he's with me that's where we'll go. I'm the one he calls if he's looking for that kind of an evening. There's another girl, I don't even know her, but they go to concerts. You know, classical music. Carnegie Hall and stuff. Another girl, Sunny, digs sports, and he'll take her to ball games."

"How many girls has he got?"

"I don't know. There's Sunny andNan and the girl who likes classical music. Maybe there's one or two others. Maybe more. Chance is very private, you know? He keeps things to himself."

"The only name you've got for him is Chance?"

"That's right."

"You've been with him, what, three years? And you've got half a name and no address and the number of his answering service."

She looked down at her hands.

"How does he pick up the money?"

"From me, you mean? Sometimes he'll come by for it."

"Does he call first?"

"Not necessarily. Sometimes. Or he'll call and tell me to bring it to him. At a coffee shop or a bar or something, or to be on a certain corner and he'll pick me up."

"You give him everything you make?"

A nod. "He found me my apartment, he pays the rent, the phone, all the bills. We'll shop for my clothes and he'll pay. He likes picking out my clothes. I give him what I make and he gives me back some, you know, for walking-around money."

"You don't hold anything out?"

"Sure I do. How do you think I got the thousand dollars? But it's funny, I don't hold out much."

The place was filling up with office workers by the time she left.

By then she'd had enough coffee and switched to white wine. She had one glass of the wine and left half of it. I stayed with black coffee. I had her address and phone in my notebook along with Chance's answering service, but I didn't have a whole lot more than that.

On the other hand, how much did I need? Sooner or later I would get hold of him, and when I did I would talk to him, and if it broke right I'd throw a bigger scare into him than he'd managed to throw into Kim.

And if not, well, I still had five hundred dollars more than I had when I woke up that morning.

After she left I finished my coffee and cracked one of her hundreds to pay my tab. Armstrong's is onNinth Avenue between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth, and my hotel is around the corner onFifty-seventh Street . I went to it, checked the desk for mail and messages, then called Chance's service from the pay phone in the lobby. A woman answered on the third ring, repeating the four final digits of the number and asking if she could help me.

"I want to speak to Mr. Chance," I said.

"I expect to speak with him soon," she said. She sounded middle-aged, with a chain smoker's rasp to her voice. "May I take a message for him?"

I gave her my name and my phone number at the hotel. She asked what my call was in reference to. I told her it was personal.

When I hung up the phone I felt shaky, maybe from all the coffee I'd been sipping all day. I wanted a drink. I thought about going across the street to Polly's Cage for a quick one, or hitting the liquor store two doors down from Polly's and picking up a pint of bourbon. I could envision the booze, Jim Beam or J. W. Dant, some no-nonsense brown whiskey in a flat pint bottle.

I thought, C'mon, it's raining out there, you don't want to go out in the rain. I left the phone booth and turned toward the elevator instead of the front door and went up to my room. I locked myself in and pulled the chair over to the window and watched the rain. The urge to drink went away after a few minutes. Then it came back and then it went away again. It came and went for the next hour, winking on and off like a neon sign. I stayed where I was and watched the rain.

Around seven I picked up the phone in my room and called Elaine Mardell. Her machine answered, and when the beep sounded I said,

"This is Matt. I saw your friend and I wanted to thank you for the referral.

Maybe one of these days I can return the favor." I hung up and waited another half hour. Chance didn't return my call.

I wasn't especially hungry but I made myself go downstairs for something to eat. It had quit raining. I went over to the Blue Jay and ordered a hamburger and fries. A guy two tables over was having a beer with his sandwich and I decided to order one when the waiter brought my burger, but by the time that happened I'd changed my mind. I ate most of the hamburger and about half of the fries and drank two cups of coffee, then ordered cherry pie for dessert and ate most of it.

It was almost eight-thirty when I left there. I stopped at my hotel--

no messages-- and then walked the rest of the way toNinth Avenue .

There used to be a Greek bar on the corner, Antares and Spiro's, but it's a fruit and vegetable market now. I turned uptown and walked past Armstrong's and acrossFifty-eighth Street , and when the light changed I crossed the avenue and walked on up past the hospital toSt. Paul 's. I walked around the side and down a narrow flight of stairs to the basement. A cardboard sign hung from the doorknob, but you'd have to be looking for it to see it.

A.A., it said.

They were just getting started when I walked in. There were three tables set up in a U, with people seated on either sides of the tables and perhaps a dozen other chairs arranged at the back. Another table off to the side held refreshments. I got a Styrofoam cup and drew coffee from the urn, then took a chair at the rear. A couple of people nodded to me and I nodded back.

The speaker was a fellow about my age. He was wearing a herringbone tweed jacket over a plaid flannel shirt. He told the story of his life from his first drink in his early teens until he came into the program and got sober four years ago. He was married and divorced a few times, cracked up several cars, lost jobs, hit a few hospitals. Then he stopped drinking and started going to meetings and things got better.

"Things didn't get better," he said, correcting himself. "I got better."

They say that a lot. They say a lot of things a lot and you get to hear the same phrases over and over.

The stories are pretty interesting, though. People sit up there in front of God and everybody and tell you the goddamnedest things.

He spoke for half an hour. Then they took a ten-minute break and passed the basket for expenses. I put in a dollar, then helped myself to another cup of coffee and a couple of oatmeal cookies. A fellow in an old army jacket greeted me by name. I remembered his name was Jim and returned the greeting. He asked me how things were going and I told him they were going all right.

"You're here and you're sober," he said. "That's the important thing."

"I suppose."

"Any day I don't take a drink is a good day. You're staying sober a day at a time. The hardest thing in the world is for an alcoholic to not drink and you're doing it."

Except I wasn't. I'd been out of the hospital for nine or ten days. I would stay sober for two or three days and then I would pick up a drink.

Mostly it was a drink or two drinks or three drinks and it stayed under control, but Sunday night I'd been bad drunk, drinking bourbon at a Blarney Stone onSixth Avenue where I didn't figure to run into anybody I knew. I couldn't remember leaving the bar and didn't know how I got home, and Monday morning I had the shakes and a dry mouth and felt like walking death.

I didn't tell him any of this.

After ten minutes they started the meeting again and went around the room. People would say their names and say they were alcoholics and thank the speaker for his qualification, which is what they call the life story that he told. Then they would go on to talk about how they'd identified with the speaker, or recall some memory from their drinking days, or speak about some difficulty they were dealing with in the course of trying to lead a sober life. A girl not much older than Kim Dakkinen talked about problems with her lover, and a gay man in his thirties described a hassle he'd had that day with a customer at his travel agency.