French Kiss (5 page)

“Welcome to the Roaring
Twenties,” I say to K. Burke as we enter Fitzgerald's Bar and Grill, on East 68th Street.

“Not much roaring going on,” Burke says. The room is empty except for the bartender and one female customer.

The same girl I watched through the window earlier.

The lone woman at the bar is young. She's blond. She's pretty. And after we flash IDs and introduce ourselves as detectives with the NYPD, she's also very frightened.

“Try to relax, miss,” says Burke. “There's a problem, but it's nothing for you to worry about. We're just hoping you can help us out.”

I'm astonished at the genuine sweetness in Detective Burke's voice. The same voice that was just loud and stern with me is now soothing and gentle with the pretty blonde.

“Could you tell us your name, please?” I ask, trying to imitate Burke's soft style.

“Laura,” she says. Her voice has a quiver of fear.

“What about a last name?” Burke asks.

“Jenkins,” says the girl. “Laura Jenkins.”

“Let's see some ID,” I say.

The girl rustles around in her pocketbook and produces a laminated card. Burke doesn't even look at it.

“You're aware, Ms. Jenkins, that in the state of New York, showing a police officer false identification is a class D felony punishable by up to seven years in prison.”

Holy shit. I'm in awe of Burke. Sort of.

The girl slips the first card she removed from her purse back into it and hands over a second. It reads:
LAURA DELARICO, 21 ARDSLEY ROAD, SCARSDALE, NEW YORK.

“What do you do for a living, Miss Delarico?” I ask.

“I'm a law student. That's the truth. I go to Fordham. Here's my student ID.” She holds up a third plastic identity card.

“Do you work?” I ask. “Perhaps part-time?”

“Sometimes I babysit. I do computer filing for one of the professors.”

“Look, Miss Delarico,” I say, raising my voice now. “This is serious business. Very serious. Detective Burke was being genuine when she said you have nothing to worry about. But that only happens if you help us out. So far, not good. Not good at all.”

Laura looks away, then back at me.

“We know that you work for a prostitution ring,” I continue. “A group that trades in high-priced call girls. We know it's controlled by a Russian gang.”

Laura begins to cry. “But I'm a law student. Really.”

“A few days ago a female detective posing as a call girl was murdered. Somebody who meant a lot to me. We need your help.”

I pause. Not for dramatic effect but because I feel myself choking up, too.

Laura stops crying long enough to say, “It's just something I'm doing for a little while. For the money. I live with my grandfather, and law school costs so much. If he ever found out…”

A few seconds pass.

Then K. Burke says, “Off the record.”

K. Burke is staring deep into Laura's eyes. But Laura is frozen. No response.

“Let me show you something,” I say.

Laura looks suspicious. K. Burke looks confused. I reach into my side pocket. Next to my ID, next to the place where I kept the cash for Carl the doorman, are two small photographs. I take them out. One shows Maria Martinez on the police department's Hudson River boat ride. I took that picture. The other shows Maria Martinez dead. It was taken by the coroner.

I show Laura the photos. Then she looks away.

Finally, she says, “Okay.”

Prostitutes don't keep
traditional hours.

Laura Delarico tells us that she's “on call” at Fitzgerald's for another thirty minutes. She's certain she'll be free by late afternoon. “Even if I do get a client,” she says, “I'll be in and out quickly.” (No, I don't think she was trying to be funny.)

I suggest that Laura, K. Burke, and I meet at Balthazar, where a person can get a decent
steak frites
and a pleasant glass of house Burgundy. “This will put everyone at ease,” I say.

K. Burke suggests that we schedule an interview at the precinct this evening. “This is an investigation, Moncrief, not happy hour. Plus,
I'm
going to that meeting with Vice.”

Because proper police procedure always trumps a good idea, at six o'clock the three of us are sitting in an interrogation room at the precinct.

Laura is surprisingly interested in the surroundings. The bile-colored green walls, the battered folding chairs, the crushed empty cans of Diet Coke on the table. I don't think I'm wrong in thinking that Laura is also interested in me.

“So this is, like, where you bring murderers, drug dealers, and…okay, prostitutes?”

“Sometimes,” I say. “But today is strictly informal, off the record. No recordings, no cameras, but as much of the cold tan sludge my colleagues call coffee as you can drink.”

Laura is wearing a black T-shirt, jeans, and a gold necklace with the name
Laura
on it. She could be a barista at Starbucks or a salesgirl at the Gap or, yes, a law student.

“We're very glad that you agreed to try to help us,” K. Burke begins.

Laura interrupts: “Listen. I don't think I want to do this anymore. I think I've changed my mind.”

“That would not be a good idea,” I say. My goal is not to sound threatening, merely disappointed.

“We're counting on you,” K. Burke says. Where does she hide that beautiful soothing voice?

“I don't think there's much I
can
tell you,” Laura says. “I get a call. I turn a trick. That's how it goes.”

“Tell us anything,” I say.

“Anything?” Laura says. Her voice is suddenly loud, suddenly scared. “Like what? What does ‘anything' mean? What I ate for lunch? What classes I went to? Anything?”

The conversation needs K. Burke's smooth-as-silk voice. Here it comes.

“Maria Martinez was found murdered on Tuesday,” K. Burke says. “Were you working Tuesday morning or Monday night?”

Laura closes her eyes. Her lips curl with disgust. She spits out three little words: “Paulo the Pig.”

Burke and I are, of course, confused. I picture a cartoon character in a Spanish children's television program.

But Laura repeats it, this time with even more venom. “Paulo the Pig.”

“That's a person, I assume,” Burke says.

“A person who deserves his nickname. If you're a girl on call and you get assigned to Paulo the Pig, you never forget it.”

Her hands shake a bit. Her eyes begin to water.

“That's where I was the night your friend was murdered. I was with Paulo. Paulo Montes.”

“Tell us, Laura,” I say. “We need to know what happened that night with you and Paulo. Everything you remember. You're safe with us.”

Her story is disgusting.

Paulo Montes, a Brazilian
drug dealer, is usually followed everywhere by two bodyguards. Tonight, however, he sends them away and waits alone for the arrival of his hired girl.

The fat middle-aged man has dressed appropriately for the occasion—a sweat-soaked sleeveless undershirt. Thick curly black hair grows like an unmown lawn over both Paulo's chest and back. The hairs crawl up and down his shoulders and neck. He wears long white silk shorts—longer than boxers, almost long enough to touch his fleshy pink knees. Montes has greased himself up with a nauseating combination of almond oil and lavender cologne. He has used this same overwhelming oil-and-cologne concoction to slick back the greasy hair above his fat round face.

Paulo answers the door himself. “You're much prettier than that dark-haired bitch they sent up an hour ago,” he says.

He is speaking to Laura Delarico—tall, slim, blond. With her fine youthful features, Laura is easily Paulo's fantasy come to life—a combination of Texas cheerleader and Italian fashion model. Fresh and clean, lithe and athletic. Just what Paulo is longing for.

He begins quickly, clumsily unbuttoning Laura's white oxford-cloth shirt. “The first one they sent was the kind I could find for ten dollars in an alley in São Paulo. Dark hair, dark skin. Screwing her would be like screwing myself.”

Paulo Montes laughs uproariously at his little joke. Laura smiles. She's been taught to smile at a client's jokes.

Paulo pulls her onto the bed. His fingers are fat, and he has become bored with trying to unbutton Laura's shirt. So he pulls it up and over her head. He tugs at Laura's panties, ripping them.

Soon she is naked. Soon Paulo the Pig is naked. Every inch of Laura's flesh is disgusted by him. She feels he might crush her with his weight, but she's skilled at positioning her shoulders and hips in such a way as to minimize all discomfort. She tries to ignore the garlicky alcohol smell as he roughly kisses her face and lips, as he squirms slowly downward to kiss her breasts. He suddenly slaps her face. For some sick reason this makes him laugh. Paulo Montes then pulls hard at her hair.

“Stop it,” Laura says. “You're hurting me.”

“Like I give a shit,” Paulo says. Now he grabs her genitals. His filthy fingernails travel harshly around her vagina. She feels scratching, bleeding. With his other hand he pulls hard at another handful of hair. “I'm paying good money for this!” he yells. “I'm in charge.”

He pushes himself back up, again closer to her face. His saliva is dripping onto Laura's cheeks and lips. The kisses begin to feel more like bites. She is certain the skin on her right cheek has been punctured by his teeth. Then more hair pulling. Her vagina is full of pain.

This time Laura screams. “Stop. Slow down!” She pushes at his fat neck.

Then suddenly Paulo makes a huge noise—a kind of explosive grunt. His breathing immediately slows down.

Laura realizes that she doesn't need to protest any longer. It's over. He's finished. He never even entered her. Paulo the Pig begins panting like a tired old horse. He is resting, she thinks. He remains on top of her for a few minutes.

Finally Paulo rolls off and rests at her side.

For a moment, Laura becomes a kind of waitress in a sexual diner. “Can I get you anything else, sir?”

But Paulo Montes merely keeps his heavy breathing pumping. “That was good, very good. Go into the next room. Take what you want. Within reason, of course.” He laughs again. What a comedian!

Like all the girls who work for the Russian gang, Laura knows Paulo Montes is one of the most significant importers of what are called travel packages: drugs that are smuggled along strange geographic routes—say, from Ankara to Kiev to Seoul to New York to São Paulo—in order to confuse and evade the narcs.

“No, thank you,” Laura says, slipping into her torn underwear, her jeans, and her shirt. She plucks a few of his many sweaty curly hairs from her stomach.

“Don't be ungrateful, bitch,” Paulo says. This time he's not sounding funny. He doesn't laugh. “Scag, maybe. I got it in the plastic containers. Or some good China white.”

“I just need to use the bathroom,” Laura says.

Paulo snaps at her quickly. “Use the maid's bathroom at the end of the hall. You can't use this one. I have personal items in there.”

Laura simply says, “Okay.” She's tired and frightened and disgusted.

“Now go in the next room and treat yourself. Even something simple. Take a little C. Have a party later with your friends.”

To appease him she says, “Do you have some weed? I'll take some weed.”

He laughs again, the loudest of all his laughing jags.

“Weed? You're joking. Like Paulo would ever deal low-class shit like that.”

She watches Paulo on the bed, naked, laughing.

As Laura leaves the room all she can think of is that line from the Christmas poem: “…a little round belly / That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.”

Laura Delarico has finished
her story.

“So that's it. The clients don't pay us girls directly. It's all online, I guess. I don't really know. When it was over, I just left.”

Burke speaks. “Detective Moncrief and I want to thank you. We know this has been tough.”

“I wish I could have helped more,” Laura says. “I'm not afraid. I just…well, that's what happened.”

“You've helped us more than you can imagine,” I say. Sincerely, softly. “What you gave us was big. I'm fairly certain Maria Martinez visited Paulo's room as well.”

Burke agrees. “There's a very real possibility she was the dark-haired girl he rejected before you.”

“You don't know that for sure,” Laura says.

“You're right,” I say. “Not yet. But it is a logical deduction. He may have killed her and disposed of her.
Or
he may have put her body in the bathroom.”

“The one he wouldn't let me use,” she says quietly. “I guess that makes sense.”

K. Burke holds up her hand. “Or we may be completely off base. Maybe it was not Maria Martinez. Maybe we've got it all wrong.”

I cannot resist. I say, “Ah, K. Burke, ever the jolly optimist.”

I reach over and gently touch Laura Delarico's hand. She does not pull away. She is so much less frightened than she was a few hours ago.

“And that is why…” Suddenly, I must stop speaking. Oh, shit. Oh, no.

I feel my throat begin to burn. I'm having trouble breathing. Maria is on my mind, in my heart. Because of Laura's information, we may actually have a shot at solving Maria's murder.

K. Burke senses the emotional hole I've fallen into. She finishes my remarks.

“And that's why…we need you to help us just a little bit more.”