More trouble.
He loosened his tie as he sat down beside Daisy, and the hooker promptly ordered a champagne cocktail.
Riker was working on his second shot of bourbon as he listened to the prostitute’s slow drawl, so like Sparrow’s. Years ago, the hookers had been the best of friends, two small-town southern girls against the city. So far, the interview had turned up nothing useful, and now he stirred up a memory of old times. ‘Remember that little blond girl who used to run with Sparrow?’ ‘Wasn’t just Sparrow. That kid used to work a battalion of whores.’ Daisy signaled Baily for another champagne cocktail.
‘What was her name?’
‘Oh, darlin’, she had a lotta names. One hooker called her the Flyin’ Flea, and Sparrow called her Baby.’
‘And you?’
‘Hey Kid – that’s what I called her. First time I ever saw her was in a crackhouse.’ The hooker paused to inhale her drink. ‘She came in lookin’ for Sparrow. What a dirty little face. And those eyes – tiny green fires, but so cold. Nothin’ warm and cuddly ‘bout that little girl. And mean? Oh, darlin’, you got no idea. Ah, but her face – I saw it when it was clean. God don’t make angels that pretty. But I don’t mean to say that God made her. I don’t blaspheme. My mama raised me better.’
This was going to take a while. Riker had no idea how Daisy made a living on the city streets, where time was money. She hailed from a more temperate climate, where customers and cops could wait around all day for a whore to finish a thought.
‘So, like I was saying, I’m in this crackhouse, and I hear a noise in the dark. At first, all I see is her eyes – cold, empty. Scary eyes. That little girl had no soul. She comes up to me and hands me a cigarette case – real silver. And she gives me this ratty old book with cowboys on the cover. Not my taste. Well, she swipes away the needles and trash so she can sit down beside me. Then she kicks out one little foot to make the rats run. And she says, „Read me a story.“ She don’t say please, nothin’ like that. Just says, „Read me a story,“ like that’s my job in life.’
‘So the kid couldn’t read?’
‘Oh, yeah, she could,’ said Daisy. ‘Better’n me. She helped me with the hard words. But that night – that first time – she lays her head down in my lap and waits for her story to begin. So I read till she fell asleep. Then I sat up all night long to keep the rats away from her. I had to, don’t you see?’
Riker nodded. ‘You were her mother that night.’
‘Other nights it was other whores – when she couldn’t find Sparrow.’
Riker looked up from his drink. Mallory sat at the other end of the bar. If she lowered the dark glasses, would Daisy recognize her? Not likely, but the long green slants of her eyes had never changed. They might spook a whore who believed in ghosts.
‘So you looked after the kid,’ said Riker.
‘Sometimes,’ said Daisy. ‘Well, she could never count on Sparrow. That junkie whore was always gettin’ stoned and wakin’ up in strange places. Lucky the kid knew how to fend for herself.’
Yeah, what a lucky little girl.
Sometimes Kathy had lived out of garbage cans, finding a cold supper there. ‘You remember the day Sparrow got stabbed?’
‘Oh, darlin’, I’ll never forget. I went to the hospital to visit. The kid was there, too. Poor baby, she fell asleep sittin’ bolt upright on the edge of Sparrow’s bed. Too tired to lie down or even fall down. That’s the last time I saw the kid alive.’
‘Remember anything else? Did Sparrow say who stabbed her?’
The hooker was wary now.
‘Hey,’ said Riker, ‘I don’t need a witness. That stabbing is old history. This is a personal thing, okay?’ A twenty-dollar bill slid across the bar. ‘Do you know who stabbed her?’
‘I’d be guessin’.’ The prostitute’s hand closed over the money. ‘Only guessin’ – hear me? Sparrow might’ve mentioned Frankie D. You remember that twisted little bastard?’
Riker nodded. Frankie Delight had been that rare drug dealer who was not strictly cash-and-carry. ‘So Sparrow was trading skin for drugs?’
‘No, she’d never do that freak for a fix. I don’t care how bad she was hurtin’. No, darlin’, she was tradin’ brand-new VCRs. Still in the cartons. One of Tall Sally’s jobs went wrong and – ’
‘I know that story,’ said Riker. And ten-year-old Kathy Mallory would have been on the stealing end of that arrangement.
The great VCR heist.
He remembered the report from Robbery Division. A patrolman’s log had mentioned sighting suspicious persons in the vicinity of the crime, among them a little blond girl with green eyes. Lou Markowitz had read him the details, then said, in a tone between awe and pride, ‘The kid robbed a damn truck.’
Daisy nudged Riker’s arm to call him back to the world, asking, ‘Whatever happened to Frankie?’
Riker had never been certain until now. ‘I heard he left town.’ One could say that the dead were way out of town. ‘So, Daisy, what’s Sparrow been up to? You guys keep in touch?’ He doubted that this whore read the papers, and her television set would have been pawned long ago to buy drugs.
‘No, we don’t talk no more.’ She stared at the bottom of her glass. ‘Not for a long time. But I did hear a rumor today. Some bitch told me that Sparrow was the hooker who got herself strung up last night. Well, I knew that wasn’t true. My Sparrow got clean – kicked them drugs. And she stopped liftin’ her skirt for a livin’. That was years ago, darlin’. Years ago.’
He gave her another ten dollars. She snatched it from his hand, then climbed down from her bar stool and backed up all the way to the door, eyes trained on Peg Baily. Daisy whirled around and fled, rather than risk an injury by staying a second too long.
Riker ambled toward the end of the bar, where his partner waited, attracting stares from every man in the room. He sat down beside her. ‘Well, that was a waste of time. We’re not gonna find a stalker with hookers. Sparrow got out of the life years ago.’
Mallory the unbeliever shook her head. She would not seriously consider any good thing said about Sparrow.
Once a whore, always a whore?
‘How did it go with the theater group?’
‘That was a dead end,’ said Mallory. ‘Sparrow was a last-minute substitute in the play. None of those people met her before the rehearsal. And that was the day she was hung.’
‘Well, somebody got her that job. We might find a tie between Sparrow and Kennedy Harper.’
‘No, Riker. This wasn’t a Broadway production. She answered an ad posted on a supermarket bulletin board. The director gave her the part because she showed up in costume and knew all the lines.’
Riker tried to imagine Sparrow memorizing Chekhov. He drained his shot glass and laid his money on the bar. ‘So what’s next? Morgue time?’
‘No, Slope’s working on a fresher corpse right now.’
‘Okay,’ said Riker. ‘A local cop, Waller, looked over your videotape. He gave Janos a name and address for the man in the T-shirt and jeans. You know that big church on Avenue B?’
‘A priest?’
‘You got it.’ Riker stared at his empty glass, turning it over in his hands. ‘If you want off this case, I can work it alone.’
‘No.’ She gathered up her car keys, then left an obscene tip on the bar. ‘I’ll see it through.’
The East Village park was full of music, rock and rap, Hispanic and soul. It poured out of radios and CD players. Some youngsters sported earphones, and Riker had to guess their songs by the cadence of their struts, their bounces and glides.
At the heart of Tompkins Square was a stellar memory of the night his father had thrown him out of the house – an elegant solution to the problem of a teenager’s dissident music. Young Riker had waged a showdown in the old band shell, the spot claimed by another boy, whose music had been a self-portrait, cool and dark, a jazz riff played on a clarinet. Riker had shot back a volley of rock ‘n’ roll, louder and longer. And they had dueled awhile before laying down their instruments.