"You're afraid of him."
"How'd you guess?"
"Has he threatened you?"
"Not really."
"What does that mean?"
"He never threatened me. But I feel threatened."
"Have other girls tried to leave?"
"I don't know. I don't know much about his other girls. He's very different from other pimps. At least from the ones I know about."
They're all different. Just ask their girls. "How?" I asked her.
"He's more refined. Subdued."
Sure. "What's his name?"
"Chance."
"First name or last name?"
"It's all anybody ever calls him. I don't know if it's a first name or a last name. Maybe it's neither, maybe it's a nickname. People in the life, they'll have different names for different occasions."
"Is Kim your real name?"
She nodded. "But I had a street name. I had a pimp before Chance, his name was Duffy. Duffy Green, he called himself, but he was also Eugene Duffy and he had another name he used sometimes that I forget." She smiled at a memory. "I was so green when he turned me out. He didn't pick me up right off the bus but he might as well."
"He a black man?"
"Duffy? Sure. So is Chance. Duffy put me on the street. The Lexington Avenue stroll, and sometimes when it was hot there we'd go across the river to Long Island City." She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them she said, "I just got this rush of memory, what it was like on the street. My street name was Bambi. In Long Island City we did the johns in their cars. They would drive in from all over Long Island. On Lexington we had a hotel we could use. I can't believe I used to do that, I used to live like that. God, I was green! I wasn't innocent. I knew what I came to New York for, but I was green all right."
"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 near Columbus 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 of Roosevelt Hospital 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?"
Chapter 2
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 in Harlem 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?"