As I opened the interior door, some light from the stairway tumbled out and across my face. I turned to close the door behind me, Tommy sprinkling some Spanish words into his greeting for the couple he was ushering back to his desk. I could see my silhouette from the waist up fall across the wall over his safe, and I wondered how many more weeks of winter Tommy Flaherty would be facing.
“Be a dear and hand me those Players, would you?”
I reached over to the kitchen counter from my aluminum-and-acrylic chair and picked up a distinctive teal-and-white pack of what felt like cigarettes, especially since a Bic lighter rested next to it. A portrait of an old-time sailor appeared on the cardboard with a “NAVY CUT” caption beneath the face, and the word “Legere” in the lower right-hand corner of the pack.
“You could toss them to me,” said Hildy Flaherty from the other side of the Formica table, “but it would be ever so much nicer if you brought one over and lit it.”
I hadn’t been real comfortable entering her kitchen from the stairway. Partly it was that she held a cordless hair dryer the size of a ray gun in her right hand, but mostly it was that Hildy’d remained in her robe — a padded-shoulder, belted model — while receiving her husband’s guest. And she had an array of small photos in front of her, all with the same blue background, like an eyewitness scanning mug shots.
“I’m still waiting for that cigarette.”
Hildy watched me as she moved the snout of the nearly silent dryer down her long, curly hair, the left hand raking behind it like Harpo Marx over his strings. The hair was dishwater blond, the eyes a green I couldn’t put a shade-name to. Heavy breasts pressed with enough definition against the fabric of the robe to tell me that Hildy wasn’t wearing anything underneath, and when she crossed her legs, I made sure my eyes stayed on her face.
Which seemed to make the woman smirk. “God, what does a girl have to do to get a... light from you?”
I slid the pack and the Bic over the Formica to her. “I don’t believe in contributing to other people’s bad habits.”
“You Americans,” said Hildy, a sexual heaviness from her bust — or her butts — melding into her voice. “Always the world’s... chaperones.”
More smirk on that last word.
I said, “Canadian?”
“You got that from the cigarettes?” she said, bringing one to life.
“No.”
“That French word — ‘legere’? — means ‘light.’ ”
“Just your accent.”
Confused now behind a cloud of smoke. “You could tell I’m from Toronto?”
It came out “Trannah.” I said, “Your lack of accent, really, sounding American except for the ‘you Americans’ part.”
Setting the Bic and the pack on the table, Hildy leaned forward, the lapels of the robe bowing in a way that suggested she was aware of it without having to look down at them. Then she passed her free hand over the photos. “Pick your favorite.”
“They’re upside down to me.”
“Which can be interesting, in and of itself.”
When I didn’t pick up on that, Hildy made a ceremony out of turning each photo around so I could see them all. Seven head-and-shoulder shots of her — identical shots, actually, except that one captured her current hairdo while the others had slightly blurry versions of radically different styles.
Hildy said, “My salon can do that with this new computer-camera they have. It really shows you a lot of choices.”
“Sometimes too many options can be a burden.”
Hildy cocked her head, then pointed to a photo with the hair cut to maybe two inches all around and permed. “I like this one, but I really do care which you’d choose. I think you’re way more clever than poor Tommy.”
I felt a sudden need to defend him. “He was a good investigator for me.”
“Yeah, well,” Hildy, rolling her shoulders like she’d just awakened, “he’s a lousy salesman for me. I mean, look at this place, would you?”
“We all do what we can.”
Hildy sent out a plume of smoke through her nostrils. “Tommy doesn’t ‘do’ enough. Spends all his time on this broken-down agency, seeing his ‘prospects’ at night — which is a pretty good word for them, ‘prospects.’ Like he’s panning for gold by a stream in the Yukon. Only Tommy swirls through a ton of dirty sand for every nugget he finds, and even that’s not enough.”
I wasn’t sure how much of Tommy’s loan-shark troubles he’d shared with his wife, including the implied threat to her, so I moved to safer ground. “You work yourself?”
A shake of the head, which seemed to remind Hildy to continue drying her long hair. “Too complicated, work permits or green cards or whatever your government requires.”
Didn’t sound like she’d explored things very deeply. “You help Tommy down in the office, then?”
A grunt that I took to be a disgusted laugh. “You see all those desks opposite his?”
“I did.”
“Papers piled on them, telephones and so forth. But why would you suppose he has the ‘prospects’ come in at night?”
“Because they do have jobs during the day?”
“Oh, John, a dig nicely done.” Hildy made her hair shimmer like a waterfall under the dim light of the overhead fixture. “But clever as your reply might be, you’re only partly right. The real reason poor Tommy has the bloody beggars come in at night is so they can’t see that he can’t afford any girls down there to help him during the day.”
I closed my eyes just a moment before opening them again. “He’s on his own.”
“Yes. Oh, I do help him when I can, though. Like with his loan.”
Steady, boy. “His... loan?”
“Yes. The pinhead was owing his ‘carriers’ or whatever those companies are called, and so he had to borrow. Only no self-respecting banker would ever lend on this decrepit operation, so Tommy needed a deep pocket less... discerning.”
Hildy Flaherty had enjoyed some education above the border, but knowledge and wisdom didn’t always come packaged together. “And you found that pocket for him.”
“Let’s just say a friend of mine did.”
Which made her friend Tommy’s referral. “Who?”
“I’m afraid my lips are sealed. Confidentiality and all that.”
I was about to say something I’d probably have regretted when Tommy poked his head through the kitchen doorway. He grinned at his wife, then said, “John, you can come back down now.”
Hildy swung her hair around slowly. “You sell those people?”
“Not tonight, but they’ll be back.”
“Yeah, right,” said Hildy Flaherty, going for another cigarette. “On the twelfth of never.”
“So, John,” said Tommy from his chair across the desk. “What’d you think of Hildy?”
“Attractive woman. Weighs her options before choosing one, too.”
“Weighs...? Oh, you mean the hairstyle thing. Yeah, she’s got an appointment tomorrow afternoon. Likes to look good for going out at night with her friends.”
“Her friends?” was past my mouth before I could yank it back.
“Yeah,” Tommy now rallying to defend his wife to me. “I’m stuck here most nights seeing customers or prospects, but that’s no reason Hildy shouldn’t enjoy her life some, is it?”
“No.” I shifted in my chair. “Tommy, back to this shark?”
“Tedesco. Lou Tedesco. He works out of a bar off Dot Ave.”
Dorchester Avenue. “Just what do you think I can do for you?”
Tommy’s eyes got bright for a moment, maybe seeing he could close some sort of sale that night. “Go talk with him for me. Show the guy I’ve got some solid people on my side.”
“Why would this Tedesco care about that, Tommy?”