“Come on,” he said.
“Let go, Don,” I said.
“Un unh,” he said. “Night’s young.”
He rubbed himself against me. I was amazed he could still become erect. I wondered if he could feel the gun in the small of my back. If he could it didn’t distract him.
“C’mon, Sunny, lighten up,” he said.
He started to maneuver me toward the couch. I took in a deep breath and let it out. I stomped one of my two-inch heels hard on his toes, and twisted as if I were grinding out a cigarette. He screamed and let go of me. I opened the door and looked back at him. He was hopping on one foot and saying “Bitch” and trying not to tip over, drunk as he was.
“Good night,” I said. “And thanks for a lovely evening.”
As I drove back to South Boston, I thought there might be worse things than sitting home wishing Richie and I could make it work.
Chapter 9
I sat across from Tony Marcus in the back room of a restaurant that Tony owned called Buddy’s Fox. I was the only woman in the room. I was the only white person in the room. Tony had about him the kind of dissipated handsome look that Gig Young used to have in old movies, if Gig Young had been black. He also had the biggest bodyguard I had ever personally seen. It reminded me a little of the short men I’d known who owned huge attack dogs. Leaning on the side wall of Tony’s office, like the threat of rain, Junior might or might not have been bigger than Delaware. He was certainly bigger than Rhode Island.
“You got some good advance notices,” Tony Marcus said. “Richie Burke and my man Spike.”
“Spike?”
“Yeah. He called me this morning.”
“Spike gets around,” I said.
“He do,” Marcus said.
“You still married to Richie?”
“Nope.”
Marcus smiled and looked at Junior.
“Amicable divorce,” he said to Junior.
Junior didn’t look as if he knew what amicable meant. He also didn’t look like he cared. Tony leaned back in his chair and checked to see that the proper amount of French cuff showed under the sleeves of his blue suit.
“So you’re looking for a whore, Miss Sunny?”
“Fifteen-year-old runaway,” I said.
Tony smiled. “That may be what she used to be, she on the street now, she’s a whore.”
“Either way,” I said. “I’d like to find her.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been hired to.”
“So you really a detective,” Tony said.
“Un huh.”
“You don’t look much like a detective,” he said.
“You don’t look much like a pimp,” I said.
Tony laughed.
“Feisty,” Tony said to Junior.
Junior nodded.
“Calling me a pimp,” Tony said, “like calling Henry Ford an auto worker.”
“Think you can help me find this kid?” I said.
“Sure,” Tony said, “she hooking, I can find her.”
“And if she isn’t you’ll know?”
“‘Less she hooking in East Long-fucking-meadow or someplace.”
“Probably not,” I said.
“She hooking east of Springfield, I can find her. Worcester, Lynn, Lawrence, Lowell, New Bedford, Fall River, she be one of mine.”
“Not Springfield?” I said just to be saying something. Guys like Tony Marcus like to talk. Especially to women.
“Springfield belongs to Hartford,” Tony said. “The Spices run it.”
“So how shall we do this?”
“You think I’m going to do something?”
“I assume you didn’t get me in here to tell me no personally,” I said.
Tony grinned.
“Knew your father, you know that?”
“No.”
“Never busted me,” Tony said. “Sonovabitch tried hard enough.”
“I didn’t know he worked vice,” I said.
“When he after me he working homicide,” Tony said.
That was to scare me in case Junior hadn’t already scared me. I remained calm.
“So how we going to find Millicent Patton?”
“You got a picture?” Tony said.
I’d had copies made of the one her father had given me. I produced one. Tony looked at it, and nodded slowly.
“She’ll make some money,” he said.
“Will she keep any?”
“‘Course not,” Tony said without looking up from the picture.
I waited. After a time Tony handed the picture to Junior.
“Have some copies made,” he said. “Circulate them. Let me know if we got her and who her pimp is.”
Junior took the picture and continued to stand against the wall. Tony winked at me.
“Junior,” he said. “I think I be safe with Sunny Randall here, while you go out and get that picture started.”
“She ain’t been searched,” Junior said.
“I going to risk it,” Tony said. “Go ahead.”
Junior looked at me for a minute, then nodded and went out of the office. Tony leaned far back in his big high-backed leather swivel chair and put his feet up on the desk. His loafers had gold chains on them.
“I’m a pretty bad man,” he said.
“I heard that,” I said.
“A lot of women wouldn’t want to come here alone.”
“Lot of people,” I said.
He laughed.
“Ah,” he said, “a fucking feminist.”
“That may be an oxymoron,” I said.
“You ain’t scared?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“Maybe you just covering up,” Tony said.
“Maybe.”
He shook his head.
“Naw. Seen too many scared people in my time to be fooled. You ain’t scared.”
“You have no reason to harm me,” I said.
“Not so far,” he said.
“And I know you don’t want trouble with the Burkes.”
“Don’t need trouble with anybody,” he said. “Making a good living.”
“See?”
He smiled again.
“If I decided I wanted to harm you, maybe you be scared.”
“Why don’t we wait until that happens,” I said. “Then we’ll know.”
“I going to help you with this, Sunny. Richie asked me. Spike asked me. So I’ll help. But don’t make no mistake about me.”
“No mistakes,” I said. “I understand why you’d accommodate Richie, but why Spike?”
Tony smiled again.
“I like Spike,” he said.
“I didn’t know people as bad as you liked anyone.”
“Sure we do,” Tony said. “We just don’t let it interfere.”
Chapter 10
The only show I ever had was in a small gallery on South Street. The Globe art critic said I was “a primitivist with strong representational impulses.” I didn’t sell many paintings, but I was pleased to know that I had a definition. Standing now in the studio end of my loft, using the morning sun for light, I wondered if maybe primitive was just another way of saying amateurish. I was working in oils, trying to paint a view of Chinatown along Tyler Street. I never had time to go to a place and set up, so I was working from memory and a half dozen Polaroids I’d taken. It looked like Chinatown. In fact it looked like Tyler Street. And the building in the foreground looked like the Chinese restaurant that you see when you stand where I had stood. But the painting wasn’t right, and for the moment I couldn’t quite figure how to fix it. I sometimes thought art criticism boiled down to indefinables like whether it was a complete statement or not. This painting was not. Most of my paintings weren’t... yet. I tried deepening the colors, and stood back a little and looked at it while the sun coming in the east windows made the colors as exact as I was likely to see them.
“Primitive,” I said aloud, “with a strong representational impulse.”