I flashed to the image of the Ukrainian interpreter who had been with me at the morgue when two male passengers viewed the body of the girl we called Jane Doe. I’d been annoyed when he injected his own opinion that she was too pretty to have been forgotten if those men had ever seen her. He’d been right, of course. She had never been on board the Golden Voyage.
“Human gold, Alex. And it all went up in smoke.”
“But that’s not why you killed the girl,” I said, clutching the banister to keep my balance as I tried to stare him down. “Who was she, Rowdy?”
“She was nobody, Alex.”
I started to tremble uncontrollably at his coldness, his calculation, his utter disregard for human life.
I was mad at myself for having missed the obvious. The girl on the beach had had a rose tattoo, like Salma and Anita Paz. But the others just coming to America-the girls like Olena, whose tattoo was a green dragon, her last owner’s mark-hadn’t yet been stamped with the small red rose. They wouldn’t become Rowdy Kitts’s property till he got them safely ashore, till he took control of their lives. Of course the beautiful young woman we called Jane Doe had not come on the Golden Voyage. She’d been Rowdy’s property long before last week.
“The girl had a name, Rowdy. Give her that much.”
“Now, don’t get all upset about it. She was just one more pitiful story, that’s who she was. I took her in with me too. Eugenia was her name. She was living on my boat, being treated pretty good the last six months,” he said. “But she was threatening to make trouble with the new girls. She was going to warn them off the life, before I even got them sorted out and signed up.”
“So you killed her, just to shut her up?” I was frozen in place, practically halfway up the tower.
Rowdy Kitts reached out with his left arm and grabbed my ankle. I started to kick but he clamped my foot down on the step and smiled. “It’s not the worst way to go, Alex. If I had a little better luck with the tides, Eugenia would have had a proper burial at sea.”
FIFTY
“May I make a suggestion, Alex?” Kitts asked with saccharine-like concern for my condition. I was sitting down, halfway up the tower, trying to quell the nausea that swept over me whenever I opened my eyes. “You can get the rest of the way a lot quicker if you just hold tight and put all those bad thoughts about me out of your head.”
“Don’t you see I can’t move? Take off, Rowdy. I won’t do anything to stop you.”
He stood in front of me, stroking the barrel of his Glock. “Me and my friend, we’d really like to get out of here. Just need to secure you up top.”
“What’s there?” I asked.
“Seems like I left my cuffs in the car last night. Wasn’t very smart of me, but we’ll just take off your socks and make a nice tight knot. Give you something to do for the next few hours.”
Rowdy stuck the gun in his waistband, at the back of his slacks, and removed my moccasins. He pulled at the soft wool knee-highs that had kept my feet so warm, stroking my legs as he bared them.
“You’ll have a hard time getting to your car,” I said, “with Mike and Mercer out on the bridge.”
“How so?”
“You left it in the Bronx, didn’t you? Save the Aqueduct Bridge and all that phony politicking that Kendall Reid did to give you money to traffic in the girls.”
Before I could finish the sentence Rowdy Kitts had slapped me across the face. His whole mood changed. “Walk, you damn bitch.”
“It’s way too big an operation for you to have pulled off alone, as good as you think you are.” My cheek stung and I was as angry as I was frightened. “You were in charge of the Eastern Europeans, I’d guess. Kendall Reid has what-the Mexicans, or the Asians? How many snakeheads does it take to feed the perversions of all your clients?”
He pulled me to my feet and grabbed the hood of my jacket, pushing against my back to move me upward.
“You’d be surprised at how efficiently we work, Alex. A few ex-cons, some of the friends Kendall left behind in the ghetto, a bunch of hungry guys willing to scratch their way out. You’d be surprised.”
“Did Eugenia leave her makeup on your boat, Rowdy? Is that why you had to get rid of it? You were such a good Samaritan to let the cops use the boat that night, after you’d taken it out first and killed her. They didn’t know they were covering up most traces of both you and Eugenia.”
“What do you know about her makeup?”
“Let me stop,” I said. “Let me sit down.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was poking me with his finger or the gun, but I got the point.
“We found Eugenia’s makeup in the ditch in front of City Hall,” I said, pausing to steady myself. The spiral was so tight now that we were practically facing each other as the curve narrowed.
“You’re lying.”
“They got her print off the mascara. And they got yours off the plastic bag.” Maybe the second half of what I said would be proved true by the end of the day. Touch DNA might be the nail in his coffin, if we could shut that lid before he slammed mine. “Your best girls got Chanel makeup? Salma, Eugenia-how many others? Should have just thrown it overboard with the ice pick.”
“Hard to do, Miss District Attorney. Eugenia left it in the glove compartment of my car. It wasn’t on my little boat. I didn’t remember that till I got to work the other morning. Just tossed it away with all those old bones.”
“You were getting sloppy, Rowdy.” I was tired and light-headed and didn’t think I had much to lose.
“You know what they say about the end of the tunnel, Alex. Look ahead and you can see the sun rise.”
The dark interior of the tower opened onto a small platform about ten feet above me.
“Were you part of Leighton’s Tontine Association?” I asked.
“Another minute or two you’re going to be eating one of your socks, young lady,” Kitts said. “I’m going to stuff one right in that busy mouth.”
“Is that where you got the idea for a gentlemen’s club?”
“Those rich boys didn’t want me anywhere near their dinner parties. But when the operations they ran went to the dogs, when that all broke up, I had me an idea for a little something else.”
“A bit more like an escort service,” I said. “Young girls, high prices, fancy settings. Who better to know when the mayor isn’t going to be at home?”
“You’d be surprised how many gents fantasize about a night in the Lincoln bedroom,” Rowdy said, taking one of my socks in his hands and twisting it around. “Hell, what I had to offer here in Manhattan wasn’t so bad.”
“You transformed the Tontine Association into another kind of club. And you renamed it Sub Rosa. Sleazy, Rowdy, and I should have been the first to figure you for something sleazy.”
“It wasn’t such a bad idea. Archibald Gracie really did belong to a dining club called Sub Rosa. You ought to tell Chapman to bone up on his history. Maybe he would have brained it out by now,” Kitts said. “Sit yourself down and give me one of those hands, Alex.”