“Sure, even purple. Just don’t make trouble for me, that’s all.” She paused. “You want me to?”
“No. Thanks a lot,” Brown said.
“Well,” she said, and shrugged, “if you should change your mind...”
“I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, I’m here to talk about a photograph.”
“Yeah, well come on in,” she said, gesturing toward the bedroom. “No sense standing here with the dirty dishes, huh?”
They walked into the other room. Dorothea sat on the bed and crossed her legs. Brown stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at her. She had allowed the silk wrapper to fall open again. The bite mark near her nipple looked angry and swollen, the outline of the teeth stitched across her flabby breast in a small elongated oval.
“A photograph, huh?” Dorothea said.
“That’s right.”
“Man, you guys sure know how to bring up ancient history,” she said. “I thought you weren’t going to make trouble for me.”
“I’m not.”
“I musta posed for those pictures twenty years ago. You mean to tell me one of them’s still around?” She shook her head in amazement. “I was some little piece in those days. I had guys coming to see me all the way from San Francisco. They’d get in town, pick up the phone, ‘Hello there, Dorothea, this is old Bruce, you ready to go, honey?’ I was always ready to go in those days. I knew how to show a man a good time.” She looked up at Brown. “I still do, I mean I’m not exactly what you’d call an old hag, you know. Not that I’m in the game, any more. I mean, I’m just saying.”
“When was your last arrest for prostitution?” Brown asked.
“I told you, musta been six or seven...”
“Come on, I can check it.”
“All right, last month. But I’ve been clean since. This is no kind of life for a person like me. So, you know, when you come around bringing up those pictures, Jesus, I can get in real trouble for something like that, can’t I?” She smiled suddenly. “Why don’t you just come on over here, sweetie, and we’ll forget all about those pictures, okay?”
“The picture I’m talking about isn’t pornography,” Brown said.
“No? What then?”
“A picture that may have come into your possession six years ago.”
“Jesus, who can remember six years ago?”
“You just now had no trouble remembering twenty years ago.”
“Yeah, but that was... You know, a girl remembers something like that. That’s the only time I ever done anything like that, you know, pose for pictures with some guy. I only let them take one roll, that was all, just one, and I got fifty bucks for it, which was more than I’d have got if I was just turning a trick without them taking pictures, you understand?”
“Sure,” Brown said. “What do you know about the National Savings and Loan Association holdup six years ago?”
“Oh, man, now we’re jumping around real fast,” Dorothea said. “First it’s hooking, then it’s dirty pictures, now it’s armed robbery. The stakes keep getting higher all the time.”
“What do you know about that holdup?”
“I think I remember reading about it.”
“What do you remember reading?”
“Look... I got your word you ain’t going to make trouble?”
“You’ve got it.”
“My nephew was one of the guys who pulled that job.”
“What’s his name?”
“Peter Ryan. He’s dead now. They all got killed on that job, some bank robbers,” she said, and grimaced.
“And the picture?”
“What picture? I don’t know what...”
“A piece of a snapshot. From what you’ve just told me, your nephew might have given it to you. Before the job. Would you remember anything like that?”
“Jesus, that was six years ago.”
“Try to remember.”
“When was the job? Do you remember what month it was?”
“August.”
“August. Six years ago. Let me see...” She grimaced again. “I wasn’t even living here at the time. God knows where the hell I was.”
“Think, Dorothea.”
“I think better when I’m drinking,” she said.
“Have you got anything in the house?”
“Yeah, but that’s like my insurance, you know? The Johns are few and far between these days.”
Brown reached into his wallet. “Here’s ten dollars,” he said. “Drink up your insurance and get yourself another bottle later.”
“And if I remember about the picture?”
“What about it?”
“How much is it worth to you?”
“Another twenty.”
“Make it fifty. You’re taking up a lot of my time, you know.”
“I don’t see a line of guys outside the door,” Brown said.
“Well, they come and go, come and go,” Dorothea said. “I’d hate to have to send a trick away just because I’m busy in here with a cop.” She paused, and then smiled. “Fifty?”
“Thirty-five.”
“It’s a deal.” She went into the kitchen, took a bottle of cheap rye from the shelf, poured herself a half tumblerful, looked up, and said, “You want some of this piss? Makes you go blind, I understand.”
“No, thanks,” Brown said.
“Here’s looking up your whole family,” Dorothea said, and drained the glass. “Whooo,” she said, “that’s poison, absolute poison.” She poured the glass full to the brim and carried it back into the bedroom with her. “I don’t remember any snapshot,” she said, shaking her head.
“Where were you living at the time?”
“Up on the North Side, I think. I think I had a room in a hotel up there.” She sipped at the rye thoughtfully. “Six years ago. That’s like a whole century, you know?”
“Think.”
“I’m thinking, just shut up. My nephew was in and out all the time; who remembers whether he ever gave me a snapshot?”
“This would be just a portion of a snapshot. Not the whole picture.”
“Better yet,” Dorothea said. “Even if he did give it to me, you know how many times I moved in the past six years? Don’t ask. Between The Law and the rent collector, I’m a very busy lady.”
“Where do you keep your valuables?”
“What valuables?”
“Where do you keep important papers?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Things like your birth certificate, your Social Security card...”
“Oh, yeah, I got them around someplace,” Dorothea said, and sipped at the drink again.
“Where?”
“I don’t keep much junk, you know. I don’t like memories. Too many fucking memories,” she said, and this time she took a healthy swallow of the drink, draining the glass. She got up from the bed, walked into the kitchen, and poured the glass full again. “You ever hear of a fighter named Tiger Willis?” she asked, coming back into the bedroom.
“No.”
“This was before your time, I guess. Twenty-five years ago, maybe even longer. He was a middleweight.”
“What about him?”
“I used to live with him. He had a shlong on him, man, it musta been a yard long.” Dorothea shook her head. “He got killed in the ring. This kid from Buenos Aires killed him. Hit him so hard, he... I was there that night, at ringside, you know. Freddie — that was his real name, Freddie Willis, the ‘Tiger’ shit was just for the ring — Freddie always got me a ringside seat for his fights, I was something in those days, I was real merchandise. This kid from Buenos Aires, he brought one up from the floor, almost knocked Freddie’s head off. And Freddie went down, he went down like a stone, he hit that canvas so hard...” She swallowed more rye and looked away from Brown. “Well, those are the old times,” she said.