The maitre d’ said, “Certainly, Mrs. Utley,” and stalked toward the kitchen.
She looked at me and shook her head slowly. “Are you ever serious, Spenser?”
“Yes, I am,” I said. “I am serious, for instance, about discussing Donna Burlington with you.”
“And I am serious when I say to you, why should you think I’d know her?”
“Because you are in charge of a high-priced prostitution operation and are bankrolled with what my source refers to as heavy money. Now I know it, and you know it, and why not stop the pretense? The truth, Mrs. Utley, will set us free.”
“All right,” she said, “say you are correct. Why should I discuss it with you?”
A waiter brought our drinks and I waited while he put them down. Mine rather disdainfully, I thought.
“Because I can cause you aggravation—cops, newspapers, maybe the feds—maybe I could cause you trouble, I don’t know. Depends on how heavy the bankrollers really are.
If you talk with me, then it’s confidential, there’s no aggravation at all. And I might do another one-arm push-up for you.”
“What if my bankrollers decided to cause you aggravation?”
“I have a very high aggravation tolerance.”
She sipped her Campari. “It’s funny, or maybe it’s not funny at all, but you’re the second person who’s come asking about Donna.”
“Who else?”
“He never said, but he was quite odd. He was, oh, what, in costume, I guess you’d say. Dressed all in white, white suit and shirt, white tie, white shoes and a big white straw hat like a South American planter.”
“Tall and slim? Chewed gum?”
“Yes.”
I said, “Aha.”
“Aha?”
“Yeah, like Aha I see a connection, or Aha I have discovered a clue. It’s detective talk.”
“You know who he is then.”
“Yes, I do. What did he want?”
She sipped some more Campari. I drank some Heineken. “Among my enterprises,” she said, “is a film business. This gentleman had apparently seen Donna in one of our films and wanted the master print.”
“Aha, aha!” I said. “Corporate diversification.” The waiter came for our order. When he was gone, I said, “Start from the beginning. When did you meet Donna, what did she do for you, what kind of film was she in, tell me all.”
“Very well, if you promise not to keep saying Aha.”
“Agreed.”
“Donna came to me through a client. He’d picked her up down in the East Village when he was drunk.” She grimaced. “She was working for Violet then; her boyfriend had pimped for her before but had run from Violet. I don’t know what happened to the boyfriend. The client thought she was too nice a girl to be hustling out of the back of a car with a two-dollar pimp like Violet. He put her in touch with me.”
The waiter came with our soup. I had gazpacho; Patricia Utley had vichyssoise.
“I run a very first-rate operation, Spenser.”
“I can tell that,” I said.
“Of course, I would deny this to anyone if it ever came up.”
“It won’t. I don’t care about your operation. I only care about Donna Burlington.”
“But you disapprove.”
“I don’t approve or disapprove. To tell you the truth, Mrs. Utley, I don’t give a damn. I think about one thing at a time. Right now I’m thinking about Donna Burlington.”
“It’s a volunteer business,” she said. “It exists because men have needs.” She said it as if the needs had a foul odor.
“Now who’s disapproving?”
“You don’t know,” she said. “You’ve never seen what I’ve seen.”
“About Donna Burlington,” I said.
“She was eighteen when I took her. She didn’t know anything. She didn’t know how to dress, how to do her hair, how to wear makeup. She hadn’t read anything, been anyplace, talked to anyone. I had her two years and taught her everything. How to walk, how to sit, how to talk with people. I gave her books to read, showed her how to make up, how to dress.”
The waiter brought the fish. Sole in a saffron sauce for her. Scallops St. Jacques for me.
“You and Rex Harrison,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “It was rather like that. I liked Donna, she was a very unsophisticated little thing. It was like having a, oh not a daughter, but a niece perhaps. Then one day she left. To get married.”
“Who’d she marry?”
“She wouldn’t tell me—a client, I gathered, but she wouldn’t say whom, and I never saw her again.”
“When was this?”
Patricia Utley thought for a moment. “It was the same year as the Cambodian raids and the great protest, nineteen seventy. She left me in winter nineteen seventy. I remember it was winter because I watched her walk away in a lovely fur-collared tweed coat she had.”
The waiter cleared the fish and put down the salad, spinach leaves with raw mushrooms in a lemon and oil dressing. I took a bite. So-so. “I assume the films were what I used to call dirty movies when I was a kid.”
She smiled. “It is getting awfully hard to decide, isn’t it? They were erotic films. But of good quality, sold by subscription.”
“Black socks, garter belts, two girls and a guy? That kind of stuff?”
“No, as I said, tasteful, high quality, good color and sound. No sadism, no homosexuality, no group sex.”
“And Donna was in some?”
“She was in one, shortly before she left me. The pay was good, and while it was a lot of work, it was a bit of a change for her. Her film was called Suburban Fancy. She was quite believable in it.”
“What did you tell the man who came asking?”
“I told him that he was under some kind of false impression. That I knew nothing about the films or the young lady involved. He became somewhat abusive, and I had to call for Steven to show him out.”
“I heard this guy was pretty tough,” I said.
“Steven was armed,” she said.
“Oh,” I said. “How come you didn’t have Steven show me out?”
“You did not become abusive.”
The entree came. Duck in a fig and brandy sauce for me, striped bass in cucumber and crabmeat sauce for her. The duck was wonderful.
I said, “You sell these films by subscription.” She nodded. “How’s chances on a look at the subscription list?”
“None,” she said.
“No chance?”
“No chance at all. Obviously you can see my situation.
Such material must remain confidential to protect our clients.”
“People do sell mailing lists,” I said.
“I do not,” she said. “I have no need for money, Mr.
Spenser.”
“No, I guess you don’t. Okay, how about I name a couple of people and you tell me if they’re on your list? That doesn’t compromise any but those I suspect anyway.”
There were carrots in brown sauce with fresh dill and zucchini in butter with the entree, and Patricia Utley ate some of each before she answered. “Perhaps we can go back to my home for brandy after dinner and I’ll have someone check.”
For dessert we had clafoutis, which still tastes like blueberry pancakes to me, and coffee. The coffee was weak.
The bill was $119 including tip.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS SUNSET when the plane swung in over the water and landed at La Guardia Airport. I took the bus into the East Side terminal at Thirty-eighth Street and a cab from there to the Holiday Inn at West Fifty-seventh Street. The Wiener schnitzel had been so good in Redford, I thought I might as well stay with a winner.
The West Side hadn’t gotten any more fashionable since I had been there last and the hotel looked as if it belonged where it was. The lobby was so discouraging that I didn’t bother to check the dining room for Wiener schnitzel.
Instead, I walked over to a Scandinavian restaurant on Fiftyeighth Street and ravaged its smorgasbord.
The next morning I made some phone calls to the New York Department of Social Services while I drank coffee in my room. When I finished I walked along Fifty-seventh Street to Fifth Avenue and headed downtown. I always walk in New York. In the window of F.A.O. Schwarz was an enormous stuffed giraffe, and Brentano’s had a display of ethnic cookbooks in the window. I thought about going in and asking them if they were a branch of the Boston store but decided not to. They probably lacked my zesty sense of humor.