6
Times Square at eight-fifteen in the morning is as sleazy as it is at night. And as busy. The whores were out getting an early start on the daily quota. Several winos had managed to get drunk already. Everywhere the industrious among us were up and at it. Me too. I was talking with the youngish whore in the black miniskirt and white mesh stockings I'd seen talking last night to Rambeaux.
"What are you interested in?" she said.
"Baseball, English landscape paintings, beer. How 'bout yourself?"
She shook her head. She was tired and even my lyrical wit didn't seem to brighten her face.
"You want action or not?" she said.
"I want to buy you breakfast and talk with you," I said.
She shrugged. "It's an hourly rate," she said. "What you do with your time is up to you."
"Okay," I said, and paid her. "Now you're mine until nine twenty-five."
"Sure thing, sugar. Where we going?"
"How about the HoJo," I said. "Across the square."
"Sure."
We crossed Broadway and Seventh where they intersect and walked up to the Howard Johnson's and sat. in a booth. I had black coffee. She had scrambled eggs and sausage patties, two strips of bacon, and home fries, buttered toast, and a Coke.
"Take care of any cholesterol deficiency you might be suffering," I said.
"Sure," she said. "What you want to talk about?"
"What's your name?" I said.
"Ginger." She used a toast triangle to push some scrambled eggs onto her fork.
"How long you been hooking, Ginger?" She shrugged while she swallowed her eggs. "Long time," she said.
"Always with Rambeaux?"
She stopped eating and stared at me. "You know him?"
"Sure," I said.
"You and him ain't friends," she said.
"True, but I know him."
"You a cop?"
"No."
"The hell you ain't," Ginger said.
"I'm not a cop. I'm not going to arrest anybody. I'm looking for information."
"You're a fucking cop," Ginger said. "You think I don't know a cop."
She ate some more of her scrambled eggs. It didn't bother her a hell of a lot if I was a cop. Cops were just another itch to scratch. If I busted her, the pimp would bail her out and she'd be back at work tomorrow.
"You want to shake Robert down?" Ginger said.
"No. I want to find out a little about him."
"How come?" She finished her eggs and sausage, and was nibbling a limp bacon slice in her fingers.
"Girl I know is in love with him. I want to see if he's reliable."
Ginger put down her bacon slice and wiped her fingers on a napkin. She sat back in the booth and stared at me.
"Reliable?"
"Yeah," I said, "reliable."
She smiled briefly. "You can rely on Robert," she said. "You can rely on him to make every dime he can off your body and never let go of it until he can't make anything more. He's reliable as hell about that."
"That's sort of what I was afraid of."
"What do you think he's like. He's a pimp. You think pimps are reliable?"
"How'd you meet him?" I said.
Ginger ate the rest of her bacon. I waited while she did. I still had forty minutes left on the meter and I could always buy another hour. A waitress filled my coffee cup. Ginger sat back in the booth again and sipped her Coke.
"I was working in a house in Boston."
"And?"
The waitress came back and put the check down.
"I'm sick of sitting here,"' Ginger said. "Let's get out of here."
I paid the check and we were on the street again. The weather was pleasant. Warm enough for Ginger's skirt and sleeveless sequined top.
"Anywhere you want to go?" I said
"Someplace else," she said.
"How about the zoo?" I said.
She glanced around Times Square. "How different can it be," she said.
I got us a cab and we rode in silence to Central Park. The cabbie dropped us at Columbus Circle and we walked across the park, east, toward the zoo. Ginger's costume looked less appropriate in the park, but no one seemed to notice. New York offers the gift of loneliness, E. B. White had said once.
We were standing in front of the polar bear cage when I said again, "And?"
Ginger seemed startled. "And what?" she said.
"And you met Rambeaux, what then?"
She looked at her watch. "You gonna pay, me some more?"
"Yes," I said. "Just leave the meter running. I'll pay you for all the time it takes."
She nodded. She looked at the bear. "You think he likes it in there?"
"No," I said. "I think he'd rather be up on the polar ice cap hotfooting it after a seal. What happened after you met Sweet Robert?"
"I came to New York with him."
"Because?"
"Because I came."
"Better money?" I said.
She was watching the bear. "Something like that," she said.
"Was it that?"
She still watched the bear. I watched him too. He had a beer keg in the water with him and he mauled it and rolled over it, taking it under and letting it pop up. It wasn't much but what the hell else was there to do?
After a long time, Ginger said, "No."
"It wasn't money?"
"No."
"It was love," I said.
"I'm sick of looking at this fucking bear," she said.
"Sure."
We moved toward the monkey house. In front of a cage full of capuchin monkeys Ginger turned and leaned her fanny on the railing and said, "Yeah. It was love."
"Better reason than money," I said.
"Bullshit," Ginger said. "Men think shit like that. Women don't."
"Hard to generalize," I said. "What happened when you got to New York?"
"He put me on the street."
"Now, that's love," I said.
Ginger looked past me at the monkeys in the cage across the aisle. She didn't say anything.
"Sorry," I said.
She looked back at me silently and nodded. "So you were on the street."
"Robert was studying music and he needed time and so I split my money with him."
"And what did he contribute?"
"I thought he loved me," Ginger said. "And he was protection."
"Against what?"
"Whatever. He'd hang around in case the john was freaky. Or tried to rip us off. Make sure I came out when I was supposed to. Stuff like that."
We walked toward the lions. On the other side of the pit was a guy selling popcorn. "You want some?" I said.
"Sure," Ginger said.
I left her leaning on the railing looking at the lions and walked over to the popcorn cart. When I came back two teenage Hispanic kids were talking to her. The heavier of them made a kissing sound with his lips and rubbed his thumb across his fingertips. He had on a yellow silk jacket. I handed Ginger the popcorn. And looked at the two kids.
"She wit' you, man?"
I nodded.
"We thought she was alone, man." Both kids were much shorter than I was and I was looking down at them. Always effective. I kept looking. The kid in the yellow jacket shrugged and he and his pal swaggered away.
"I'm impressed," Ginger said.
"At what?"
"You. You must be fairly scary. Kids like that aren't normally scared of anything."
"They are, they pretend they're not," I said.
"With you they didn't pretend. They must have seen something."
"They probably sensed I am pure of heart," I said. "What happened? How come you're not in a classy call house? Why'd he turn you out on the street?"
She shrugged again. In the strong sunlight there were small wrinkles around her eyes. Her makeup looked harsh.
"He says I'm shopworn," she said. I raised my eyebrows.
She nodded and ate some popcorn. She held the box out toward me. I shook my head. "So Rambeaux moved you down scale."
"Un huh. A lot less money per trick."
"So more tricks," I said.
"Robert's tuition payments didn't drop," she said.
"They never will," I said.
"Tell me something I don't know," Ginger said.
"And when you get a little more shopworn?"
"There's a place in Miami," she said, "where the girls never get out of bed. Guys get fifteen minutes, by the clock, then a bell rings and they gotta get off, and the next guy gets on."