“Still...girls have been known to fall for real louses.” I grinned at her. “I’ve even had a few fall for me.”
She didn’t grin back. “Not a louse like this one. He paid women to humiliate him, and then he took it out on them.”
“I heard that before. Maybe you could be more specific.”
She swallowed, seeming ill at ease—and Bunny was not the ill-at-ease type. “Morgan, Halaquez would want that...that sick submissive shit, whole nine yards. Handcuffs, chains, whips, ball gags—you know?”
“I know. Not my scene, but I know.”
“But after? After, he would beat the girl, like I told you. But on several occasions he...I know they’re prostitutes, Morgan, I have no illusion what I am or what they are...but he raped them. He goddamn raped them, Morgan.”
Nausea fought the beer in my stomach. “And how does a whore go to the cops with that complaint?”
Bunny’s tone was icy. “She doesn’t. She doesn’t.” She shuddered. “He could really rip a girl up, that bastard.”
“Which girl?”
“Well, he had a few favorites, but not many of my girls would put up with him, after the first time.”
I put a hand on her shoulder. “Keep it in mind, Bunny. Someone’s holding hands with a killer, and that someone could be the next one taken out of the game.”
She shook her head, and a purple tendril fought its way free from the bouffant. “What girl in her right mind would want to be with a sick sadistic rapist like Halaquez?”
“Maybe a girl whose first experience was having Daddy rape her. Maybe a girl who likes money. Don’t ask me, Bunny—find a shrink, or write Dear Abby. But it’s possible. Did you put the word out about that Consummata dame?”
She made a dismissive gesture. “I placed a few calls. Nothing. It must just be a rumor.”
“Make more calls. If this woman is the queen of sadomasochism, like you and others in the know keep telling me, she’s right up Halaquez’s dirty alley.”
Bunny shot me an angry look and slammed the beer can on the glass coffee table nearby. “Damn it, Morgan! Since you showed up, there’s been nothing but trouble.”
“Hell, don’t look at me. I didn’t ask for it.”
“Maybe so, but it seems to grow where you go, like a sickness you’re carrying. Typhoid Morgan, that’s you!”
“Thanks a bunch.”
She sighed. Shook her head. “Take today. Today, I had to go down to the morgue and identify a body, and—”
I sat up. “Whose body?”
She tried waving it off. “Just a guy. Former client.”
“Just a guy? So why did the cops call you to make the I.D.?”
“He had an address book on him—six names in it, five untraceable, the other is lucky me. He’s been coming into the Mandor Club off and on for maybe three years. No trouble, just a customer the kids liked, and who wasn’t afraid to spend money. We knew him as Richard Best. Dick Best.” She laughed a little. “Some of the girls called him the Best Dick.”
“Why, was he hung like a horse?”
“Almost the opposite. He came to the Mandor to be pampered, and half the time, he never got around to the sex. He was no spring chicken—maybe sixty, sixty-five? He was looking for company, for pleasant female companionship. An ideal client for my girls, the polar opposite of Jaimie Halaquez.”
“What did he look like?”
“Oh, he was nothing special. Just a medium guy, medium height, average looking.”
“Hair color?”
“Brown.”
“Eye color?”
“Brown. He kind of reminded me of that old actor, William Powell? But not quite as handsome. Nice man, though. Real sweetheart.”
“How well did you know him, Bunny?”
She thought back, and her expression conveyed a fondness for her subject. “Well enough, I guess. We talked plenty of times. We’d sit in the bar and talk old times.”
“Why, had he known you before?”
“Well, if so, I didn’t remember him. But he remembered me and my husband, the old fox, from the days when we were in the papers regularly.” Her chin lifted, her eyes rolled back in remembering. “Used to tell me how much he admired my husband, and how he thought my better half had gotten framed into prison. Framed? Hell, the old fox worked good and damn hard to get behind bars. He deserved everything he got!”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Bunny,”
Her eyes were distant. “...not that I didn’t love the slick ol’ bastard, though.”
Time to get her back on track. “What was it that turned Richard Best into a corpse?”
“Broken neck. He got slugged with something. His cash, watch and ring were gone, and his place turned inside out. He lived in an apartment, nothing fancy. Lived there and died there.”
“Still, he must have had enough worth killing for.”
Bunny kicked her shoes off and put her feet up on the coffee table. “Morgan, anybody who has anything is worth killing for these days. That area where he lived—two robberies and a mugging in the past three months. Damn. World’s losing its moral compass, don’t you think?”
All whorehouse madams were philosophers.
I asked, “Ever have a regular patron turn up dead before, Bunny?”
She gave me sideways look laced with a tight smile. “Come on, Morgan. Anybody who makes a whorehouse a regular stop is some kind of target for somebody. I’ve seen familiar faces in the news one day and the obits the next.” Again she shuddered, and sipped beer. “It’s just that I don’t like to get called in to identify bodies.”
That tight little feeling was running up my spine again. I could sense it running across my shoulders and bunching up into my neck.
“I don’t like it, Bunny. With what we’ve been up to, having a stiff turn up for you to identify?...I don’t like it at all.”
“You think I do?”
I leaned back in the softness of the couch; it tried to soothe me, but it didn’t work. “Think you can find anything else out about this particular corpse—Richard Best?”
“Like how?” she asked suspiciously.
“Surely you have friends on the department.”
“Me and the fuzz don’t exactly socialize.”
“I didn’t ask if you socialized with them. You’re friendly with somebody or you wouldn’t be open for business. Somebody picks up a monthly envelope of green stuff. Or is it weekly?”
She reached for a package of Virginia Slims on the coffee table, selected one, lighted it up with a silver decorative lighter, and blew the smoke at the ceiling.
Reluctantly, she said, “Okay...so I know a few people.”
I gestured with an open hand. “You could show a sign of interest in the dead guy. I mean, they already know he was a client, so you go around and say ol’ Dick Best was a good, even beloved patron of the Mandor arts, much missed by all the girls. Then offer up a cheap burial if nobody claims the body.”
She smirked in quiet disgust. “Yeah? Then what?”
“Make a simple inquiry. I’d like to know what the autopsy report shows.”
“Damn it, Morgan! You...”
“Yes or no?”
Something in my voice stopped her, made her look at me closely a few seconds, then she said, “Okay, I’ve been a chump before.” She dragged on the cigarette again. Shook her head. “I don’t know why the hell I’m doing this.”
“I do,” I said.
“Really?”
“Sure. You’re a nosy old broad.”
This time her grin was quick and open. She looked me up and down with a friendly, salacious gaze. “I’m not that old, Morgan. I think I could still teach you a thing or two.”