“You can walk away!” she said. “You can go home and paint your house!”
“Not now. This thing has got to be settled.”
“They’ll kill me!”
“They’re killing you every day you stay here, unless you’re lying. I mean the money’s good.”
She whirled toward me. “It’s not that good! They own me like they own this place and the car!”
“So what are you going to do about it? Maybe you can endure — but the older you get, the worse it will be. Pretty soon you’ll be the Welcome Wagon lady at a migrant labor camp.”
“I don’t know much,” she said.
“OK. Let’s start with your name.”
“I’m Gloria Reeves, from Jackson, Mississippi.”
“Who’s J. C. Langston?”
“My contact. He pays the bills and owns the car, you know. But he works for someone else I’ve never seen.”
“Where can I find him?”
“He’ll kill me!”
“He will anyhow, eventually.”
“He runs the All-Star Escort Service.”
When I reached the lobby a chubby faced guy of about forty wearing a madras jacket and yellow polo shirt was waiting. As we passed he gave me that little-boy-headed-for-the-candy-shop-with-a-new-quarter look. I had the urge to knee him where the sun never shines. But the philosopher side of my nature held me in check, and I went into the parking area reminding myself that we all have our good reasons for everything.
Everything — even getting suckered, which I was, by one of the oldest dummy tricks in the world.
As I started my car, a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt grabbed the back of my neck, and the cold steel of a gun barrel pressed my cheek. Ovid Johnson growled. “Thought you didn’t know where Kimberly is? And you come straight over here like a bee-martin to its gourd.”
I went limp because there wasn’t any way I was slipping that grip short of breaking my neck. He eased off and said, “Yeah, I followed you from the motel. She in that fancy building?”
I told him no, that I didn’t know where she was.
He tapped that hog-leg .44 against my temple. “Think again, mister, while you got time.”
I was thinking. All I needed to get my ticket punched was a wild man shadowing me. Still, Ovid did have his good points. He was big, and he was determined. So I raised both hands and said, “Let’s talk. Put that cannon away.”
“All right. You turn around real slow and lay your hands on the back of the seat, so I can count your fingers.”
They say that truth is the best shield. But it’s never easy telling a man that the woman he loves has been up to something nasty, and I had never heard of honesty being tested by a magnum slug. But Ovid’s concern was righteous, and he seemed decent enough, so I took the chance and told him the truth about his daughter’s occupation.
Rather than pistol-whipping or blasting me, the huge guy sagged. The pistol slipped from his fingers and he buried his face in his hands and sobbed. Under the circumstances I guess I would’ve too.
After a moment, I said, “What we need now is information. I’ve got a plan. Are you willing to help, even if it means going to jail for a couple of hours?”
“Mister,” he said, his head bowed, “just tell me who you want killed.”
“Nobody,” I said. “Are you good with your fists?”
He looked up at me and half-smiled. “I’ve been known to break a few jaws. When I was a kid I even wrestled a bear.”
My plan was one of those calculated to kill two birds with one stone, and I figured if it didn’t work, at least Ovid would be out of my hair for a while.
He followed me to the All-Star Escort Sen ice on Spring Street. The office was a walk-up next to a topless bar, a large room with modern sofa and chairs, presided over by a matronly woman with a blonde beehive and too much makeup. Behind her desk was another room, and through the half-open door I saw a coffee table on which were propped the feet of two men. One wore size twenty quad-E lace-ups, the other a pair of those slick Italian loafers.
Hemming and hawing in my best ah-shucks manner I told Blondie I was in town for an important business conference. There was going to be a cocktail party followed by dinner at the Plaza. What I... well... needed was someone to take to impress my contact. Did she have a suitable lady — should be young, attractive, you know, and also have good manners and dress well. Money was no object.
The lady smiled like the housemother at the dog pound. She opened a photo album for my inspection. As her purple-nailed finger pointed out a really special lovely, Ovid lumbered in and yelled, “I need me a woman!”
Blondie looked up at him and said, “Sir?”
The guy was a pretty convincing actor. “Had me a few drinks,” he declared, “and then I thought about getting me a woman. What you got, honey?”
I said, “Sorry, you’ll have to wait. I was here first.”
“Listen, shorty,” he said, “I don’t wait for nobody, not when it comes to women!”
I had told him not to hit me, and he didn’t. But the shove flung me across the room. I hit the wall and I wasn’t playacting as I slumped to the floor.
Blondie squealed. From out of the back came a guy as big as all outdoors with a scar for a beauty mark. He thundered toward Ovid like a dry elephant smelling water. Ovid’s punch was like a slug from a high-powered rifle. Wham — thud — and the guy back-flipped over Blondie’s desk and didn’t move. A little guy in a silk suit popped out next, waving a blackjack. He started to yell something tough, but when he saw Ovid his mouth fell open and he tried to backpedal. But Ovid was too quick. He grabbed his silk tie and hoisted him over the desk and gave him a couple of short shots that turned the guy’s eyes inside out.
Now I was yelling at Blondie, “Call the cops! He’ll kill us!”
She went for the phone. Ovid got to it first and ripped it out of the wall.
“Run!” I yelled. “Get help!”
She did, as fast as her fat little legs would carry her, ripping her skirt from hem to waist as she went.
“Was that okay?” Ovid asked, with a grin.
I was on my feet, checking my ribs. “Best today,” I grunted. “Now watch these two.”
I went into the back room. The desk and filing cabinets were unlocked. In the bottom drawer I found an address book with coded names and phone numbers. Underneath it was another book with fewer names. I stuck both in my jacket pocket and made for the door, telling Ovid to count to fifty before he left.
I was in my Chevy when a patrol car squealed around the corner, and two beat cops huffed up on foot. As I drove away, something big smashed the office window and fell to the sidewalk. I hoped it was only the sofa, but I didn’t look back to check.
When I got home, I made a cup of black coffee to steady my nerves, and then I took off my shirt and looked for damage. I had a couple welts, nothing more. Tomorrow’s bruises, purple and pink like the sunrise. I was lucky. The two guys at All-Star wouldn’t be back from Ovid’s never-never land for hours.
I sipped the coffee and looked through the books. There were maybe seventy entries in the big one, but the coded names like B/1642 and J/0012 didn’t mean anything till I recalled the army way of I.D.-ing personal effects with an initial and the final four digits of a social security number. But you needed the master list to learn who B and J were. I spotted the phone number of the Buckhead Place apartment though; the old one had been scratched out, the new penciled in. And when I ran down the list again, looking for Ks, I found K/3398 lined up with the old number.
A lot of girls. Whoever was running this show had a sweet thing going.