Chapter 15

Cameron House was a condominium on upper Connecticut Avenue. I punched 3G on the security system intercom. It buzzed like a fat spring fly hitting a screen door. One. Two. Three. Four. A sleep-thickened voice answered. “Hello.”

“Hello, my name is Leo Haggerty—”

“We don’t want any.” She hung up.

I dialed again. Seven rings this time. “If you don’t go away, I’ll—”

“Call the police. Please do. They’ll be very interested in talking to me. Don’t bother with vice, go straight to homicide.”

The voice got real clear. “Who are you?”

“I’m a private investigator. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions, very discreetly, since discretion is the soul of our professions, is it not?” I stared at the door while she weighed her options. I was buzzed in.

I knocked on 3G. There was a peephole. The door opened slowly on a thick chain. A hand reached around and a voice said, “Show me some I.D.” I slipped my license out of my wallet and handed it to her. The door slammed closed. I looked at my watch. “Two minutes to check me out is all you have, darlin’,” I said to the peephole.

Right on time the door was pulled open and I walked in. A woman in a terrycloth robe showed me in. One hand clutched the robe near her throat. With the other hand she gave me back my license.

I walked into the living room and took it all in. The white walls were divided by a bold, plum-colored slash that wandered around the living room and then disappeared down the hall to the left. Gauzy, patterned curtains diffused the midday light. Three strange chairs sat around a large wooden coffee table.

One was an old throne chair with claw feet. The snarling heads of lions would be over the shoulders of the person who sat there. A loveseat was carved in the shape of a bleary-eyed old wino. One hand clutched a brown paper bag, the other was thrown over the back of a simple, straight-back seat that grew from his left hip. The third chair was an old bentwood rocker with a plum cushion.

To the left of the bedroom hallway was a game table with two chairs. Above it, a cabinet hung on the wall. To the right of the hallway stood a high-tech stereo system. Two Leonor Fini prints, at least I assumed they were prints, were on the other wall. Next to the picture window was a table with a computer system atop it. I guessed the kitchen to be off to the right.

The woman in the doorway had one of those all-purpose faces that most models have. All the right proportions and no glaring flaws. A face that could be enhanced by any new look, any new product without calling attention to itself. Good hit men have the same face.

Another woman walked into the room. They looked at each other for a moment, then the first one introduced herself.

“I’m Wanda Manlove. This is my apartment.”

“Anita Coxworth,” the other girl said.

“Of course, and I’m Luke Warm.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Wanda said.

“No doubt. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about a man you met at the Presidential Arms last Friday.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She crossed her arms over her chest and gave me her best dead fish look.

“Cut the crap. Like I said, I have no interest in hassling you. Just answer a couple of questions and I’m gone. Otherwise, I call homicide and send them down here to rain on your parade. So what do you say? You talk and I walk?”

Wanda sat in the throne chair. I avoided my boozy wooden companion and took the rocker. She stared at me like I was a pimple on prom night. I glared back. In my mind I kept hearing Sister Benigna saying, “Your body is the temple of the holy spirit.” Wanda, Wanda, Wanda, why’d you wanna make God a slumlord?

Wanda looked over my shoulder, then back at me. “All right, Anita says you’re clean.” The other woman was sitting in front of the computer console.

“Maybe we can compare databases someday,” I said.

“I doubt it. How did you find me anyway?”

“A girl named Francine Ky gave me your name.” A useful lie.

Anita and Wanda’s eyes met for an instant. “When did you see Francine?”

“This morning.”

“How’s she doing?” Wanda tossed out the question like it was last year’s look.

“Real poorly.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.”

I thought she was going to yawn. I was getting tired of this charade. “Isn’t it. Her pimp fucked her up so bad she’ll never work again. Your name cost her plenty, so let’s make it worthwhile and cut this bored, solicitous shit. I mentioned her name and this room got ten degrees cooler. What gives?”

“It’s none of your business. What did she say?”

“She only gave me your name. I can fill in the rest, though. You asked her to see if there had been any inquiries about the guy who had died there, Malcolm Donnelly. She told you no, it was going down as a suicide and no one was looking for a woman who might have been in his room. But I know better. All I want to know is what happened in that room.”

Wanda shook her head. “Shit. Where’s Francine?”

“Over at Casualty Hospital.”

“All right. I’ll tell you what you want to know on one condition. Otherwise, I’ll take the heat. It’ll be an inconvenience but I won’t do time for it.”

“What’s the condition?”

“You fix that animal pimp of hers. He’s hurt enough girls.” She pointed at me. “Look at that face. What’s the matter, peeper? You’ve got principles? That’s the deal, take it or leave it.”

I sat there weighing my options. Out on the street and in that hospital room I had really wanted a piece of Jack. I wasn’t ready to become a hired killer, though. For guidance I reviewed the two or three nuggets of enduring wisdom that had panned out after almost a dozen years of this work. I settled on Haggerty’s Law of the Conservation of Effort: Never do more for somebody else than they’re willing to do for themselves.

“Let’s go, Mr. Private Eye. Is it a deal?”

“I’ll tell you what I will do. I won’t kill him but I will take him off the streets for a good long time. I’ll do it tonight. But Francine Ky has to press charges after I take him down. You talk to her. Get back to me with an answer.” I got up to leave.

“Wait a minute, how do we know you’ll do it?”

“One of you can come along and watch if you want proof. Then call the other one and have Francine talk to the cops at the hospital.”

“All right. You stay here though. I’m going to go down to the hospital right now and have a talk with her. I’ll call here with an answer.”

“Fine.” I sat back down. Wanda stood up and went down the hall to get dressed. I leaned back and began to rock. Anita asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee. I said no. She, unlike her friend, was striking. Thick, lustrous black hair swept up from a pronounced widow’s peak that gave her face almost a heart shape. The combination of large round eyes under the thinnest arch of an eyebrow, a Roman nose, and beestung lips gave her face a look of perpetual astonishment. All in a slightly olive cast.

Wanda returned, ready to go. I asked her why she was so interested in Francine Ky.

“She was supposed to meet us here today. She was ready to leave her pimp, and we were going to help her learn how to work for herself.”

“The word out on the street was that she was going to go outlaw and Jack knew it.”

“Outlaw? Give me a break. Let me tell you something. I’ve never had a pimp and I never will. No son of a bitch is going to lie around, turn me out, work my ass to the bone, beat the shit out of me and take my money. Not in this life. What do I need one of those bastards for? To tell me he loves me? A pimp wouldn’t know love if it ran up and bit him on the ass. The last few years I’ve made plenty. A couple more like it and I’m going to retire, and I’m not going to do anything I don’t want to ever again.”

“Is that what you were selling Francine?”

“Yes. Get her off the streets and away from that animal. We’d teach her how to manage herself. How to keep the money she earned. Get out of this rat race in one piece.” Wanda picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder. “Shit. I really thought we’d get her out. She was supposed to stay off the streets and away from Jack until she came here.”

“Maybe she was trying to and Jack found out.” The present for his car could have been a diversion, her desperation on the street because she felt that I was jeopardizing her escape. Then again, maybe not.

“What do you do, recruit the girls?”

“Yeah. One day a week, I go down to ‘The Stroll’ and look for someone with some fight in them. I take them out to lunch and make my pitch.”

“Have any girls ever told their pimp what you’re doing?”

“Not yet. I’m a pretty good judge of character.”

“You’d better be. If the pimp’s union ever gets onto you they’ll toss you off Key Bridge.”

“That’s why I carry this.” She pulled a little automatic out of her purse. “I keep a low profile, screen my clients very carefully and never trick where I live. I’ve been doing this for six years and I’m not on any police blotter anywhere. That guy dying though really put me on edge. I don’t like that kind of visibility. So I asked Francine to check it out as a favor to me. When you showed up I thought cop or pimp, but the computer says otherwise. Anita’s a real whiz with that thing.” She dropped the gun back in her purse, put on a short coat and went to the door.

“One last thing though,” I said, “the street law is very clear on this. Do unto others as they have done unto you. I’ll keep my end of the bargain. You’ll have a witness to that. If you don’t keep your end of the deal I’ll throw you off of Key Bridge. Understood?”

“Yeah, I understand.”

When Wanda left, Anita asked me if I wanted something to eat. I said no thanks, but I would take her up on her prior offer of coffee. While she prepared a breakfast I went to the picture window and stared down at Connecticut Avenue. The zoo wasn’t too far away and beyond that, off Columbia Road, was the city’s Hispanic section, Adams-Morgan. Twenty years ago I’d lived there with a junkie from Texas named Bonnie Rasmussen. It was hard to accept that she loved the needle more than me. Maybe that was why I didn’t leave after the first O.D. Maybe I thought that if I just loved her more, she’d give that stuff up. One day I walked in and saw her sitting there on the bed, naked, the needle in her arm, slowly pumping the junk into her arm and then letting it and her blood back into the syringe. Back and forth, back and forth she did that, all the while moaning in a way she never had with me. I went back to Bethesda. She moved in with her dealer.

“Here’s your coffee,” Anita said.

“Oh, thanks.” I sat down at the dining room table with her and watched her work through some scrambled eggs and grilled ham. She wiped at her mouth and said, “Are you sure you don’t want some of this?”

“No, that’s okay.”

“I guess I just feel odd eating in front of someone who’s not having any.”

“I’ll go over and sit in the rocker.”

“No, don’t do that. Anyway I’m almost finished.” She wiped her mouth with her napkin. “You and Wanda really hit it off big time.”

“Right. I’ve got no beef with her. If everybody does what they say they will, we can help each other.”

“I think it’s real hard for her to need a man’s help on anything.”

I just want her to know that asking me to take Jack down is serious business. I don’t want her even thinking about fucking with me on this.”

“Oh, I think your message came across loud and clear.”

“Good. I hope she’s as smart as she is tough.”

Anita stood up and said, “Well, I’ve got work to do. Make yourself comfortable.” She got up and walked down the hall.

While I sipped my coffee I considered my next moves. Marta Vasquez was still on the big board. Maybe what Wanda had to tell me would get her off. It would be a lot easier than taking a photograph of her and showing it around to the hotel staff. I yelled down the hall, “Do you mind if I use your phone?”

“No, go ahead.”

I called the school board and by giving them Marta Vasquez’s address I found out the name of her local school. The day-care program director had no qualms about answering my questions and yes, Marta had picked her children up that day. I thanked her and she told me that it was no problem—Mrs. Donnelly had said I’d probably call.

Anita came back out, dressed this time. She wore black stirrup pants and a pastel blouse with the sleeves rolled up. She sat down at the console and started to work.

“What do you keep in that thing?”

She smiled at me over her shoulder. “That’s classified, sir.”

“Of course. Silly me.”

“We keep track of all our investments. That’s what I do for Wanda and the other girls who want to invest their money. I keep track of things. Keep them posted. Make recommendations. Move money if they want to change investments.”

“So you’re the house broker?”

“You could say that.”

“How’d you get started in this?”

“Hooking?”

“No, the investment end of things.”

“I’ve always been real interested in money.” She laughed. “It seemed to me that the trick was to let your money make money. Tricking was the fastest way to make good money, so I did that. I took some courses on investing and began to get the hang of it. The more my money started making me money, the less I had to trick. Wanda has lots of good ideas but she just doesn’t have the temperament for investing. She wants everything right away. So she let me take over managing her assets and then the other girls’. I make most of my money from consultant fees these days. I still trick now and then. Just to keep my hand in. You never can tell what you’ll need to do for money.”

She turned back to her console and I went into the kitchen and poured out the dregs into the sink. The phone rang. Anita answered it and handed it to me.

“Haggerty, Francine will press charges against Jack, after we have word that he’s been, shall we say, neutralized. Anita will go with you as an observer. I’ll stay at home for the message. When she calls me to tell me it’s been done, I’ll go to the hospital and we’ll call the police. Okay?”

“Fine. One thing. Don’t tell any of Jack’s girls about this. Believe me, the word will get out on the street about what happened. You can make your pitch the next day. I want Jack as fat and full of himself as he can be. Surprise is essential.”

“Okay, no problem.”

I hung up the phone and turned back to Anita. “I’ll pick you up about six. Be down front. Our business should be over between nine and ten. Afterwards, you call Wanda. She’ll be waiting here for your call. Then we’ll all meet at the hospital for a little talk.”

“All right. I’ll see you at six.”