Bruce DeSilva - Cliff Walk

She twisted away from me, and I thought she was getting up to go. Instead, she reached behind her, plucked our drinks from the table, and handed me my bottle of Bud.

“How long have you been in Providence, Marical?”

“Tree muntz.”

“Do you like it here?”

“Better than Haiti. I have no work dere.”

“What do you have to pay to dance here?”

“I pay one hundred dollas a night. Tonight so far I loose moany.”

Marical set her drink back on the table and ran her fingers through my hair, working on my sales resistance. She flicked open the buttons of my Dustin Pedroia Red Sox game jersey. Then she draped her arms around my neck, pressed her breasts against my bare chest, and humped the front of my jeans. That had to be worth something. I peeled off a five and slipped it in her garter. My hand had a mind of its own. It lingered on her inner thigh.

“I know you want me, beebe.” And that was no lie.

She took my hands in hers, placed them on her ass, and humped some more.

That’s when two guys shouldered through the door. I pegged them for college students-Providence College, maybe, or URI. They stood there until their eyes adjusted to the dark and then took seats at a table near the stage to study the action. Marical twisted around in my lap to look them over, then turned back to me.

“Love you, beebe, but I go to work now. Come see DEZ-tin-ee again when you have some moany, okay?”

She got up from my lap and walked toward the college boys, swinging her hips again as she went. She sat down at their table, and for a minute or two I listened to them laugh. Then I watched her bounce up, take them both by their hands, and lead them into one of the private rooms.

I wanted to kick the door in, pull her out of there, and take her away from all this. But I didn’t.

Later I was sitting on a barstool downstairs, sipping another Bud and feeling vaguely guilty, when the bartender turned up the house lights and announced closing time with a twist on an old familiar refrain: “Time to go, dudes. You don’t have to fuck at home, but you can’t fuck here.”

That’s when I got a good look at one of the bouncers. His eyes were small and pale blue. His hair was the color of wet sand. At six feet three, he was my height but wider at his bulging shoulders, his torso tapering to a slightly pudgy waist. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t come up with a name. He saw me, too, and headed my way as I drained my bottle and clunked it on the bar.

“Hey, Mulligan. Ain’t seen you in a while.”

The high, gravelly voice gave him away.

“Hi, Joseph.” I hadn’t seen Joseph DeLucca since his house burned down during the arson spree in Mount Hope last year. “How’d you lose all the weight?”

“Cut my fuckin’ drinkin’ to two six-packs a week. Gave up doughnuts and pizza. Stopped chuggin’ Coffee-mate from the bottle at breakfast.”

“You drank Coffee-mate from the bottle?”

“It’s fuckin’ good, Mulligan. Oughta try it sometime.”

“Looks like you’ve been working out, too.”

“Most every day, yeah. Vinny Pazienza lets me use his private gym. Love pounding the heavy bag, man. Vinny says I got fuckin’ talent. Started sooner and I mighta gone pro.”

You lost, what, fifty, sixty pounds?”

“Closer to a hundred.”

“Good for you, Joseph. So how long you been working here?”

“Since June. First time I had steady work in more’n three years.”

The bartender wandered over and tapped Joseph’s swollen, pasty forearm. “Friend of yours?” he asked.

“Yeah. Give us a couple of brews, Sonny.”

“Sure thing,” he said. He drew two Buds from the ice chest, popped the tops, and slid the bottles onto the bar. “Take your time. It’ll take me a half hour to clean up.”

I pulled a roll of Tums from my pocket, peeled off a couple, chewed them to calm my stomach, and chased them with beer.

“So whatcha doing here, Mulligan?” Joseph said. “Guy like you oughta be able to get his pussy for free. Never figured you for a John.”

“I’m not. I’m workin.’”

“Saw you upstairs with Destiny on your lap. Nice work if you can get it.”

“The Dispatch doesn’t pay much,” I said, “but the job does have fringe benefits.”

“Mine, too. I watch out for the girls, make sure nobody gives ’em a hard time. And they take care of me.”

“Complimentary blow jobs?”

“Complimentary means free?”

“It does.”

“Then yeah, every fuckin’ night.”

“Do customers give the girls a hard time often?”

“Nah. Most of ’em know better. But every now and then, one of them South Providence pimps comes bopping in and tries to squeeze the girls for a cut. Miss Maniella don’t allow that. Says the girls got a right to keep what they make.”

“Good for her.”

“Last month King Felix came in. Heard of him?”

“We’ve met.” In fact, Felix and I went way back.

“Couple of the girls, Sacha and Karma, used to be in his stable. He seemed to think they still were.”

“What’d you do?”

“Told him he was mistaken.”

“How’d that work out?”

“Asshole went for a little silver pistol stuck in his waistband, so I took it away from him. Always heard he was a tough guy, but when I grabbed him by his fuckin’ dreads and dragged him outside, he screamed like a little girl.”

“Knock him around a little, did you?”

“Nothin’ major. Smashed his nose. Cracked a few ribs. When I was done, I told him to go back out on the street and spread the word. Then I tossed the fucker in the Dumpster.”

Joseph picked up his Bud and drained half the bottle in a swallow. The bartender wandered back our way and mopped a wet spot with his bar rag.

“You ain’t told me what you’re workin’ on,” Joseph said.

“I’m looking for Vanessa Maniella. Seen her around lately?”

He frowned, and his blue eyes turned to slits. “I don’t want to read my name in your fuckin’ paper.”

“Okay.”

“’Cause if I do, I’ll kick your ass.”

“Understood.”

The bartender was still mopping that same spot. Maybe he was eavesdropping. Maybe he was just being thorough.

“Ain’t seen Miss Maniella in weeks,” Joseph said. “She’s got people what run the place for her. She don’t come in much.”

“How about her father?”

“Ain’t never seen him in here.”

“Think he’s dead?”

“All I know about that is what you put in your fuckin’ paper.”

“No scuttlebutt about it around the club?”

“Scuttlebutt?”

“Gossip.”

“Nah. Nobody here knows a fuckin’ thing.”

“That beating you gave King Felix. You said it was last month?”

“Yeah.”

“Before or after the shooting on the Cliff Walk?”

He took a moment to think about it. “’Bout a week before.”

“Think he was mad enough about it to go gunning for Sal?”

“Wouldn’t have been in any condition to go after anybody,” Joseph said.

“He could have sent one of his peeps.”

“King Felix is a fuckin’ moron,” Joseph said. “I doubt he even knows who Sal is. And the retards who work for him? They wouldn’t be able to find Newport on a map. Besides, if they had the balls to come after somebody, it would have been me.”

“They still might,” I said, “so watch your back.”

That night I logged on to iTunes and built a new thirty-song playlist: “Love for Sale” by Ella Fitzgerald, “Teen-Age Prostitute” by Frank Zappa, “Bad Girls” by Donna Summer, “Roxanne” by the Police, “Call Me” by Blondie, “What Do You Do for Money Honey” by AC/DC, “Lady Marmalade” by Labelle, “The Fire Down Below” by Bob Seger, “Honky Tonk Women” by the Rolling Stones, “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” by Tom Waits, and a bunch more.