Len Levinson - Without Mercy

On the next block was a peep show, and Rackman walked in, following his instincts. It was modern and clean with chrome and Formica covering the walls and ceiling. Behind the counter was a big black guy and a metal tube filled with quarters. Rackman got two dollars worth, then passed the tables covered with porno books and magazines and entered the area of private booths, where for a quarter you could watch ninety seconds of a hard-core porno film. In front of each booth were large photographs of scenes from the films on display, and Rackman chuckled at the picture of a blonde girl in pigtails sucking two cocks at the same time. The next booth showed a brunette being screwed by a dog. Then he came to a photo of seven lesbians in a big sexual pretzel.

Other men were looking at the photographs and entering or leaving the booths. They didn’t appear filthy or depraved, and probably were ordinary office workers, tourists, students, union members, the guy who lived next door. They came to places like this, got horny, and sometimes visited one of the whorehouses in the neighborhood. Rackman wondered if Cynthia Doyle’s killer had been in a place like this last night, or if he was just a crazy bastard hanging out on West Forty-fifth Street, deciding to commit a murder just as Cynthia Doyle happened along.

At the rear of the peep show area was a series of booths with a sound system playing funky rock and roll. Rackman entered one of the booths, closed the door behind him, and dropped a quarter in the slot. There was a motorized humming sound and a little screen lifted, revealing two naked girls dancing in the small area that the booths enclosed. One of them, a white girl with short dark hair, was hopping around and wiggling her ass, moving from window to window and giving everyone a close-up show of her ass and genitals. The other girl was black and lay on a circular revolving platform in the middle of the floor, spreading her legs and fingering her labia while screaming obscenities.

The dancing girl stopped before Rackman, winked, and whipped her ass around. She spread the cheeks of her ass and pressed it against the window in front of Rackman’s nose.

“How does it look?”

“Okay.”

The girl turned around and dangled her low-hanging breasts in front of the window. “Like ’em?”

“I guess so.”

The motor hummed and the curtain came down. He dropped in another quarter, and up it went again. The girl had moved to the next window, and Rackman could see across the dance area to the windows on the other side, where guys were drooling and ogling the girls. He felt sorry for them because he figured they were lonely and didn’t have women. He’d gone through a long period of loneliness himself, and it’d been awful. All you could think about was women and fucking. Sometimes it got so intense that you’d pay for it, and there was nothing so degrading as paying for it, because it was an admission that you couldn’t get a woman on your own.

The screen dropped again. Rackman left the booth and roamed farther back to another room where some guys were slouching around in front of booths that had photographs of naked girls on them. The deal here was that for four quarters you could talk privately to a naked girl, separated from her only by a plastic window. With only a haphazard glance at the photograph in front, Rackman walked into a booth and dropped his coins into the slot.

A curtain that ran the full length of the opposite wall raised slowly, revealing a young blonde girl sitting on a chair. She wore a flimsy nightgown that was unbuttoned, her legs were wide open, and you could see her snatch and breasts. Rackman stared at her and didn’t know what to do.

She had a telephone in her hand, and pointed to the one hanging beside her. He picked it up and held it to his ear.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

They looked at each other for a few moments, and the silence hung heavy.

“Are you married?” she asked in a sprightly way.

“Not now.”

She looked disconcerted because she thought he meant he didn’t want to talk about his marriage just then and that she’d said the wrong thing.

“I meant that I’m not married now,” he explained.

“Oh.” She smiled again.

“Are you married?” he asked.

“No, but I’m getting married.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

He looked at her and wondered what to say. Most guys told the girls to stick their fingers between their legs, press their coozies against the glass, or get into obscene poses. “Where are you from?” he asked at last.

“Florida.”

“I’ve been to Florida a few times. What part?”

She thought for a few moments because she didn’t want to tell him where she was from. “Jacksonville,” she said finally, and it was a lie.

“I’ve never been to Jacksonville. My parents live in Miami Beach.”

“It’s nice down there.”

“Yeah.”

The curtain came down. Rackman walked out of the booth, out of the room, and through the peep show area to the street. He thought about the girl in the plastic booth and wondered why she had such a shitty job. Maybe she was lazy and it was easier than working as a secretary. It almost certainly paid more. She mustn’t be very bright. Nobody with smarts would do something like that.

Out on the sidewalk, he walked past a hat store, a pizza stand, and one of those stores that sell cameras, transistor radios, watches, and knives at alleged discounts. In doorways and alleys were the ubiquitous slobbering drunks. He passed a noisy gathering of black dudes, and wondered if one of them was the boyfriend of the girl in the plastic booth. They were a weird subculture of dumb little girls and violent guys, who saw the rest of the human race as suckers to be intimidated or ripped off. Their attitude was understandable because the rest of the human race had permitted them to sink about as low as human beings could go.

He turned right on Forty-eighth Street and walked past a few hotels and bars patronized by the down and out. On the corner of Eighth Avenue was a hamburger parlor bearing the name of one of the lesser-known national franchise chains, this one a hangout for pimps and whores and those trying to become pimps and whores.

Two uniformed black guards stood near the entrance, and around the orange Formica tables inside sat an assortment of local types, many of whom Rackman knew personally because they’d been in Midtown North at various times for involvement in crimes of prostitution, narcotics, theft, assault, burglary, and so forth. Occasionally one of them would push things a little too far and kill somebody. Perhaps Cynthia Doyle’s killer was sitting there right now.

Luke the Duke sat at a booth facing the front door. He wore a pearl gray sombrero, black suit, and red silk shirt open at the collar. Next to him was one of his whores, and opposite were two black guys also dressed like pimps. Luke looked at Rackman icily as he approached down the aisle.

“Hiya Luke,” Rackman said, his hands in his pockets.

Luke nodded without smile or sound. He knew Rackman and didn’t like him for no other reason than that Rackman was a cop.

“Let’s have a talk,” Rackman said to Luke.

“I ain’t in the mood,” Luke replied in his lazy Tennessee drawl.

“We can talk quietly here or you can come down to the precinct with me. It don’t make a fuck to me either way.”

“What you want to talk to me about?”

“I’ll tell you when we get alone.”

Luke turned down the corners of his mouth. “You motherfuckers are always messin’ with me. I ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong.”

“Nobody said you were. I just want to have a little friendly chat.”

“We ain’t friends, and I got nothin’ to say to you.”