Ed McBain - Long Time No See

“I’m not making a bust,” Carella said.

“Then what are you doing?” Arthur asked, looking even more distraught than when he had learned they were out of bourbon.

Carella noticed for the first time that he was wearing a gold wedding band on his left hand. “Arthur,” he said, “you only have to worry about one thing. You only have to worry about not telling anybody outside that I’m a cop. You understand that?”

“This ain’t my day,” Arthur said mournfully.

“This is your day, Arthur,” Carella said. “Believe me, it’s still your day. We’re going out there now, and you’re going to tell Shana you’ve changed your mind about a session with her.”

“If you’re going to bust this place, tell me, okay? Cause I’ll head straight for the door, okay? I can’t afford to be caught in a place like this, I mean it. So do me that favor, okay?”

“This isn’t a bust,” Carella said. “Let’s go, Arthur.”

“We might as well shower first,” Arthur said. “They ask you to shower here before you go in for your session.”

“It figures,” Carella said.

The shower had nothing to do with cleanliness; it had only to do with a legal defense known as entrapment. If Carella entered a room naked or wearing a towel, and a girl came into that room to give him a massage and to discuss fees for sexual services, it could be presumed that Carella had by his own conduct trapped the girl into offering herself to him. Considering this, and remembering that prostitution itself was the lesser of all the offenses in Article 230, a mere violation as opposed to the misdemeanors or felonies in the other sections of the article, it was hardly worth the trouble making an arrest. A violation was punishable by no more than fifteen days in jail and a fine of no more than $250. In cases where a policeman was dumb enough or eager enough to arrest a hooker, the girl was usually out on the street an hour after her pimp paid a fifty-dollar fine. There had been no recent massage-parlor busts in the city for which Carella worked; the legal defenses were too plentiful. If you couldn’t get the people operating the joint, and you couldn’t get the girls performing the services, who was left? Guys like fat Arthur here, who was trembling inside his heavy overcoat at the thought of his wife finding out he’d been in Tahiti this Saturday night?

Carella went outside to tell Shana he was ready for his session.

He had showered, and dried himself, and wrapped an orange towel around his waist. The black man in the red jacket had given him a plastic bag into which he had put his holstered service revolver, his wallet, his leather shield-case, his keys, his cash and his watch. The black man saw the Detective’s Special, but said nothing; five bucks can sometimes go a long, long way. Carella wrapped the plastic bag inside a second towel, and then pushed through the louvered doors into the lounge. Shana was there waiting for him. Arthur was nowhere in sight. Neither were the girls who had been there earlier. Carella wondered which of them Arthur had chosen.

“Will you want to take a drink in with you?” Shana asked.

“No, that’s fine,” Carella said.

“What’s in the towel?” Shana asked.

“Family jewels,” Carella said.

“I meant the one in your hand," Shana said, and laughed. “Come on,” she said, and opened the door near the end of the bar.

Carella followed her into a narrow corridor that had bamboo on the walls and straw mats on the ceilings and floors. She opened a louvered door onto a room some six feet wide and eight feet long. A bed was snugly recessed into the niche formed by one entire wall and parts of two others. Covering the bed was a form-fitting print in swirling reds, yellows and blues. The three walls enclosing the bed were mirrored. The narrow floor space between the bed and the fourth wall was covered with straw mats. Bottles of colored lotions that looked like all the oils of Araby rested on the floor, against the wall. There was a slip bolt on the louvered door. Shana threw the bolt, turned from the door, smiled at Carella, and walked to the bed. Sitting on it, she took off her shoes.

“So,” she said, and smiled again. “This is your first time in a massage parlor, huh?”

“Yes,” Carella said.

“Let me explain how it works. I give you a body rub for the twenty dollars you paid outside — you booked for a half-hour session, didn’t you?”

“Yes, a half-hour.”

“Okay. If there’s anything you want in addition to the body rub, that’s extra.”

“How much is extra?”

“It’s usually twenty-five for a handjob, forty for a blowjob and sixty for sexual intercourse. But Lauren tells me you know a friend of mine, so maybe we can make a special—”

“No, I don’t know any friend of yours,” Carella said.

“You don’t? Lauren told me—”

“I was lying.”

Shana looked at him.

“That’s right,” he said.

“Why?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“You had to lie so you could talk to me?”

“I’d already asked for you by your real name. I had to go along with it.”

“How’d you know my name?”

“It was in someone’s address book.”

“Whose?”

“Your aunt’s. A woman named Hester Mathieson.”

“I don’t get this.”

“I’m a cop,” Carella said.

“Let me see the tin,” she said.

“It’s wrapped in the towel there. Believe me, I’m a cop.”

“Is there a gun in there, too?”

“Yes.”

“So what is this? A bust?”

“No.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Your aunt—”

“Oh, Jesus, don’t say it. Has something happened to her?”

“She’s dead. Someone killed her.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“I’m sorry.”

“How?”

“Somebody cut her throat.”

“Oh, Jesus!”

The room went silent. Down the hall Carella heard someone laugh. A door eased shut. He looked at the girl. She was staring down at the ankle-strapped shoes on the floor. The sloping tops of her breasts in the bra top were dusted with freckles. She sat with her hands in her lap, staring at the shoes. Her fingernails were long and manicured, the color a red as bright as blood. He wondered what he should call her. Until a moment ago she had been Shana, a girl who casually quoted prices for sex acts with a stranger. But the name in Hester Mathieson’s book was Stephanie Welles, and mention of the murder seemed to have transported them both from this dimly lighted place of fantasy to a tenement hallway no less dimly lighted but only all too real.

“Miss Welles?” he said, and this seemed correct; she nodded briefly in response, still staring at her shoes. Against the wall the bottles of lotion shimmered with reflected light. “When did you see her last?”

“Before I started here.”

“When was that?”

“About six months ago. May. Is that six months?”

“You hadn’t seen her since?”

“No.”

“Were you particularly close?”

“I liked her a lot. I guess maybe I loved her.”

“But you hadn’t seen her since May.”

“No.”

“Had you talked to her?”

“You mean on the phone?”

“Yes.”

“I tried to call her at least once a week. She was blind, you know. How could anybody... why would anybody...?” Stephanie shook her head.

“When did you talk to her last?”

“Last week.”

“When last week?”

“Thursday night, I guess it was. I get Wednesdays and Thursdays off.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Well, the usual.”

“Which was?”

“Well, you see, I lied to her about the job here. I mean, that’s why I stopped going to see her. Because if, you know, I had to sit there face to face and lie... she could sense things, you know. Blind people can sense things. And if I lied to her sitting right there in the room with her, well, she’d just know it, and I... I couldn’t bear that. My mother’s dead, you know, Aunt Hess was all I had, I didn’t want to... to hurt her... or to... you know... by her finding out I’m working in a place like this.”