Robert Parker - Hundred Dollar Baby

"Good to know," I said.

"But, I was a grown woman when I met you," Susan said. "Remember? Married and divorced. I had already learned a lot of things."

I nodded.

"And there was that little business out west," she said.

"That was then," I said. "This is now."

She looked steadily at me with no banter. My hand was on the table. She put her hand on top of it.

"Yes," she said. "It is."

We were silent. I drank some scotch. She drank some Cosmopolitan.

"I'm running around this thing like a headless chicken," I said.

"My guess would be," Susan said, "that whatever answers you're likely to get will come out of April."

"She denies all," I said.

"She has a past," Susan said. "Maybe that will tell you something."

I nodded slowly, thinking about it.

"What got her in trouble last time?" Susan said.

"Looking for love in all the wrong places."

"And the time before that," Susan said. "When you first met her?"

"Looking for love in all the wrong places," I said.

"Without some sort of major intervention," Susan said, "people don't change much."

"Cherchez l'homme," I said.

Susan nodded. "Maybe," she said.

"You Ivy Leaguers are a smart lot, aren't you?"

Susan nodded vigorously.

"Wildly oversexed, too," she said.

"Not all of you," I said.

"One's enough," she said.

"Yes," I said. "It is."

I raised my glass toward her. She picked up hers. We clinked.

"Fight fiercely, Harvard," I said.

In New York I stayed at the Carlyle hotel. I could have stayed at a Days Inn on the West Side for considerably less. But I would have gotten considerably less, and I'd had a good year. I liked the Carlyle.

Thus, on a bright, windy day in New York, with the temperature not bad in the upper thirties, I sat with Patricia Utley in the Gallery on the Madison Avenue side of the hotel and had tea. It was elegant with velvet and dark wood. Faintly from the Cafe I could hear piano music, somebody rehearsing for the evening. Barbara Carroll? Betty Buckley? I felt like I was in Gershwin's New York. I was more sophisticated than Paris Hilton.

"A professional thug," I said. "And a whorehouse madam having tea at the Carlyle. Is this a great country or what?"

"We look good," Patricia Utley said. "It covers a multitude."

We did look good. I looked like I always do: insouciant, roguish, and quite similar to Cary Grant, if Cary had had his nose broken more often. Patricia Utley wore a blue pinstriped pantsuit and a white shirt with a long collar. Her short hair had blond highlights, just like April's. Her makeup was discreet. She looked in shape. And the hints of aging at the corners of her face seemed to add some sort of prestige to her appearance.

We ordered the full tea. I like everything about tea, except tea. But I tried to stay with the spirit of it all.

"I've been chasing my tail," I said, "since I started with April."

Patricia Utley sipped some tea and put her cup down.

"And you wish my help?" she said.

"I do."

We both paused to examine our tea sandwich options.

"Let me tell you what I know, and what I think," I said.

"Please."

She listened quietly, sipping her tea, nibbling a cucumber sandwich. She seemed interested. She didn't interrupt. When I was finished, she said, "You think there's a lover or ex-lover somewhere in the picture?"

"I think I should find out if there is."

"What do you need from me?" she said.

"Information."

"Information is problematic," Patricia Utley said. "I am in a business which deeply values discretion."

"Me too," I said.

She smiled.

"So we will be discreet with one another," she said.

"I need to have some names, someplace to start," I said. "Can you give me a list of her clients in the last year, say, when she was with you in New York?"

"Why would you think that I would have such a list."

"You're a woman of the twenty-first century," I said. "You have a database of clients in your computer, or my name is not George Clooney."

"You're bigger than George Clooney," Patricia Utley said.

"Yeah, but otherwise…" I said.

"An easy mistake to make," she said.

"I won't compromise you," I said. "But I need to see if she had a more than, ah, professional encounter with any of them."

She had some more tea, and a scone, while she thought about it.

"I have learned not to trust anyone," she said.

I waited.

"But oddly," she said, "I trust you."

I smiled my self-effacing smile, the one where I cock my head to the side a little.

"Good choice," I said.

"You won't compromise me," she said.

"Of course I won't."

"Of course you won't."

"So I get the list?" I said.

"I'll have it delivered to you tomorrow," she said. "Here."

"Oh good," I said. "I'll pay for tea."

The list of April's regular partners was a good one. There were about fifteen names on it; each was annotated with the dates of contact, how they paid, how to reach them, what their preferences were. I was pleased to see that their preferences were within normal parameters.

The direct approach might not be productive: Hi, I'm a private detective from Boston. I'd like to talk with you about your long-term relationship with a professional prostitute. I decided to consult a New York professional. And I knew who to call.

I met Detective Second Grade Eugene Corsetti for lunch at a Viand coffee shop on Madison Avenue, a couple of blocks uptown from the hotel. We sat in a tight booth on the left wall. It was tight for me, and Corsetti was as big as I was but more latitudinal. He was built like a bowling ball. But not as soft. I ordered coffee and a tongue sandwich on light rye. Corsetti had corned beef.

"How can you eat tongue," Corsetti said.

"You know how intrepid I am."

"Oh, yeah, I forgot that for a minute."

"You make first yet?" I said.

"Detective First Grade?" Corsetti said. "You got a better chance of making it than I have."

"And I'm not even a cop anymore," I said.

"Exactly," Corsetti said.

The coffee came. Corsetti put about six spoonfuls of sugar in his and stirred noisily.

"Is that because you annoy a lot of people?" I said.

"Yeah, sure," Corsetti said. "Always have. It's a gift."

The sandwiches came, each with half a sour pickle and a side of coleslaw. Corsetti stared at my sandwich.

"You're gonna eat that?" he said.

I nodded happily.

"Want a bite?" I said.

"Uck!" Corsetti said.

"You remember first time I met you?" I said.

Corsetti had a mouthful of sandwich. He nodded as he chewed.

"You were looking for a missing hooker," he said after he had swallowed and patted his mouth with his napkin.

"April Kyle," I said.

"Yeah," Corsetti said. "And somebody involved in it got killed a few blocks east of here, I think."

I nodded.

"And I caught the squeal," Corsetti said. "And there you were."

"And a few years later, at Rockefeller Center?"

"Heaven," Corsetti said. "I got a lot of face time on the tube out of that one. Whatever happened to the guy you had hold of."

"We arranged something," I said.

" Lot of that going around," Corsetti said. "Whaddya want now?"

"Renew acquaintances?" I said.

"Yeah, sure, want to hold hands and sing `Kum By fucking Ya'?"

"I'm working on April Kyle again," I said.

"The same whore? She run off again?"

"No," I said. "She's in trouble."

"And her a lovely prostitute," Corsetti said. "How could that be?"

"I have a list of names; I was wondering if you could run them. See if any of them are in the system anyplace."

"Where'd you get the list?"