Charlie Huston - Already Dead

He smiles.

– G. That chick wasn't straight enough for no boyfriends. She a mad freak. Super freakin'.

– You ever see her with a guy, fifties, a guy with money?

– Hell no. Chick never had no money, always be bummin'.

– You seen the pictures in the paper, of the guys she was with?

– Shit yeah, who ain't?

– You ever see her hanging out with them?

– Got me. Anything else, G? My McNuggets be gettin' cold.

– Yeah, that's it.

I take a twenty out of my pocket.

– Here, dinner's on me.

– Sweet.

He grabs the bill. I think of something and hold onto it.

– You know anything about a guy selling nude pics of her on the Net?

– Shiiit, I don't know 'bout that, but like I say, chick a freak. Know she most definitely picked up some change on the side doin' some freaky shit for a guy.

– What guy?

He tugs on the twenty. I let it go.

– Guy name Chubby Freeze. An'you can't find Chubby, you don' deserve to be comin' on all detective-like.

I stand there thinking as he walks away. At the corner, a good twenty yards away, he turns and points at me.

– That's right, bitch! An' done let me see your ass in the shop again or I'll buss a cap init.

He throws me the bird and turns the corner to go tell his pal outside the Continental how I tried to lean on him and how he hardcased me. I walk the other way, toward Chubby Freeze's place. Because he's right, I don't deserve to be all detective-like if I don't know where to find Chubby Freeze.

– Hey, Chubbs.

– Joe! What brings you?

Chubby Freeze isn't chubby. He may have been chubby once for a few minutes right after he was born, but now he's corpulent. A very short, very fat black man who is literally almost as wide as he is tall. He sits behind a grand but beaten mahogany desk, he and his fat sprawled on a threadbare red velvet love seat in lieu of an office chair that he would doubtlessly crush.

I point at the pretty boy perched on the arm of the love seat.

– Think he could take a walk?

Chubby smiles.

– Of course, Joe. Walking is one of the things Dallas does best. Isn't that right, Dallas?

The boy shrugs and shoots me a couple eye daggers.

– Show him, Dallas. Show the nice man how you walk.

Dallas sighs, pushes himself up and sashays past me to the door. The Chelsea gym-boy looks and booth tan don't fool me. If Chubby keeps him in his office, he's not just in here to move the desk out of the way when Chubby wants to get up; the boy is dangerous. I watch him till he's out of the room. Chubby watches, too.

– Lovely, isn't he?

– If that's how you like em.

– Well, Joe, I like them every which way, but the pretty ones are a particular weakness. The pretty ones and the grotesque.

He points at the cracked red leather wingback in front of his desk.

– Sit, Joe. Relax. It's ages since we had a chat.

I sit in the chair.

– What's on your mind, Joe?

– Whitney Vale.

He bows his head, closes his eyes and pats his chest with a well-manicured hand. Fat ripples beneath his three-piece suit. He lifts his head, looks at me.

– Joe, that was a sad waste.

He takes a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket.

– Such a sweet girl.

– So you knew her?

He blows his nose on the kerchief and tucks it back in his pocket.

– Before we go any further with this, Joe, it goes without saying that I am delighted that a man of your prowess is taking an interest in this child's death, and naturally I will do anything to assist whatever investigation you may be involved with, but is it safe to say that doing so will make us even on the last thing?

The last thing.

I look around Chubby's crappy little office. It's just a Sheetrock cubicle in an industrial loft on Avenue D, but he's tried to dress it up with that desk and the love seat and other touches, like a stained Persian rug and a faux Tiffany lamp. The rest of the loft is taken up by Chubby's production studio. Two tiny soundstages, a dozen editing bays where video is cut, converted to digital and compressed for the Internet, a small room of servers, and some storage space for costumes and sets. Of course the costumes are mostly slutty lingerie and leather harnesses, and the sets are mostly sheets of plywood with dungeon walls painted on them, so they don't take up much space. Chubby does a nice business in creating and distributing Internet porn. It's not classy, but it's a huge step up from where he was when I met him fifteen years ago dealing dime bags in Tompkins. It's that step up in respectability that convinced him to shed his homey gear and trade it in for the hip-hop producer look.

He's deep in the life, Chubby is, way out there on the edge of how the citizens live and he's been out there all his life. He's a hood from a hood family and he makes no bones about it. Far as he's concerned, this is just the way things are. Guys like Chubby, smart guys who last in the life, they see things and they hear things and sooner or later they start to think things. The punch line is that Chubby doesn't know everything that goes bump in the night, but he knows some of them. Me for instance, he knows I go bump. Even if he doesn't know exactly how or why. Which gets us to the last thing. The last thing was some trouble Chubby had some months back. He wanted someone heavy to take care of it, heavy but subtle. He called me.

He's pretty careful about the talent he hires, handles all the interviews and casting himself. But sometimes something slips through the cracks. What slipped through the cracks this time was a guy who specialized in hard-core bondage scenarios. He was an expert with ropes and racks and such. Good with a knife, too, cut so thin the marks were gone in a couple weeks. He did a couple photo sessions for Chubbs and shot a video and that was it. Few weeks later a couple of Chubby's girls went missing. Not that unusual in this business, but these were two of his regular girls, girls who were part of the family here. He gave me a call and asked if I'd take a look. I went through the employment records and checked up on the short hires over the last month. I made some house calls.

The third house I called on was on Staten Island, the bondage expert. Chubby loaned me his car and driver so I wouldn't have to rely on the ferry. We drove out and I knocked and the door was answered by the bondage guy. I didn't even need to ask any questions, I could smell the girls' fear-sweat, urine, and feces reeking all the way from the basement. He thought he was smooth. He invited me in, anything to help. As soon as the door closed behind us I took care of him. Then I went down to the basement, got the girls upstairs and into the car and told the driver to take them to Chubby. After he pulled away I went back in the house and rigged the creep so it looked like he had broken his own neck doing an autoerotic asphyxiation gig with one of his nooses. When Chubby asked me what he owed, I told him it was on the house.

– I told you that was on the house, Chubbs.

– Nonetheless.

– Yeah, sure, if it makes you feel better, we have a clean slate on this.

He smiles.

– Excellent. I always felt bad that you wouldn't take payment on that, Joe. I wouldn't want you thinking you owed me anything on this girl. And I know taking a freebie isn't in your nature.

– Whatever you say, Chubbs. I just need to know what you can tell me about her.

– Of course.

He inhales deeply, casts his eyes to the ceiling and exhales,

– Under normal circumstances I would not have these details in mind, but after I heard the news I thought it expedient to review Whitney's employment records, before I disposed of them.

– Good thinking.