Hundred Dollar Baby (19 page)

The light from the declining sun was reflecting off a window in the building across the street and making a small prismatic rainbow on the wall behind Patricia Utley. She didn't appear to notice. She was looking at her hands, clasped in her lap. I waited. She didn't say anything.

"And?" I said after a while.

"She began to talk about her Dreamgirl idea. She wondered if I might wish to invest."

"Did you?"

"No. She assured me that she would not exploit our business in Boston, or anywhere else, but that she was looking for financing and, if I didn't want to be involved, did I know anyone."

"Who could lend her money so she could compete with you," I said.

Patricia Utley shrugged slightly.

"That doesn't seem a serious threat to me," she said. "This is a girl's fantasy. I'm going to be a princess as soon as I can find the right prince to help me."

"Did you send her to anyone?" I said.

"No. I have contacts in this city, financial sources. But I didn't want to compromise them. I didn't want to be the one to send her to someone who would regret doing business with her."

"She's unraveling," I said.

"Yes. Before our eyes," Patricia Utley said. "I have liked her especially, partly because you sent her to me, but . . ." She shook her head. "The life she has led is catching up to her."

"Your life hasn't unraveled you," I said.

"My life is not her life," Patricia Utley said. "I got into the sex business because, frankly, I liked sex, and it seemed easy money. And, early, I got into the management end of it."

"Where liking sex didn't matter."

"Where I could choose who to have sex with," she said, "and never mix it with business."

"For April, sex mixes with everything," I said.

"Your girlfriend could probably explain it," Patricia Utley said. "I only know that it's so."

"My girlfriend can explain everything," I said.

"You are very lucky," Patricia Utley said.

"Yes," I said. "I am."

"More coffee," she said.

"Thank you, no."

We were quiet again.

"We'll get to the bruises eventually," I said.

She was still looking at her hands. She nodded slowly.

I waited.

"I got a visit," she said gently, still looking down, almost as if she were talking to herself. "From a man named Arnie Fisher."

"You know Fisher?" I said.

"I knew of him. We had never met. He told me that April and Lionel wanted investment money from the DeNucci family," she said.

"He said DeNucci?"

"No. He said his people, but I know who his people are."

I nodded.

"He said that they told him I was the third partner in the deal," Patricia Utley said. "That I had a proven track record running this sort of thing. They said that they had already established three Dreamgirl sites."

Patricia Utley shook her head sadly.

"One in Boston," she said. "One in Philly. One in New Haven."

"These are bad amateurs," I said.

"Yes. Imagine scamming the DeNucci family?"

"You spoke up?" I said.

She raised her head and smiled at me without very much oomph.

"Yes. I said I had nothing to do with Dreamgirl, that April was an amatuer, and that Farnsworth was dishonest and incompetent."

"What did Fisher say?"

"Very little. He listened. He nodded. When I was through he thanked me and said he'd like to talk with me again, if I were willing."

"Were you willing."

"I said I was always willing to talk."

I sat back a little on my chair, looking at the rainbow on the wall. It had shifted position as the sun sank and the angle of reflection changed. It had also elongated.

"And when they had lunch downtown," I said, "with Arnie and Brooks DeNucci, Arnie told them no deal unless Lionel were out. And, maybe, you were in."

She shrugged.

"And they came roaring up here to talk you into it and there was an argument and somebody hit you."

"April," Patricia Utley said. "She was crazy. She said it was her chance and she was going to make it happen. We talked and talked, but I wouldn't budge. They said it was a lock if I were in, that was Farnsworth's word, a 'lock.' And I said I was not in and would never be in, if he were involved. We argued about that some more until I said that it was futile and asked them to leave. I stood. We walked to the door. And she started quite suddenly and without a word to hit me. First a slap and then with her fists."

"What did you do?" I said.

"I was as much startled as hurt at first, and I covered up and backed away. She came after me, hitting me."

"What did Farnsworth do."

"Nothing," Patricia Utley said. "I sort of had the sense that it scared him. He doesn't seem a physical type of man."

"Then what?" I said.

"She stopped quite suddenly and turned and walked out with Farnsworth behind her."

"And that was it?"

"No, a few hours later she called to apologize. She said she had lost her mind for a moment, the way a kid does with her mother. I had been like a mother to her, she said."

"Apology accepted?"

Patricia Utley shrugged.

"I've been hit before," she said. "And, you know, I still care about April. So do you. It's why you're here."

I nodded.

"She say anything else?"

"She said if I'd think about joining Dreamgirl, she would rid us of Lionel."

"What'd you say?"

"I was trying to think still how best to save her, if it's not too late."

"I think it's too late," I said.

"But you're not sure, and neither am I. I told her if she could demonstrate to me that Lionel was really out of her business and her life, we could talk."

"Were you serious?" I said.

"I was serious about talking," Patricia Utley said. "I was not serious about the business."

"You hear from her since?"

"No."

I let out a long breath. Patricia Utley smiled at me.

"That sounds almost like a sigh," she said.

"If I weren't such a toughie," I said, "it would be."

It was pretty good spring weather, so when I left Patricia Utley I walked back to the West Side. I needed the exercise. I had done nothing but sit and stare and listen and nod for days. I felt like a rusty crankshaft. There were a lot of dogs in the park, which made me feel better. When I got to Lionel's building, Hawk wasn't there. Which meant April wasn't there. I thought about bracing Lionel, but I knew I'd have trouble with the doorman, who already knew me for a phony and a Bostonian. It was late. I walked back across the park to my hotel.

In the room, my message light was flashing. I had voice mail. It was Hawk.

"Called your cell," he said. "But no answer. Figured you don't know how to retrieve messages on it. So I didn't leave one. April come out, got her car, and headed north, me behind her. At the moment I'm behind her, south of Hartford. I think we going home."

I called Hawk's cell.

"Yeah?" he said.

"Stay with her," I said. "I got a couple bases to touch here and then I'll drive your car home and bring your stuff."

"Careful of the car," Hawk said.

"I'll be in touch," I said.

After I hung up I made myself a strong scotch and soda and took a pull and looked out the window and let out a long, though tough and manly, exhale and rubbed the back of my neck. Below me the traffic, mostly cabs, raced uptown as if it was important to get there. I watched them for a while and drank my scotch. It seemed a perfect time to review what I was doing. Which didn't take long, since I didn't know. The crime under consideration was who killed Ollie DeMars. I was supposed to be interested in that. It was what I did. But my real goal seemed to be the salvation, again, of April Kyle. Which, I supposed, was also what I did. What I knew was that I wasn't getting anywhere with either.

I went back to the minibar for a refill, then I sat on the bed with my drink and called Susan.

"I'm alone in my hotel room," I said, "drinking scotch and heaving long sighs."

"Would phone sex help?" she said.

"Probably."

"Okay," she said. "Glad to accommodate-who is this, please?"

"Oh, good," I said. "Toy with me, in my despair."

"You have never despaired in your life," Susan said.

"Until now," I said.

"Tell me about it," Susan said.

I did. Susan listened quietly, offering only an occasional encouraging "uh-huh."

"So," I said, "my question to you, doctor, is, What's up with April?"

"I'll spare you the perfunctory preface about not having examined April and thus not being in a position to make a solid diagnosis."

"Thanks," I said, "for sparing me that."

"I can, however," Susan said, "make an informed guess."

"Please," I said.

"I'll probably need to use the phrase
deeply ambivalent,"
Susan said. "Can you handle it."

"You're a shrink," I said. "You have to talk that way."

"Okay," Susan said. "I would guess, and what I know of her history would certainly suggest it, that she is deeply ambivalent about men."

"There it is," I said.

"Yes," Susan said, "I warned you. Everything that she has ever gotten she has gotten by seducing men, you included."

"Seduced in a broad sense," I said.

"Yes. Seduction needn't be sexual. And everything bad that has ever happened to her has been caused by men.

"In fact?" I said.

"In her fact," Susan said. "The way people experience things is not necessarily consonant with empirical fact."

"Consonant."

"Remember the Harvard Ph.D.," she said. "This Dreamgirl scheme seems a perfect expression of her situation."

"She sees it as a way out of dependence on men," I said. "But to do it she has to depend on men."

"She has moved from Lionel, to Ollie, to you, to Lionel again. My guess is that you, or maybe even Hawk, are waiting in the wings, when the buffeting of circumstance, and her own ambivalence, overwhelms her again with Lionel."

"Which it will?" I said.

"Predictions are hard," Susan said. "Explaining afterwards is what shrinks do better."

"Informed guess?"

"She'll be overwhelmed," Susan said.

"Any tips on saving her?" I said.

"Maybe she can't be saved," Susan said.

"I know," I said.

"She's had these furrows grooved into her soul by her whole existence."

"Shrinks don't say 'soul.' "

"Never tell," Susan said. "When are you coming home?"

"Tomorrow or the next day," I said. "How about that phone sex?"

"Better than nothing," Susan said.

I was in the backseat of a Cadillac with Arnie Fisher, driving slowly though Central Park. There was a glass partition between us and the driver. There were joggers. The trees were beginning to bud. Baseball opened next week. Life was quickening.

"Corsetti said you wanted to talk private, just me and you."

"What are your plans for April Kyle."

"Depends," Arnie said.

"On?"

"Well, naturally, Brooks gotta okay anything we do."

"Or his daddy," I said.

"His daddy's in jail," Arnie said.

"Yeah?"

"So Brooks is the man."

"The hell he is," I said. "Brooks couldn't run a birthday party.

"No?" Arnie said.

"The old man's running it through you," I said.

Arnie shrugged.

"If that were true, so what?"

"So what are your plans with April Kyle?"

Arnie grinned.

"You're pretty cocky for a yokel out of Beantown," he said.

"Ever since we won the series," I said. "You still interested in Dreamgirl?"

"What's your interest?"

"April Kyle."

"That's it?"

"Yep."

Arnie nodded slowly.

"Corsetti says you're the real deal," Arnie said.

I waited.

Arnie nodded some more.

Then he said, "We like the concept."

"Dreamgirl," I said.

"Yeah."

"Even though the cops are starting to circle it?"

"We can await developments on that," Arnie said. "It's not a deal-breaker."

"So what's your problem."

"We're not happy with the management setup," Arnie said. "Girl don't seem too smart. Guy is a weasel."

"Ah," I said, "you know Lionel."

Arnie grinned.

"I know a lot of Lionels. Half as smart as they think they are. Word's no good. Pressure builds, they'll sell you out for a bottle of beer.

"We could work with her," Arnie said. "But she ain't in."

"Why not just take the idea and run with it?" I said.

"Could," Arnie said. "Thing is, we ain't really interested in being in the whore business. Dion don't actually approve of it. But this thing falls in our lap. We consider it. But we got to start from scratch. We got better things to do."

"How'd they get to you in the first place?"

Arnie smiled.

"Brooks," he said.

"Figures," I said. "How'd he know them?"

"Knew Farnsworth in Allenwood."

"Brooks has done time?" I said.

"You wanna call it that," Arnie said. "Six months watching TV."

"So Brooks likes this idea?"

"Brooks trying to be a player."

"Genes seem to thin out, don't they," I said, "as the generations proceed."

"He ain't Dion," Arnie said. "But he's Dion's kid. We look out for him."

"So it doesn't matter whether he likes this deal or not."

"No, not really," Arnie said.

"So without Patricia Utley, there's no deal."

"We might go for an arrangement," Arnie said, "where we had one of our people running it."

I nodded.

"You have people that know the whorehouse business?" I said.

"The broad and Lionel can run that part," Arnie said. "Our guy would run the books."

"Where do you stand now with them?" I said.

"They'll get back to us," Arnie said. "Why you after April Kyle?"

"I'm trying to save her," I said.

"From what?"