SK01 - Waist Deep (12 page)

21

My knee ached and my head
swam
.

I trudged west down Sprague Avenue, keeping the pace slow to avoid my limp coming out.
I knew it would
anyway, long before I got home.
I’d pay for the long walk tomorrow, but right now I needed the time and motion.

None of it made any sense to me.
Sure, girls ran away.
Some got tattoos.
Some even became prostitutes.
It wasn’t an uncommon story.

But not girls like Kris Sinderling.

So w
hat had happened?

I continued to walk along, my boots clicking on the sidewalk, because I had absolutely no idea.

22

I wished I’d opened the folder and read it when Katie had suggested it.
I could’ve asked her questions that would be useful now.

Rolo, for instance.
He wasn’t a pimp that I knew, but my information
on River City bad guys
was a decade old.
I didn’t know who the players were when it came to hookers, gambling or dope anymore.
I was about as out of touch with the criminal scene in River City as I’d felt when I’d opened up the entertainment section of the newspaper back at Polly’s.

At Sprague and Smith, I stopped and looked around.
Regular Joe Citizens zipped by in their Regular Joe cars, on their way to or from
legitimate
, taxable enterprise of some sort or another.
All the while, most of them remained oblivious to the less legitimate, completely untaxed business that transpired right on Sprague Avenue.
Two blocks west, I saw a small black kid huddled in the doorway of a paint store that had gone out of business.
He was most likely a dealer, or a runner for one.
A half block further up, I saw a heavyset white woman in stretch pants and a dark green windbreaker.
A true River City hooker.
No import, that one.

I paused, struck with an idea.
Some of the cash Matt had given me was still in my front pocket.
I pulled it out, shielding the bills with one hand and flipping through them with the other.
Carefully, I arranged four twenties on the outside of the stack, folded it over and slipped it into the inside pocket of my jacket.

I passed by a dry cleaners, an Army-Navy Surplus store and a restaurant before reaching the deserted paint store.
The thin, young black kid sat huddled in the corner of the inset doorway.
I briefly considered talking to him, but rejected the thought.
He might know things, but he wasn’t likely to tell me anything except where to get some rock cocaine.
I ignored him and fixed my eyes on the wide hips up ahead of me.

Even though I wasn’t looking directly at him, his eyes followed me as I walked by.
He waited until I was almost completely past before hissing, “Hey, man!”

I looked over in spite of myself, slowing to a near stop.

The kid was in bad shape.
H
is head and shoulders
jumped in small, sharp twitches. His toes tapped
as if he were listening to music only he could hear.
His eyes held a
ho
llow, desperate look
.

I should’ve kept walking, I thought.

He struggled to his feet and licked his lips nervously.
“Hey, man, you got a cigarette?”

“No,” I told him.
“Don’t smoke.”

He gave me a brief nod, then cast his eyes quickly left and right before bringing them back to bear on me.

“Suck
it
?” he asked, his voice slightly lower.

“What?!”

He stepped toward me with the beginnings of a smile.
“Suck your dick, mister?”

I shook my head and moved back, my skin crawling.

“C’mon, man,” he said, casually.
“I’ll suck it
hard
.
I’ll suck it
good
.
You’ll blow your wad harder than with any bitch you ever had suck it.”

“No,” I said, holding up my hand.
“Not interested.”

“I’m jus’ tryin’ to make a livin’, man,” he said, disappointment creeping into his voice.
He took another small step in my direction.

“I don’t care if you’re trying to cure cancer,” I told him.
“Stay the fuck away from me.”

He muttered, “Asshole,” and returned to the doorway of the deserted paint store.

23

The woman watched me approach in my slow, ambling gait.
My limp really showed and I felt the dull throb in my knee that came with it.
Wearing cowboy boots had been a mistake.
I could feel the beginnings of at least two blisters on the inside of my foot.

She moved her zipper slowly up and down her windbreaker, exposing a pink bra and bone-white belly flab beneath.
She easily weighed over two bills
, all packed onto a five-foot-three
-inch
frame.

A practiced smile broke over her face.
“Hi,” she said.
Her voice was low and sultry.
At least, that’s what I think she was going for.

“Hi,” I said back, and stopped about two feet from her.

Her tongue arched out and touched her upper lip, making me think of her as a super-sized Cher.
She didn’t stop with the zipper routine, either.
In fact, she left it down longer before zipping it slowly up.

“Dookie not your speed, huh?” she said in a husky voice.

“Dookie?”

She tipped her head in the direction of the black kid.

“Oh,” I said and shook my head.
“No, not my thing.”

“Poor Dookie,” she said.
“He tries so hard.”

I nodded and shrugged at the same time.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Stef,” I told her.
Why lie?

“Stef?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Stef, tell me something.”
She took a small step toward me as the zipper slid down.
Her cleavage spilled out of the windbreaker.
“What
is
your thing?”

I considered for a moment how to play it, then said, “Girls.
I like girls.”

“I’ll bet you do,” she cooed.
The zipper reached the bottom of her windbreaker and paused there.
“Do you like me?”

I nodded.
“Sure.”

“You wanna date?”

I nodded again.

Her eyes flicked left and right.
It was the same move Dookie had made just minutes before, but she was much smoother about it.

“I get forty for head,” she said.
“Eighty for sex.”

I didn’t answer right away.
I suddenly realized that a cop might drive by and catch me in the middle of this charade and I’d be busted for soliciting a prostitute.
Or she could be a cop herself.
Either way, if getting involved in a scuffle at the River City Arena was considered a fall from grace for a former police officer, I could only imagine how getting popped for soliciting would rate.

She watched me for a few moments, looking me up and down.
I knew what she was thinking.
I was poor but clean.
Low risk, low return.

“If you’re short cash, I’ll go ten for a hand job,” she said, almost kindly.

I decided she wasn’t a cop.
It wasn’t so much what she said.
It was her size.
Every lady cop I ever knew who worked undercover as a hooker was at least moderately good looking and never more than a few pounds overweight.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

She regarded me for a moment.
“What do you want it to be?”

I shook my head.
“I want it to be what it really is.”

She stared at me for another long moment.
“It’s Tiffany, baby,” she said, finally. “Now are you buying or just window shoppin’?”

“Buying,” I said.
“I’ll pay the forty.”

Her look of mild concern melted away.
“Come with me,” she said with a sly smile.

I followed her back up the block toward the empty paint store.
Cars whizzed p
ast on Sprague as we walked.
I hoped silently that no police cars drove by.
The East Sprague corridor was heavily patrolled, but not so much in the daylight as in the hours of darkness.

Tiffany kept her pace slow.
Whether it was out of necessity due to her bulk or out of compassion for my limp, I didn’t know.
As we approached the paint store, she turned between it and the pawn shop next door.

Dookie glared at me as I followed Tiffany between the two buildings.
He shook his head.
“Bitch couldn’t suck off a
Dilly bar
with her worthless mouth,” he said to me.
“You shoulda stuck with me.”

I ignored him and followed Tiffany’s wide ass between the buildings.
The pawn shop was twice as deep as the paint store.
A fence began at the end of the pawn shop and ran to the alley, where it turned sharply and ran east to a gate.
When I reached the end of the paint store and turned the corner, I could see that the entire back lot of the business was fenced in.
Plenty of privacy for the type of business Tiffany was in.

The smell of old beer and piss rose from the asphalt.
A decrepit green dumpster sat against the eastern fence.
Several used condoms lay on the ground next to the dumpster.
One was stuck to the side.
Someone had written
Screw Bush
in spray paint on the fence.
Some other wit had scrawled
as much as i can
directly below that.

“Over here,” Tiffany said from the doorway.

I realized that it was also a perfectly private place to rob somebody, so I kept my pace slow and scanned the area for threats.
The back lot was empty, though, and the doorway that she stood in was only about three feet deep.
We were alone.

“Don’t be shy,” Tiffany said.
Her windbreaker was unzipped and she lifted her bra.
Her huge breasts flopped out and hung toward her belly.
She gave a little shoulder shake and they swayed from side to side.
“Come on over here.”

I stepped into the doorway.
Before I could say a word, her hands went to my crotch.
Her sudden movement made me jump and that made her jump back.
Our eyes met.
Her bra was still on, high up on her chest, pushing down on her flabby breasts.
The nipples were large, rosy and erect.

“Sorry,” I said.

She shrugged with one shoulder.
“It’s okay.
I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She pointed to her chest.
“You mind?
It seems warm out for February, but it gets cold fast.”

“No,” I said, a little relieved.
“Go ahead.”

Tiffany gave me another fake smile.
With an expert shrug, she pulled her bra back over her breasts and zipped up the windbreaker.
Then she reached for my jeans again.

“You got that money, baby?”

Tiffany’s fingers found my member and began a practiced caress.
She casually checked both of my front pockets for cash.
She performed the check in a smooth, stroking motion.

In spite of myself, I reacted.
Some heat.
Then a twitch.
A moment later, a growing hardness.
I tried to remember the last time I’d been with a woman.

“That’s it, baby,” Tiffany said, trying to sound breathless.
“He’s coming
alive
.”

She lifted her free hand, proffering it in the international position that says “pay me.”
Almost in self-defense, I reached into my jacket pocket and removed a pair of twenties.
I held them up in front of her face, but as she reached for them, I closed my hand over them.

Her rubbing stopped and she pulled back from me.

“What the fuck, mister?”
Her voice had lost all its attempt at seductive luster.
“What are you trying to pull?”

“It’s okay,” I said.
“I’ll pay you.”

“Goddamn right you will,” she said, her voice now taking on the tone of a black streetwalker.
“One yell from me and two brothers will be here in five seconds kicking your ass.”

“I’ll pay,” I said.
“I just don’t want sex.
I want to talk.”

Tiffany’s pose relaxed, but she remained irritated.
“Baby, I’m flattered, but I ain’t got the time to be a sweetheart date.
I gotta make
some
cash.”

I opened my fist briefly and showed her the forty dollars.
“Three minutes,” I said.
“Less time than you thought.”

A small, mischievous smile appeared on her lips.
“Most times, three minutes is more than enough.”

I gave her a smile I didn’t feel.
The hardness in my pants showed no sign of fading
, though
.

“Whatchoo wanna talk about?” she asked.

I peeled one of the twenties off and handed it to her.
She took it with two fingers, crinkled it up and it disappeared somewhere into her clothing.

“That’s a down payment,” I said.

She shrugged at me and waited.

“All I want to know is who I should talk to about you and the other girls out here.
That’s it.”

Surprise flared in her eyes, but she recovered quickly.

“I didn’t figure you for no cop,” she said.

“I’m not.”

“Then why you askin’ me about this?”

“I just need to talk to…”
I paused, considering.
Finally, I finished, “to your pimp.”

“About what?”

“That’s my business,” I said.
“And his.
You want the money, or should I go ask Dookie?”

I waited patiently, trying to appear benign enough to convince her to talk and tough enough to keep her from calling out for the brothers.
I knew they existed, though I figured they were quite a bit more than five seconds away.
It didn’t matter, though.
I needed a good two-minute head start if I expected to get away.

“Gimmee the twenty,” she finally said.

I shook my head, breathing a sigh of relief inside.
“This isn’t sex.
You talk, then I pay.”

She paused again, this time not nearly as long.

“Rolo’s the man,” she said.
“He’s who you want to talk to.”