Barry nodded. “Mind if I ask where you’re going next?”
“I guess I’m going to find myself a hooker.”
Ogden used his cell phone that he always refused to use at home. He was sitting in his truck in the police parking lot. He called the number from the Craigslist ad.
“You want to make an appointment?” the woman asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She gave him the address.
He looked up the address in his Thomas Guide and drove the twenty minutes across town. The neighborhood was slightly industrial and the address he’d been given had a small sign that read NO PAIN CLINIC. There was NO PARKING posted on the street, so he drove around the corner. It was just before ten. It seemed an odd time to call on a hooker, but the woman had answered the phone.
There was a buzzer button, but there was no knob or handle on the outer wrought-iron door. The inner wooden door opened. A middle-aged Asian woman looked at Ogden, opened the metal door, and let him in. She didn’t speak, but led him by the hand through a dim room with a couple of sofas and into a room with what might have been a bed or a massage table pushed against the far wall.
“What do you want? Thirty minute, one hour?” the woman asked. She was anywhere from thirty to fifty, with a wide, almost pretty face and hair that was dyed light brown and streaked with a strange red. She wore a light blue smock over sweatpants.
“Thirty minutes,” Ogden said. “I just want to talk.”
“What?”
“Talk.”
“Wait here.” She left quickly.
Just as quickly, a younger woman came in. She was also Asian, pretty, with dark hair pulled back tight. She was dressed like the first woman. “Cindy don’t understand English good,” the woman said.
“I just need to talk to you for a minute,” Ogden said.
“To me?”
“Yes.”
“No, I Mama.”
“I want to see Petra.”
The woman stared blankly at him.
“Destiny,” he said.
Her expression changed slightly.
“I’m looking for a white girl.”
At first Ogden thought she was offended or angry. He could feel her tensing up, like a horse on the muscle. Then she laughed. “Oh, you want white girl.”
“Yes,” Ogden said.
“You don’t want white girl. You pick the girl you want. I bring in, you pick.”
“Do you know a white girl named Destiny?”
“No, no Desny.”
“Carol? Do you have any white girls?”
The woman’s feelings now appeared hurt. She walked out without a word. Ogden sat on the bed and waited. After about ten minutes, ten long minutes, a white woman walked into the room. She was not Petra and she looked none too happy to be there. She looked as if she’d just been roused and told there was a man there to fuck her. She ran a hand through her stringy blond hair and looked at Ogden with weak, blue-green eyes sunk deep into her face.
“Okay,” she said, “what do you want?”
“What’s your name?”
“Shelly.”
“All I want is some information.”
“What? Are you a cop?”
“I am.”
“Ain’t no money changed hands.”
“I’m not interested in arresting you. I’m looking for someone who goes by the name of Petra.”
“What do you want with her? I mean, even if I did know her.”
“Listen, I’m not even a cop from around here. I’m from New Mexico. I’m just looking to ask Petra a couple of questions.”
“She’s not here.”
Ogden nodded. This was at least information. “Do you know where she is?”
“She used to live a few blocks from here. We was never friends. She shared some dope with me once.”
Ogden nodded.
“Do you remember the address?”
She shook her head.
“Can you describe the house, the building?”
“It was big and square and it had windows, like a building, you know. Yellow, it was yellow, hard to miss all that yellow. It’s on a really busy corner and there’s a big cyclone fence with wire on top down the street side.”
“You ever see a man around with one hand?”
“You mean One Hand?”
Ogden smiled. “Yeah, One Hand.”
The woman was either suddenly nervous or needed a fix of whatever fixed her, but she withdrew. “I’ve heard of him.”
“Is he a pimp?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’ve seen him.”
“Maybe. I don’t remember. Why do you want Petra?”
“She’s a friend of Destiny. Are you a friend of Destiny? Do you know Destiny?” Ogden did what he could to appear nonthreatening. He remained seated. He avoided prolonged contact with the woman’s eyes, looking instead at her shoulders or hair.
“I know Destiny. What’s going on?”
“Destiny’s dead.”
“Oh, fuck, man.”
“She was killed in New Mexico. I’m trying to find out who killed her.” He pulled a copy of Carla Reynolds’s driver’s license from his pocket. “Do you know this woman?”
Shelly shook her head.
“How well did you know Destiny?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you do drugs with her?”
The woman said nothing.
“Thank you,” Ogden said. He didn’t want to scare her any more than he already had. He might need to talk to her again.
~ ~ ~
The big yellow square thing with windows that was a building was easy enough to find. A couple of young, rough-looking men stood by the front door, smoking, leaning, staring at Ogden as he approached. Ogden was scared, but like when dealing with a bad horse, he had to keep his emotions, his fear, in check.
The three men were white, tattooed over most of their arms. One of them had a tattoo on his face, a chevron on his forehead. They wore heavy black boots.
Ogden addressed them clearly, firmly. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Maybe you can help me.”
“Maybe we can,” one of them said.
“Do you know a woman called Petra?”
“Nah, man, we ain’t be knowing no Peta,” the same one said.
“Petra. I was told that Petra lives here.” Ogden looked up at the second floor of the building. “Shelly told me.”
“Who the fuck is Shelly?”
This was not going well. Ogden was glad he wasn’t wearing his sidearm. Nothing gets you shot faster than having a gun, he always thought, and he was sure he wouldn’t have been able to resist the urge to pull it out if he’d had it. He tried to stay cool.
“Shelly is a hooker at the whorehouse around the corner,” Ogden said. He stepped close to them so he could read the names by the buzzers behind them. What few names were there were only last names, mostly Hispanic. There were no hooker pseudonyms.
The most muscular of the three leaned close to Ogden.
“She up there?”
“No. I have a picture,” Ogden said. He showed them the two women.
“You a cop?” the first asked.
“As a matter of fact, I am.”
“Let me see your badge,” muscles said.
“Why, you want me to arrest you?” Ogden smiled. “No, really, look at the picture. This one is dead. Somebody shot her. I’m looking for this one.”
They looked at the picture. “I seen her.” Muscles pointed at Carol Barelli.
“Here?”
“Yeah. I ain’t seen the other one, though.”
Ogden looked at the building again. It loomed larger now. He supposed he could ring every bell and knock on every door, but the prospect was not appealing. The three men outside the building had lost interest in him, and though they remained aware of his presence, he didn’t feel threatened by them any longer.
He tried the exterior door and found it locked. He recalled his father saying that a thing would not get done unless you did it. It wasn’t until he reached for the first button that he realized his hand was shaking. He rang bell after bell until someone buzzed him in. It was Hernandez in 104 who let him in.