I nodded and got up, and Belson and I walked out of the squad room.
"Lovable," I said to Belson as we walked to the elevator.
"Nicest guy in the vice squad," Belson said.
The elevator came and I went down. It was cold on Berkeley Street. As I walked the three blocks from Police Headquarters to my office the wind was blowing grit around and doing a good job of penetrating my leather trench coat. If I zipped in the pile lining, then the coat was too small. One of those life choices that remind us of reality. Tight or cold. Maybe I should get a new coat. Something to make me look like a young Robert Mitchum. The choices in size 48 were fairly narrow, however. Maybe a young Guinn "Big Boy" William would be enough.
I sat in my office with my chair swiveled around and looked out the window. I could see a portion of Boylston Street from this position. If I stood up I could look down onto Berkley Street. On windy days like this I usually liked to stand and look down and watch the skirts swirl on the young women who worked in the insurance companies. But today I was too busy trying to think of what to do about April Kyle when we busted Poitras. She was unlikely to go home, and if she went she was unlikely to stay, and if she stayed it was unlikely to do her any good. Susan said there were some social service organizations that might take her, but what experience I had with them was not encouraging.
Across the street the young art director with the black hair and the good hips was leaning on her drawing board looking out the window. Our eyes met. She grinned and waved. I waved back. We had never met and our relationship was conducted solely through windows across a busy street. Maybe when I got my new coat… The more I thought about April the more I didn't know what to do with her.
Susan was breathing down my neck about Poitras. She was tougher minded, sometimes. To keep Poitras away from next year's crop of burnouts she'd let April go. She was right, of course. The greatest good for the greatest number. Democracy. Western civilization. Humanism. A working definition of ethical behavior.
The mail came through the letter slot. I got up and picked it off the floor. There was nothing in it I wanted to read. I threw it away unopened. I stood at the window with my hands in my hip pockets and looked down into the street. The wind was swirling newspapers and Big Mac wrappers around, but almost all the women from the insurance companies were wearing pants. Why doesn't the breeze excite me? I walked across the room and leaned my forearms on my file cabinet and my chin on my forearms. Why didn't I know any nuns? A strong-willed, smiling sister with a sense of humor who looked like Celeste Holm. Sister Flanagan's Girls Town. She ain't heavy, she's my sister. Where the hell is the woman's movement when you need it? I didn't know any nuns. I didn't even know any priests. I knew some pimps and some leg breakers and some cops and some junkies and some whores and a few madams. Actually I knew one madam.
I could hear the faint chatter of a typewriter from somewhere down the hall and the occasional ping of the steam pipes in my office. I could hear traffic sounds, muffled by the closed window, and in the corridor a pair of high-heeled shoes tapped briskly past my office door.
I knew a madam in New York named Patricia Utley. Or I used to. I straightened up and pulled out the second file drawer in the cabinet. I found a manila folder marked Rabb, in about the right alphabetical sequence, and took it out and brought it to my desk. I riffled through the details of some business I'd done about seven years ago. On a piece of note paper from a Holiday Inn was Patricia Utley's name and address and phone number. I put the file back and sat down at my desk again and called Patricia Utley's number.
A man's voice answered. I asked for Ms. Utley. The voice asked who was calling and I told him. The line clicked on to hold and in maybe thirty seconds I heard her voice.
"Spenser?" she said.
"You remember, then?"
"Yes," she said. "Summer, 1975. I remember quite clearly."
I said, "I owe you a favor and this isn't going to be it. This is going to be a request for another favor." "Um-hum."
"Are you still in business?" I said.
"Yes."
"I'd like you to meet a young woman I know. She's interested in a career," I said.
"Are you working on commission?" Patricia Utley's voice sounded as if she were smiling.
"No." "Well, I must say it's a surprising request coming from the man I remember, but yes. I would talk with her…
"Okay," I said. "I don't know exactly when. I'm working on that, but soon. I'll call ahead."
"Certainly," she said. "Have things worked out for the young woman we once had mutual interest in seven years ago?"
"Yes," I said.
"Good," she said. "I'll look forward to seeing you soon."
We hung up and I sat back and thought some more.
Chapter 28
"You're going to encourage her to be a whore?" Susan said. We were at my place, with a fire going, sitting on the couch with our feet on the coffee table.
"It's all she wants to do," I said. "At least with Patricia Utley she'll be a high-class whore."
There was feta cheese and fresh Syrian bread and Kalamata olives and cherry tomatoes and green pepper rings and smoked kielbasa from Karl's Sausage Kitchen on a large platter between our feet. We had opened a bottle of new Beaujolais.
Susan drank some wine. "You are an original thinker," she said. "I'll give you that."
"Give me a better choice," I said.
"There are agencies to deal with this sort of thing."
"Uh-huh. Or maybe a nice foster home?"
"Perhaps," Susan said. "Often either of those choices is a good one for a child." I always knew when she was speaking professionally. Her language became more formal.
"We did consider the possibility that being a whore offered her more than she was used to getting."
"Yes," Susan said, "but only in comparison to her home life, to the sterility of her parents and their expectations and the conventional town that reiterated those expectations. Life in Smithfield is not easy unless you are nearly interchangeable with everyone else. Especially in the public schools."
"Maybe being a whore in fact is better than being a whore to the expectations of your neighborhood," I said.
Susan shook her head.
"Let me call some people in Youth Services," she said.
"Sure," I said. "Want me to ask Poitras for some names?"
Susan shook her head again and frowned. "`Not fair," she said. "There are lots of good people out there. Poitras doesn't represent them all."
"I know," I said. "I guess I am just dysfunctional about institutional solutions."
We were quiet. I spat an olive pit into the fireplace. It made a barely audible sizzle. I drank some Beaujolais. Then I made a small triangular sandwich out of a piece of Syrian bread and some cheese, with a pepper ring, one cherry tomato, and an olive. I pitted the olive before I slipped it into the sandwich. The proportions are the secret in eating feta cheese and raw vegetables. I sampled the sandwich. Too much cheese obliterated the other flavors. I ate it anyway. Plenty of time to experiment, plenty of time to get it right. I ate some sausage. Susan was swirling the wine about in her glass and watching the small turbulence she'd created.
"Distaste," I said, "is our automatic response to prostitution. It's almost impossible for us to think about it beyond deploring it, you know?"
I poured a little more wine in my glass.
"Yes," Susan said. "I know. I suppose if you do think about it beyond the normal assumptions you have to recognize that prostitution is not a single experience."
"No," I said. "It isn't. There's lots of kinds of prostitution. Metaphorically the kinds are almost limitless. Everyone who does things for money instead of pride, I suppose."
Susan smiled at me. "Didn't I see you building a cabin out by a pond in Concord the other day?"