Taming a Sea Horse (3 page)

"Hey, she's better off. She's making better bread than she ever made with Utley."

"And keeping it?" I said.

"Sure, man, whatta you think, I'm no pimp."

"Yeah, sure," I said, "you're a music student. You probably carry that razor to trim clarinet reeds."

"No shit, man. I'm taking courses at Juilliard."

"Robert," I said, "what's the point? If I can talk her out of you, I will. If you can stop me, you will."

"You can't talk her out of me, man."

"Probably not," I said. "But I'll try. And if you try to cut me again, I'll break both your arms."

"Maybe next time I won't be alone, man."

I turned back toward Fifth Avenue. "I think we can count on that, Rob," I said.

I strolled across the park toward Lincoln Center. To my left the row of high-rise hotels on 59th Street gleamed in benign elegance over the burgeoning green swales of Olmsted's grand design. Roller skaters and Walkmen and joggers and Frisbees and dogs and kerchiefs. Lunch in brown bags and park rangers on horseback and outcroppings of dark rock on which people sat and got the early yellow splash of spring sun in their faces. Birds sang. Maybe ten years ago a group of young men raped a young woman in the park and left her naked, gagged, and bound hand and foot. Another group of young men came along and found her and raped her too.

Ah wilderness.

Lincoln Center looked like an expensive complex of Turkish bathhouses, a compendium of neo-Arabic-Spanish and silly. It did for the West Side what the Trump Tower did for the East, offering the chance for a giggle on even the drabbest day.

A large-eyed woman wearing a full skirt and silver New Balance running shoes opened a file folder and told me that in fact Robert Rambeaux was registered at Juilliard. He was taking a course in composition with a practicum in woodwinds.

"What's his address?" I said. "He still living on First Street?"

"I'm sorry, sir, it's against our policy to give out that sort of information."

"Quite right," I said. "People drive you crazy if they know where you live. A person has a right to privacy."

She smiled at me and nodded. Her hair was pulled back behind her ears and fell to her shoulders. She didn't look very old, but there were gray streaks in her hair. Premature. Probably from worrying about the rights of privacy.

She had a cup of coffee in a white mug with Beethoven's picture on it. As I stood I brushed it with my elbow and spilled it across her desk and onto her lap.

She jumped up, trying to keep the coffee from soaking through, brushing her skirt with both hands.

"Oh, my God," I said. "I am sorry."

While I said that I shuffled the stuff on top of her desk frantically out of the way, and in doing so I copped the top sheet out of Rambeaux's folder and folded it inside my jacket.

"It's all right," she said, her graying head still bent over, smoothing at her skirt. "Really, it's all right. The skirt is washable."

I closed Rambeaux's folder and put it and two other folders and a long pad of yellow paper in a pile on the corner of the desk. She left her skirt and turned her attention to the calculator on her desk, wiping it off with Kleenex she took from a drawer.

"Really," she said, "it's my fault. I shouldn't have left the coffee there. It'll be fine. I'll just get a wet paper towel from the ladies' room and wipe off the desk."

"Well," I said, "thanks for being so decent about it."

"No, really," she said.

I smiled my earnest smile at her and thanked her again and she put her file folders away in the file and locked it and went to the ladies' room to get a paper towel. I left.

Walking through Columbus Circle, I read Rambeaux's transcript. He'd done well in his courses. And he lived on East 77th Street. I put the transcript in a trash bin attached to a lamppost. Incriminating evidence. Probably could have looked Rambeaux up in the phone book. How many Robert Rambeauxs could there be? But it's good to keep in practice. And the risk factor at Juilliard was low.

I walked back across the park and crossed Fifth Avenue and turned uptown. There was a plate glass window on the Hotel Pierre and I checked my reflection as I went by. I was wearing a leather jacket and a blue-toned Allen Solly tattersall shirt and jeans, and Nike running shoes with a charcoal swoosh. I paused and turned the collar up on my leather jacket. Perfect. Did the traffic slow on Fifth Avenue to look at me? Maybe.

It was nearly four in the afternoon and getting less sprf nglike when I turned east on 77th Street. I crossed Madison Avenue, the Hotel Carlyle on the southeast corner. Rambeaux's building was five and a half blocks east. Between Second and First avenues, a five-story gray brick building with black iron fire escapes zigzagging the front. The bell directory listed Rambeaux in SD. I settled into the entryway of a brownstone church across the street and waited.

Rambeaux knew me, so it would be harder following him. But not so hard it couldn't be done. I zipped my jacket up. It pulled a little tight over my shoulder holster, and it lost the nice contrast with my Allen Solly shirt. But the alternative was coldness. It's almost never perfect. After five, people began coming home. Students with school bags and musical instruments in cases, young women in tailored suits with blouses and bows at the neck, young men in tailored suits and white shirts and ties at the neck. A lot of briefcases. Nothing happened across the street. It was a quarter to six, it was chilly, I was missing the cocktail hour. Soon I would be missing the supper hour.

At six-twenty Rambeaux came out of the house wearing a tweed coat with a velvet collar. There was a young woman with him. It wasn't April. They walked to Second Avenue and caught a cab downtown. I drifted along behind them and caught the next one.

"I can't think of a slick way to put this," I said to the cabbie, "but follow that cab." The driver turned toward me and said, "Where you go?"

"Follow that cab," I said.

"La Guardia?" he said. "Grann Central? Waldorf?"

"Allez-vous apres ce taxi?" I said.

He shook his head. Rambeaux's cab took a right turn on 75th Street.

"Never mind," I said and got out of the cab and started across Second.

"Som a beetch," the cabbie yelled after me, out the passenger window.

"Sonova," I said. "Son… of… a… bitch. Short i."

The cabbie pulled away, spinning a little rubber as he went. I walked back to the St. Regis. Follow that cab. It seemed simple enough. Used to work perfect for Richard Arlen.

The next morning I went over to the Hertz place on West 56th Street and rented a tan Toyota Celica, and drove up to 77th Street and parked across the street from Rambeaux's place, in front of a hydrant, with the nose of the Toyota aimed at Second Avenue. I let the motor idle, and listened to WNEW and ate two bagels with cream cheese and drank coffee. I had on jeans again and my leather jacket and my Nikes, standard tracking outfit. But I had changed my shirt and was wearing my Utica Blue Sox baseball hat for disguise. Also because it made me look stunning. William B. Williams was just saying that WNEW was where it all began when Rambeaux emerged from his building. It was nearly noon. He turned toward First Avenue. God damn. I pulled the Toyota out from the hydrant, ran the light turning left onto Second Avenue, made the light turning left onto 76th Street, and ran the light turning onto First Avenue. Many New Yorkers honked at me. But ahead of me Rambeaux was just getting into a cab and heading uptown.

Follow that cab.

We went to 87th Street, where Rambeaux picked up a young black woman with her hair pulled tight in a chignon, who was waiting on the corner. Then we went crosstown to Fifth Avenue and back downtown to 76th Street. Rambeaux paid off the cab and he and the lady walked down 76th Street. I edged around the corner and double-parked behind a truck that said it delivered Boars Head sausage. Rambeaux and the young lady went into a restaurant near the corner of 76th and Madison, Les Pleiades. It didn't look like a place where jeans and a Utica Blue Sox cap would pass unnoziced, so I waited behind the Boars Head sausage truck for an hour and forty-five minutes.

I'd once eaten lunch in Les Pleiades. I had had a lamb stew with haricots verts and several bottles of Fisher beer. Maybe they were having that, or fresh asparagus with the butts carefully peeled, served with a mild vinaigrette. At ten of two they came out and caught a cab and went back to her place on 87th Street. Rambeaux went in. He came out at four and walked back to his apartment with me dawdling several blocks back, annoying hell out of maybe thirty-five cab drivers. At four-twenty he turned into his building and I was back at my spot on the hydrant. At four thirty-five an NYPD patrol car pulled up with two cops in it and the one on the passenger side told me to move away from the hydrant: I nodded and smiled and apologized and pulled out behind them and went around the block and parked on the hydrant again.

By a quarter of seven I was giving some thought to eating my Utica Blue Sox hat, and maybe would have but for the stunningness issue. Two bagels don't cover you into the evening. At ten of seven Rambeaux came out. He had on a vanilla-colored double-breasted suit and a dark shirt open at the throat and carried a black trench coat over his arm. He went up toward Second Avenue. If he caught a cab there, I'd follow in the car. He didn't, he went on across Second. I left the Toyota on the hydrant and followed him on foot. He was walking. If he were going uptown, he'd have caught a cab on First. If he were heading crosstown, he'd have hailed one on the corner. At Lexington he went into the subway and I followed him. He put a token into the slot and I did too. I always got a few tokens when I was tailing someone. Be prepared. I got on a car behind the one Rambeaux got on, and watched him sort of obliquely through the connecting doors. The subway wasn't jammed, but there were enough people so blending in was easy. We got out at 42nd Street and walked west. I stayed on the other side of the street and kept my head down, but Rambeaux wasn't nervous. There was a spring in his step and he made no attempt to evade a tail. He had no reason to think there'd be one. He never looked around. When we crossed Fifth Avenue past the library and began to move toward Times Square the spring in Rambeaux's step seemed to increase. At Sixth Avenue he seemed barely to touch the ground, and by the time we got to Times Square he was clearly in a New York state of mind. Times Square is the Parthenon of sleaze. And Rambeaux seemed right in his element. He moved easily among the porn theaters and shops that sell ghetto blasters and martial arts equipment. He paused, spoke to a black woman in a red leather miniskirt and a blond wig, moved on, talked to a young girl in a black leather miniskirt and white mesh stockings, moved on and stood in the doorway of a store that sold adult novelty items, his arms folded, a look of benign pleasure on his face. He bobbed his head slightly, probably listening to the lullaby of Broadway. A chunky white man in a three-piece suit stopped to speak to him. Rambeaux smiled and shook his head. The man walked on. Rambeaux's eyes ranged across the square and then he arched his back in a stretching movement, and moved out and walked uptown along Broadway. He paused, traded a low five with a burly black man in a safari jacket, talked for a moment, took a cigarette and moved along toward 44th Street smoking. At the corner of 44th Street he spoke with two women, both in miniskirts and boots, one of them wearing a squirrel jacket, the other coatless, wearing a scoop-neck sequined blouse. One woman was white, the other oriental. He took the hand of the oriental girl and held it for a minute. I saw her face tighten in pain and realized he was squeezing it. Then he dropped her hand and smiled and kissed each of them on the cheek and drifted on up Broadway. Rambeaux was the home office. He was making a field inspection.

At 50th Street, Rambeaux crossed and worked that side of Broadway back toward 42nd. He smoked several cigarettes. He talked with whores, occasionally spoke with a colleague. As the evening cooled he slipped on his black trench coat, cut fashionably large, with a belt around the waist. There were fastfood joints and I was in danger of malnutritive hallucinations, but anything cooked in Times Square would probably give you rabies.

By ten I knew what I needed to know. Rambeaux was a pimp and he had a string of streetwalkers. Who the young ladies were he'd dined with uptown was not yet clear. But I knew what was happening here. I revisited two or three of the girls on my own and made sure I'd recognize them. Then I walked over to Sixth Avenue and caught a cab up to 77th Street and retrieved my car. The Hertz Corp. had gotten a ticket. Serves them right, parking on a hydrant. I put the ticket in the glove compartment and returned the car and went to the St. Regis with visions of the room service menu dancing in my head.

Times Square at eight-fifteen in the morning is as sleazy as it is at night. And as busy. The whores were out getting an early start on the daily quota. Several winos had managed to get drunk already. Everywhere the industrious among us were up and at it. Me too. I was talking with the youngish whore in the black miniskirt and white mesh stockings I'd seen talking last night to Rambeaux.

"What are you interested in?" she said.

"Baseball, English landscape paintings, beer. How 'bout yourself?"

She shook her head. She was tired and even my lyrical wit didn't seem to brighten her face.

"You want action or not?" she said.

"I want to buy you breakfast and talk with you," I said.

She shrugged. "It's an hourly rate," she said. "What you do with your time is up to you."

"Okay," I said, and paid her. "Now you're mine until nine twenty-five."

"Sure thing, sugar. Where we going?"

"How about the HoJo," I said. "Across the square."

"Sure."

We crossed Broadway and Seventh where they intersect and walked up to the Howard Johnson's and sat. in a booth. I had black coffee. She had scrambled eggs and sausage patties, two strips of bacon, and home fries, buttered toast, and a Coke.

"Take care of any cholesterol deficiency you might be suffering," I said.