The Closer (9 page)

Two and a half years ago.

“Can I ask you a few questions?”

Nikki looked over the man at the next booth, carefully. He was around thirty, with unkempt brown hair, a stubbly beard, and eyes that looked like they hadn’t seen sleep in a week. He was dressed too well to be homeless, but he didn’t have the vibe of a customer. She made him for a cop, but that didn’t bother her; she dealt with cops every day, they were as much a part of hooking as the johns.

“I’m not working, honey,” she said. “Coffee break, you know? Get back to me in twenty minutes or so.”

“I’d rather not cut into your profits,” the man said. “I’m a journalist. I’m doing a story about the Stroll and I’d like your take on it.”

She smiled at him. A smile was her automatic reaction to dealing with anyone, regardless of how she felt—it lowered people’s defenses while giving her a second to raise her own. Every working girl she knew had one unbreakable rule about dealing with johns, and Nikki applied that rule universally: go with your gut. And her gut said…

Danger?

Sorrow.

“Okay,” she said abruptly. “Have a seat.”

Later, she analyzed that moment over and over, trying to figure out why she had agreed to talk to him. There was something not quite right about the guy, something damaged and hurt—she’d never have gotten in a car with him. And yet, the overwhelming impression she got wasn’t rage, but a deep sadness.

He picked up his coffee cup and slid into the booth across from her. “My name is Jack.”

“Wendy.” It was the name she used on the street.

Jack pulled out a notepad and pen. “How long have you been doing this?”

“Since I was seventeen—fifteen years, give or take.”

“How’d you get started?”

“Same reason everyone does—drugs. I got hooked on the worst one of all.”

“Crack?”

“No—money.” She pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “See, the money to be made can be
amazing.
When you’re young and dumb, it almost seems like they’re giving it away. So you spend it. Life becomes one long party. Next thing you know, you’re addicted to something expensive, and now you don’t have a choice anymore. You can’t just quit and go work as a waitress, because minimum wage plus tips won’t support your habit, and besides, you’re not qualified to do anything else.”

“You don’t look like a junkie.”

She lit her cigarette with a small butane lighter. “That’s because I’m not one. Wrong part of town.” She waved one red-nailed hand, indicating the diner they sat in. It was called the Templeton, and it was funky but not run-down; a row of booths lined one wall and an old-fashioned counter with chrome stools the other. It was decorated in a retro-chic fifties’ style, with a sign over the servers’ pick-up window that read
Specials
in glowing neon script. Each of the booths had its own chrome mini-jukebox mounted next to it, the kind where you flipped through the selections by turning pages mounted behind glass. A few other working girls sat at another booth, and a young man with a goatee tapped away at a laptop at the counter.

“See, every city has two Strolls: the downtown and skid row. Skid row is where the crackheads and junkies work. They work cheap because all they want is enough for that next fix. The downtown is different—young, pretty and upscale. We cater to businessmen, mainly. You took a poll of the girls downtown, you’d get mostly single moms and college students.”

“Which one are you?”

“Neither. I’m an old-timer, been doing it my whole life. I’m used to the money and don’t really know how to do anything else.”

“You could always go back to school.”

“And do what? Become an accountant? I could just see me at the staff Christmas party—‘Hey, everyone! Wendy’s giving blow jobs under the mistletoe!’ ”

Jack winced, almost imperceptibly.

“Yes, the Christmas season,” he said. “Brisker business during the holidays?”

“No, men are pretty much horny all year round.”

“What about bad johns? Any increase at particular times of the year?”

It was an odd question. She thought about it, then said, “Maybe in the summer. Hot weather, hot tempers. But the really bad ones—well, they’re bad all the time. All that stuff about the full moon bringing out the crazies is bullshit. You’re just as likely to get a creep on a sunny afternoon in July as midnight on Halloween.”

“Ever had it happen to you?”

“Sure. Not in a long time, though—my instincts are pretty sharp.”

“How about friends of yours?”

“Everybody gets a bad trick sooner or later. If you’re lucky, you’ll only get robbed.”

“Ever known someone who was unlucky?”

She glanced at him sharply. He met her stare eye to eye. After a second, she answered.

“If you’re talking about
dead whores,
yes. Yes, I’ve known several
dead whores
. Would you like
details?”
She threw the words at him like broken glass.

His reaction wasn’t what she expected. He simply looked thoughtful and said, “I don’t care how they made a living. Were they your friends?”

She glared at him, not sure what to think. “Some were. Others probably deserved what they got and more.”

“That might be true. But how do you know?”

“I trust my gut. Some people are just shit—the planet would be better off without them.”

“I wish my gut was as reliable as yours.”

“What, don’t journalists have instincts?”

“No,” he said. “Just questions…”

And he’d asked her a few more and then gone away. She saw him a few more times over the next week, talking to other girls, and from what they said he’d asked them pretty much the same things he’d asked her.

But Nikki was the only one he interviewed twice.

He came back to the same restaurant about ten days later. She was sitting by herself, and nodded when Jack asked if he could sit down. Outside, a gray rain was drizzling down.

They stared at each other for a moment without talking. They never spoke about that moment afterward, but Nikki knew exactly what had happened. They had
recognized
each other, had understood on some deep level they were alike. It had taken an effort to smile.

“So,” she said. “How’s your story going?”

“I’m not a journalist.”

“Big surprise. Cop?”

“No.”

“What do you want?” she asked flatly. “I don’t work for pimps.”

“I’m not a pimp. Why don’t you have a partner?”

That stopped her for a second, but she pretended not to know what he meant. “Because
I’m
not a cop either, I’m a hooker—”

“Most girls use a buddy system. One gets in a car, the other one writes down the licence plate.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“So I hear.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

A waitress hurried by. Jack waited until she was out of earshot before replying. “Most hookers don’t carry weapons or drugs because they’re more likely to be busted for that than soliciting. You not only carry weapons, you’re not afraid to use them. Frankly, the other girls are terrified of you.”

“Fuck ’em.”

“And what about Sally? Fuck her, too?”

Her smile faltered, but only for an instant. “You knew her?”

“No. But I know what happened to her.”

“Only one person knows that,” she said calmly. Her hand crept toward the purse beside her on the booth seat.

“I didn’t kill her,” Jack said. “But I know how she probably died.”

Her hand slipped inside the purse.

“She was picked up on the night of July nineteenth, in a white car stolen an hour before. Nobody saw the driver’s face, including you. She was probably raped, strangled and dismembered, but the body still hasn’t been found.”

Her hand found the pebbled roughness of the hand-grip and tightened around it. She thumbed the safety off.

“Three girls in the last eight months,” Jack said. “All of them with dark hair in curls. Sally was the only working girl, and the only one whose body—or body parts—haven’t been found.”

Her finger wrapped around the trigger, ever so carefully. “Why?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But if you’ll help me, maybe we can ask him in person….”

And after a second, she’d thumbed the safety back on.

He told her, calmly and rationally, exactly what he planned to do. He explained the risks, and what he expected of her. He told her she could walk away at any point.

She told him she’d have to think about it. He gave her a week.

She’d taken the rest of the night off and gone home—no way was she going to be able to work with Jack’s offer on her mind. She lived in an apartment in Yaletown, just off the downtown core, overlooking False Creek to the south. It cost her a good chunk of money every month, but she wouldn’t scrimp on living space; though she never stayed in one city for too long, she always made sure she was comfortable. She didn’t do drugs, hadn’t had a boyfriend in years—de-signer furniture and an address with a view were relatively harmless vices in comparison.

She changed out of her working clothes and slipped into a pair of sweats and a T-shirt, then curled up on her white leather couch with a glass of scotch. She took a sip and looked around her home: plasma-screen television, CD jukebox, DVD collection, computer and computer games. Toys, distractions. Something to do when she wasn’t working or working out. The same went for the Rollerblades, the mountain bike, the snowboard. She’d get rid of them the next time she relocated, and buy brand-new stuff in another city.

Her eye fell on the bookshelf. The books were the only thing that traveled with her from place to place, even though they were heavy and a pain to transport. Travel books mostly, big hardcovers with lots of pictures. Spain, Tahiti, France, Greenland—she liked variety. She had maps, too, and a big hollow globe in the corner that doubled as a bar. There were also recipe books from all over, even though she never cooked— they were something she’d gotten into the habit of picking up when she traveled. Some people collected spoons, some collected ceramic figurines, she collected cookbooks. Go figure.

Travel was her true addiction. She’d save up every year and go someplace for a month or two, taking a vacation not just from her work but from herself. She’d travel under a different name, dye her hair, experiment with different kinds of clothes, food, even the TV shows she watched. At first she’d regarded it as a kind of game, a harmless hobby like all her others, but eventually she realized she was doing the same thing she did for her clients—playing a role. The difference was she was doing it for her own pleasure, not somebody else’s, which made it masturbation as opposed to prostitution.

What the fuck. Considering how many hand jobs she’d given in her life, she deserved a little self-satisfaction.

But was it enough?

Maybe that wasn’t even the right question. Maybe she should be asking herself if Jack was crazy, or if she was. So why wasn’t she?

Because she already knew the answer.

What she found herself thinking about instead was Sally. And Janet. And Billie and Yolanda and Joyce and CC and Veronique …the list went on and on, girls she’d known that had turned up dead or just disappeared. Nikki hoped some of them had made it out of the life; had gotten married or moved or just plain quit.

Maybe some of them had. But not many.

The phone rang. She frowned, got up and checked the call display. Private Caller, no number. She didn’t pick up. She’d been having problems with a client the last couple of days, an Asian guy who had been hanging around the Stroll. Unlike Jack, this guy was definitely creepy—he’d picked up Nikki, then tried to talk her into a freebie by claiming he was a pimp scouting talent. She hadn’t fallen for it, but apparently he’d pulled the same thing on several other girls who weren’t as bright; one of them—probably Teresa, that bitch—had given him Nikki’s phone number, and now he kept calling. The guy had dressed well and talked a good game, but no way he was a pimp—too short, too round, too ugly. She might have believed he was some kind of Chinese gangster, but those guys tended to travel in packs and their girls usually worked out of massage parlors.

The phone had stopped, but now it rang again. Same ID. “Fuck,” she said, and picked it up.

“Hello, Wendy?” It was him.

“Yeah?”

“I’d like to see you again.”

“Look, Richard, I told you—I’m not interested.”

“Why not? I’ve asked around, you don’t have a manager.”

“And that’s just how I like it.”

“Really? You’re not considering someone else?”

“I’m a solo act, Richard. I don’t like to share.”

“Then who was that guy in the coffee shop—the one you were talking to for so long?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve been spying on me?”

“No, no. I was just down on the Stroll and saw you, that’s all. Who is he, your boyfriend?”

“No,” Nikki snapped. “He’s someone I trade favors with now and then. I fuck him, he fucks somebody else—like some jerk that won’t take no for an answer.”

“That supposed to worry me?”

“Thing is, he uses a badge and a gun. He fucks you, you
stay
fucked.”

Richard laughed. “Sure. I’ll be in touch.” He hung up.

She growled, and slammed the phone down. She’d have to change her phone number…

Or she could change everything else.

“Fuck it,” she said.

Jack hadn’t left a number; she’d had to wait for him to get in touch with her. It was a long, strange week— she found herself looking at every one of her tricks with new eyes. She’d always been cautious, but now she found herself turning down even regular customers. There was a tightness in her belly that at first she thought was fear… but after a while she realized it was simply anticipation. She wound up spending most of her time in the diner where they’d first met, waiting.

Finally, seven days later, he walked in and sat down. She told him she accepted.

And the training began.

She’d thought at first that he’d be the one in charge, a drill sergeant putting her through her paces. What actually evolved was more balanced: Jack trained her mind, while she trained his body. Nikki held a master-level belt in Akido, a martial art that relied primarily on submission holds, and worked out with weights three times a week; Jack had two years’ worth of art school. When they started, he was soft and out-of-shape—six months later, he could bench-press three-eighty and run a mile in four and a half minutes.