Shella (17 page)

The Indian and I smoked a couple of cigarettes apiece while the man played with his computer. He spun around in his chair to face us.

“The PVW is off,” he said.

“Parole Violation Warrant,” the Indian said. Looking at the man, explaining it to me.

“Yes. You’re dead,” he said to me. “Killed in a train wreck in South Carolina. Amtrak out of D.C., heading for Florida. Unidentified white man, mangled pretty bad. We just ran his prints, got a match with yours. You’re off the computers. Dead.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You know what I want?” the man asked, looking right into my eyes.

I nodded.

“I find your girl, you do this for me … that’s our deal?”

I nodded again.

“Show us,” the Indian said.

“What?”

“You know
he
can do it…. Show us
you
can.”

The man smiled. His teeth were yellow, crooked, all mashed together in his mouth. He went back to his computer.

“Huntsville, Alabama,” the man said.

I watched him.

“Room 907. Marilyn Hammond. Executive VP for an options-trading firm on the coast. Declared an income of one hundred and eighty-eight thousand dollars last year. She’s a white female, five foot four, a hundred and fifty-one pounds. Brown hair, brown eyes. Divorced, no kids. That’s what she’s doing now.”

“That’s not Shella,” I told him.

“No, that’s not her, that’s what she
does.
This Marilyn, she’s heavy into S&M. That’s the way she gets off. Your Shella, she’s a hardcore top, you understand? After you went down in Florida, she took off. But she didn’t go back to dancing … she disappeared into the fem-dom underground.”

“Disappeared?”

“She can’t hide,” the man said. “It’s easy to find fetish
players. All they think about is their games. It’s perfect for your girl … she doesn’t even have to be an outlaw. She’s not even selling sex now. They advertise in the magazines. Role-playing. Discipline sessions. All that stuff. I can find her.”

I thought about that cottage we’d rented a long time ago. That girl, Bonnie. Shella slapping her.

“We have a deal?” the man asked me.

“We’re changing the deal,” the Indian said.

The man rubbed the lump on his head, not saying anything.

“We want to do your work first,” the Indian said. “Then, when you find his woman, he doesn’t have to come back and see you.”

The man smiled his smile again. “So what I promised you for bringing him to me, for getting him to do the work … you don’t want to wait for that either?”

“No,” the Indian said.

“You’re worried he’s going to find his girl and take off … not come back and do the work?”

“No.”

“What if he does the work and I don’t find the girl for him?”

“You will.”

“You threatening me?”

“Yes.”

The man turned to me. “You okay with this? You do the work for me first, then I find the girl?”

“You look while I’m working,” I told him.

“The Chief here will tell you what I need done, okay?”

“Yes.”

“When it’s done, you get your girl.”

I nodded.

“I can find her,” the man said. “I can find anyone.” I just looked at him—this part was over.

“I found you,” the man said.

As we stepped outside, a cab pulled up. A different one. We got in the back. The Indian didn’t say anything to the driver.

When we turned into the block near where I was staying, the Indian turned to me.

“Get your stuff, check out, okay?”

I did what he told me. The cab was still waiting out front. I put my duffel bag in the trunk.

“You got a car around here?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“Give me the keys.” I did it. “Show me where it is.”

The cab pulled up next to my car.

“I’ll follow in your car, okay?” the Indian said.

The cab went along Broadway, turned into a block lined with apartment buildings on both sides. The sign said Carmen Avenue. The cab came to a stop. The driver didn’t say anything.

I smoked a cigarette. After a while, the Indian opened the back door. I got out. We took my duffel bag from the
trunk. I followed the Indian inside the building. It was a big apartment, long. It went all the way through: windows on the street, windows out back, into an alley. My car was parked back there.

The Indian opened the refrigerator, showed me there was food inside. Furniture in the apartment, like somebody lived there. He gave me two keys. “One’s the front door downstairs, one’s for this place. The rent’s paid, nobody’ll bother you. There’s a phone in the living room. When you hear it ring, pick it up, don’t say anything. If it’s me, I’ll talk. If you don’t hear my voice, just hang up.” He gave me back my car keys too.

“I’ll be back tomorrow morning,” the Indian said. “I’ll call first. Anybody rings the bell downstairs, don’t pay attention.”

“I got it.”

He turned like he was going to go. Then he spun around and faced me. Stuck out his hand, open. I didn’t know.… I put out my own hand. He grabbed it, squeezed, hard. I squeezed back, careful not to hurt him.

Then he went out the door.

I opened my duffel bag, laid out my stuff Took a shower. Turned on the TV set. I left the sound off, watching the pictures in the front room. The curtains were closed—it was like night.

A nature show came on. A snake caught a big fat furry animal. It swallowed the furry animal, a big bulge all through its body.

The snake was a monster. Dangerous to anybody. But
when it was all stuffed with food, it could hardly move. And it couldn’t bite.

I made a sandwich, took some cold water from the refrigerator. When I finished, I smoked a cigarette. The telephone was one of those old black ones, with a dial instead of push buttons. I looked at it for a while.

I don’t know one single phone number. Not one.

I tried to think about what happened. It’s hard for me. I asked Shella if I was stupid, once. A long time ago. Her face got sad.

“You’re not stupid, baby. Not like dumb-stupid. You don’t get things because you don’t feel them, that’s all. Like your brain is all scar tissue.”

“I never got hit in the head. Not real hard, anyway.”

“You just do it different than most people. There’s things we don’t want to remember. I worked with a girl once. She was a real racehorse, a sleek girl with legs that went on forever. Everybody called her Rose … ’cause she had such long stems, get it?”

“I guess.…”

“Oh, shut up. Just listen for a minute. Rose was hooking big-time. Worked out-call, never less than five yards a night. She didn’t draw lines, a three-way girl, she’d take it anyplace you wanted to put it. You get
that,
right?”

“Yes.”

“She killed a trick. Stabbed him to death with a letter opener. The papers said he didn’t have a drop of blood left in him when she was done. She didn’t even try and run for it—the cops found her right there. I went to visit her
in the jailhouse. At first, it was like she didn’t recognize me. I held her hand. Then her eyes snapped and she knew who I was. I asked her what happened. She just said … ‘Flashback.’ That’s all she said. Flashback.

“At her trial, the doctor said something happened to her when she was a kid. He didn’t know what it was. Rose wouldn’t tell him. Rose looked like a million bucks at the trial, flashing those long legs, smiling. The doctor said it was more important to her not to go back where she was—it would cost her too much.

“They found her guilty. Got a life sentence. I kissed her goodbye. She was still smiling.

“It wasn’t even a year later that I read about it in the papers. She escaped. With a guard that was working her section of the prison. He was married, had two kids. They never found either of them.”

“What do you think happened?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Something ugly.”

“No, I mean …”

“Oh. I figure Rose got the guard’s nose open. Some men, they’ll give up everything for a taste.”

“You think I’m like that?”

“You? No, honey. I don’t think you’re like anything. Whatever you buried, you put it down deep.”