Little Girl Lost jb-1 Read online

  “Where does he work?”

  “He runs a club called Shots down on Houston.”

  “I don’t know it. What’s it like?”

  “It’s not Scores. You don’t get your Charlie Sheens and your Howard Sterns going there. But it’s a lot higher on the food chain than Carson’s or the Sin Factory.”

  “Have you ever worked there?”

  She shook her head. “It’s a little out of my league.”

  “Miranda danced there.”

  “Sure, when she was doing her act with Jocelyn. That was a hot act. After they broke up, she wasn’t so hot any more. She had to work the same places as the rest of us.”

  “See, that’s what I don’t understand,” I said. “You’re a beautiful woman, you’re a good dancer-”

  “I hear a ‘but’ coming,” she said.

  “No, no ‘but.’ It’s just that I don’t understand why – and please don’t take this the wrong way – but what I don’t understand is why someone like you or Miranda would need to work at a place like the Sin Factory. It’s such a dump – it’s small, it’s dark, it’s a rotten place. The managers are crooks. You should be able to find work at better clubs.”

  “I do,” she said, only sounding a little defensive. “Sometimes. Some of the places I work at are better. Some are worse. But you’ve got to work. You know? After you’ve been doing this for a while, you learn not to be so choosy. Every place has spotlights, they’ve all got stages and poles and guys who grab your ass, the managers are always crooks – so one night you’re here, the next you’re there, does it really matter where ‘here’ and ‘there’ are?”

  “Of course it matters,” I said. “It matters whether you’ve got ten guys watching you or a hundred-”

  “No, see, because the places where you’ve got a hundred, you’ve also got ten times as many girls. You can make less money at the bigger clubs.”

  “Okay, but the tips – the guys at the Sin Factory were laying down ones and fives. I think I saw one twenty once.”

  “Yeah, Mandy’s guy. He came every night.” Susan stopped to catch her breath. I glanced around, but no one I saw looked like they were paying attention to us. “The truth is, John, fives add up. Even ones do. Yes, twenties are better. I won’t lie to you, I didn’t like working at the Sin Factory. But you take what you can get. There are only so many good clubs – most of what’s out there isn’t so good. But you’ve got to eat every night, not just a couple of times a week, and there are a lot of girls out there who’ll take the jobs if you don’t. Ones and fives are a lot better than nothing, and if you start turning down gigs, that’s what you end up with pretty soon – nothing.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “Yes you did. But that’s okay. It’s your job, prying.” We started walking again. “Speaking of which, you know, it’s not like your job is a whole lot better.”

  Why did it hit me so hard? It was nothing but the truth. Who the hell was I to ask her why she worked for tenth-rate clubs when I was working for a twentieth-rate detective agency?

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “You’re right.”

  “So there you go. You work where you work and I work where I work. Maybe we both deserve better, but we take what we can get. That’s all I’m saying. We’re not in such different positions.”

  “You know what the difference is?” I said. “The man I work for? I’d trust him with my life.”

  “Yeah, well,” Susan said. “You’ve got me there.”

  “Maybe you should try that agent again,” I said, but she was already dialing.

  “Busy,” she said. She closed the phone.

  “At least that’s a good sign. Means he’s there.”

  “Or that someone else was leaving a message for him.”

  “We’ll try again in a few minutes,” I said.

  We turned uptown, headed toward Ninth Street. “If you were Jocelyn,” I said, “where would you go?”

  “If I had half a million dollars in stolen money and a couple of killers coming after me?”

  “She may not think they’re still coming after her.”

  “I would, if I were her.”

  “Okay,” I said. “A couple of killers coming after her.”

  “And you.”

  “And me.”

  She thought for a second and then shook her head. “I don’t know. We don’t even know where she lives. She might go there. She might go back to Tracy, depending on how things ended between them. She might have some other girlfriend, or boyfriend. She could rent a hotel room.”

  “Or she could get on a plane and fly to Peru,” I said. “All true. But what would you do if you were her?”

  “Me?” She thought for a second. “I’d go home.”

  “Even though you could be traced there?”

  “I might not stay there, but I’d go there. That’s where all my stuff is, I can crash there, get my bearings. It’s where I’d feel safest.”

  She’d go home. It made a certain amount of sense. But where was home for Jocelyn? Unfortunately, we had no idea. I didn’t even know where home was for Susan, for God’s sake.

  It suddenly struck me that Susan’s address was the least of what I didn’t know about her – I still didn’t know her last name, for instance.

  “Susan,” I said, “this may sound strange, but-”

  “What?”

  “What does the ‘F’ stand for?” I held up my cell phone. “Susan F.”

  “That’s okay. It’s not strange,” she said. “It stands for Feuer. F-E-U-E-R. My dad’s family was German. Mom was French-Canadian, but you wouldn’t know it from her name, which was Stine.”

  “Feuer-Stine,” I said. “Firestone.”

  “Give the man a cigar.”

  “Where did you get Rachel?”

  “I just liked it. Susan is so plain-Jane. I always wanted something more exciting.”

  “I think Susan is pretty exciting,” I said.

  She took my hand, squeezed it. “Listen,” she said, “I know how this goes. Next you’ll want to know where I live, and how I got into stripping, and what was my childhood like, and you know what, maybe one of these days I’ll want to share all that with you, but not today, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She squeezed my hand again.

  “So, who could tell us where Jocelyn lives?” I asked. “Did she have an agent?”

  “Not according to Cimino. He said she and Miranda handled their own bookings.”

  “Have you heard about any friends they had?”

  She waved her phone. “This Tracy is the first I’ve heard about.”

  “Relatives?”

  “Nobody mentioned any.”

  “There’s her parents, but if she hasn’t seen them in six years, I don’t see her going back to them now.”

  “Probably not.”

  “But maybe?” I said. “I guess it’s worth checking.” I pulled up my phone’s menu of incoming calls, scrolled back to the last call I’d received from Daniel Mastaduno. “Why don’t you try Kodos again?” She was dialing when I heard Daniel pick up.

  “Mr. Mastaduno, this is John Blake-”

  “Have you found anything?” I heard the eagerness in his voice and I knew there was no good news. He wouldn’t sound like that if she’d come back.

  “No, I’m afraid not. I was hoping you might have.”

  “Me?”

  “We believe Jocelyn was in New York recently, and we thought there was a slim chance she might have gotten back in touch with you.”

  “No, Mr. Blake, she hasn’t. I have a feeling her mother and I are the last people she’d get in touch with.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “If you do hear anything, though, will you please give me a call?”

  “Of course,” he said. “But Mr. Blake – I wouldn’t wait for it.”

  “No,” I said. “I won’t.”

  I hung up and turned to Susan. “Nothing,” I said. “You
?”

  She held up one hand. “… four o’clock? That’s fine. Eighth floor, I’ve got it. Thanks. See you then.” She was smiling as she closed her phone. “I got him,” she said. She sounded excited. It reminded me of how I’d been when I started working for Leo, when each small success had felt like a major triumph. “I told him we’d heard about Tracy and wanted to hire her for a new club we’re opening in the West Village. He said she was booked through the end of February, so I said that was fine, we weren’t opening till March, but we’d want to talk to her now, and he said okay, she’d be in his office later today anyway, we could come by.”

  “That’s terrific.”

  “This detective stuff isn’t so hard,” she said. “Maybe we should trade jobs.”

  “I’d look lousy in a g-string.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said.

  The doorman waved us past when we got to my mother’s building, then came running up to us before we could get in the elevator. He held out an envelope with nothing but “14-A” written on it. “I forgot. Someone dropped this off for you.”

  “For me?”

  “Yeah, a woman. Asked me to give it to you.”

  “What did she look like?”

  He shrugged. “Dressed up warm. Winter coat, hat, earmuffs, scarf, sunglasses. Couldn’t see much of her face, to tell you the truth.”

  “And she said to give this to me?”

  “You’re John, right? Margaret Blake’s son?” I nodded. “Well, that’s who she said to give it to.”

  “Thanks.”

  I waited till the elevator door closed, then tore the envelope open. I read the single piece of paper inside and passed it to Susan.

  In plain type on a sheet of plain paper it said, Stop looking for me, or you’ll be sorry.

  Chapter 24

  “How could she know about this apartment?” Susan asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe she followed us.”

  “From where?”

  “I don’t know!” I tried to get my voice under control. “Maybe one of the people you called is still friendly with her and passed her this phone number. She could have looked up the address in a reverse directory-”

  “But I didn’t leave this number anywhere,” Susan said.

  “Then I don’t know.” I finished checking the windows in the living room – they were all locked. Not that it mattered when you were fourteen stories up, but somehow it made me feel a little less uncomfortable. I pulled the blinds down.

  “How she found out doesn’t really matter,” I said. “What matters is that she did. I can’t leave my mother alone now. Or you, for that matter.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “How, if you’re on the street and she comes up to you with a gun, or a knife?”

  “Me? What about you?”

  “I have to go after her,” I said. “You don’t.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m part of this now. You made me part of it, remember?”

  I took her hand. “You are part of it, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am. Without you, there’s no way we’d be this close. But your part is back here on the phone, not on the street. I can’t watch out for both of us.”

  “Why can’t we watch out for each other?”

  “You could get hurt or killed. It’s bad enough that I have to run that risk – you don’t.” She looked like she was getting ready to argue. “Anyway, I need you here. I need you to keep making calls. And I need to you watch out for my mother. Jocelyn could show up here at any time, and if she does, I need you to call me, call Leo, call the police – hatever you do, just don’t face her alone. This is a woman who’s already killed two people. Four, if you count the burglars she set up. We just can’t take any chances.”

  “What about our appointment with Tracy? They’re expecting me.”

  “I’ll go. I’ll tell them I’m your partner.”

  She shook her head, but what she said was, “Okay, John. I’m not brave. I’ll stay here, and you can get the bruises for the both of us.”

  “It’s not bruises I’m worried about this time,” I said.

  “So why don’t you stay here, too? We can talk to Tracy on the phone.”

  “And then what? Corner Jocelyn on the phone, too? Talk her into giving herself up?”

  We watched each other. “Just be careful,” Susan said finally. “If something happened to you-” She broke off, embarrassed.

  I went into my mother’s bedroom. My mother was sitting on the edge of her bed, looking more annoyed than frightened, but I could see a little of each in her eyes.

  “Mom,” I said, “please listen to Rachel while I’m out. No matter what, you’ve got to stay in the apartment. I’m sorry about this, but you won’t be safe otherwise.”

  “Why not?”

  “We got a threat from the woman we’re trying to track down. She knows about this apartment, and if she has a chance, she might do something to you.”

  “To me? I’m an old woman. Why would she want to hurt me?”

  “She doesn’t, she just wants me to stop looking for her, and she figures threatening you might get me to do it.”

  “So why don’t you? Why don’t you let Leo handle it?”

  “This is the woman who killed Miranda,” I said. “I have to handle it.”

  She seemed to accept that, grudgingly. “How long will this go on?” she said

  “Not long,” I said. “I think we’re getting pretty close.”

  Andrew Kodos had a suite in an old skyscraper on Fortysecond and Lex. Beautiful Art Deco carvings on the outside of the building, soaring lobby, but by the time you got up to the eighth floor, you weren’t surprised any more that a guy who booked strippers for a living worked here. The hallway was poorly lit and dingy. At one end, a mop and bucket had been abandoned. There was a locked men’s room and a women’s room whose door was propped open with a block of wood. In between were five doors advertising five separate businesses. This being Saturday, all but one of the doors were dark.

  The one with light behind it said “Kodos Theatrical Representation” in gold letters on the pebbled glass. I wondered if his theatrical work involved handling anyone other than strippers. But I knew the choice of wording was probably just to avoid spooking the building management. It was the same reason Leo had finally settled on “Hauser Consulting Services” for our door.

  I pressed the button by the doorknob, then knocked on the glass when I didn’t hear anything buzzing or chiming. I saw a shadow approach through the glass. The door swung open. “Come in, come in.” Kodos looked behind me, saw no one else in the hall, and shut the door.

  He was a well-fed specimen, extra pounds pressing the limits of his belt, which was straining at its last hole, and his shirt collar, which looked tight even unbuttoned. A blue necktie hung at half-mast, knotted but loosened as far as it would go. He wiped his hand on the leg of his pants before extending it to me but when I shook it his palm still felt damp against mine.

  “You spoke to my partner earlier today,” I said. “We’re opening a club downtown.”

  “Sure, I remember. It’s good to meet you. Where’s your partner?”

  “Something came up at the last minute,” I said. “She’s sorry she couldn’t come.”

  “Me, too. She sounded like a good-looking young woman.” He coughed into his hand. “Excuse me. Every January I get a cold. Like clockwork. So where’s this club of yours going to be?”

  What had Susan said, the West Village? “You know where Calder Street is, near the West Side Highway?” Fortunately, it looked like he didn’t. “That’s where we’ll be.”

  “And how’d you hear about Tracy?”

  “I didn’t, my partner did. You’d have to ask her.”

  “Well, you won’t be disappointed. She’s the best.” He led me through a short corridor lined on either side with framed eight-by-tens of women in all sorts of outfits: stockings and garters, boas and headdresses, bikinis and evenin
g gowns. You could tell from the hairstyles that some of the photos went back to the eighties, some to the seventies. There were even a few black-and-white shots that looked older still. Many of the photos were signed: To Andy, the greatest agent in the world! Love, Cherry. Or Asia, or Crystal, or Jet.

  “How long have you been doing this?” I asked.

  “Signed my first girl in 1962,” he said, pointing to a photo. “Maxine Murray. Danced under the name ‘Sissy.’ Can you imagine a dancer calling herself ‘Sissy’ now?” He shook his head at the wonder of the world. “That was before you were even born. How old are you anyway?”

  “Old enough,” I said.

  “Aren’t we all.” He opened the door to his office. “Tracy, I want you to meet-” He waited for me to fill in my name.

  “John Blake,” I said. I held my hand out and she leaned forward in her seat to shake it. She could have stood up, but that wouldn’t have given me a view of her breasts pressing forward against the front of her scoop neck T-shirt. It was a thin shirt and her dark skin showed through the white fabric. I could see that she was wearing small rings through her nipples. If I’d looked closer, I could probably have told whether they were silver or gold.

  “Andy, would you mind if I talked to Tracy alone for a minute?”

  He looked puzzled, but he said, “Sure. Sure.” Then he told Tracy, “He’s opening a club down on… where was it?”

  “Calder Street,” I said.

  “Calder Street. And they want you for the opening. I told him you’d be perfect for it.”

  “Did you?” she said. But she was looking at me rather than at Kodos, and somewhere along the way it had turned into a skeptical look. I wondered what I’d said or done wrong.

  “So, you kids talk. Just don’t forget to bring me back in before you talk money.” He patted me on the shoulder. “That desk folds out into a bed in case you need it.” Then, to Tracy, “What? What? I’m joking!” He backed out of the office and drew the door shut behind him. I waited for his silhouette to disappear.

  “Tracy-”

  “You’re not really opening a club, are you?” she said.

  I hesitated for a second, then shook my head.