Chapter 22

In due course the fire department showed up in response to the alarm, and I could hear them tromping around the hall. I couldn't be sure whether Fred had told them about me and my frantic scramble, but I didn't hear my name mentioned. One of them looked in on the bathroom where I was concealed—after knocking and calling out respectfully—but it was only a glance, and I stayed hidden. After a while they left.

"What now?" Susan asked.

"No idea in the world," I told her. "I don't seem to have a lot of good choices here."

"You can't go back to the hotel," she observed.

"No," I agreed. "And I can't go home, the way we'd planned. Actually, right now I can't go much of anywhere, at least not that I can think of. I'm probably best off staying right here for tonight."

"In the ladies' room?"

I rolled my eyes. "In the building, I mean."

"What about calling the cops?"

"Why?"

"Well, you could..." She trailed off. "I see what you mean," she finally said quietly.

"I don't know that Fred even saw the guns," I said. "And whether he did or he didn't, so what? The best is that they take me seriously, get some descriptions and put out an alert. Which gets me a big fat zero. They sent one team, so they pull those guys back and send another. It was one thing when all I had to deal with was your Walter fellow, but now it looks like they're coming at me in phalanxes."

"Larry, honey, I'm so sorry. It never even occurred to me that Bobby'd be this desperate."

"Yeah, I— What do you mean, 'desperate?'"

"The guys tonight, they were Mexican, right?" she said.

"I guess," I agreed. "Latin, anyway, somewhere down there." I waved vaguely south. "I guess your pal Senator Bobby called in the cavalry."

"That's what I mean. He'd never do that if he weren't in a panic."

I thought a minute. "I don't follow you."

"He's beholden to them now," she said.

"So how's that different?" I asked, puzzled. "He was in their pocket before, he still is."

"No!" she burst out. "Up to now they were just, well, business partners, sort of. He gave them a base here, well, in D.C. and probably back in his home state, too, they gave him drugs, it was like a trade. Like I run a store or something and you buy from me, but neither of us is above the other. We're just swapping, your money for my stuff. Arms' length, they call it, quid pro quo. Filthy business with Bobby and the Mexicans, of course, but still just business."

"And now?" I prompted.

"Now he hit a wall and had to ask them for help," she explained. "It changes the whole relationship, don't you see?"

"They did him a favor, now he owes them one," I said slowly, beginning to grasp her point. "Is that what you mean?"

"It's more than that. Do you understand the concept of patronage? I mean, the way it works when you're, well, outside the law."

"Not completely, I guess," I admitted.

"Look, back when I was hooking, early on, I mean ... Larry, I hate talking about this to you, but it's been my frame of reference for a lot of years. Does it bother you?"

I shrugged. "Honey, like I keep saying, it's who you used to be, not you today. Yeah, I hate that you lived like that, but I hate it a lot worse for you than for me. You know? Say what you were going to say."

She sighed. "I wish, I wish, I wish I didn't have all that baggage I'm carrying around, but what the hell, wishes don't make reality. OK, anyhow, back then there were all these guys kept coming around. Not johns, I mean, well..."

"Pimps?" I guessed.

"Pretty much," she acknowledged. "They didn't call themselves that, they wanted to be my 'agents, ' my 'protectors, ' like that. I'd say no to one and the next minute there'd be another. And some of them got, well, a little forceful about it. I remember I had to cut one guy a little bad before he'd back off, put him in the hospital for a few days."

"Wow," I said, not knowing what else to say.

"The thing was, once these guys got their hooks in you they had you for life. They were your patrons. They fucking owned you. You gave them all the money you earned, every cent, and they doled it back out to you in driblets. As they saw fit. You were labor, they were management, and that was the relationship forever. Except no labor unions, no laws about what they could and couldn't do, nothing. You were property, and they didn't take well at all to having anybody fuck around with their property. Especially not you."