Blossom - Andrew H. Vachss [66]
"Those boys're not wrapped too tight."
"I know. I don't have an address for him. Just a place he hangs out. On the Interstate, a strip joint."
The windshield reflected Virgil's face, Cherokee cast to his features. "There's a number you can call at the mill. Pay phone. Anyone answering, you just tell them to get me. I can be anywhere around here in maybe fifteen minutes."
100
IT WAS WELL past eleven when I tossed a handful of pebbles and dirt in a gentle arc against Blossom's bedroom window. A light blinked on. I went around to the back door, an airline bag in my hand. She was wearing the terry–cloth robe, her face puffy with sleep.
She grabbed the sleeve of my jacket, turned around, and went back to her room, tugging me behind her.
101
IT WAS AFTER three in the morning when I felt her hands on my shoulders.
"Why are you sitting out here by yourself, baby?"
"I wanted to smoke a cigarette. Figured you didn't want the smell in your bedroom."
"Come on back with me. Bring your damn cigarettes."
102
THE PHONE rang in her bedroom. She didn't stir. Voice of an answering machine picking up. Man's voice. A hard man. "Nobody's available to talk to you right now. Leave a message and one of us will get back to you."
The machine beeped. Hang–up tone.
"Working at the diner, you meet all kinds of folks. It's not hard to get a phone number. They call, hear that voice, they figure I'm not living alone. It wouldn't bother anyone with a real message for me."
"Who made the tape for you?"
"An old friend."
"You know a lot of tricks for a country girl."
She propped herself on one elbow, eyes luminous. Leaned across my chest, found the cigarettes. Stuck one in her mouth, snapped a match alive, took a drag. Handed it to me.
"My mother ran a bawdy house. That's what they called them then. I was raised with working girls. My mother was one herself, before she went into management. You know West Virginia?"
"A little bit. I worked the riverfront once. Both sides. Steubenville in Ohio, Weirton in West Virginia."
"That's the spot. Mama started with a little crib on Water Street, back in the sixties."
I remembered. Only place I'd ever been where you could buy moonshine and heroin on the same block. Made Detroit look like Disneyland.
The red tip of the cigarette pulled highlights from her hair, flowing loose around her shoulders.
"My mother got left with a baby. Pregnant prostitute, you heard all the jokes. That was my sister Violet. She made it by herself, did what she knew how to do."
"You were never…"
Blossom laughed. "I never went to church. Mama wasn't enough of a hypocrite for that. And the kids at school, they knew. I learned how to fight real young. But turn a trick? She would've taken the skin right off my backside. Same for the other girls…the girls in the house, I mean. Some were silly, some were mean. But most, they were real sweet and loving to me, like family. I used to have to take four baths a day, scrub off all that perfume and powder they'd put on me when I was a little girl."
Two girls. How many faces? I turned to her. "And you went to medical school…"
"Yes."
"Those houses were rough joints. How'd your mother keep things quiet?"
"She always had a boyfriend. And we had a manager. House man. He wasn't for the girls, Mama did that. He'd work the door, handle things. She had the same one, J.B., long as I can remember. Boyfriends, they'd come and go, but J.B. was always there."
"Never got busted?"
"Oh, sure. Once in a while. It was never much of anything. Pay a fine, pay the sheriff, Mama said it was all the same. It was a sweet house. Blue light. No rough stuff. You could gamble downstairs, but it was no house game. Just the boys playing cards among themselves. No dice, no wheels. You give a man a card table, some good whiskey, let him smoke his cigars, have some pretty girls walk around in high heels and fishnet stockings, serve the drinks, light their smokes, they'll stay all night. Mama