52 pickup

"Nice-looking girl about five-four," Mitchell said. "Blond hair. She was going to school at the time."

"They're all going to school," Leo Frank said. "These are probably the most educated young ladies you've ever met in your life. Pick any one you want."

"Her name's Cynthia Fisher," Mitchell said.

The fat man looked off with a thoughtful expression.

Finally he said, "Yeah, she worked here a while. Quit sometime ago. Couple months at least."

"You haven't seen her since then?"

"Can't help you. They come and they go. They don't leave any forwarding addresses." Leo Frank nodded toward the three girls, lowering his voice. "That Terry there, one in the middle, you want to look at some nice goodies."

Mitchell glanced over at the girls, not wanting to stare at them. "How long she worked here?"

"About a week is all. Her and Mary Lou just started."

"What about the other one there?" Mitchell said.

"Peggy? Yeah, Peggy's been here maybe a couple of months."

"I'll take her."

"Nice goodies," Leo Frank said. "Peggy might have a little extra going, if you know what I mean."

Mitchell paid the fifteen dollars and walked over to the girl, not looking at the other two. All three of them were watching him now. He said, "Peggy?" The girl took her time getting up. Mitchell waited. She walked past him toward the hallway. Mitchell followed, feeling his age and the two girls watching him.

Leo Frank swiveled around in his chair, putting his back to the two girls across the room. He picked up the telephone and dialed a number. When a voice answered, Leo Frank said, "He's here… Who the fuck do you think I mean? The guy. He's here."

The girl stared directly at Mitchell as she unbuttoned her shirt and took it off. For several moments she stood there, bare to the waist, before she said, "You don't happen to be a cop, do you?"

Mitchell said, "I thought it was legal."

"It is," the girl said. "I was just wondering."

"Do I look like a cop?" He was thinking that probably he did. On the force twenty years. The vice squad.

She said, "You can't tell anymore," unzipping her slacks now and stepping out of them. She wore bikini panties. "Some of them, vice and narcos, they got long hair, mustaches, even beards. There ought to be a law they have to wear their uniforms at all times."

"I'm not a cop," Mitchell said. "I just like to look at bare-naked ladies."

"That's all you do, just look?"

"That's what the sign says."

"Would you be interested in something else?" She hooked her thumbs in the panties, like a cowboy, giving him a hip-cocked pose. "Well, would you? I'm not going to come out and say it, that's called soliciting. But I imagine you get the general idea."

"Do all the girls who work here, are they all… pros?"

"Shit, you're not a cop," the girl said, "you're a newspaper reporter. How'd you get into this? How much you make? Does your mother know you ball? Cop, you know where you stand. Newspaper reporter, he's got a dirty mind, wants you to say dirty things he can't write in the paper anyway. No, I'm sorry, I'm not answering any questions at all today about anything."

"I'm not a cop," Mitchell said. "I'm not a newspaper reporter. I just want to ask you if you know somebody. Girl used to work here, her name's Cini, Cynthia. Do you know her? It's a personal matter. I'd like to get in touch with her but I don't know where she lives anymore. She moved."

The girl hesitated. "You know where she used to live?"

"Apartment by Palmer Park. On Merrill."

The girl said, still cautious, "She moved from there months ago."

"I know she did." Mitchell waited.

"She was going to school," the girl said. "I think Wayne."

"Not anymore," Mitchell said. "I called. She hasn't been to class in over a week."

"Well, you know more about her than I do," the girl said. "I never saw her much. I didn't even know she quit school."

Mitchell was silent, thoughtful for a moment, before he said, "Well, thanks anyway," and started for the door.

The girl said, surprised, "Hey, don't you want to see my thing?"

Leo Frank waited until Mitchell was outside before he swiveled his back to the girls for the second time and picked up the phone. When the voice came on he said, "He just left… No, he was asking about Cini… What do you think I told him for Christ sake?… Yeah, he went in a room, but the broad didn't know shit… Right, I'll see you. Let me know."

Alan Raimy put down the phone and came out of the cramped, cluttered, one-desk office in the lobby of the Imperial Art Theater; "Adult features-continuous 10 a.m. to 10 p.m." He took time to check the house again, counting one, two… six, nine, twelve, sixteen, a couple guys over in the corner, maybe a couple more down low in the dark, somewhere in the rows of nearly empty seats. He could hear the projector throwing black-and-white images on the screen that were fuzzy, out of focus. The steam room scene. The stud is sitting there. The chick comes in. Oh, she says, isn't this the ladies' bath? The stud stands up. Her eyes lower and widen and there's the close-up of her reaction. Holy shit, mom. The twenty or so guys in the audience who have paid five each would see the stud and the chick on the massage table in about four minutes, then the group thing in the whirlpool bath shortly after. Same old shit. Slower than usual and enough out of focus to be a

Alan Raimy didn't own the theater, he was the manager. The owner lived in Deerfield Beach, Florida, and stayed down there from November through May; so Alan booked the features and took enough off the top to make the extra work more than pay for itself. A hundred guys come in today, only pass out tickets to half of them. It was easy to rake it off a dumb shit who lived in Deerfield Beach seven months of the year. The nice part, Alan got to see all the movies at the screenings. Alan dug movies. He was going to make one himself sometime: a good hard-core porno, but done well, with style; not just a dirty movie, a dirty film.

He went out through the lobby to the street and began walking south along Woodward Avenue, hands in his hip-huggers, bony shoulders hunched against the damp cold, dark hair curling over the collar of his safari jacket: young guy going nowhere in particular, in no hurry, looking at the storefronts and the cars going by-until he saw Mitchell on the corner.

When the light changed Mitchell started across Woodward. He was on the other side by the time Alan reached the corner.

The pedestrian warning light flashed wait. Alan fixed his gaze on it and was in the middle of the six-lane avenue when the light turned from red to green for the northbound traffic. He kept walking. A horn blasted close to him, to his right. Alan didn't look over until the driver yelled, "You idiot, you want to get killed?"

The front three cars were waiting for him to pass. Alan walked over to the middle car, where the guy who had yelled at him was looking out the side window, ugly-looking middle-aged guy wearing a white hardhat.

Alan said to the guy, pleasantly, "Hey, sport. Fuck off," and kept walking. The guy wasn't going to get out, not with all the traffic behind him. Alan threaded his way through the waiting cars and got to the sidewalk in time to see Mitchell going into the Kit Kat Bar.

It was the place where he had met her and first talked to her, after Ross had realized he wasn't getting anywhere and had switched over to her friend, Do

There were three men at the bar and another half-dozen, including two women, sitting alone, at the tables closer to the oval stage where the ski