Johnny Porno

Chapter 22

“He did what?” Louis asked.

He had answered the phone in a daze and wasn’t sure he had heard Holly right. Something about a guy exposing himself and then going to her dorm. Louis looked at his watch and saw it was two o’clock in the morning.

Now she was crying.

“What happened?” he said. “Calm down and tell me from the beginning.”

Holly told him what had happened and that she didn’t know what to do. She admitted to being infatuated with her professor, but she had been conflicted about having sex with him so long as she was still attending one of his classes.

“In other words, if you weren’t in his class you would’ve banged him,” Louis said. “Very nice.”

“I’m trying to be honest,” she said. “Yes, I think so. But then he did that, held himself like that in his kitchen… and what he said to me… now I don’t know what to do.”

She was sniffling again. Louis saw an opening and took it. “And now you come to me for advice. The student comes to the window cleaner because her professor turns out to be like most men, just interested in a piece of ass.”

“Don’t say that. I feel bad enough.”

“You’re a smart girl, Holly. Probably a lot smarter than I’ll ever be, but sometimes you’re naïve to no end. Your professor isn’t interested in you the way you’d like to think. He’s interesting in getting laid.”

Holly was crying again.

“Hey, it’s your life,” he said. “You’re the one has to make the decisions.”

“I can’t turn him in,” she said. “I can’t do that. I was just as responsible as he was.”

“Because you’re pretty and he couldn’t control himself?”

“Because I’m at fault, too. I wanted to be there. I went about it the wrong way, but it’s just as much my fault. He could lose his tenure.”

Louis grinned on his end of the phone. “And now it doesn’t even bother you to hurt me, telling me all this. Thanks a lot. It’s the first time you’ve called me in a few days, you didn’t bother returning my calls and now you tell me how you wanted to screw some other guy. Great. Thanks, Holly. Sleep tight.”

He hung up the phone and looked at the television. The credits were rolling from the Hercules movie he’d been watching earlier. The phone rang again. He let it ring a few times before deciding to answer.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” Holly said.

“Yeah, well, why the hell you calling me anyway?”

“I’m sorry,” Holly said. “I’m so sorry.”

She sobbed some more before she was able to control herself.

“I feel like an idiot,” she said.

“You’re not an idiot. You’re young is all.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you, Louis. I am.”

“You’re damn straight I’m hurt,” he said with a smirk on his face.

“I’m a dope.”

“You really want my advice?”

“Yes. I do. Please.”

“Don’t file charges. Don’t go to his boss. Let the guy wiggle. I’m sure he’s all fucked up about it anyway.”

“He’s been trying to talk to me all day.”

“He’s probably afraid he lost his job.”

“I can’t do that. I wouldn’t.”

“It’d be just as bad for you if you did. There’s that to consider. He can’t see that, though. He’s probably scared shitless. Not that he shouldn’t be, the fucking pervert.”

“I wish I hadn’t gone there.”

“Here I am fighting your war against porn and you go and watch one with your professor. How’s that for ironic?”

“It wasn’t porn, Louis. Last Tango isn’t porn.”

“Except it gave your professor a hard-on he couldn’t control.”

He faced the mirror over his dresser, curled his free hand and stroked the air with it. “I’ll bet he’s nailed a couple dozen kids from his classes. How old you say he was?”

“I didn’t say. He’s in his forties, maybe fifty.”

“And you like him. Enough so you would’ve slept with him.”

“I don’t know anymore,” she said. “The way he looked, what he said. I don’t know.”

“Well, there’s not much I can do,” Louis said. “And I have to get some sleep. I have things to do tomorrow and Sunday that require I’m alert.”

“Can I see you?”

“Why, so you can cry about your professor some more? No thanks.”

“Please, Louis.”

“I don’t have time. Not this weekend.”

“I can help you.”

“I don’t see how. Not while you’re all broken up over your perverted professor.”

“Please?”

Louis didn’t answer.

“Please, Louis?”

“I don’t know,” he said dismissively. “Let me think about it. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Will you?”

“I’ll call. I’m not making any guarantees, though.”

“I don’t want to be here this weekend. Not at the dorm.”

“You come here, you’ll be alone most the weekend anyway. I have that thing to do.”

“I don’t care. I just don’t want to be here.”

“I’ll let you know in the morning.”

“Promise you’ll call.”

“Hey, I’m not the one ignores phone calls.”

“I’m sorry about that. Please call me.”

“I’ll see. Good night, Holly.”

“Good night.”

He hung up, turned to the mirror and mimicked Holly’s pleading. “‘Promise you’ll call,’” he said. “‘Please, Louis.’”

The phone rang again. He knew it was Holly. He picked it up without answering.

“I still care about you,” she said. “I want you to know that.”

He hung up again.

“Where do they grow people that stupid?” he asked his reflection.

Special Agent Stebenow was wearing gym shorts, a Miami Dolphins T-shirt and carrying his sneakers in one hand as he crossed the sand toward the water’s edge. He had been following Bridget Malone since she left the apartment above Fast Eddie’s a few hours ago. Twenty minutes earlier Bridget and two girlfriends she met in Park Slope had spread a towel on the sand near the water. A few minutes later the girlfriends left Bridget to join a group of young couples sitting around a small fire near the fishing dock. Stebenow watched as Bridget stripped out of her clothes and couldn’t tell if she was wearing a bikini or her underwear when she ran off toward the surf.

There was a full moon. Stebenow noticed at least two other couples on blankets close to the water as he made his way from the boardwalk to the surf. The sand was cool against his feet.

He could see Bridget body surfing toward the shore when he made it to her blanket. He observed how neatly the blanket had been spread on the sand and how a towel was folded under a small radio. A pair of cut-off shorts and a sweatshirt lay on the towel alongside a beach bag.

Stebenow looked up and saw Bridget trying to balance herself against the tug of the receding water around her feet. She stepped out of the surf and jogged a few feet before she saw him. She smiled as she drew closer. He could see through her white panties and bra. When he spotted her triangle of dark pubic hair, he turned away.

“Agent Stebenow?” Bridget said. “I almost didn’t recognize you without your sunglasses.”

“It’s too dark for those now,” he said. “Speaking of which, isn’t it a little dangerous swimming this late?”

He grabbed the towel from the beach bag and held it out to her without looking.

“Dangerous how?” she said. “You mean sharks or black men?”

Stebenow pointed at her face. “That’s a nasty bruise.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes Eddie can get nasty.”

“You okay?”

“You really care?”

“Yes.”

“Can I take that for a sexual advance?”

“No.”

“Because I’m white?”

“No, because I’m married.”

“Separated.”

“I’m not divorced.”

Bridget finished drying her legs and stepped inside the cut-off shorts.

“Did you get it on tape?” Stebenow asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I wasn’t expecting it,” Bridget said. She removed her bra and Stebenow turned away again. “The tape was full from the night before. I didn’t get a chance to change it. I’d look a lot worse if he caught me doing that.”

“You don’t have to take being hit.”

Bridget pulled the sweatshirt over her head. “And here I thought you’d appreciate the extra drama.”

“We want to put him away. Nobody wants to see anything happen to you.”

“I might believe you, but I know that prosecutor could care less. He’d be fine if I were killed so long as it was on tape.”

Stebenow read the script on the sweatshirt. “Mrs. Jay’s Beer Garden.”

“In Asbury Park. I went there to see a friend play drums. He’s in a new band.”

“Somebody your own age?”

“That bothers you, huh, Eddie and me?”

“On so many levels you can’t imagine.”

“You could always save me from him. It be a first for me, a black man. How ‘bout you? Ever been with a white girl before?”

Stebenow ignored the question. “Can you take a walk?”

Bridget squatted down over the beach bag. She pulled a cassette from a pocket inside the bag and held it out.

“Don’t you want this first?”

Stebenow pocketed the tape. “I wish you were a little more careful,” he said.

Bridget giggled, waved to her friends and then yelled she’d be right back. She followed Stebenow to the boardwalk, across it and down the ramp to the sidewalk and his car. He unlocked her door and held it open.

“Thank you,” she said before getting in.

He walked around the back of the car and could see she had turned the rearview mirror to look at herself. He got in and waited until she was finished before readjusting the mirror.

“You need to keep a fresh tape in the recorder,” he told her. “Just in case he does something like that again.”

She took his right hand and held it against her bruised cheek.

He looked away from her. “Does it hurt?”

“I think you could make it better,” she said.

She moved his hand across her mouth and kissed it.

Stebenow slowly pulled his hand away.

“I wouldn’t tell if you wanted to have sex with me,” Bridget said. “I’m of age. It would be of my own free will.”

“I’m married, Bridget.”

“Yeah, so?”

Stebenow opened his window.

“You’re too much,” Bridget said. “You’re like the one square cop I ever met.”

“You meet many cops, do you?”

“That one visited Eddie would’ve pushed my head into his lap already, we were ever this close.”

“Which one was that?”

“I don’t know his name. Eddie calls him Mr. Horse. I’m supposed to believe he’s a bookie but I know he’s not.”

“And how’s that?”

“Red hair, freckles? He isn’t an Irish cop, I’m a nun.”

“Kelly,” Stebenow said. “He is a cop, so be careful. Be extra careful. He might be watching you for Eddie.”

“You know that, why don’t you bust him?”

“He’s peripheral to the investigation. He’ll go down when the time comes, but he’s not our focus. Eddie is.”

“Well, he showed up the other night while I was on my way home, the Irish cop. He let me borrow his hanky.”

Stebenow lit a cigarette. “What was that about?”

“I was bleeding from the nose.”

“Snorting?”

“Once in a while your nose bleeds. It’s no big deal.”

“Aside from the fact, like I said, he might’ve been tailing you, there are health issues like ruining your nasal passages.”

“I’m not an addict, what Eddie thinks.”

“You’re bleeding from the nose you’re well on your way.”

She reached for his cigarette. He let her take it from his mouth. She took a long drag.

“This porn thing isn’t working,” she said. “It repulses him when I talk about it and he isn’t going to tell me any names besides the one he already did. That Rothenburg guy.”

“That name helped,” Stebenow said.

“Well, he isn’t going any further than that. I keep pushing him, but this is what I got, a slap across the face.”

“If you could get him on tape with Kelly, Mr. Horse, that might bring this to a close a lot sooner.”

“The guy came over out of the blue the other day. Eddie never mentioned him to me.”

“My point being, if the tapes are always fresh, you have the thing ready… he might’ve said something the other day you didn’t hear.”

“That’s a lot more dangerous than you think,” Bridget said.

“I understand that.”

“I don’t think you do.”

“You going back tonight?”

“It’s where I live,” Bridget said. “So long as he pays the rent, it’s where I live.”

She had an edge to her voice. He apologized about pushing her with the tapes, then added, “It’s just the sooner we have something concrete, the sooner you’re off the hook. I’d like to see that, believe it or not, you being out of this.”

She had been snagged in a heroin deal two years earlier and had agreed to testify against her former boyfriend to avoid a prison sentence. When her boyfriend died in jail, Bridget was forced into a deal with the government gathering evidence against her boss, Eddie Vento.

“He plays cards tonight,” she said. “If he doesn’t go straight home, he’ll be back around six. He’ll be drunk and horny, but that’s good for you because it’s the only time he name drops, when he’s drunk. He’ll want me to talk dirty to him, too, in case they haven’t let you listen to the tapes yet.”

“I’m sorry,” Stebenow said. “I mean it.”

“Right,” she said.

She went to get out of the car and Stebenow stopped her.

“What?” she said.

He pulled his wallet from his back pocket, fingered a ten out and handed it to her.

“Sure you don’t want a blow job?” she asked with venom.

“Be careful,” he told her.

Bridget forced a phony grin, lost it just as fast and then got out of the car. Stebenow watched her walk back up the ramp toward the boardwalk. He waited a full minute after she disappeared before driving off.