Taming a Sea Horse

15

The sky over Portland is like the sky above San Francisco, unusually blue and high, suggestive of the ocean that surrounds the city on most sides. The buildings were low and that emphasized the high of the sky and the silent presence of the ocean.

I parked along the restored waterfront on Commercial Street and walked up through the Old Port Exchange area to Congress Street. The Old Port Exchange was urban renewal at its chichiest. The nineteenth-century granite buildings restored and full of restaurants and dress shops and places with names like The Elegant Elephant. The people walking about in the area could have been from Boston or Chicago. It was startling when they spoke in the Titus Moody accent that had persisted even here among the bleached oak and hanging plants.

I passed a shop called Gazelle, and a bookstore that displayed the complete works of Thomas Merton in the window, and turned east on Congress Street. The Holiday Inn where I'd spent the night had a map of downtown Portland in its lobby and I had spent a minute in front of it after breakfast. Like Boston, Portland was a red-brick city. There were occasional granite and brownstone buildings and the usual ugly newer ones, but mostly it was red brick. Past Franklin Street, at the east end of Portland, the Magic Massage Parlor, Massages by Women, stood across the street from a store that sold scuba gear.

The storefront display windows were discreetly curtained on the first floor, but a small card in the lower left-hand corner of the biggest window said OPEN. I crossed the street and leaned against the front wall of the dive shop and scoped things out.

Magic Massage was in a three-story brick building. In addition to the massage parlor entrance there was another door. A sign in gilt lettering on the door said LONGFELLOW HOUSE, ROOMS. The two floors above the massage parlor had small balconies. The trim was neatly painted white. The neighborhood was good, the place was neat. Looked like a better deal than Lindell. A brown Chevy van went by with a couple of Cumberland County sheriffs deputies in it. They paid no attention to me or Magic Massage. I shifted position a little and felt the stiffness from yesterday's fight. I looked at myself in the window'of the dive shop. The left side of my face was puffy. I hadn't shaved this morning to spare the puffiness and I had a small dark stubble beginning to show. I looked sort of sinister.

Across the street a customer appeared at Magic Massage. He had a crew cut. He wore a red-and-white-striped short-sleeved knit shirt that was stretched tight over his bulging stomach. He had on new jeans with the bottoms rolled a couple of turns to feature his new shiny brown shoes with three lace-eyelets and thick soles. Nineteen fifty-two grown old. He opened the door with the confidence of an old customer and went in and closed it behind him.

I flexed my hands. They were sore and stiff and the knuckles were swollen. Maybe I should rely more on sweet reason.

I crossed Congress Street again and went in the door of Magic Massage. A small sticker above the doorknob said that MasterCard and Visa were welcome. Inside there was a short high counter to the right. A middle-aged woman with purplish red hair sat behind it. There was a cash register on the counter, and a phone, and one of those little devices that take a credit card imprint. The room was small. Against the far wall was a sofa covered in tan Naugahyde. The arms and legs were dark oak. There were two matching chairs against the left wall and a low coffee table with an assortment of magazines. In the angle of the wall opposite the counter a small color television set was showing a talk show in which the host and audience were debating sex-change operations with an intensity that suggested almost everyone might have one.

Leaning against the end of the counter was a tall guy wearing a beige gaberdine suit and black cowboy boots. He had on a white shirt and wore one of those odd little shoestring pieces of neckware fastened at the throat with a silver clasp. On his head was a big black cowboy hat with the brim turned down all the way. His face was thin and he had a long pointy nose and prominent upper teeth and a large Adam's apple. His hands were big and the knuckles were outsized. He wore a big ring with a blue stone in it on his little finger, left hand. There was a thin, jagged-looking scar along his jawline almost back to his left ear that looked as if someone had tried to cut his throat with a broken bottle five or ten years ago and made the swipe too high.

The woman said, "A nice massage today, sir?" She had on a red blouse and wore big round rose-tinted glasses with blue frames, the kind where the bows come off the bottom instead of the top.

I said, "This is sort of embarrassing, but may I speak to the manager?"

The tall guy in the cowboy hat said, "What do you want to see the manager about?" He was looking very hard at me. Hard enough to notice that someone had whacked me recently along the side of the head. He seemed like a man who noticed such things.

"I'd like to ask about a young woman," I said, "used to work here."

"You ain't a cop," he said.

"I'm too polite," I said.

"Un huh."

"-I'm working on a thing in New York," I said. "No problem for you."

"Private cop," he said.

"Yes."

"There a reward?"

"No," I said, "except I go away and don't annoy you."

He nodded. "What's her name?" he said.

"You the manager?" I said.

He grinned. His bottom teeth were missing in front. "I represent the manager," he said. "What's her name?"

"Ginger Buckey."

A guy in a gray plaid suit came in. He looked at us uneasily. The tall guy gestured with his head and we walked over to a door beyond the sofa. Behind me I heard the lady with the purplish red hair say, "A nice massage today?"

We went through the door and into a corridor. There was a stairwell up the right wall. The tall guy opened one of the doors. It was a small room like the examining room at a doctor's office. The walls were narrow vertical planking painted green. There was a table covered with a white sheet, a straight chair, and a small side table with baby oil and lilac water and a small pile of towels on it. The tall guy closed the door and leaned against it.

"Customers get sort of nervous they see a guy looks like you hanging around in the reception area."

"Afraid I'm a cop?"

"Well, you got the look, 'cept you're so polite."

"Nothing wrong with a good massage," I said. "No law against that."

"Sure, what do you want to know about Ginger Buckey?"

"Where she went from here," I said.

"Beats me," he said.

"Her father brought her to you," I said, "and you gave him a finder's fee. Now that may be doing business just like U.S. Steel does business, but it might be white slavery."

"And if it was?"

"If it was, or if it looked like it was, I bet I could get the cops and Cumberland County and maybe the U.S. Attorney's office interested enough in whether it was white slavery or not to make a genuine economic impact on the business here."

"Maybe you'd end up feeding lobsters in Casco Bay, you did that," he said.

"Tough talk for a guy wearing a shoestring for a tie," I said. "I'm already the toughest guy in Lindell."

"Where the fuck is Lindell?" he said.

"It's where Ginger came from. Why do this hard? You tell me where she went from here and I go away and leave you to massage your way to health and fortune, maybe even get yourself a lower plate. You don't, and either you've got to put me in the bay, which I don't think you can do, or have me accusing you of trafficking in children. The Press Herald will be on your ass, and the cops. It'll be awful."

He was wearing a gun under his left arm. You can wear a gun without it showing, but some guys want it to show, and some guys don't care.

"You don't think I can handle you," he said.

"If I thought you could, would I still be here annoying you?"

He put his left hand into his side pocket and came out with a pair of brass knuckles. He put them on his right hand and moved it in a little circle at waist level and said, "Now what do you think?"

I sighed. "I think it's been a hard year," I said. "And I'm tired. And I think you are dumb as hell to put those things on your right hand, which means it will take you an hour and ten minutes to get your gun out from under your left arm, whereas I…" I took the gun off my hip and showed it to him without really pointing it. He looked at the gun. His right fist stopped moving in a circle.

I said, "Sort of embarrassing, huh?"

He let his fist drop to his side. "Now what?" he said.

"I don't feel like shooting you," I said. "I don't feel like taking your brass knuckles away and knocking you down and kicking out the rest of your teeth. All I want is to leave you in peace and good health and go see the people that Ginger Buckey left you for."

"I'll get in trouble," he said.

"They won't know," I said.

"How do I know you won't tell them?"

"Because I said I wouldn't."

"And if I don't tell you?"

"I blow the whistle on this place so loud that the people you're bribing won't be able to help, and the ownership will get in trouble and be mad as hell at you."

"For crissake, man, she was already a pro when we got her."

"She was fourteen," I said. "White slavery, babe. Film at eleven."

"I passed her on to a guy from Boston," he said.

"Who?"

"Guy named Art Floyd."

"And what did he do with her?" I was still holding the gun in a sort of random way, not exactly pointing but not really hanging at my side either.

"How the fuck do I know, man. Probably put her in a house up there. You think we had a long talk about it?"

"Did Ginger want to go?"

The tall guy laughed. "Something else we didn't have a long talk about."

"Finder's fee," I said.

"Sure," he said. "She's product, man. You know? You raise cattle, you give the cows away?"

"So you sold her to a guy from Boston named Art Floyd."

"Yeah."

"Okay," I said. "I'll see if I can locate Art. If I can't I'll come back."

"Hey, man, he said he was from Boston. What can I tell you?"

I nodded. "Give me your gun," I said. I leveled my gun as he took his knuckles off and put them in his pocket again and took a Browning automatic out of his shoulder holster and handed it to me.

"Cost me $475," he said.

"I'll give it to you outside," I said. "I just don't want you shooting me while I walk away."

"I wouldn't backshoot you, man."

"Course you wouldn't," I said, and went out of the room and through the reception area. The tall guy followed me. The threat of him was gone. He wanted his gun back. I got in my car and opened the window. I took the clip out of the gun and checked the action once to make sure there was nothing in the chamber. I thumbed the bullets out of the clip. Put the clip back in the gun and handed it to him.

"You gonna keep the bullets?" he said.

"Oh, hell," I said, and put my hand out. He cupped his hand and I let the bullets fall into it.

"You won't tell Floyd, will you?" he said.

"No," I said, "I won't."