Spooner reached the corner and waited patiently for the light. He didn’t like going into Tito’s joint himself, but it wasn’t because of Tito. Truth be told, he kind of liked the guy, affectacious little mustache and all. What he didn’t like was sitting there and inhaling all those alcoholic odors. He’d been on the wagon for almost two years now, and it was a powerful temptation whenever he went in the place. Tito understood this, and never offered him anything but club soda, though he politely refused to meet anywhere else.
The light changed, and he crossed the street. Only a few blocks more to go.
Palmieri must have seen him coming, because just before he got to the passenger door he heard the lock click open. He opened the door and clambered in, sitting down heavily on the bucket seat. It would have been more comfortable if it had been just a little bit wider, but that was his fault, not the car’s. After finally successfully giving up on booze, he’d started eating more than was good for him and really packed on the weight. He’d managed to lose some of it over the past few months, but he still had a ways to go. If he didn’t lose another thirty pounds he’d fail the next physical and get reassigned to desk duty. He hated desk duty. There was no chance at all to make a little extra money if you were chained to a desk.
“What did he want?” Palmieri asked as he pulled the door shut. She had a first name, Jessica, but he never called her that and she never called him by his first name, Paul. They were partners, and had been for six months, but they were nothing more than that, and using first names just wasn’t done. At first he’d been apprehensive about her, until he’d discovered that this tall, striking, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman was just as corrupt at heart as he was, and all business all the time.
“He wants us to do a little dirty work for him,” Spooner replied. He passed over the pictures. “Having a little trouble with a business associate. He’d like for us to make her go away.”
Palmieri quickly flipped through the photos. “Pretty woman,” she commented. “What makes him think we can make her go away?”
“I guess he hears things,” Spooner shrugged.
“Right,” Palmieri passed the pictures back. “And what the fuck makes him think we’ll take out his trash for him?”
“It won’t be taking out his trash,” Spooner replied. “He seems to think he’s doing us a favor. According to him, this woman’s the one who’s been rolling rich drunks all over town.”
“Yeah. And you bought that?”
“It’s worth checking out, at least. She doesn’t seem to have anybody who’d really miss her, and she looks pretty enough. We oughta get a nice wad of cash for her.”
“Maybe,” Palmieri relented. “It’s been a while, and Kingston’s been bugging us to get him some new merchandise. We’ll check this bitch out. I’d be interested in seeing what the rest of her looks like. The descriptions we’ve gotten from those rich drunks are all over the place as to height, hair color and eye color, but they all agree that she had really nice tits.”
“And legs,” Spooner added.
“Yeah, that’s right, you’re a leg man, aren’t you, Spooner?”
“I got nothing against nice tits,” he shrugged.
“Well, we’ll find out. You got a name and address?”
“Her full name’s Kristina Lynn Saunders, but she goes by ‘Krissy’. She does some modeling, and works conventions too. Tito gave us her address. She lives in the old Hilltop district.”
“Lots of cheap apartments there,” Palmieri mused. “What kind of modeling does she do?”
“Tito didn’t say, except that she wouldn’t do nudity.”
“Huh. Local advertising, maybe?”
“You’ve seen her pictures. Recognize that face from anywhere?”
“No,” Palmieri admitted. “But who the hell really remembers faces from ads?” She started the minivan. “Well, let’s get back to work. Those whores and pimps aren’t going to arrest themselves.”
They cruised on down to the riverfront. It had decayed almost beyond redemption over the years. Sometime ago, parts of it had started to come back as wealthy young urban professionals began buying up refurbished lofts as cool new places to live, but that recovery had been spotty from the start, and sputtered out as the local economy soured and much of the money dried up. Now you could find upscale lofts, cheap bars, abandoned buildings and empty lots all practically on the same block. There was lots of traffic, even at this hour, people cruising for sex or drugs. It all went on down here because nobody complained. The yuppies stayed barricaded in their lofts at night, calling only if they heard more gunfire than usual, or if a stray round shattered one of their double-glazed windows. The bar owners had some kind of arrangement with the local criminals, and their businesses were safe enough as long as they went to the local bosses with any problems instead of to the cops. Every election, politicians made a big thing about how they were going to clean up the riverfront, loud promises that were quietly forgotten right after all the votes were counted. As Spooner saw it, none of this shit would be going on if there weren’t people willing to pay for it, never mind what the politicians said. As a vice cop, he figured it was his job to keep it all manageable. That was a helluva lot easier than trying to eradicate it, and a lot more profitable. Palmieri felt the same way, but she didn’t like some of the perks as much as he did. Oh, he passed on freebies from the hookers. There were just too many nasty bugs floating around, and getting serviced by one of these street whores was too much like playing Russian Roulette with five bullets in the revolver instead of one. Besides, most of them were pretty unappealing to begin with, all strung out on one drug or another.
There were male hookers down here too. They kept to their own area of a couple of square blocks, which helped customers who might otherwise get confused by some of the crossdressers. Every so often someone did anyway, and then sometimes the cops would get called in on a nasty assault and battery. It was never any of the regular customers who got caught up in that. It was always some green out-of-towner who made the mistake and couldn’t handle the surprise. Then it was all reports and official business that usually ended with the out-of-towner paying off the pimp for the damages in order to keep the mess out of the courts and the papers.