City Limits. Will Oursler
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carry a rose in my teeth,” I said. “See you in two minutes.”
The hotel bar was crowded, but I picked her out at once. She was a slim, delicate-featured blonde in a light green-and-white summer print. She was somewhere in her mid-twenties, but the stiff, school-girl way she perched on her bar stool, as though she wasn’t used to sitting at bars, made her seem even younger. Her upswept hair-do gave her the fresh, innocent look of a sub-deb. In her lap she held one of those huge, cone-shaped bags which close by a drawstring, the kind women carry when they are carting around too much stuff for a purse to hold but not enough to require a suitcase. It was of the same material and design as her dress.
Stopping behind her, I said, “Hello, Penny.”
She turned slowly, almost with reluctance, as though bracing herself for a plunge. I suppose when a girl sells herself sight unseen, she goes through a little mental: turmoil wondering what she’s sold herself to.
After looking me over, her expression turned relieved. She smiled approvingly, exposing small, perfect teeth.
“I don’t see the rose,” she said.
“The sight of you so overwhelmed me, I swallowed it,” I said. “Shall we take a booth?”
Obediently she slipped from her stool, and I led her to a booth in a corner of the room. I ordered drinks, then we just sat there smilingly examining each other until the waiter brought them and went away again.
“I’m a little surprised,” I said finally. “I didn’t expect such young innocence. Sure you’re old enough to be in the business you are?”
She flushed. A little defensively she said, “Did you expect something hard-boiled? You can get that for a lot less than two hundred dollars.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “I almost forgot that part.” Reaching in my pocket, I pulled out the four fifties I had already folded together and casually dropped my hand on the table, my palm covering all but a corner of the folded bills. “Just pretend to squeeze my hand and nobody will see the transfer.”
She flushed even deeper. “I didn’t mean it like that. I wasn’t dunning you.”
She was surprising me more by the minute. I said, “Sorry I injected such a harsh commercial note, but isn’t it the custom to pay in advance?”
She looked as though she was going to cry.
I changed my tone. “I really am sorry,” I said sincerely. “I’m not trying to make you feel like a tramp. But there is a business deal that has to be settled sometime. I’d just as soon get it over with, so we can start from scratch. Unless you want to make it a free weekend and pay your employer’s cut out of your own pocket.”
Her eyes touched mine, then dropped to the table. “You know I can’t do that,” she said in a low voice. “It’s just that I hate this part. I—I guess I’m not very good at this business yet.”
Tired of holding my hand in the center of the table, I lifted one of hers with my free hand, pressed the bills into her palm and held her hand in both of mine for a moment. Any nearby observers would probably have thought I was proposing. Not necessarily proposing marriage, but proposing something.
When I released her hand, she dropped it into her lap. I heard the slithering noise the drawstrings of her bag made as she pulled open its mouth and then drew it shut again. Her eyes avoided mine.
“What did you mean by ‘yet’?” I asked. “How long have you been in the business?”
“You’re only my third customer. My fourth, really, except I wouldn’t take one. Mr. Smith was awfully mad. That’s my boss, Mr. Smith. He said if I ever turned down another customer when I went out on a call, he’d—well, he said not to do it. I was so glad when I saw you. I almost get sick wondering what a man will be like.”
“I suppose it is like playing grab-bag,” I said. “What was the matter with the customer you turned down?”
“He was—well, greasy-looking. I just couldn’t go with him.”
“Why do you stay in the business if you’re so squeamish?”
“How else could I earn two hundred dollars every weekend? A hundred and fifty, rathei, after Mr. Smith’s fee.”
“Couldn’t you live on less?” I asked dryly.
Her chin went up and she looked at me levelly. “I do live on less. Weekdays you’ll find me modeling dresses at Stoyle’s Department Store. I only do this weekends. And every cent I make from it goes to my sister in California.”
I looked at her blankly. “You mean you do this solely to support a sister?”
“Not support,” she said. “Anita broke her back in an auto accident three years ago. She’s completely paralyzed, and she’s been in and out of hospitals ever since, having one operation after another by high-priced specialists. Her hospitalization insurance ran out long ago. She has four children, and her husband has mortgaged everything he owns to pay bills. She needs one final operation to make her walk again, but they’ve reached the absolute end of their rope. If I don’t send the money, she won’t have it.”
I never met a prostitute who didn’t have some heartrending excuse for being in the business. One of the standard ones is needing money for an operation, usually on a poor old mother.
Penny Coynes’ story had the ring of truth, though. You could question her judgment in selling her body to aid a sister, for it was hardly the sort of sacrifice the average woman would even consider, regardless of the urgency of the situation. But I didn’t question her sincerity.
I’m not a sucker for sob stories. As an assistant D.A. I’ve heard too many. I even once had an axe murderer try to work me into sympathetic understanding of why he was driven to his crime. I’ve also heard enough to spot the phony ones.
I believed Penny Coynes’ story.
She gave a little forced laugh. “That’s a fine way to give you your money’s worth. Telling you my troubles. You’ve paid for a good time, and you’re going to get it. How are we going to spend the weekend?”
I looked at her and raised an eyebrow and she blushed. “Well, that I know,” she said. “Is that all you want to do? You want to take me up to your room now?”
She was making an heroic attempt to give me my money’s worth, all right. I’d paid the fee, so she was mine for the weekend, to do with as I pleased. But it took effort for her to be matter-of-fact about it. She wasn’t exactly scared. By her own admission I was at least her third customer, so she couldn’t have been. But she was at least self-conscious. I suppose some women could never get used to selling themselves, even after the thousandth time.
I said, “We have the whole weekend. How about another drink now?”
We had three, and she was becoming a little tipsy by the time the third was down. It didn’t detract from her, though. It only made her cuter. She began to sparkle like a diamond bracelet.
Then, just as we were getting really chummy, a shadow loomed over us and a reserved voice said, “Evening, Mike. I didn’t know the Graham was one of your hangouts.”
We both looked up, and my heart sank when I recognized the round, pink-and-white face of Lieutenant Stan Spooner. He was looking curiously at Penny Coynes.
There wasn’t anything I could do except introduce him. I mumbled, “Stan Spooner,” deliberately leaving out his title, then nodded toward Penny and said, “Miss Coynes, Stan.”
He said he was glad to meet her, in his quietly pleasant way, and refused my reluctant offer to buy him a drink with the remark that he didn’t want to intrude. I thought he was going to move on without giving me away, when he spoiled everything.
He said to Penny, “Hope you and Mr. Macauley have a pleasant evening, Miss Coynes.”
That