The Girl From Nowhere by Christopher Finch

Author:Christopher Finch
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2014-07-20T23:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

When I got back to 12th Street, Sandy was in her underwear, ironing a skirt.

“Do you need anything ironed?” she asked.

“Only my libido.”

I told her to put on a robe. She looked hurt.

“I was here alone—I didn’t think it was a big deal. Are you mad at me?”

“For Christ’s sake, put on the fucking robe,” I told her. “You look too fucking available and your boss just warned me that I had better not get fresh with you or he will personally lop my balls off.”

Sandy’s eyes widened and her mouth opened as if she was waiting for someone to pop a goldfish into it. Then she put down the iron and hugged me. This girl had learned everything she knew about compassion from the Marquis de Sade.

“Joey didn’t really say that, did he?” she asked.

“He said that there’s a line I’d better not cross. That was why he wanted to see me—to tell me that.”

She didn’t respond.

“What’s the fucking story?” I asked. “Not that it’s any business of mine, but you take your clothes off for a living, and now I have your boss telling me to treat you like a virgin. And he’s not the first one. You’re not a virgin, are you?”

“I lost my virginity,” she said, “very brutally and a long time ago.”

I wanted to pursue that, but sensed it wasn’t the right moment. She picked up my robe from a chair and pulled it on. That’s when I hit her with the question that had been burning me up since I left the Alibi.

“How well did you know Paul Drexler?”

Her face reddened and she pressed her lips together.

“What do you mean?”

“Until recently, Paul Drexler—last seen hanging by the neck from the ceiling in your sublet—was employed as a lighting designer at the Alibi. He also put in some time at Aladdin’s Alley in Florida, possibly while you were down there. Seems he upset some of the girls by playing Peeping Tom and becoming intimate with their underwear—yours included, probably—so he was fired. It would be strange if you didn’t know the guy.”

“Paulie?”

“Yes, Paulie, who I found dead in your apartment and who had been following you home and waving his dick at you—the lowlife whose identity you more than once denied all knowledge of. How well did you know him?”

She burst into tears.

“Paulie’s dead,” she sobbed.

I wanted to shake her, but instead I waited till she calmed down and then posed the question again.

“I didn’t want to tell you,” she said. “I wanted to protect you. I knew if you found out who Paulie was it would drag you into Joey Garofolo’s world, and that’s a dangerous place to be.”

“So how was I supposed to help you if you were withholding incidental little tidbits of information like that? If you weren’t going to let me in on that stuff, why tell me about Drexler at all?”

“He was freaking me out. I had to tell someone about it, but I was afraid if I told you I knew who the guy was, then you’d hurt him or something.

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