Sinner's Ball by Ira Berkowitz Read Free Book Online Page B

lingered for a few moments, and then shifted back to me.
    â€œDoing God’s work,” she said.
    I looked around the office.
    â€œHe’s certainly showered his bounty on you.”
    â€œOne thing I learned on the streets. He helps those who help themselves.”
    â€œLooks to me like you helped yourself just fine.”
    â€œAnother Chance is a nonprofit organization. I couldn’t have launched it without financial support from several important people who think the sex trade is an abomination.”
    â€œLike those two worthies outside?”
    â€œYou mean Frank Ennis and John Riley?”
    â€œThe only guys out in your waiting room.”
    â€œThey work for me.”
    â€œDoing what?”
    â€œThis is dangerous work, Steeg. Whenever a girl accepts our help, her life—my life—is in danger from pimps who just lost a source of income.”
    â€œHow many girls do you work with?”
    â€œAnywhere from twenty to thirty at a time. We provide them with safe housing, peer counseling, drug rehab, vocational training, and money to get them started.”
    â€œAnd Ennis and Riley.”
    She gathered the cards together and set them aside.
    â€œSo, the reason for the visit?” she said.
    â€œI’m working a case. Privately. Looking for a prostitute who feels abused enough to commit murder.”
    â€œAnd you came here?”
    â€œJust to develop a few leads. Hoping you might help.”
    She looked down at the deck of cards and then back at me.
    â€œMy job is to protect these girls. And we do that bypromising them confidentiality. Besides, you’re not going to get anywhere with them. Hookers lie.”
    â€œSo you’re saying …?”
    She picked up the deck, fanned it out on the desktop, and examined it closely.
    â€œIt’s not in the cards.”

10
    T he Majestic Hotel was a relic of a time when the Bowery was the last stop on the train ride to perdition. Four stories of misery for folks who dove into the bottle and never came out.
    I could have been one of them. For years I had been riding Johnny Black’s one-trick pony, until it occurred to me it was better to change mounts.
    A small group of the curious and just plain bored clustered behind yellow police tape watching the action. I gave a uniform my name and told him Luce Guidry was expecting me. He disappeared into the hotel. A few minutes later he reappeared and waved me in.
    Luce, along with a bunch of cops and techs trying to look useful, was in what passed for the lobby—a small, dingy space sporting a counter with a Plexiglas partition,ceiling-high gates, and no chairs for the weary. It had the pungent smell of puke and body odor.
    â€œWhat’ve you got?” I said.
    Luce wrinkled her nose and looked around.
    â€œHow do they live like this?” she said.
    â€œNot too many options.”
    â€œCubicles so small they would cramp an elf. Mangy cots filled with mangier people. And vermin for bedmates.”
    She gave a despairing shake of her head.
    â€œSometimes, Jackson, the human condition just gets me down. Anyway, I got something you might be interested in.”
    â€œAnd that would be?”
    â€œAnother stiff,” she said. “Want a peek?”
    I followed her through an opening in the gate and into a rear office. The lower drawer of the room’s lone filing cabinet—about five feet wide and three drawers high—was pulled out. Its original contents had been scattered on the floor and replaced by a body. He looked to be middle-aged. Except for a tonsure of black hair going to gray, he was bald. Large freckles dotted his scalp.
    On the linoleum just under the drawer lay an amoeba-shaped pool of blood.
    â€œHell of a filing system,” I said. “Meticulous to a fault.”
    â€œEven managed to file him under the M’s.”
    â€œAnd why would this gentleman be of interest to me?”
    â€œCould be one of