Nice Jewish girl, no less, Yolande thought, but did not say it because she couldn't bear seeing a grown man cry. A nice Jewish girl like you?
Giving blow jobs to passing motorists at fifty bucks a throw. A Jewish girl? Suck your what? She almost smiled.
"So what are you then?" Liebowitz asked. "A dancer?"
"Yeah," she said, "how'd you guess?"
"Pretty girl like you, this hour of the night, I'm a dancer in one of the topless bars."
"Yeah, you hit it right on the head."
"I'm not a mind reader," Liebowitz said, chuckling. "You were standing in front of the Stardust when you hailed me."
Which was where she'd given some guy from Connecticut a twenty-dollar hand job while the girts onstage rattled and rolled.
"Yep," she said.
Tipped the manager two bills a night to let her freelance in the joint.
Pissed the regulars workin there, but gee, tough shit, honey.
"So where you from originally?" Liebowitz asked. unlo, she said.
"I knew it wasn't here. You don't have the accent." She almost told him her father owned a deli in Cleveland. She didn't. She almost told him she had once been to Paris, France. She didn't. Yolande Marie was her mother's idea. Yolande Marie Marx, Known in the trade as Groucho, just kidding. known in the trade as Marie St. Claire, which Jamal had come up with, lot of difference it made to the johns on wheels. My name is Marie St. Claire, case you're interested. Nice to meet you, Marie, take it deeper.
She had nightmares about a john pulling up in a blue station wagon and she leans in the window and "Hey, hiya. Wanna party?" and she gets in the car and unzips his fly and it's her father. Dreamt that on average twice a week. Woke up in a cold sweat every time. Dear Dad, I am still working here in the toy shop, it's a shame you never get out of Cleveland now that Mom's bedridden, maybe I'll be home for Yom Kippur. Sure. Take it deeper, hon.
"So do you have to do anything else at that bar?"
"How do you mean?"
"You know," Liebowitz said, and looked at her in the rearview mirror.
"Besides dancing?"
She looked back at him. He had to be sixty years old, short bald-headed little fart could hardly see over the steering wheel.
Hitting on her. Next thing you knew he'd offer to barter. Fare on the meter was now six dollars and thirty cents. He'd agree to swap it for a quickie in the backseat. Nice Jewish man. Unzip his fly, out would pop her father. "So do you?"
"Do what?"
"Other things beside dancing topless."
"Yeah, I also sing topless," she said.
"Go on, they don't sing in those places."
"I do."
"You're kidding me."
"No, no. You want to hear me sing, Max?"
"Nah, you don't sing."
"I sing like a bird," Yolande said, but did not demonstrate. Liebowitz was thinking this over, trying to determine whether or not she was putting him on.
"What else do you really do?" he asked. "Besides sing and dance?
Topless."
She was beginning to think it might not be a bad idea to turn another trick on the way home. But not for the six-ninety now on the meter.
How much cash you carrying, Zayde? she wondered. Want a piece of nineteen-year-old Jewish-girl ass you can tell your grandchildren about next Hanukkah? She thought her father again, decided no. Still, talk old Max into a hundred for a quick blow job, might be worth it. Twice the going price for a street girl, but oh such tender goods, what do you say, Granpa?
"What'd you have in mind?" she asked coyly.
The black man in the black jeans, black leather jacket, black boots, and black watch cap appeared in front of them like an avenging angel of death. They almost all three of them peed on his boots, he was standing that close.
"Now what do you call this?" he asked rhetorically.
"We call it pissing in the gutter," Richard the Second said.
"I call it disrespect for the neighborhood," the black man said. "That what the letter P stand for? Pissing."
"Join us, why don't you?" Richard the Third suggested.
"My name is Richard," Richard the First said, zipping up and extending his hand to the black man. "So is mine"
Richard the Second said. "Me, too," Richard the Third said.
"As it happens," the black man said, "my name is Richard, too."
Which now made four of them.
Bloody murder was only an hour and sixteen minutes away.
