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  BABY FACE

  By Steve Brewer

  Copyright © 1995 by Steve Brewer

  To Frank Zoretich and my wife, Kelly, my ports in the brainstorm

  She wore nothing but white cotton panties. She was stretched across the bed on her face, her feet tangled in the sheets, one knee cocked up like she'd been trying to run. Long brown hair spread out behind her, snarled and twisted. Her young breasts pooled against bare mattress. Her skin looked tawny and firm, but a couple of plum-sized purple bruises had surfaced between her shoulder blades.

  The back window dangled open on its hinges, rocking in the wind, mocking me. I holstered my revolver and, knees trembling, stepped around the end of the bed for a better look.

  Bruises wrapped around her throat like the skins of overripe bananas. Her head was twisted toward one shoulder, and the odd angle of her neck told me there was no need to hurry about an ambulance.

  I knew her. Her name was Deena, and she was maybe fifteen years old. She was new on the Cruise, one of those lost children who fall into prostitution early. I'd sometimes seen her on the street, dressed up in a Catholic school uniform with pleated plaid skirt or a thigh-length baby doll dress, all ready for the johns to take her home and play with her.

  She hadn't been on the Cruise long enough to get that hard cast to her face, that tight-lipped bitterness that comes from too many disappointments. Her face was as soft and innocent and full-cheeked as a baby's. The sweetest little baby face.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was another windy Thursday in Albuquerque and I was feeling lower than a toad. It was the end of May, long past the usual end to the spring gales, but that hadn't prevented the hair-snatching, eye-watering wind from sandblasting the city all week.

  I cowered indoors, draped over my easy chair like I'd fallen there from the sky, clicking through channels with the TV remote, bathing in the flickering glow. The drapes were drawn and the door was locked and the TV volume was up high, but I still could hear the wind's coyote howl through the walls.

  Two sharp raps on the door penetrated my blue haze. I switched off the television and dragged myself to the door. I winced before opening it, bracing for a blast of hot wind. But when I flung the door open, a huge bald man filled my doorway so completely that not a molecule of air seeped in around him.

  The man had a face like a coral reef, lumpy and craggy and covered with warts and boils and pustules that looked like they could sprout tentacles if some prey happened by. The growths clustered around his bulblike nose, spread down the creases alongside his thick lips, disappeared into the folds of fat under his chin. They covered his ears, which had turned in on themselves in retreat until they were like wads of chewed gum stuck to the sides of his hairless head.

  He could've been made of pale dough, rolled into a ball and plucked by fingernails until he was covered with lumps and peaks. He wore a long-sleeved shirt buttoned to the collar, but his hands were covered with the growths, and I could imagine what his body must be like.

  He had a peculiar odor, like he was rotting where he stood, and the smell caused me to stumble backward. He smiled, showing perfect white teeth, all that might be left after the rest of him degenerated into a bubbling pile of protoplasm.

  He looked around my dim room, moving only his eyes, then stepped inside before I could say anything. The wind followed him in, blowing grit across my linoleum floor.

  "All clear, Mr. Sweeney," the misshapen giant rasped, and a short, fine-boned man glided into the room past him. The giant pushed the door closed, shutting out the wind. Even in the dim light, I could see that his hand left an oily, sweaty palm print on my door. I suppressed a shudder.

  I would've recognized Sultan Sweeney even if I hadn't already heard talk on the streets about his grotesque bodyguard. You couldn't live along East Central Avenue for long without crossing Sultan's path, or at least being warned away from him. He'd only been pimping girls along the Cruise for a couple of years, since arriving in town from his native New Orleans, but ruthlessness had been good for business. He wore a shiny charcoal suit worth more than my entire wardrobe.

  He straightened his lapels indignantly, glaring at the door as if the wind had nearly blown off his clothes.

  He ran a manicured hand over his hair, which was slicked back into a tight-fitting swim cap that framed his face.

  Sultan had the face of a china doll—high, chiseled cheekbones and thin, arching eyebrows, and skin pale and creamy as yogurt. The face Michael Jackson has been paying to acquire. Sultan had come by his naturally, and it had made him a good living as the bait in a woman trap, one that led to prostitution and degradation and early death.

  "I'm lookin' for Bubba Mabry. Dat you?" Sultan's tongue rolled thickly around the words, still dancing to a Bourbon Street rhythm, that peculiar mix of Dixie and Brooklyn spoken only in New Orleans.

  My leg bumped my bed, and I realized I'd been edging away from the big bodyguard.

  "Uh, yeah, I'm Bubba Mabry." I looked from one to the other, trying to see if being Bubba Mabry was going to get me in trouble. Again.

  I couldn't read anything in the giant's lumpy face, but a hard glint behind Sultan's brown eyes made me nervous. Had I crossed him somehow? What could I have done? I'd hardly left my room for days, a prisoner of the wind.

  "What's de mattah, Bubba? Somethin' wrong?"

  "No, no. I just wasn't expecting company. What can I do for you?"

  "You could start by offerin' me a seat."

  I blurted an apology and stepped out of the way so Sultan could reach my room's one easy chair. The big chair made him look even smaller as he settled back and crossed his legs. His shoes were pointed black loafers with a pebbly surface. Alligator hide.

  The giant leaned against the door, blocking any escape. He reached into a pants pocket, which made me stiffen, and pulled out a wrinkled white handkerchief. He wiped his palms on it and patted his chin ever so carefully, like touching the tumid tumors would make them spread.

  "I know it's hard not to stare at Hughie, Bubba, but it ain't polite." Sultan smiled up at me from the chair.

  "Sorry." Hughie didn't seem offended. His ravaged face seemed incapable of much expression.

  "Besides," Sultan said, "I'm de one with de bidness proposition. Pay attention to me."

  I apologized again, and perched on the corner of my bed, staring at Sweeney's face to show him I was concentrating.

  "What kind of business?"

  "An investigation. Dat is what you do, idn't it?"

  "Right, right. Sorry."

  "You about the sorriest man I ever met." Sultan gave me a chilly smile. "You've apologized four or five times since we got here."

  My face flushed hot, but I swallowed and muttered something about having been half asleep when they knocked.

  "Well, if you're sleepin' in de daytime, I guess you got time to do some nosing around for me."

  "Depends on what it's about."

  Sultan's grin melted and he shot me the same hawkish glare he'd given the windstorm.

  "It's about murder, Bubba. Thought you'd figured dat out by now."

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "My ladies, Bubba. Three of my ladies been killed. Didn't you know dat? What do you do, just sit here all day, watchin' TV?"

  "I'm working on a case. I couldn't face that wind anymore so I called it a day."

  He nodded, looking me over.

  "Well, when you're workin' for me, a little wind better not get de best of you."

  I straightened, glanced over at Hughie, and said, "I'm not working for you yet."

  "Well, you gonna be. I've decided you're de man for de job."

  I said nothing.

  "See, I don't think much of what de police been doin'. They've been what you'd call halfhearted in tryin' to find out who's killin' my girls."

  I could see a vein pumping in the milk-glass skin at his temple. Other than the movement of his lips, it was the only sign he was alive. He sat perfectly still, poised in the armchair, as conscious of his body as a cat.

  Hughie sighed and shifted on his feet, getting more comfortable, accustomed to waiting. His stale breath seemed to fill the room. I tried to focus on Sultan Sweeney.

  "I'm not surprised the police aren't trying very hard," I said. "They don't think much of folks on the Cruise. The more dead, the fewer they have to arrest."

  Sultan lowered his chin a centimeter, which I took to be a nod.

  "Since de newspapers picked it up, dey shown a little more interest. But dat's been a worse problem."

  "How's that?"

  "Bad publicity. The johns are scared to come down here. My girls are scared to work. I spend all my time patrollin' the street like I'm a cop, makin' sure everybody workin'."

  I nodded, kept quiet. I didn't want any part of this case. Sultan wasn't going to like that answer.

  "Besides, it's bad for me. Shows a lack of respect. We need to set an example."

  I sighed, stood up, put some distance between me and Hughie. My small room wouldn't let me go far, and I turned to face them when I got to the wall. I thought of my pistol, safely locked away in the glove compartment of my car. There wasn't anything else in the room I could use for a weapon. I keep it that way because clients are always dropping by. Sometimes, very angry clients. I don't want them picking something up and whopping me with it. Now my own careful planning betrayed me.

  "So you want me to finger somebody, then you'll knock him off?"

  Sultan stared at me from under arched eyebrows, waiting.

  "Sorr
y, but I don't work that way. I can't take your case."

  Sultan's face hardened ever so slightly, limestone becoming marble.

  "I tell you what, Bubba. You find whoever's doin' it, then we'll talk about what happens next."

  I shook my head. My eyes darted between Sultan's crystal face and Hughie's lumpy one, and I tried to get them under control. Nothing looks more frightened, or shiftier, than twitching eyes.

  "Is dat a 'no'?"

  "Yes. I mean no. I can't take your case. There's too much heat. I try to stay out of cases the cops are working. Especially murder. It pisses them off to have private eyes poking around."

  "I don't care about dat."

  "I do. I have to. I've come close to losing my license before."

  "Don't worry about your license."

  "Let me decide what my worries are. Get yourself another boy."

  Sultan gave me his cold stare for a long moment. I could feel the tension building in my shoulders.

  "I tell you what you bettah worry about, Bubba. You bettah worry about Hughie. He don't like it when people sass me."

  Hughie shifted slightly, ready to waddle over and wham me if Sultan blinked. The thought of being touched by him gave me the trembles.

  "Whoa, now. No need to get carried away. I didn't mean any insult. But I told you, I've already got a case. It's pretty much taking up all my time."

  Sultan cut his eyes ever so slightly, just enough to make me turn and look at my still-warm TV in the corner. His meaning was clear.

  "What's dis case you're workin'?"

  "I can't talk about it."

  "What's so important you can't spare a day or two workin' for me?"

  "Really, I can't say anything."

  "You can tell us. Ain't dat right, Hughie?"

  Hughie studied a fingernail, which looked red and infected around the quick. He tugged at it experimentally, and the thought it might be rotted enough to come loose made my stomach roil. I looked away.

  "It's, uh, there's this lady, and, uh, someone stole something that belongs to her and I'm, ah, tracking it down."

  "Why'n't you say so, boy? If it's just stolen merchandise, I'll replace it and you can get right on my case."

  "It's irreplaceable. It's a collection."

  "Of what?"

  "I really can't talk about it. You know, the client's privacy, all that."

  This time, he asked through a tightened jaw. "Collection of what?"

  "Dolls. Little kewpie dolls like they used to give out at state fairs."

  The ice fled Sultan's face, and he allowed himself a grin.

  "You hear dat, Hughie? Man been lookin' for kewpie dolls. Well, now, I can see why you couldn't get involved in somethin' like murder right now. Busy with kewpie dolls and all."

  I hung my head. Privacy be damned, this is why I didn't want to tell him. I knew I'd have to listen to this.

  "What de hell kinda private eye are you?" Sultan leaned forward in his chair, and his voice was low, contemptuous. "What's de mattah? You scared to poke around de Cruise a little bit? You just wanna sit here in dis room and hide from de wind?"

  My throat felt too tight to say anything. I might squeak.

  Hughie's attention was back on me, his eyes menacing in that dropped pizza of a face. Sultan leaned back in the chair, exhaled, crossed his legs. He studied the snout of his alligator shoe for a second, and when he looked back up, the smolder was gone from his eyes.

  "What's it gonna be, Bubba? I'm done talkin' to you."

  I looked back and forth between them, and my eyes settled on Hughie's crustacean hands. They flexed ever so slightly.

  "Okay, I'll do it. But I can only spare a couple of days. And if I find the killer, I'm going straight to the police."

  Sultan's mouth rose a hair's breadth at one corner.

  "I'll need a retainer," I said quickly, but the shadow of a smile didn't disappear like they so often do.

  Sultan reached inside his suit and pulled out a roll of crisp bills. His manicured fingers peeled off two hundreds, and he tossed them on the table beside his chair. My mood brightened.

  "Dat enough?"

  "That's swell."

  He produced a business card from another pocket and flipped it on top of the money.

  "You call me every day at dat number, Bubba. Let me know how it's goin', how much it's costin' me."

  I nodded, but kept my distance as he rose and Hughie gripped the doorknob.

  "And Bubba, you call me when you know who done it. Don't call the police. Dis my bidness."

  Hughie threw open the door, and they disappeared into the wind.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I poured myself a short bourbon and flopped into the big easy chair Sultan Sweeney had occupied. The seat was still warm, which surprised me. He looked cold through and through, like everything he touched should come away with a veneer of frost.

  I sipped the whiskey, let its warmth work on my nerves. The money lay beside me on the table, wise old Ben Franklin smiling up smugly. It didn't do much to comfort me.

  I'd just gone to work for a pimp. That was a first. Guess it was a first for him, too, because he hadn't even waited around for me to ask him questions about the murders. Names and addresses of the victims, how they were killed, nothing. Just got what he wanted, then he was gone. And I'm left maundering through my thoughts, firmly in his employ and with damned few ideas about where to begin.

  I suppose Sultan figured I'd already heard all about the killings, living on the Cruise and all. And, truth to tell, I did know most everything he could've told me. Thanks to Felicia Quattlebaum, I knew plenty.

  Felicia had developed a morbid fascination for the hookers along the Cruise lately. Part of it was that the Albuquerque Gazette had assigned her to cover the growing controversy over the sin corridor along Central Avenue, the hot issue in the coming primary election. Another part, I suspected, was some sort of twisted jealousy. Some small secret part of her unconsciously resented the hookers and their proximity to me.

  As usual with Felicia, knowledge bred opinions, and I'd heard a lot of what she thought about prostitution. Other times, I could feel her pumping me for firsthand information about life on the Cruise. There wasn't much I could tell her about the politics of it all, or about the murders that kept Felicia's stories on the front page. Naturally, she'd assume I was holding out on her, and she'd get miffed, and we'd get into another fight.

  What's weird about it is that the Big Fight, the one that had become the Wall in our Relationship, as Felicia called it, was about me living down here among the criminals and hookers and crazy vagrants who thrive in the neon light of Central Avenue. She wanted me to move Uptown with her, to escape the littered streets and the piss-stink alleys, the wanton women and violent men.

  No way she could stay on the Cruise, she'd said. The quick boom of the occasional stray gunshot at night made her edgy. To me, it just meant more potential clients.

  But now, now that a Story's involved, Felicia couldn't be more interested in the Cruise, wanting to know slimy details, wanting to study with a microscope the mechanics of the place. As if she could arrange into a pattern a transient society governed by superstition and fear and sweeping, powerful randomness.

  It worried me to have her cornering people on the Cruise. Central Avenue is a place where you keep your head down. Looking the wrong way at the wrong guy can get you killed. And she's out there buttonholing bikers and chasing hookers down the street, barking questions. She, of course, saw it as chauvinism on my part. It was all right for me to nose around Central, turning over rocks and poking sticks into hidey-holes. But when she did it, I objected. There'd been more fights.

  And now I was working for a pimp. She was going to love that. I'd just been telling her how I was trying to land more upscale clients, how I was chipping away at the connections I'd built up along Central Avenue. She would see working for Sultan Sweeney as a relapse. How could I make her understand I'd been forced into it by the threat in Sultan's eyes, by the silent menace of the moldering giant?

  My drink was gone. I set the glass on top of the money, watched the damp ring from its bottom soak into Benjamin Franklin's face. The money was the one bright spot in all this. I desperately needed money. The bills I owed and my inability to pay them had become paralyzing, like the wind that still hammered at my window.