Taming a Sea Horse Read Online Free PDF Page A

said, and paid her. "Now you're mine until nine twenty-five."
    "Sure thing, sugar. Where we going?"
    "How about the HoJo," I said. "Across the square."
    "Sure."
    We crossed Broadway and Seventh where they intersect and walked up to the Howard Johnson's and sat. in a booth. I had black coffee. She had scrambled eggs and sausage patties, two strips of bacon, and home fries, buttered toast, and a Coke.
    "Take care of any cholesterol deficiency you might be suffering," I said.
    "Sure," she said. "What you want to talk about?"
    "What's your name?" I said.
    "Ginger." She used a toast triangle to push some scrambled eggs onto her fork.
    "How long you been hooking, Ginger?" She shrugged while she swallowed her eggs. "Long time," she said.
    "Always with Rambeaux?"
    She stopped eating and stared at me. "You know him?"
    "Sure," I said.
    "You and him ain't friends," she said.
    "True, but I know him."
    "You a cop?"
    "No."
    "The hell you ain't," Ginger said.
    "I'm not a cop. I'm not going to arrest anybody. I'm looking for information."
    "You're a fucking cop," Ginger said. "You think I don't know a cop."
    She ate some more of her scrambled eggs. It didn't bother her a hell of a lot if I was a cop. Cops were just another itch to scratch. If I busted her, the pimp would bail her out and she'd be back at work tomorrow.
    "You want to shake Robert down?" Ginger said.
    "No. I want to find out a little about him."
    "How come?" She finished her eggs and sausage, and was nibbling a limp bacon slice in her fingers.
    "Girl I know is in love with him. I want to see if he's reliable."
    Ginger put down her bacon slice and wiped her fingers on a napkin. She sat back in the booth and stared at me.
    "Reliable?"
    "Yeah," I said, "reliable."
    She smiled briefly. "You can rely on Robert," she said. "You can rely on him to make every dime he can off your body and never let go of it until he can't make anything more. He's reliable as hell about that."
    "That's sort of what I was afraid of."
    "What do you think he's like. He's a pimp. You think pimps are reliable?"
    "How'd you meet him?" I said.
    Ginger ate the rest of her bacon. I waited while she did. I still had forty minutes left on the meter and I could always buy another hour. A waitress filled my coffee cup. Ginger sat back in the booth again and sipped her Coke.
    "I was working in a house in Boston."
    "And?"
    The waitress came back and put the check down.
    "I'm sick of sitting here,"' Ginger said. "Let's get out of here."
    I paid the check and we were on the street again. The weather was pleasant. Warm enough for Ginger's skirt and sleeveless sequined top.
    "Anywhere you want to go?" I said
    "Someplace else," she said.
    "How about the zoo?" I said.
    She glanced around Times Square. "How different can it be," she said.
    I got us a cab and we rode in silence to Central Park. The cabbie dropped us at Columbus Circle and we walked across the park, east, toward the zoo. Ginger's costume looked less appropriate in the park, but no one seemed to notice. New York offers the gift of loneliness, E. B. White had said once.
    We were standing in front of the polar bear cage when I said again, "And?"
    Ginger seemed startled. "And what?" she said.
    "And you met Rambeaux, what then?"
    She looked at her watch. "You gonna pay, me some more?"
    "Yes," I said. "Just leave the meter running. I'll pay you for all the time it takes."
    She nodded. She looked at the bear. "You think he likes it in there?"
    "No," I said. "I think he'd rather be up on the polar ice cap hotfooting it after a seal. What happened after you met Sweet Robert?"
    "I came to New York with him."
    "Because?"
    "Because I came."
    "Better money?" I said.
    She was watching the bear. "Something like that," she said.
    "Was it that?"
    She still watched the bear. I watched him too. He had a beer keg in the water with him and he mauled it and rolled over it, taking it under and letting it pop up. It wasn't much but what the hell else was there to do?
    After a long