What It Was by George P. Pelecanos Page B

said Passman. “His pals are buying him a present.”
    “The Fourteenth Street cherry-bust. A rite of passage in this town.”
    “They don’t want a white girl, though. They can get that any day at their high school. This one’s gonna take the money and turn the boy over to one of the black girls in the stable.”
    “Then?”
    “The boy’s directed to a building and told to go up a flight of stairs. Imagine what that’s like. How his heart’s pounding. Boy’s never even been down here before and now he’s in a strange house in what he thinks of as the ghetto. So he meets his whore in a dark little room. She tells him straight away he has to use a rubber. Offers to put it on for him, and if he says no, she insists. She doesn’t want to get on her back, is what it is. More often than not, that boy’s gonna shoot while she’s fittin the safe on his pecker.”
    “Liftoff,” said Vaughn. “Bit of a letdown, isn’t it?”
    “He’ll be
grateful
. Matter of fact, he’ll go back to his friends with a spring in his step. Bragging about how he fucked a black chick.”
    “You got a daughter, Hap?”
    “Two. I keep ’em close.”
    “My son’s twenty-six and he still lives in my house, rent free. Olga stocks his bathroom with toilet paper, Hai Karate, and his favorite brand of minty toothpaste.”
    “Least you know where he is.”
    A signal came from the handheld radio on the seat by Passman’s side. It was a plainclothes officer who had been sent into the Coco Watkins house and was now up in a room with one of the girls. He was telling Passman that the transaction had been made and that his girl had been badged. Passman switched frequencies and radioed a couple of squad cars that were parked on nearby side streets, waiting for his call. They arrived, sirens and cherry-tops activated, shortly thereafter, accompanied by a wagon. The Camaro promptly sped off, and the white girl disappeared into an alley.
    “Life’s off-key symphony,” said Passman, a cut-rate philosopher toiling in a world of hookers, pimps, glory-hole enthusiasts, flagellants, women who spread their legs on the D.C. Transit, and guys who played with their dongs in public.
    “Let’s see what we got inside,” said Vaughn.
    The building had been a row house, once residential, now zoned commercial, with an urban market on the first floor. They followed the uniformed police into the door beside the market and went up a flight of stairs to the second floor. The uniforms had drawn their service revolvers, but Vaughn’s rig remained snapped. At the sound of the sirens, Red Jones would have gone out the fire escape that led to the alley, where another patrolman and his partner were stationedand ready. But those officers had radioed in that all was quiet. Vaughn had not expected to find Jones in the building. He was here for information.
    The undercover officer and the unlucky young whore were standing in the hall, his hand loosely gripping her upper arm. She was an unformed-looking girl in a purple negligee. A prominent mole marked her face. Two other girls were standing in the hall, similarly attired, observing, smoking cigarettes.
    “Entrapment,” said the girl, whose name was Shay. “Entrapment.” She had been told to repeat that word and nothing else.
    “Down at the end,” said the plainclothes man to Passman and Vaughn.
    They didn’t need to be told. Coco Watkins, in red lipstick, violet eye shadow, high heels, high hair, and a red dress, stood by an open door at the end of hot-pad row, leaning against the frame. Her arms were folded. Her breasts were like chocolate grapefruits heaving up out of her plunging V-neck.
    “All right, that’s enough,” said Vaughn, and the uniformed police holstered their guns.
    As Vaughn approached Coco, he noted that he was looking her straight in the eye. Wasn’t often that he came upon a woman his height. Her evening shoes gave her three inches, but even without them, she had to be six foot