Hammered: A Jewel to Die For

"Okay. How will I find you?"

"Diamond, I'm 42, almost 43, 5'-11, 175 pounds, clean shaven, and, unfortunately, bald on top, though I do have short brown hair around the sides. Let's see, I'll be wearing a light gray suit with a white shirt and a...ahem...a yellow tie." Trying to stand out so she could see me better, I added, "And a brown belt and brown wingtips. Tell you what, I'll have a seat on the south side of the fountain—"

Of course, she didn't know which way that was so we worked it out. In case anyone was trying to trick her, I also gave her a code word I dreamed up out of the blue to identify myself, too, before concluding with "Be careful, Diamond. I'm on my way and I'll see you in a little while."

I flagged a taxi and jumped in, hoping that the niggling feeling in the back of my mind wouldn't turn out to be right.

George and I had asked a lot of people about "Dyna Myte" and word had gotten around since, though it had been twenty years, the original version was still well remembered by some. Could others be looking for her, too? Could the John Doe in the alley have been killed because of his connection to her? Thinking of the latest I'd read on the Watergate scandal, I suddenly had another thought: could my interest in Diamond have led someone to wiretap my phone?

"Shit," I said under my breath. It was, I figured, entirely possible, and I'd given her the code word to identify myself as pretty as you please. Someone that looked even remotely like me might pretend to be Les Pardee and get away with it with that word. Fortunately, with such a tight timeframe, I doubted that would be possible.

However, I suddenly realized, could this be someone pretending to be Diamond to take me out?

"Driver, speed up, please," I said, flashing him my badge in the rearview. "Police business."

I couldn't be sure but I suspected the bastard may have slowed down a little after I said that, though it might have just been the traffic conditions.

Keeping it down low where the driver couldn't see it, I pulled out my 38 Special Colt Official Police revolver with a 4-inch barrel. Most detectives carried a Colt Detective Special, but I'd learned long ago that I'm a much better shot with the 4-inch barrel versus the little 2-inch snubby due to the sight radius. Loaded, I checked the cylinder before putting it back in the holster at my waist and then took a look at the three spare moon clips in my pocket. All were ready to go in an emergency.

I could only hope this would be simple and that the revolver and the extra ammo wouldn't be needed.

My thoughts quickly went back to Diamond. Even if she wasn't the Dyna Myte we were seeking and even if she wasn't my daughter, she was Dinah's and I had to come through for her and for Dinah. I had to save her.

I got to the park and looked around, but only then realized it was a worthless gesture. In my nervousness and desire to get to her, I hadn't asked Diamond to describe herself.

"What a fool," I cursed at myself, feeling every bit of it. If it came down to it, I could only hope that Diamond might look at least a little like her mother.

Being a hot summer day, there were lots of people milling about the park.

Moms pushing baby strollers.

Dads pushing baby strollers.

Other dads carrying a kid on their shoulders. I winced, knowing that I'd never get to do that.

Couples walking holding hands. I looked away at that one too.

A parent or parents holding hands as they walked with their kid or kids. A double wince from me as I thought of the wasted years with Patricia while I wanted children and she didn't.

There were kids on roller skates, and even a couple of brave ones zipping around on skateboards with those new-fangled urethane wheels that were supposed to be smoother and faster than the hard wheels of years past. City emergency rooms would, I suspected, see a good bump in their traffic as those damn things became more popular.

There were men walking dogs, women walking dogs, and one woman was even trying to walk four, though none of them seemed to be interested in going in the same direction. Someone might have to call NYFD for a rescue unit if she got tangled up as bad as it looked like things were going. I avoided a laugh at that...but barely.

Then, even as tense and nervous as I was, I couldn't help but chuckle. Somebody was walking a frickin' big-ass cat. Cats always look a little aloof to me, maybe even perturbed, but this one looked plain pissed.

"Don't blame you, brother," I whispered across the way toward it. "No, I don't blame you one bit."

A group of hippies were sitting around smoking, promoting free love, protesting the war in Vietnam, or yapping about some such shit. They didn't have signs to identify their particular cause and no one seemed to care.

A little whiff as I passed them by in the distance told me it was marijuana and that they probably didn't care what their cause was either.

A hot dog vendor was hawking his dogs and ice-cold drinks. As hot as it was, I would have gotten one under different circumstances.

A guy was sitting on a bench reading a paper.

In truth, it was like every day in New York, with lots of people doing lots of things, but everyone being basically invisible to everyone else except for those who actually knew each other. Everyone else would be forgotten in seconds, unless something really clicked. Even in most of those cases, the memory would last only a matter of minutes before fading away.

I stopped, 25 yards from the fountain, and yawned as I looked around, trying my best to spot Diamond, but seeing no one who stood out as a particularly good possibility.

The yawn itself was real. As tired as I was, I yawned again before making my way forward.

A check of my Timex told me I was two minutes early, so I stopped on the east side of the fountain and pitched in a penny, making a wish as it splashed on the surface and sank to the bottom.

A little boy, no older than three pulled my pants leg and held out his hand.

"Johnny, no!" said his mother from a few feet away where she was patting the back of a baby probably only three or four months old. His or her stroller sat parked next to them. "Come back here!"

My hand was already on the penny in my pocket so I handed it to him anyway. He tossed it where it hit the top of the terrazzo bench around the pool and rolled, falling into the water with a little plop on the other side. He clapped his hands and held out for another but I sent him back toward his mother with a smile.

I didn't want to give the little beggar the wrong idea and end up responsible for him being picked up for panhandling in another 15 or 20 years. The mom nodded with a smile and called "Thank you" to me as she planted the little one back in the stroller.

As the appointed time neared, I made my way to the south side of the fountain and had a seat. I pulled a little newspaper out of the breast pocket of my jacket and pretended to read.

***

Minutes passed as I sat there waiting for Diamond to appear, becoming more concerned about her tardiness with each passing moment. There were several people seated around the fountain on the south side, but none looked anything similar to the description I'd given Diamond on the phone while the description fit me to a tee, of course.

I folded the paper and looked around as if enjoying the day.

Then I saw her, coming around the fountain, a look of apprehension on her face as she glanced at each person she passed. Noticing me, she stopped a few feet away and pulled something out of her pocket. She gripped it in her hand as she closed her eyes for a moment and then turned it in her hand and held it up to her lips.

A penny, I realized, just like I'd thrown, like the one I'd given the young panhandler.

She gave a little kiss and sent it flying into the pool with a pleasant plop.

Though I hadn't known how she looked before she approached, I knew at once that it was her, for she looked so much like her mother, a nearly dead ringer for Marilyn Monroe, the late actress. Her hair was brownish-blonde, but not the platinum blonde of her mother and Miss Monroe, and it was styled differently. The big difference was her face, a younger version of Dinah but without the hint of sadness due to hard times or the lines won with age. She sported a smile and her green eyes practically twinkled. Finally, with it being a hot day, she showed her long svelte legs by wearing cutoff blue jean shorts that threatened to show the bottom of her cheeks with every damn step she took.

That wasn't the worst of it though.

On top, she wore a flowery, short-sleeved button-down shirt that appeared to be missing practically all of its buttons, being tied off just below pert little tits that had probably never once sported a bra. As tight as the shirt was, she had a small but quite pleasing cleavage, and just below that was a bare, taut midriff that would have turned heads on any beach in the world.

My heart practically skipped a beat and dick pulsed at the image before I remembered that she might be my daughter. I berated myself a little and tried to put such thoughts out of my mind as I stood up to meet her.

She glanced over at me then, giving a smile and a little nod. "Hi, I'm Diamond."

"Hi, Diamond, Les Pardee. Oh, and 'horsefly,'" I added, giving the crazy identifying word I'd dreamed up to identify myself less than 40 minutes earlier.

She giggled as she hooked an arm through mine and we started to walk away from the fountain at a good clip. While I wasn't sure if Diamond was in danger, the dead body in the morgue with her name on it and her fear of being followed meant that I didn't want to take any chances.

"Mr. Pardee, even if you didn't look like you described yourself, which you do, I'd guess that you are who you say you are because nobody—and I mean nobody!—would ever be able to come up with such a silly word. Were you a spy or something?"

"No, never. I was raised on a farm and have been a military policeman, but I have read James Bond and love the movies."

"Hey, have you seen the new one?" she asked, referring to "Live and Let Die," the newest entry in the series that had been released a few weeks earlier.

"No, Cousin Beau Maverick's the new James Bond. I don't see that and won't see it."

She shook her head. "No, no, that's not his name. It's...oh, the guy who played The Saint on TV. Oooh! I don't remember."

Feeling a bit like Roger Moore in a number of his roles, I suppressed a chuckle but didn't offer her his name, as I watched all around us for anyone who might be following or who might be approaching with ill intent. Finally fairly sure we weren't being followed, we went down the steps toward the subway where we could make our escape.

***

The New York Subway opened in 1904 and is one of the largest and busiest mass transit systems in the world. It works well for getting people from place A to place B and it's also a great place for getting lost in a crowd.

No, I didn't think anyone was following us but a couple of transfers and an on-and-quick-off right as the doors closed didn't reveal anyone so I hoped we really were in the clear. Not having a good plan and not knowing where to go, we took a seat in the rear of a car and rode for a while. Diamond looked scared, gripping her seat, but seemed to start to relax after a while when she realized no one was after us.

"Diamond, I need you to tell me what's going on. Start from the beginning, okay?"

She nodded nervously, biting her lower lip. "Mr. Pardee, when mom got sick, she had the assistant manager take over her flower shop. Mrs. MacLean does a good job there but she's not much for kids and didn't want to have anything to do with me after hours. When Mom died, I had to go live with my friend Lori until I graduated from high school. Mom had left a fund for me with Mrs. Mac being the administrator so Lori's parents got a check for my expenses every month, but the money ran out when I graduated so I needed to get out of there and make a change because I didn't feel comfortable anymore."

"The money ran out?"

She nodded. "Mrs. Mac showed me the records. Mom's medical bills ate up a lot of it and Mrs. Mac covered the last three months after the money was gone."

"But your mom still owned the flower shop. What about the money from that?"

"Mrs. Mac gets her salary and fifty percent of the profits. I get the rest but most months there aren't any."

I tried to keep from frowning. Once we got Diamond's situation resolved, we'd have an accountant sort through Mrs. MacLean's books with a fine-tooth comb. Having been a police officer so long, I'd seen a number of cases where someone had cooked the books for their own purposes to someone else's detriment.

"You said you didn't feel comfortable at your friend's house. Why?"

She shrugged. "Things were good when they were getting paid for my boarding every month. When that stopped, Lori's dad started looking at me like he was going to collect it another way."

"Did he ever...?"

"Oh, no. Never. But...well, I didn't want to cause trouble between Mr. and Mrs. Jacobsen or Lori, so I packed my things, took what money I'd saved, and caught a bus after leaving them a note. That was last summer. I'm nineteen now and, well, a lot more worldly than I was."

"You came directly here? What happened?"

"Yeah, and too much. Everything was so expensive and my money didn't last so...I got a job as an office assistant. That wasn't enough so I remembered what Mom had done."

Her mother had been, for a time, one of the highest-sought call girls in the city. "You set yourself up like your mom did?"

She shook her head. "Well, sort of. Back then, Mom had someone help. I didn't have anybody and didn't know how, so I, well, I resorted to freelance hooking."

Freelance girls, sometimes called indies, mavericks, or renegades, run their own business without a pimp. That means they get to keep their proceeds and avoid the abuses pimps sometimes heap on their girls, but it also means they won't have any protection when a pimp who's claimed an area comes calling to try to add her to his stable. Freelancers often have to move around and are often running from several pimps, always trying to stay at least one or two steps ahead.

"Remembering that I'm a vice cop and bust hookers, pimps, and johns, and that the Supreme Court's decision from a few years ago in Miranda versus Arizona requires that I remind you that anything you say can be used against you in a court of law, how did that go? Did you have any trouble?"

She stared at me for a moment as if evaluating me before smiling. "Vice cop, yes, but the one my mom sent me to and said I could trust...so I'm trusting you. Yeah, it was tough for a while but I met a couple of girls who helped. And no, I'm not giving you any names."

She stuck her tongue out at me and I couldn't help but laugh. A couple of women in a seat a few feet away noticed her do it; they looked from her to me and then gave me a look of disgust before going back to their quiet discussion.

Diamond continued. "I was trying to stay out of sight of the pimps and their stables at first while still meeting clients to make some money and start building a client base. I was really careful, going by Di—you know, short for Diamond?—and wearing my own brownish blonde hair at work by day and wearing the platinum blonde wig and going by Dyna Myte in the evening, just one client a night. I got a second phone line installed in my apartment with one of those Panasonic answering doohickies so clients could call and leave messages and I'd call them back to set things up in a public place. They had to agree to the amount, to pay in advance, and we had to go to a decent hotel."

"Diamond, despite the precautions, you know that everything you're telling me is extremely dangerous, right?"

"Tell me about it. I guess I was just lucky until about nine or ten days ago. A former client named Nash called me wanting to get together that evening. I called him back and told him I was already booked but that I had an opening two evenings later. Remember, I only did one date per night since I had to get my beauty sleep and be ready to go to work at the office the next day."

She mentioned beauty and my heart could only say "Yes!" I looked at her and saw her mother shining through, as beautiful as she was twenty years before when we met, but then I reminded myself that Diamond was probably my daughter and the beauty I was seeing had to be considered as a proud papa rather than the salacious way I'd just said it to myself.

"Nash begged, saying he really needed to see me, and he offered double my usual fee, even for just an hour. He told me where he wanted to meet and I figured I could still be home before midnight and get a decent night's sleep so I finally agreed to it. I met my first client that evening, took care of things a little quicker than usual, and then made it to Nash's hotel room by 10. I got there, he told me what he wanted, and we—"

"Diamond, sorry, hold on. Cop, remember?" I said while thinking "dad" the whole time. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to give me any specifics on what you did with your client, okay?"

She leaned close and whispered in my ear, "Cop? Or just afraid it's going to turn you on?" Her tongue flicked my ear, causing me to shiver as she proved her point to me, if not to herself.

One of the biddies noticed and groaned, "Uoooh!" The other glanced around trying to see but it was too late. I almost stuck my tongue out at them but held off; as snobbish as they appeared, I suspected that neither of them had had a particularly good fuck in their life—if one at all—so I tried to ignore them and turned back to Diamond and the thought of what she'd done. I felt really turned on in a way, but also a little sick to my stomach at the thought of our probable relationship.

"Well, maybe that too," I agreed reluctantly, trying to put it all out of my mind. "What happened afterward?"

"Well, Nash was happier than a clam when we were done and I'd put my mark on him?"

"The kiss and 'Dyna Myte' in lipstick?"

Her eyes widened and she leaned back away from me. "How...how in hell did you know that?"

"Diamond, this is very important. Do you do that to all of your clients?"

"Well, yeah, if they're not married." She was still staring at me, suddenly unsure if she could trust me?

Still, I had to press on. "Tell me, what does Nash look like? Describe him to me."

My face was set, my jaw tight, as she proceeded to describe the John Doe we'd found in the alley nearly a week before.

"Did he have any scars? Or tattoos?"

While they hadn't been visible to us that night, the ME had since found a scar indicating a probable appendectomy and a missing appendix.

Diamond thought for a moment before nodding. "You know, he did! It was right here," she said, touching her left side right just above her low-cut shorts. I almost asked if she was sure before she laughed and said, "Wait, it was on that side the way I was looking at it. On him, it would have been on his right side."

That gave us an identity on the stiff from the alley, but she hadn't finished so I prompted her. "How would you describe him? His typical demeanor, not his looks?"

"Oh, he was a nice guy but seemed really shy and he didn't really know how to act with a woman." She grimaced. "To be blunt, I'm not sure if he was all that smart, just in the way he talked and acted. I...well, I felt sorry for him in a way."

She paused so I prompted her to continue.

"I was giving him little pointers without being too obvious on our dates, trying to teach him, you know? It seemed to help because the difference between our first and third dates was like night and, well, at least dawn. He'd made a lot of progress and seemed to be more confident and self-assured, though he still had a long way to go."