What the Nanny Saw

Chapter 7: Who's the whore here?

Shortly after Di Stefano escorted out the still-crying nanny. Carlo wandered in.

"I saw the girl getting into the car with Di Stefano," he started. "Did she tell you what was the deal with the video tape?"

"She hadn't known about the tapes, or so she claimed, but she confirmed that the girl in the video is her sister, her twin sister, if you can believe it, a Malia," answered Romano.

Carlo considered this. "A twin sister is too close to fiction, but having seen the tape, I'm going to say - believable. Especially as I think I saw the girl this afternoon by the Wharf." The Wharf wasn't the docks. It was the dilapidated business and warehousing district, just up from the water, that served as a red light district and generally unsafe place to be.

"Really, are you sure? Did you stop her?" asked Romano in a fast jumble.

"Nah, it was quick and just from the corner of my eye as she slipped down an alley, but I'm pretty sure. And she wasn't dressed like our nanny. Not unless she's hiding spiked heels and a mini-skirt in that little bag she was carrying just now."

"So what did you learn, then?" asked the Inspector.

The Sergeant reported that he'd spoken to an informant. He was blessedly free of biographics today. The informant told him that there had been an influx of Tunisian prostitutes, and some of the more established girls were upset. But that no one would do anything about it, because the new girls were "protected".

"Do you mean by pimps?" asked the Inspector.

"He didn't say, but he gave me the two shots to the back of the head sign, so I'm pretty sure he meant the mafia."

"More Tunisians even with the stepped up patrols?" asked Romano.

"Nah, Boss. He said they had come through, but slowly faded away about six months ago. There are still a few, though, he said. They work out of a club on 3rd, the Pink Kitty. Do you know it?"

Romano admitted he did not, but muttered, "A dumb fucking name, what's wrong with goddam Italian?" English language business names were a long-standing pet peeve.

"Pretty sure it's a mafia front. I've seen Russo's boy, Giuseppe, going in and out of there."

The Inspector resolved to visit that evening, and see what he could learn.

Romano met Ingrid for dinner at Enzo's, prior to his outing to the Pink Kitty. As per usual, they didn't speak while they ate their antipasto. But in between courses, he told Ingrid about the break in and the presumably stolen videos. "This whole case is like two steps forward two dozen steps back," he groused.

Ingrid, placed a hand on his arm. "If just a few videos were taken, maybe it was Mirriam? If she knew about the girls and the, what did you call it? The dungeon? Then maybe there was some... content... she didn't want you to find?"

"Maybe," answered Romano, "but there's a woman on the other videos that looks like it could be her, so I don't know why she'd only take a few. I'd expect her to take the whole lot."

Ingrid let this pass, as the fish course arrived.

The Pink Kitty was spewing regrettable hip hop music and flashing lights onto the street when Romano arrived. With all the noise it was generating, he expected it to be packed. But after clearing the bouncer and walking through two sets of curtains, he found the club largely empty, save for a few girls listlessly dancing on a stage up by the bar.

Romano walked to the bar and ordered a Messina. He might be in a low class, English-named club, but he sure as hell was going to order a Sicilian beer. The bartender raised an eyebrow, but bent, and retrieved his beer which he poured into a seemingly clean glass.

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"I hear you can get girls here," Romano offered along with a note for the beer.

The bartender regarded the note, offered no change, and pointed with a chin to a booth in the corner, partially obscured by a curtain. "Sit there," was all the bartender said.

"A man of few words," thought Romano as he took his glass and sat in the booth.

Romano sat for some time when suddenly a girl slipped in on his right and a much, much larger man on his left. He was boxed in. "I hear you're asking after girls," said the gorilla. "An odd request coming from a policeman." The tone wasn't menacing, but with the size of the guy, it didn't have to be.

"I'm not here to cause trouble," said Romano. "I know who owns this club."

"Be that as it may," said the ape, surprisingly articulate for a giant primate, "you are going to put 100 euros on the table, and I am going to sit here while you enjoy some company. And if that all happens, just as I tell you, you are going to be walking out of here on two, unbroken legs. All clear?"

Romano allowed that it was, in fact, all clear. And he placed the aforementioned 100 euro note on the table. "That's gonna be hell to expense," thought Romano.

The girl, not Tunisian he noted, was pretty enough. But the whole situation turned Romano's stomach, and he didn't feel sexy at all. He felt like an ass and also regretted the work he was putting the girl to, trying to get him excited under the eye of a baboon.

Fortunately, a kerfuffle by the bar, called the grizzly away, with an admonition that things better proceed as had been agreed, or a badge wasn't going to protect Romano's kneecaps.

The girl, "the whore," thought Romano, slipped under the table and started working in earnest. The flashing lights of the club set off a strobing effect that made for the oddest skin flick Romano had ever seen, as he almost dissociated from her attentions. Her mouth descending on his half-hard prick in fits and starts. Her tongue appeared without reason here and there as it licked at the head of his cock.

Despite the semi-public setting and his overall discomfort with the situation, Romano found himself relaxing into the blowjob, stiffening fully. He reached down to caress the whore's head, stroke her hair and she pulled back as if she expected a blow. But as his hand settled on the side of her hair, she moaned into his cock, sending waves of pleasure up his spine.

She picked up the pace. Her accelerated sucking appeared almost as if standing still under the strobed effect. She reached up and took his hand from her head and placed it down her loose top, onto her bare breast. Romano squeezed and pinched and she moaned again.

Romano tried to ask her questions. Where there Tunisians working the bar. Where had they come from? How long were they there? But even if she could hear him over the terrible music and the sounds of her own sucking, no answers were forthcoming.

Romano looked over to see if the hippo was watching, and then bent down to whisper to the whore working his cock. "You don't have to finish, we can just say you did."

But she shook her head. "They are going to want to see the cum,' she whispered with his cock still half way in her mouth. And then plunged back down. Her tongue caressing his underside.

Romano was frustrated. A hundred euros, humiliated by a mastodon, and an unwanted blowjob. And no information to compensate. And he had to listen to fucking American music on top. But as he came into her mouth and the whore sat back up on the seat to his right, holding her mouth lightly closed to avoid spilling, she tried to tell him something. A bit of his cum trickled out and she held up her hand to catch it. Or to protect her top.

"The Tunisian whores all came from Bonsignore. He sent a lot of girls. Even a few Italians," she managed.

"Can you give me some names?" ask Romano. But the girl was already off, heading, presumably, to show the brontosaurus her mouthful of treasure.

Romano was already a man who lived with a parade of the little ghosts of regrets. They visited daily to remind him of past failures and humiliations. But, even so, he was confident it would all be displaced by tonight's debacle. Little information. Bullied into sex with a prostitute. Worst of all, a lost 100 Euros. Ingrid better not have drunk the last of the whiskey, he was going to need it tonight.

It was in this state of abject humiliation, that Romano tumbled out of the Pink Kitty, its neon light and terrible music still bathing his back. And that is when he came face to face with a face he distinctly remembered from a little video currently in the evidence lock up - the poor Tunisian girl who'd been suspended by her arms in the Bonsingore sex dungeon.

Romano mustered what little dignity he had left, looked her in the eye, and said, "You're coming with me."