The Little Death Read Free Page A

swiveled to look. Louis focused on a woman in green with cotton-candy hair. Her face had the same taut look as Reggie’s, and had the lighting been kinder, she might have been mistaken for being in her fifties. But her neck and hands betrayed her as somewhere past seventy.
    “That’s Rusty Newsome,” Reggie said. “I was supposed to escort her to the Heart Ball on Saturday. Her husband, Chick, never goes to anything, so I always take her.” He met Louis’s eyes. “That’s what I do. I take women to dinner or charity balls or the club. I pay attention to them if their husbands are too bored… or too dead.”
    “You make a living at this?” Louis asked.
    Reggie gave him a small smile. “There’s a lot of clubs in this town and a lot of widows in each club.”
    “They pay you?” Louis asked.
    Reggie tilted his chin up. “Sometimes they give me a little cash. Sometimes they give me little gifts. It’s not just about the money, you see. It’s about having a door into a life I could not really afford on my own.”
    Mel took a long drink from his beer. “I always thought you were a hustler, Reggie.”
    Reggie looked wounded. “Some might see it that way. But there are good hustlers, and there are bad hustlers. A bad hustler is always trying to get something out of someone. I am always trying to give these women something. I am the first to admit I have no real talents or ambition. But I am a wonderful listener, I know about wine and food, and I am very good at bridge. I know how to make a lonely woman feel happy.”
    “Is sex part of this walker deal?” Louis asked.
    Reggie’s eyes shot to him. “Never. The women I know are not interested in sex.”
    Louis shook his head slowly. “Mr. Kent, I do a lot of work for wives whose husbands are cheating on them. Every time I find a guy’s been charging escorts to his Visa, he claims he just did it for the pleasure of the lady’s company.”
    “This is different,” Reggie said, reddening. “What a walker offers is friendship. And sometimes a friendship is more intimate than a marriage. But it never, ever involves sex. We are not gigolos.”
    He picked up his glass and downed the last of the gimlet. Louis was hoping he wouldn’t order another one.
    “Your friend—what’s his name again?” Louis asked.
    “Mark,” Reggie said softly. “Mark Durand.”
    “You said he was a walker, too?” Louis asked.
    Reggie nodded slowly. “He was just starting out as one, and I was sort of introducing him around, helping him get connected. He would have been a great walker.”
    “But he turned up headless in a cow pasture,” Mel said.
    Reggie nodded and looked at his empty glass with longing. Louis wondered if Mel had a credit card.
    “How many times have the cops questioned you?” Louis asked.
    “Three times,” Reggie said with a sigh. “It was in the
Shiny Sheet.
They even used my picture. Awful, just awful.”
    “Why?” Louis asked.
    “Why what?”
    “Cops don’t question someone three times without good reason. Why do you think they’re after you?”
    Reggie was silent.
    “Talk to us, Reggie,” Mel said.
    “I was with Mark the night before his body was found,” Reggie said. “We had a dinner at Testa’s and…” Another big sigh. “We had a fight. Everyone saw it.”
    “About what?” Mel asked.
    “What does it matter now?”
    “It matters,” Mel said.
    “Mark had been staying at my place, and he told me he wanted to get his own apartment,” Reggie said. “I told him he should stay with me for a while longer.”
    “That’s it?”
    Reggie nodded.
    “You two weren’t—?”
    Reggie stared at Mel. “Together? Oh no, no. Mark was quite a bit younger than me. No, there was nothing between us. We were just friends.”
    Mel drained his beer, set the glass down, and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “Don’t lie to us, Reggie.”
    “I’m not. Like I said, it was just a business arrangement. I was trying to help him. But Mark