I grew up in a big city, and I used to live in one. I’d never live in one again, but I still find big cities to be interesting. That’s because every big city has three parts.
The part most people know about is the bright lights, the theaters, and the cocktail lounges where the bartender will fix you a “Batanga” with El Tequileño Blanco tequila and Mexican cola or a “3:10 to Yuzu” with High West Rendezvous Rye, Yamazaki 12 Single Malt, and yuzu juice and tamari. If you’re a beer drinker, the bartender will have an assortment of craft beers and if you want to experiment, the bartender will fill you in on the variations in flavor from first taste to finish for each beer they have. The wine list will be extensive as well as expensive, and will be sold by the bottle rather than by the glass.
The people on the street look like they stepped off the cover of some fashion magazine. Most don’t live in the city unless they live in penthouse apartments that require a special key card or elevator code to get the elevator to their floor. Most live in gated communities of expensive suburban homes or in exclusive, gated condos in the suburbs and they get to the city in style. Some get there in chauffeured limos with drivers dressed up in suits and ties and wearing chauffeur hats. Some get there by driving themselves and letting a valet park their Mercedes or BMW.
The sounds of this part of the city are the sounds of stiletto heels on the sidewalk, car horns blaring out as cab drivers jockey for position in front of the hotels, theaters, restaurants, and cocktail lounges, and the soft jazz that plays in the background of quiet conversation by the drinkers and diners.
This part of the city is like the women in the restaurants, on the street, in the theaters and in the cocktail lounges — gorgeous, spoiled, and well aware of the image they present.
The women are wearing either dresses that show a lot of their tits and nylon-sheathed legs or pant suits that show a lot of their tits and fit their asses so you don’t have to imagine much. Chances are those women are about ten years older than they look. Those women have the money to pay to reduce the effects of aging and gravity. The cosmetic surgeons with offices in the tall office buildings are more than willing to make those effects go away.
The older men are all wearing tailored suits and ties with a little handkerchief with three or four points sticking out of the breast pocket. The younger men will be wearing sort of a suit, but the pants might be jeans and the shirt will be either a T-shirt or a plain shirt with no tie.
Those who don’t live relatively close to the city probably checked into one of the five star hotels for the night so they could change into what they’re wearing. Once they’ve changed, they go to one of the restaurants where you have to know somebody just to make a reservation and the food comes displayed like art and costs just as much.
They’re there for two reasons. The primary reason is to show everybody how much fucking money they have. The secondary reason is to take in a play at one of the theaters and then have a drink or two at one of the cocktail lounges. They talk with the people they call friends about money and politics and if they’ve decided to go to the beach house that weekend or to drive to their summer home in the mountains.
The second part of the city is where most of the people live in apartments on floors over the shops at street level. The only bright lights are on the street and in the windows of the corner bars that have been there since forever. Those bars serve American beers from the taps on the bar, and if you want something a little stronger, the bartender will pour you a shot or two of Wild Turkey or Jack or Jim Beam, or if you’re a woman, a rum and Coke or a vodka Sour. There won’t be a lot of wine drinkers, but the bartender will have at least one red and one white, probably in a plastic bag inside a cardboard box.
There usually won’t be much in the way of sounds other than the laughter at a bar or the sound of a stereo or a television from an open window of one of the apartments high above the street. That part of the city retreats inside once darkness turns the streets into small islands of light from the streetlights amid threatening expanses of dark and shadow everywhere else.
That part of the city is like the women in the corner bars on any Friday or Saturday night – not gorgeous but still pretty, and well aware of the fact that they’re looked down on by most of the elite in the city. They don’t really give a shit about that because they’re happy where they are.
The women there dress in ordinary dresses that cover up their tits or in pants and blouses that also cover up their tits, though their asses sometimes do show you that they’re real women. The men wear working men’s clothes, either jeans and a T-shirt or a pair of Dickey’s uniform pants and a matching shirt. If it’s on a Saturday night, you might see a few men in bowling shirts with little bowling pins for escort buttons.
The talk around the tables and at the bar is about which ball team is going to win next weekend and how their job sucks but it pays the bills so they’re going to hang in there until they can retire. That’s what the men talk about. The women talk about how much groceries and everything else has gone up and how they’re planning to have some time alone with their husband if they can get their mother to take the kids for the weekend.
The third part of the city is the part most people never see and the part nobody wants to talk about. I don’t call it the “underbelly” like you read in some novels. I call it the “stink and pink”, because it’s the unwashed crotch of the city.
There are apartments over the boarded up former businesses that people – usually pimps, hookers, and drug dealers – live in. They all have at least one backed up toilet you can smell a block away and the roaches and rats will carry off any food you don’t keep shut up in the refrigerator or a sturdy metal cabinet.
The same corner bars are there as in the second part of the city, but they’ve not been maintained for years. When you walk into one, the first thing you see is that you can’t see because of the cigarette and cigar smoke. The second thing you see is that the wood floor is black because nobody has ever cleaned up the spilled beer, puke, and street dirt tracked in over the last fifty years or so.
They’ll serve you any mixed drink you ask for as long as it’s in the 1957 edition of “The Bartender’s Guide” and doesn’t require fresh fruit or fruit juice or some fancy mixer. The liquor will be the cheapest brands and the glasses will usually have some spots on the inside and outside. The bar will also have a selection of beers — all cheap American brews. The people who go to those bars go to get drunk and forget how they live, not to have fun with their friends. They don’t really have friends anyway.
The walls and ceilings are kind of a streaky tan because nobody’s cleaned them of all the cigarette and cigar smoke over the years. If you’ve stayed long enough, the next thing you’ll notice is the smell of stale beer and the unmistakable stink of piss coming from the door that says, “Men”. There’s a door that says, “Women” as well and it stinks too, but not quite as bad. I suppose that’s because men stand up to piss and if they’re drunk they can’t aim their cock worth a shit. Women always sit down to piss so they don’t have to aim. Neither john has a sign to remind people they should flush.
That’s the “stink” of that part of town. The “pink” is the women there. In this part of town you won’t find any women in nice dresses or pants and a top that make them look a little sexy but still socially acceptable. The women in this part of town are dressed so you’ll know exactly why they’re there.
They wear little shorts or skirts that show their ass cheeks and tops that barely cover their tits. They’ll flash their tits at you and tell you it’s such and such for a handjob, about twice that if they suck your cock, and about three times that much if they let you fuck them. If you don’t want to wear a rubber the price is double. You can find several that will let you fuck them in the ass if you have the money and you’re into that sort of thing. The lube they carry in their purses is free.
There’ll be a few women there in the strip clubs where they dance as well as do some hooking on the side. They just look used up. Most of them are. They were hookers or strippers when they were in their twenties and early thirties but they worked the strip joints and corners in the areas between the first and second parts of town. When they aged into their late thirties, men in those clubs wouldn’t pay much for a lap dance or a fuck from a woman with tits that have started to sag and an ass that looks like bubble wrap. The women took a step down to keep doing the only thing they knew how to do.
The men who come to that part of town to watch a woman strip or to get her to blow their cocks or let them fuck her in the ass don’t care if her tits sag or if her ass is fat. They’re just interested in the price. Just like anything else that’s for sale, the quality of the product determines the price and in this part of town, the price is cheap.
The men dress cheap too. The men who are there to sell you a chemical escape from your problems dress in non-descript clothes and usually wear a hoodie that mostly hides their face. That’s so when some cop radios in that he’s chasing down some motherfucking drug dealer, the only description he can give is “brown pants and a black hoodie.” That description fits about half the men in that part of town.
The pimps and bouncers dress a little better. The bouncers in the bars and strip clubs dress in tight clothes that let you know they can toss you out on your ass without breaking a sweat. The pimps dress in gaudy clothes with a ton of jewelry. They’re a little like the elite in the first part of the escort bayan city in that they like to show their wealth. They’re just not as sophisticated and subtle about it.
Life in that part of the city is lived in reverse. The people who live there are the human equivalent of the night hunters of the animal kingdom. They sleep during the day and come out at night looking for whatever they can find. As a result, that part of the city is quiet during the daylight hours, but a mix of loud music, hookers reciting their menus to the johns, drug dealers in the shadows shuffling money in one pocket and baggies in the other, and the obscenity of what good jazz can sound like when it oozes from the door of a cheap strip club or the bars where the hookers go to take a piss and clean up a little before going back out on the street.
Like I said, most people never see that part of town because it’s the crotch of the city. I have. I’m Matt Shively, and that part of town was where I made my living as a private investigator. My office was in the block on the good side of Dunley Avenue, and I was one of the few PI’s who’d venture across the street and into the third part of the city during the day, let alone at night. I did a lot of my work at night because that’s when all the action happens.
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That night I was looking for a hooker and not because I wanted to have her suck my cock or fuck her. I didn’t get fucked a lot back then, but I’d never paid for it because a couple of the fringe benefits of fucking a hooker are fucking hard to get rid of. I was looking for her because her sister paid me to find her and bring her home. Her sister didn’t know that her sister was a whore, but figured I did.
I’ve known a lot of hookers during my years on the dark streets and not one of them ever told me she just woke up one morning and thought, “I wonder how I could have fun jacking off guys and blowing their cocks and letting them fuck me a dozen times every night and make a shit pot of money too.”
Actually about half of the hookers I know are lesbians or at least really hate men. To them, doing what men want them to do is like they have enough power to make a man pay to get what he can’t get on his own. Don’t ask me how the fuck that works because I don’t have a goddamned clue. I just know that’s how it is because more than one has told me that.
They like me because I’ll pay them for just talking to me, and they come in handy from time to time. Hookers are on the street when everything is happening and like all women, they tell each other everything they know. They’ll tell me too as long as I hand them a twenty.
Most girls become hookers for one of two reasons, sometimes both. A lot start out as runaways. They head for the city to be free from the rules they had at home, but quickly find out there’s not one goddamned thing in any big city that’s free. Every fucking thing in the big city costs money.
The best part of the city is what they were dreaming about, but since they usually don’t have any skills to earn decent money, they can’t even get a little taste of it. The middle part of the city is cheaper, but still too expensive. Most aren’t smart enough or hot enough to even succeed as a stripper.
They end up looking for someplace to stay and some pimp will give them a room in a cheap-ass hotel. All they have to do is suck his cock and fuck him when he wants and fuck anybody else the rest of the time and give him most of the money they collect. I guess when you’re hungry and think you can’t go back home your moral code gets pretty flexible.
Some get into drugs and drugs cost money too. A pimp will be happy to keep a girl in coke or heroin as long as she doesn’t whack herself out every night. He wants her standing up and talking so she can still make enough money to pay him back. That usually takes every penny they earn.
Once they’re in, they’re stuck until they get too old to flag down some john in a car. After that, well, I already told you about the strip joints in that part of town. Their situation there is about the same, a room and assuming she can collect enough in tips, hand and blow jobs, and the occasional fuck by some drunk, to buy enough food to eat. If she can’t, well, that’s why the cops keep finding them OD’d in an alley somewhere.
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I didn’t know where the fuck Sally Adams was working, but some other hooker would. That’s why finding her would be relatively easy. All I’d have to do was walk down the street, flash a twenty and then ask the question. Sooner or later I’d find somebody who knew.
Getting her away would be harder even if she wasn’t into drugs. Pimps consider their girls to be their property and will do about anything to keep them in their stable, including beating the shit out of the guy trying to take them even if it’s another pimp. They’re all pretty much cowards except towards their girls though, so he’ll promise a freebee with his best girl to a couple buddies if they’ll help him out. They seem to like a minimum bayan escort of three. That’s two to hold you still and upright and one to beat the shit out of you.
I wasn’t too concerned about getting my ass whipped. I’d served eight years in Special Forces and knew two things about that type of fight. If it was just him and me, I could put him down hard, grab the girl, and leave. If it was more than just him, I had two options. Those options were either backing away and coming back at a better time, or the Colt Defender in the holster clipped to my belt and inside my jeans.
Backing away would be cleaner, but not always easy. Once they’re challenged, some pimps can’t just let things be. I suppose it’s either pride or the need to feel like they have some power. If that was the case, the Colt would be quicker and easier and wouldn’t come with all that many complications.
That’s because of how it works in that part of the city. The rule is you don’t talk to the cops and you stay healthy. You talk to the cops and you find yourself in the hospital or worse. The cops would investigate, but nobody they talked to would know anything. In the end it would be just another known pimp and one or two other bad guys who somehow got dead in an alley. Chances are the cops had been trying to arrest the assholes for years anyway. I’d just have saved them some trouble.
Chances are nobody would come for the bodies either. No matter who you are, it’s fucking hard to admit you’re related to some asshole who sells women for a living. People will claim a murder’s body or a drug dealer’s body because they can come up with an excuse for why he turned out like that. Not so for a pimp or anybody who runs with him.
When the cops can’t come up with anything, the case will gather dust in a file someplace. If the guy who took the beating is still alive, he’ll be released as soon as he can walk and the state will pay his hospital bill. If he isn’t, he’ll end up being cremated and his ashes buried in the same place as the rest of the unclaimed human trash that part of the city accumulates. It isn’t worth doing much more when there are law-abiding people who really do need and appreciate the police.
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Actually, I didn’t know for certain that Sally was a whore but the odds were in my favor. She was just nineteen and was waiting tables in a diner in the small town where she and her sister grew up. Apparently she’d talked to some salesman who said she should be waiting tables in a better place and the city had a lot of better places. Apparently he also told her that there’s a lot of turnover among waitresses in those places because they end up marrying the rich men who go there for dinner or a drink.
My dad always told me, “Don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.” Apparently nobody had ever told Sally that. She took it all in hook, line, and sinker. She told her sister she was headed for the city and a better life.
I’d heard that story before and knew that “salesman” was really shopping for new talent for some pimp in the city. Like I said before, a whore’s good career, if there is such a fucking thing, only lasts until she’s maybe thirty, thirty-five if she’s not into drugs and takes care of herself. After that, most pimps kick them out and they need a replacement. That’s what the guy was doing — fishing for new talent.
I had hopes that Sally hadn’t fallen so low in just a week, but it doesn’t take long.
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That night, I crossed Dunley Avenue with two hundred in twenties in an inside pocket of my light jacket and that jacket was zipped up half way. The jacket served two purposes. It kept most of my cash where I’d be sure to feel it if some guy bumped up against me and tried to feel for anything valuable I had on me. It also covered the grip of the Colt Defender clipped into my jeans. I had another hundred in twenties in my front jeans pocket.
At the first street corner, I saw Julia standing there with most of her tits hanging out over her tank top and wearing a skirt so short I could have seen the crotch of her panties if she’d been wearing any.
She grinned when I walked up.
“Hi Matt. Changed your mind about me? I promise I’d be the best you’ve ever had.”
I smiled.
“No, not tonight, Sweetheart. I’m working. I got a twenty though if you have some info I need.”
I pulled the picture of Sally from my jacket pocket.
“Ever see this girl before?”
Julia pulled me under a street light, looked at the picture for a few seconds, and then shook her head.
“No, at least not on this block. How long’s she been here?”
I said about a week and Julia frowned.
“That’s probably why I haven’t seen her. Most guys would sorta try her out before they put her on the street. Ricky kept me in my room for eight days.”
She giggled then.
“He said I was ready after two, but he liked the way I blew his cock so he kept me for another six.”
“Ricky” would be “Slick Rick”, one of the nicer pimps in that part of the city. He never hooked his girls on drugs and if one got herself hooked, he’d kick her ass out. I guess some pimps do have sort of a moral code. No, on second thought, Slick Rick was just maximizing his profits like any good capitalist.