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me, by the time I was twelve he was dicking me." I patted her hair.
    "My old lady knew about it but she was scared to say anything. Everybody knew about it. Kids used to call me Fucky Buckey. But nobody did anything about it. Everybody was scared of Vern. When I was fourteen he sold me to a whorehouse in Portland."
    The overhead light was on. It had seemed cheerful in the gathering evening, with the room service table being wheeled in. Now it seemed too bright. Like the lights in an operating room. But I couldn't reach the switch, so I sat still in the harsh light and patted Ginger's hair and let her clutch me and didn't say anything at all.

9
    Ginger and I slept apart on the same bed. In the morning I gave her most of my cash and put her in a cab. She gave me her phone number. I gave her my card.
    "You need me, you call me," I said.
    She nodded. Since she'd told me about her father she hadn't said five words. The cab pulled away and I watched it turn downtown on Fifth Avenue. Vern Buckey, Lindell, Maine. I got in the next cab and went to Patricia Utley's town house on 37th Street, west of Lexington. It was as elegant and quiet as it had been ten years ago when I'd come here looking for another young woman.
    Steven let me in. Patricia Utley was waiting in her library. There was a silver service for two laid out with coffee and some half-size croissants.
    "Have you breakfasted?" she said.
    "No, ma'am, but, begging your pardon, this don't look like it."
    She smiled. "Shall I have Steven bring some Froot Loops?" She poured coffee from the silver pot into a white china cup with a silver band around the rim. I ate a croissant.
    "Do I have to save any for you?" I said.
    "Perhaps one," Patricia said. "Have you spoken with April?"
    "Yeah. She's in love with a pimp named Robert Rambeaux, who studies music at Juilliard and needs her money to complete his education."
    Patricia poured herself some coffee.
    "I met Rambeaux," I said. "Tall, lean, light-colored man of African ancestry. Thinks he's tough, carries a straight razor. He told me to stop bothering his lady."
    "Did you agree?"
    "No. Robert and I agreed to disagree."
    She smiled and took a small lump of sugar from a small silver bowl with small silver tongs and dropped it into her coffee. "And?" she said.
    "And I tailed him and noticed that he spends a lot of time with attractive young women during the day and that he runs a string of streetwalkers at night."
    Patricia said, "He turns the girls over to a high-class service and takes the used ones and turns them out for himself. He gets a commission from the high-class house and he gets the income from the street girls. It's quite a profitable arrangement."
    "Like a car dealer," I said. "Sells you a new car, takes your car in trade and sells it. Gets a double profit."
    Patricia nodded.
    "The funny thing is," I said, "he really is enrolled at Juilliard."
    "People aren't one thing," Patricia said.
    "Yeah, I know. Hitler loved dogs."
    "He probably did in fact," Patricia Utley said.
    "Didn't make him not Hitler," I said.
    "True."
    "I met one of the street whores. Kid named Ginger Buckey. Actually not so much a kid anymore. Except by my standards."
    "Our standards," Patricia Utley said. "We're about the same age."
    "But we don't look it. She asked me if I was going to save her."
    "And you think you can?" Patricia Utley said.
    "No," I said. "That's what makes it lousy. I know I can't."
    Patricia took a very small bite off the narrow end of one of the croissants. "Care to tell me about her?" she said.
    I did.
    When I was through Patricia Utley said, "And you have noted her father's name?"
    "Vern Buckey," I said.
    "And where he lives."
    "Lindell, Maine," I said.
    She smiled. "And you won't forget it."
    "No."
    She smiled more. "You are a piece of work," she said.
    "Un huh."
    "Oh, I know you won't race up to Maine burning with a passion to right old wrongs. You are in your own idealistic way as cynical as I am. But you'll store that up and