Unknown Victim by Kay Hadashi (top 10 books of all time txt) 📗

occurred to her, something Detective Kona had said to her a few days before. It was what the coroner had found during Danny’s autopsy.

Cheese, mustard, and mayo on white bread made by Clara every day for the crew. The same thing found in Danny’s stomach during his autopsy. Danny found dead on her porch. Clara making a wide berth around the porch to go in the back door.

It wasn’t superstition or fear of ghosts that made Clara nervous at the house.

“Clara, you knew Danny, didn’t you?” Gina asked quietly.

“Maybe.”

“Was he the father of your baby?”

“Why do you care?”

“I care because Danny was found on my front porch, and I have the police coming out here every day to question me about him. Nobody seems to know who he was, or at least they don’t confess to knowing him. But you do.”

“So what if I do? I didn’t kill him!” Clara said. She had a knife in her hand, ready to cut the sandwiches in half, or anything else that got in her way.

Gina stepped back to lean against the counter, keeping a wary eye on Clara’s knife. “Nobody said you did. But the police are still trying to figure out who did. Do you know?”

“Why should I help the cops?”

“To bring Danny some justice. He deserves that much.”

“Just a homeless guy. Who cares about them?” Clara said.

“You must’ve, enough to sleep with him. The coroner found a partially digested cheese sandwich in his stomach, just like the kind you make every day. Did you give it to him?”

“Maybe.” Clara lopped a sandwich in half using the knife as a guillotine. “He wasn’t getting anything else to eat. I took him the leftovers from our lunches. What’s wrong with my sandwiches, anyway?”

“Nothing. How long had he been homeless?”

“I dunno.”

“Were you homeless, too? Did you live at Kapalama Park with him?”

“No!”

Gina knew she was straying into female battlefield territory, and landmines were everywhere when it came to pregnant women. But Clara was turning out to be the best lead either she or Detective Kona had so far.

“What kind of relationship did you have with him?”

“Different. We weren’t in love or nothin’.”

Gina had a ‘wait a moment’ situation. Getting a drink of water, she leaned back against the counter and watched Clara work. Ignoring the belly, she took in the girl’s appearance with a new eye. She had grown-out highlights in her hair, and a few waves that were turning to split ends. She was the only one in the work crew that wore makeup, and Gina had figured it was because she worked indoors and didn’t need to worry about sweat messing it up. She was just a little too sultry looking to be part of a crew that did farm work.

“He was a john, wasn’t he?” Gina asked as gently as possible. Even with that, she steeled herself for an explosion from Clara.

“Not a john. I owed him some money and I had to work it off.” Clara stacked the sandwiches on plates. “He wasn’t homeless then. He was still a…my manager.”

“Manager as in pimp?”

Clara nodded. “I didn’t get paid by someone, and I had to work it off.”

“How many times did he make you work it off?”

“Just the once. But I know it was him that did this.”

“How long did you work for him?” Gina asked.

“Just a few months. I wasn’t very good at it. Pretty bad, actually. That’s why I didn’t always get paid.”

“Where did he have you work? The streets or did customers call for you?”

“I worked out of Bunzo’s. He had only a few girls, and we all worked out of Bunzo’s.”

Gina snapped her fingers. “I knew something was going on there. I just thought it was Harry behind it.”

For the first time, Clara made eye contact. “It wasn’t Harry. That guy’s too dumb.”

“He didn’t impress me as a scholarship winner. It was only Danny that had girls at Bunzo’s?” Gina asked.

“Someone else did. He was better at business than Danny, though.”

“And that caused trouble?”

Clara nodded.

“Was Holly one of Danny’s girls, too?” Gina asked.

“She works for someone else. Can’t trust her. She’s bad, like rotten bad. Stay away from her.”

“I plan to. Who was the other pimp that had girls at Bunzo’s?”

“That bartender named Chuck. He was new, but he brought his girls with him from another bar that closed. He even paid Harry a small commission, just to look the other way and to lie to the police whenever they came around.”

“And Danny didn’t pay?”

Clara shook her head. “Too cheap.”

“It seems to me that Harry would’ve forced Danny to pay something, just for the protection, if nothing else.”

“No, I mean we were too cheap. The girls didn’t earn much. We were the cheap alternative to Chuck’s girls. Danny couldn’t afford to pay anything to Harry, for as little as we earned for him. Some nights we didn’t work at all. We just sat there and drank watered-down drinks that Danny had to pay for. So humiliating to sit there and smile at jerks who walked right past us, only to hook up with someone more expensive. Like we weren’t good enough. But whenever Danny wasn’t around, Chuck would steer johns to his girls, and talk crap about us, about Danny’s girls having the clap or whatever.” Clara sighed. “Eventually, the other girls started working for Chuck. I was Danny’s last one.”

The whole thing sickened Gina. In her brief time as a police officer, she arrested plenty of hookers and a few of their pimps, but had never learned much about the inner workings of the trade. Now, here was a girl who had somehow fallen into that life, and came away pregnant by her pimp, who was now dead.

“The police are trying to figure out Danny’s last name. Do you know it?” Gina asked.

Clara shrugged. “I’m not so sure Danny was his real first name.”

Now it was becoming heartbreaking, that Clara didn’t know the real name of the father of her baby.

“Do you know who killed