Free The Ragman's Memory by Archer Mayor Page B

corpse left in the sun would have decomposed enough for hair to slough off. Ron’s PKU test, if he finds it, will make it official, but Shawna looks pretty good as our victim.”
    The manager approached us, still beaming. “Find what you were after?”
    I pointed out the entry. “Yes, thank you. You said you could tell us what all these numbers mean.”
    “Right. This is the code for the procedure—a cut and dye—purple and orange. The cut was half shave, and half left long—very popular. Let’s see, the hairdresser was… Hang on a second.” She went back behind the counter and retrieved another ledger. After a minute spent flipping through its pages, she announced, her voice flattening, “Susan Lucey.”
    I broke into a smile. “You’re kidding. Is her address still Prospect Street?”
    She looked at me with eyes wide, confirming I had the right Susan Lucey. “You
know
her?”
    I laughed. “Yeah. I take it she hasn’t changed much over the years.”
    The manager suddenly became guarded. “I don’t know. She didn’t do too well with us. And she lives on Washington now.” She handed me the book so I could read the address.
    I shook her hand. “Not to worry. Thanks for your help.”
    “She’s a hooker, isn’t she?” Sammie asked me as we crossed the sidewalk to the car.
    I caught the disapproval in her voice. In her way, Sammie was quite old-fashioned, and prostitution was one of the things she utterly condemned. But the older I became the less judgmental I felt—there are a lot of prostitutes out there, after all, and only a few of them are women selling their bodies for sex.
    Plus, I genuinely liked Susan Lucey. She’d been a big help to me on a case years before—at personal risk to herself, as it turned out—and I’d never forgotten the favor. And she had spirit—plying her trade in Brattleboro, Vermont, was not the sign of an overachiever, but she carried herself with a pride I respected. As the saying had it, “She walked like she was going places and looked like she’d been there.”
    I was struck by the change of address. Prospect Street, where she’d previously lived, followed the crest of a bluff overlooking Canal and most of the town, like a sentry’s high catwalk. A few years back, as with the neighborhood behind it, Prospect had been much the worse for wear—a neglected offshoot of a more boisterous commercial age and now an example of society’s frayed edge.
    But times had improved, and with them Prospect Street’s fortunes. While still no yuppie enclave, it was looking much better. It saddened me to know that Susan had not been able to keep pace and had instead been forced back—a single, significant block—to the kind of environment where she seemed fated to spend her whole life. Not that Washington Street was a ghetto—it even sported some very handsome, well-maintained houses. But it was also a harbor of endless economic struggle, where a single bad year could mean the loss of a home. Cheek-to-cheek with those occasional gingerbread showpieces were tired, old, patched-together multi-tenant dwellings that stood like reminders of a very thin margin.
    Without specifically knowing the address we’d just been given, my gut told me which of the two above options it was going to be.
    Sadly, my fears were confirmed. We pulled up opposite one of the dreary, gray-sided triple-deckers so common to New England factory towns. It looked like the landlord would soon be choosing between a whole new foundation, or complete demolition.
    I left Sammie in the car. I had no desire to rub her nose in something she didn’t like, nor in subjecting Susan to a scrutiny she didn’t deserve.
    The manager’s ledger had indicated the top floor, so I circled the building, stepping carefully through snowdrifts littered with hidden trash, until I got to the exterior staircase running up the back wall. Switchback on switchback, balcony to balcony—one of which was festooned with frozen laundry—I