Pain Management Page 10

  The booth was the last one in a row of maybe a dozen. The man waiting there was mixed-race Asian, surprisingly tall when he got up to greet us. His hair was jet black, carefully spiked. His face was too rounded to be Chinese. Samoan? Filipino? Mama would have been able to decode his DNA in ten seconds. I just filed it away with the million other things I didn’t know. He wore a slouchy plum-colored silk jacket over a black shirt and tie made of the same material, and a heavy silver ring on his left hand with some sort of symbol cut into the top.

  Gem kissed his cheek hello. Even in her four-inch spikes, he had to bend forward to let her reach his face. He did it so smoothly I could tell they’d done it before.

  We shook hands. His grip was dry, without pressure. “Henry Hong,” he said.

  “B. B. Hazard,” I answered him.

  He waited for Gem to slide into the booth before he sat down across from her.

  “Gem says there is something you want to know that I might be able to help you with?” he opened.

  “Maybe. Depends if what I’m picking up is on your teletype.”

  “Could you be a little more specific?” he asked politely, taking a gunmetal cigarette case out of his jacket, opening it to make sure I could see what it was. He offered me one with a slight gesture.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He lit his smoke from a slim lighter the color of lead, then handed the lighter to me. I fired up, blew some smoke at the ceiling.

  “I’ve been spending a lot of time on the hooker strolls,” I began. “Looking for a teenage girl. Runaway.”

  “Where, specifically?”

  “Burnside, MLK, Upper Sandy . . .” I said vaguely, implying even wider coverage.

  “All right,” he said, validating my choices. “What makes you think she would be hooking?”

  “Nothing. In fact, I’ve got good reason to think she wouldn’t. But she has to be earning money somewhere, and I wanted to just . . . rule it out, you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. What I’d do, normally, is spread her photo around with my phone number on the back. Tell the girls there’s a reward out for good info.”

  “Normally?” he asked, mildly.

  “Yeah,” I replied, ignoring the question he was asking. “But these girls are on the hustle. You want to work with them, you have to make sure they aren’t working you. So you try and get one of them alone, make your pitch.”

  He dragged on his cigarette gently. I was letting mine burn out in the ashtray.

  “That’s where I picked it up,” I said. “I’m using a flash car—nice new Caddy, no rental plates, clear glass. Nothing that would spook them; anyone can see inside. But they pretty much approach only in pairs. I’ve even seen three of them at a time. And the ones who don’t come off the curb, they’re still watching . . . a lot closer than from idle curiosity.”

  “No offense,” he said softly. “But your face . . . Maybe you’re just—”

  “It’s not that,” I told him, so he’d know I wasn’t being sensitive. “No way they react to my looks from that distance. Maybe some types of rides would make them edgy. I could see it if I was driving a van, even a station wagon. But I even tried it with a top-down convertible, and it didn’t make a bit of difference.”

  “You try any of the escort services?”

  “Why would I do that? I’m looking for street info, not the high-priced spread.”

  “You said she was underage. . . .”

  “Oh. Okay. You got any suggestions?”

  He looked over at Gem, boxing me out as if he had wedged a wall between us in the booth. I couldn’t see her expression without turning sideways, and I wasn’t about to do that. I reached over and ground out what was left of the cigarette I hadn’t smoked past the first drag. The cop’s eyes were downcast, as if he was thinking something over. Or maybe he was looking at the tiny blue heart tattooed on my right hand, between the knuckles of the last two fingers. A hollow, empty heart. My tribute to Pansy.

  Burke’s NYPD file shows a lot of scars and marks, but no tattoos. They’d never had a chance to photograph this one.

  “What do you think it means?” he finally asked me.

  “Girls have been disappearing. Girls who worked the streets. Maybe in Portland, maybe somewhere down I-5; word like that moves with the traffic.”

  “This is a guess?”

  “At best. I haven’t seen anything in the papers about a serial killer. . . .”

  “There was the guy they caught up north.”

  “Yeah. And he preyed on prostitutes, too. But that’s nothing new—they’re the easiest targets.”

  “They are,” he conceded. “But that’s all you have—that the hookers are working doubled up? Maybe three-way’s the hot ticket out there right now.”

  “You start a sentence with ‘maybe,’ anything you say after that has to be true.”

  Gem kicked my ankle. A lot more sharply than she would have needed to get my attention.

  “So what do you think?” Hong asked.

  “I think you’re playing with me,” I told him. “There’s lots of other reasons I’ve got for thinking there’s a killer on the road, but what difference? Either you already know it, or nothing I can say would convince you.”

  He put his cigarette case flat on the table, helped himself to another. I passed.

  “Could you not say what else you—?” Gem started to say. That time I turned and looked her full in the face. She shut up.

  Hong smoked another cigarette in silence. I didn’t know what Gem had told him about me, but if he thought waiting was going to make me nervous, he was misinformed.

  Finally, he snubbed out the butt, leaned forward, and spoke so softly I had to concentrate to get it all.

  “There’s thirteen of them known gone. Between Seattle and the California line, nine of them in Oregon. No bodies. No missing-persons reports, either. None of them listed as runaways. All but one have priors.”

  “And habits?”

  “It’s a safe bet, but not a sure one. We don’t think that’s any kind of link.”

  “Their pimps said they ran off? Or just didn’t come back one night?”

  “Both. A couple of them claimed they knew where their girls ran off to. They pull girls from each other all the time.”

  “Or sell them.”

  “True. But the trafficked girls, you wouldn’t expect to see them on the street right away. The pimps would want to stick them indoors, get their money out of them as quick as possible.”

  “No bodies, right?”

  “No bodies,” he confirmed. “No crimes, as far as we know.”

  “But the girls, they know different.”

  “They think so, anyway.”

  “Much obliged.”

  “Sure. If you pick up anything, I’d appreciate—”

  “Bur— My . . . Uh, B.B. could help you,” Gem stumbled out.

  Something was very wrong with all this. Gem doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes.

  “How would that be?” Hong said smoothly, as if trying to spackle over a suddenly appearing crack in a plaster wall.

  “B.B. is an expert,” Gem told him confidently. Like I wasn’t there. “He knows more about this . . . kind of thing than anyone.”

  “Is that right?” Hong asked me, deliberately neutral.

  “I know freaks,” I promised him.

  “And you scan this as . . . ?”

  “I don’t. I needed to verify what I picked up on with you before I spent any time on it.”

  “And why would you spend any time on it?”

  “If there was something in it for me,” I told him, making it clear that was the only motivation that worked.

  “You’re going to catch a killer?”

  “No. Not my style,” I said.

  “What, then?”

  “Maybe I could get you some information about how it’s being worked.”

  “ ‘It’?”

  “The disappearances
.”

  “Yes? Well, that would be worth . . . something, I’m sure. What is it you’d be looking for in exchange?”

  I reached in my jacket, handed him one of the photos of Rosebud I’d been circulating. He took it, nodded.

  “And,” I said, quickly, before he got the idea that we had a contract so easy, “the name of that escort service.”

  “Which . . . ?”

  “The one that runs them underage.”

  “What is wrong with you?” Gem snapped, as soon as we got into the Caddy.

  “With me? I was just doing business.”

  “You were . . . offensive for no reason.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You do not think you were being offensive? Or you believe you had a reason for being so?”

  “You sound like a fucking lawyer.”

  “You do not wish to answer me?”

  “What I fucking ‘wish’ is that you’d keep your little nose out of where it doesn’t belong.”

  “Is that so? Perhaps you believe my nose does not belong in your house, then?”

  “It’s your house,” I reminded her.

  “Ah,” she said. As if I had finally confessed to something.

  For the escort service, I would need a hotel room. The only place I’d ever stayed in Portland was the Governor, when I’d been studio-comped by an old pal. It was an old-fashioned, classy joint, with nice thick walls. And it had a back way in that allowed you to avoid the front desk.

  Nobody except the room-service folks had seen me the last time I’d stayed there, and if they remembered me at all, it would be in connection with the studio, so a visiting “escort” wouldn’t exactly shock them.

  I checked in around four in the afternoon. Between taking a nap, having something to eat, showering, and shaving, I easily killed time until it got dark. Figuring the escort service would have Caller ID, I made sure I used the hotel phone. Asked for a “reference,” I gave them the name Hong had told me to use.

  All that got me was a conversation, kind of like no-touch dancing. I tossed them every hint I could think of—right down to telling them I wanted a girl any father would be proud of; I bit eagerly when they spoke vaguely about “no discipline problems.” After running the valid but untraceable major credit-card number I gave them, they promised me a “perfectly behaved young lady” by eleven.

  She was about what I expected—a thin, curveless girl dressed down to look fifteen. She even brought her own silk-lined leather handcuffs and a red lollipop.

  It took me about ten minutes of soft talking to convince her that I wasn’t a cop, and another half-hour to sell her on the idea that she could make some serious money if she turned up Rosebud.

  The hooker looked at the photo, almost blurted out that she’d never seen the girl I was looking for, then went into a slow shuffle about how maybe she’d seen her around, she just couldn’t be, like, sure, you know.

  Sure, I knew.

  Maybe the hardest game on the planet is convincing a hooker you’re not a trick.

  The girl-looking hooker left early enough for me to go back on the prowl. So I walked a few blocks to where I’d stashed the Caddy and went back to work.

  But the only girls who approached me alone were big-time wasted, strung out, and needy. Risking a ride with a serial killer wasn’t much compared with their daily game of sticking dirty needles in collapsed veins. But all they could babble was a mulch of “fuck-suck” and “money-honey.” Not much point in asking them if they’d seen Rosebud—they couldn’t see the end of their own road.

  When the sleek Subaru drifted across my path, I had a flash that maybe it was what was spooking all the girls. The wheeled shark sure looked menacing enough. Just the kind of car some halfwit screenwriter who thinks all sociopaths are handsome, charming, and intelligent would write into his fantasy.

  But around three I saw it parked. Or stopped anyway, with a couple of girls bent low to get their heads down to the driver’s window, their bottoms poised high, always working. I slid past on the right. The Subaru’s passenger-side window was up. And tinted almost as dark as the body.

  I grabbed the license number. Just in case Gem’s friend would do me a little favor. If I ever decided to trust him that much.

  “What is it that you want from me, exactly?” Madison’s voice, on my cell phone. I guess Smilin’ Jack did take care of his regulars.

  “Just to ask you some questions. About comics . . . I think.”

  “You . . . think?”

  “I have this picture. I mean, it’s a drawing. But in ink, whatever you call that. I want to show it to you, ask you a couple of questions about it.”

  “And this is all because . . . ?”

  “Because it’s a clue. To that girl I told you I was looking for.”

  “What makes you think I would know anything of value?”

  “I think you know a lot of value,” I told her. “I’ve read all the comics now.”

  “How nice. But as to this . . . drawing?”

  “Oh. Yeah, well . . . I’m not sure.”

  “Why me, then? Portland’s full of experts who could take a look at—”

  “It’s the connection to you. To your work, I mean.”

  “Do you think it was my drawing?”

  “No. It obviously isn’t. Not your style at all. But that’s not what I meant. Look, Ms. Clell—”

  “Madison.”

  “Madison. Rosebud collected your comics. There isn’t a sign that she ever collected anything else. So, the way I figure it, if anyone knows what this drawing means, it’s you, okay?”

  I listened to the cellular’s satellite-connect hum for a few long seconds. Then she said, “Okay.”

  I’d already run across every street-kid thing from New Age to Wicca to skinhead. Pretty extreme range, but one thing in common—music drove all their cultures. Sometimes it just ran in the background, sometimes it was the sun everything orbited around. But it was always there.

  I knew my chances of just bumping into Rosebud at random weren’t worth much, so I concentrated on making friends. Financial friends. Bouncers at clubs, clerks in bookstores, swastika-inked tribalists, buskers, multi-pierced statement-makers, druggies, day-trip runaways.

  Bobby Ray was always ready to talk with me, but he never came up with anything. I knew he was testing—pumping for info, back-checking to see if I told the same story twice—but I didn’t know if he was sitting on knowledge or just looking for some.

  When you’re hunting, you tell different people different things. Or, at least, you drop different hints, let people draw their own conclusions. The bouncers thought I was looking for the kind of underage runaway that could only make trouble for them if they let her inside. But she could make them some real cash if they lifted the rope, and made a call while they had her boxed.

  Other people got the idea Rosebud didn’t know her sister needed a bone-marrow transplant. The skinheads thought I was up to something privately ugly. I made sure they knew she wasn’t Jewish, and that if anyone but me hurt her, I’d hurt them.

  One night, I passed by a couple of low-grade humans who thought that wearing stomping boots made them street-fighters. They were busy slapping around a tired old burnt-brain who lived out of garbage cans. I pointed the pistol at them and held the index finger of my left hand to my lips. They moved away quick. I figured, since the burnt-brain spent all his time on the street, he might have seen something. But whatever he saw he couldn’t bring out into words.

  Every time he saw me after that, he gave me a gathering-spiderwebs-from-the-air kowtow. A fragment from an earlier part of his journey, maybe.

  The punk who thought the snick! of his switchblade opening would paralyze me must have thought the neat round third-degree burn on his right hand happened by magic. That would be later, in the emergency room, after he’d stopped screaming. If he’d taken a closer look at the cigarette lighter I’d been toying with as we talked, he would have seen they make piezoele
ctric blowtorches real small nowadays.

  I was getting the kind of shadowy reputation that can buy you anything from information to a bullet. But I wasn’t getting any closer to Rosebud.

  In fact, I couldn’t be sure she was anywhere close by. Not one confirmed sighting . . . although plenty of people told me otherwise, thinking they’d see the color of my money before they actually went out looking. The color was all they got to see.

  I had one idea, but it was as close to a hole card as I was holding, and I didn’t want to play it too soon.

  “Any progress?” the lawyer asked me.

  “It’s not like building a house,” I told him. “You can’t see it going up. I haven’t found her.”

  “Yet?” the father asked.

  “It’s always ‘yet,’ “ I answered him, not taking my eyes from the lawyer. “Until you get it done.”

  “Can you at least tell me if she’s in Portland?”

  “I’ll be able to tell you in a couple of weeks, max.”

  “Why by then, particularly?” the lawyer wanted to know.

  I shrugged.

  “I’ve already spent a lot of money,” the father reminded me.

  “Uh-huh,” is all he got back.

  “Isn’t there any way to get more . . . aggressive about this?” the lawyer said, his academic tone designed to take some of the insinuation out of his words.

  “Not much point hurting people for information they don’t have,” I said, bluntly.

  “I’m opposed to violence,” the father said.

  “Me too,” I assured him, catching the lawyer’s thin, conspiratorial smirk.

  A pro burglar had trained me. I mean a professional, not a chronic. To the public, you do the same thing often enough, you’re a “professional,” no matter if you’re a total maladroit at it. The government feels the same way about the people who work for it.

  The newspapers will call some congenital defective who sticks up a dozen all-night convenience stores in a month a “professional criminal,” but people who actually make a living from crime know better.

  The old-timers knew how to ghost a house so slick, they could unload the pistol you kept on the night table in case of burglars and put it right back in place between your snores—just in case you woke up while they were sorting through your jewelry like an appraiser on amphetamine.