Mask Market b-16 Read online

  I cracked open my newspaper. A human—the paper called her a “mother”—in Florida had been prostituting her little girl for years. Twenty bucks a trick. Extras were extra. Her older daughter, almost twelve, had finally resisted the beatings. So the mother just sold her outright. A used car plus five hundred in cash, and some lucky vermin got to make his slimy dreams come true.

  I wished I had a bullet for every one of them. Not a simple death-dealer, a magic bullet—the kind that would take one life and give back another.

  In my world, you get even because you’re nothing if you don’t, but it’s never enough. It can’t be. You can’t really get even. You can make someone who hurt you dead, but whatever they took from you is never coming back.

  The ride was less than three hours, right on time. Even more on time was the canary-yellow Corvette convertible waiting at the curb outside, a truly spectacular redhead behind the wheel.

  “Toni?” I said, as I walked up to her.

  “Who else?” she answered, grinning.

  S ome women get annoyed if you stare at their breasts. This gorgeous Titan didn’t care where I looked, so long as it wasn’t at her Adam’s apple.

  “So you’re Michelle’s big brother,” she said, appraisingly. “Somehow, I thought you’d be…”

  “Better looking?”

  “No!” she giggled, patting my thigh.

  “More sophisticated? Smarter? Taller?”

  “Stop it! I just meant…Well, you know Michelle. She’s so…refined. You look a little rough around the edges, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “You’re not the first. And most don’t say it so euphemistically.”

  “That’s what I was looking for! Michelle said you were a real intellectual.”

  “Is that right?” I said, reaching into the breast pocket of my Harris-tweed jacket and slipping on a pair of plain-glass spectacles.

  “Oh, those are perfect! You’re some kind of investigator, aren’t you?”

  “I guess I am.”

  “Well, anyone who works with that husband of hers must be smart. That Norm, he’s a genuine genius, she says.”

  “She’s not lying,” I promised, finally learning the name Michelle assigns the Mole for social occasions that require bragging. “He’s way past being a genius. Their son’s going to win a Nobel Prize someday.”

  “Terry? That’s if Hollywood doesn’t grab him first. That is a gorgeous young man!”

  “That’s outside my area of expertise.”

  “What exactly are we doing, you and me?” she said, making it clear she was just curious—the answer would have no effect on her participation.

  “We’re going to look at a house. You already have the address.”

  “A house you’re thinking of buying?”

  “No. There’s a woman living there; it’s her I’m interested in,” thinking, Michelle said she was one of us. “Interested in professionally.”

  “Oh?”

  “Michelle told you what I do for a living?”

  “Well, of course. Like I said. You’re some kind of investigator, aren’t you?”

  “An investigator who doesn’t know one end of this part of the country from another.”

  “Toni the Chauffeur, at your service,” she said, saluting.

  “I appreciate it, Toni. Very much. But this isn’t about finding a house as much as it is finding a way inside it, do you follow me?”

  “In broad daylight?” she said, sliding the ’Vette through an intersection on the caution light.

  “We’re not talking about a burglary here. I want to talk to the person who’s inside—who I hope is inside. Not because she’s the one I’m looking for; because she can…maybe…lead me in the right direction.”

  “And you don’t think she’ll be, what’s the word you guys use, ‘cooperative’?”

  “I can’t even guess,” I said, truthfully.

  “So where do I come in?” Toni asked.

  “I’m not sure yet,” I told her. “I was hoping you might have some ideas.”

  “T his neighborhood is first-tier,” Toni said, her sheer-stockinged legs flashing in the sun as she changed gears. “Not absolutely top of the heap—the plots are too small for that. But these are all seven-figure houses.”

  “There’s slums in New York where you could say the same thing.”

  “Oh, I know. Michelle showed me around the last time I was up. I couldn’t believe it.”

  I looked down at the map spread open in my lap. “What’s a ‘crescent’?” I asked.

  “If you mean when they use it for an address, it’s just a fancy name for ‘street.’ Probably shorter than most, maybe a cul-de-sac. How far…?”

  “Next left.”

  “How fast do you want to go by?”

  “Like we’re just passing through. On our way to somewhere.”

  “What number?” she asked, turning in.

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Be on your side.”

  The house was two stories with an attached garage. Dark green, with white shutters around the windows.

  “Nothing special,” Toni said. “Four bedrooms, three baths, probably. But they spent seriously on the landscaping.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” I said. We were at the end of the block, and Toni turned the Corvette onto a slightly wider street.

  “Those back trees are old growth,” she said. “The way the plantings were arranged beneath them, it’s almost like outdoor bonsai, with the flower beds and those hedges and all.”

  “A privacy thing?”

  “Could be. You think whoever you’re looking for could be staying there?”

  “You should consider a change of careers,” I told her.

  “You mean I’m right?” she said, flashing another smile.

  “On the money.”

  “Let’s get coffee,” she said.

  “T his is her?” Toni asked, holding the blown-up photo of Beryl Preston. The redhead’s long nails were beautifully manicured, heavy bracelets concealing wide wrists.

  “Yep.”

  “How long ago was this taken?” A woman’s question. A suspicious woman.

  “I don’t know exactly. But she’d be in her early thirties now, so it looks recent, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe,” she said, grudgingly.

  “I was going to just walk up and see who answers the door. But…”

  “What?”

  “Well, you’re about the age of the girl I’m looking for. A bit younger, sure, but close enough.”

  “Yes?” she said, widening her improbably greenish eyes.

  “If you were to just ring the bell, and say you were looking for Beryl, who knows? Her mother—that’s the woman who lives there—might just call her downstairs or something. Hell, it might be Beryl herself who answers the door. She’s got no reason to think anyone would be looking for her here.”

  “But she does know people are looking for her?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “This isn’t a—?”

  “What did Michelle tell you?” I said, letting my voice harden.

  “I know,” she said, working her lips like she was making a decision.

  I sipped my hot chocolate, feeling the minutes slow-click against the clock in my mind.

  “Let’s talk outside,” she said.

  “I was a runaway,” Toni said. “I didn’t know what I was, but I knew what I wasn’t. Do you understand what I’m—?”

  “Yeah,” I said. And I did.

  “I…My family had money. They sent me to…professionals. That didn’t work: I was still a girl inside, no matter what they called it. I was…I was sad, but I wasn’t suicidal. Until they sent me to the healer.”

  I made an encouraging sound in my throat.

  “It was a…They called it a Christian retreat, but it was a prison.”

  “Because you couldn’t leave?”

  “Because they had bars on the windows,” Toni said, fingering the tiny
gold cross that caught a shaft of sunlight as it twinkled against her white sweater, standing between her prominent breasts like a warning. “Because there was no privacy. No privacy ever. Not even in the bathroom. Because they were afraid you might…do something to yourself.

  “What I had…what I had inside me, they said that was being possessed. Satan had my soul. But if I worked hard enough, if I prayed hard enough, if I did everything they told me to, I could drive it all out.

  “Only I didn’t want it out. I wanted to be…I wanted to be myself. Me.”

  I nodded my head.

  “At first, I kept that to myself. When I finally said it out loud, that’s when the beatings started.”

  She shifted position, opening her stance like a boxer loading up to throw the equalizer. Her voice dropped into a metallic baritone.

  “They called it ‘correction.’ The rod, right out of the Bible they made me read after each time. My parents never knew. Part of the program was that they couldn’t have any contact with me for the first six months. ‘Total immersion in the Lord,’ is what they called it.

  “I was only fifteen. And sheltered, too—my parents had taken me out of school years before that. Because of my…problem. So I didn’t know much about the world. But it didn’t take me long to understand. They taught me a lot in that place. And the first thing I learned was, those beatings, they liked doing that. It was exciting for them. Got them all…you know.”

  “I do know,” I said, reaching for her hand. She let me take it, but didn’t return the squeeze I gave.

  “We were at the zoo. To see the baby pandas. It was like a field trip. Only for students who had been good. Obedient, they meant. I knew how to be ‘good’ by then. That’s when I ran.

  “I knew I couldn’t go to my grandmother’s—she would have just called my parents. And I didn’t have any other place to go. I kept seeing New York in my mind. The biggest city in the world. Magic was there, I was sure of it.

  “Michelle found me on my second night. I was looking for a place to sleep. These two men were…taunting me. It was at this old empty building, right next to a pier, all the way downtown. But they had been there first, they said, so it was their home. And I had to pay rent.

  “I would have done it. Whatever ‘it’ was, it would have been better than going back. And then Michelle just burst in. She’s so small—I was bigger than her even then, and the men were much bigger. But they were scared of her. She was so fierce. And she had a razor….

  “I stayed with her for a few weeks. She worked nights, but we talked when she came home. Every day. I told her everything.

  “One day, she told me she had to go away for a while. She promised she’d be back, and made me promise I wouldn’t go out while she was gone.

  “I don’t know how she did it, but when she came back, she told me it was time for me to go home. I was so scared, but I believed her. And when I got home, it was like I had different parents. They apologized to me. My mother was crying, and my father was…well, I don’t know what to call it, but he was very, very determined.

  “That’s when I started to become Toni. The doctor they sent me to was so good and kind. I couldn’t have the surgery until I was of age, but he explained I had to live as a girl for at least two years first anyway, just to be sure.”

  “Your parents turned out to be really something.”

  “They did,” she said, relaxing her shoulders, her hand soft and damp in mine. “They were Christians, but real Christians, like Jimmy Carter, not fundamentalist freaks. That…place they sent me to, it was out of ignorance. When my father found out what they really did in there, he…I don’t know exactly what he did. But I know there was a big lawsuit, and the place ended up closed.”

  “That’s quite a story.”

  “Oh, it’s a long story, I know,” she said. “But I told it to you for a reason.”

  “Did you, Toni?”

  “Yes. I wanted you to understand what I’m going to say now.”

  I waited.

  “Michelle said, anything I did for you, it would be the same as doing it for her. Do you understand?”

  “I do.”

  “And I’d do anything for Michelle,” the big redhead told me. “That’s N. E. Thing. Understand now?”

  T oni dropped me off at a bowling alley. Luckily, they also had a few pool tables. I wasn’t even finished with the first rack before a pudgy kid in a short-sleeved shirt big enough to be a dust cover for a refrigerator wobbled over and asked me if I wanted to play some nine-ball.

  The hustler was patient. I was up fifty bucks—the worm on the hook he was baiting—when Toni walked in. She sashayed her way over to me, snapping necks as she went, mane of red hair bouncing.

  “How much have you managed to lose so far?” she said, hands on her hips, but smiling to show she was being the indulgent girlfriend, not a harpy.

  “Hey! I’m up about fifty, right?” I said, turning to the fat kid for confirmation.

  “That’s right,” the kid said, gravely, nodding his head to reluctantly acknowledge my clear superiority with the cue.

  “Well, we are late,” Toni announced.

  “Just one more game?”

  “One more,” she said, warningly. Then she perched herself on a high stool, crossed her long legs, and cupped her chin in one hand.

  “Double or nothing?” I said to the fat kid.

  “Oh, hell, it’s the last game, let’s make it for a hundred.”

  “Your break,” I said, winking at Toni.

  The pudgy kid’s shot hit the rack like a cannonball going through crepe paper. The balls ran for cover—three of them so terrified they ducked down into the pockets. The cue ball was centered, a little short of the head spot. He cut in the one-ball, came three rails for perfect shape on the two, tapped it into the side, pirouetted like a bullfighter, and comboed the four-nine without drawing a breath.

  “In between tournaments?” I asked him, as I paid up.

  “You recognized me?” he said, caught between surprise and pride.

  “Sure,” I lied.

  “You’re pretty good yourself. Want to go one more time?”

  “You see that girl over there?”

  “I sure do, bro.”

  “That’s all the luck I’m ever going to find in this place, son.”

  “S he was the third house I visited,” Toni said. “I’m a broker—for real; that’s what I do—Michelle must have told you. I told the woman I have a client who’s much more interested in the right neighborhood than in any individual house. He and his wife have three school-age children, and he’s done his research. I didn’t get where I am today by waiting for the right MLS to pop up—I go out in the field and scout around. Occasionally, you run across someone who wasn’t thinking of selling…until they hear the kind of money my client’s willing to put on the table.”

  “Very nice,” I said, giving her a con man’s respect for a superior opening shtick.

  “It’s actually true,” she said, smiling. “If someone were to make a phone call to my office, it would get verified, too.”

  “Even better.”

  “She was last on my list,” Toni said. “Fortunately, the first house I tried, no one was at home. And the second one, it was only the maid. But if anyone had been watching…”

  “Beautiful.”

  “The woman who answered the door isn’t your girl. Too old. Not that she doesn’t keep herself up—she was all toned-and-tucked, believe me—but she hasn’t seen thirty for a good long time. Has to be the mother.”

  “Did you get the sense anyone else was there?”

  “Well, there was at least one more,” Toni said. “The baby. More like a toddler…? I don’t know; I’m not good with guessing ages when they’re that small. Young enough for the mother to be carrying her around in one arm, anyway.”

  “Did she act like—I’m not sure how to put this—did she act like the baby was her baby? Or a kid she was watching for someone else?”r />
  “Oh, it was her baby. She had that…protective way of standing you see in mothers.”

  “Some mothers.”

  “Some mothers,” Toni agreed. “But there was more…. She was, like…I don’t know how to say it…. Maybe the way she talked, like the baby was in on the conversation. She didn’t treat her like a baby. Didn’t just make noises at her, she called her by her name. Elysse. That was her baby, Burke. I’d bet a month’s commissions on it.”

  “She let you come in?”

  “Not exactly. She didn’t tell me to get lost, but—this is all part of the way she was standing; I can’t quite explain it—she wasn’t going to give any ground. She acted like she had all the time in the world. Even took my business card. But she wasn’t offering me a cup of coffee. Not even when I said my client was a seven-figure buyer, all cash.”

  “That’s great, Toni. You did a perfect job.”

  “Thanks. I would have felt better if she’d let me in, but I didn’t want to push it.” She glanced at the dashboard, said, “If you’re not going back to see her today, we can still make your train.”

  “Let’s get that train,” I told her.

  “When you spend your life going in and out of houses, you get a feel for them,” she said. “That place was big, but it was empty, too. I got the distinct impression that she lives there by herself. Her and the baby, I mean.”

  “Well, it was long odds.”

  “She might have a cat. Everyone says cats are so curious, but some of them couldn’t be bothered to get up just because someone’s at the door.”

  “But a dog…”

  “That’s right,” she said, “a dog is different. My Samson—he’s a Jack Russell terrier—if you let a mosquito in the door, he’d have to go and see for himself.”

  “Jack Russells are all lunatics.”

  “That’s true!” she said, laughing. “But there was no dog in that woman’s house at all. I could just tell.”

  I didn’t say anything, watching the scenery change as we got back inside the D.C. limits.

  “Maybe she doesn’t think she needs a dog,” Toni said, as she pulled up to the station. “Just inside the front door, there’s a blue box on the wall. Some of my clients have the same one. It’s a central-station system. If that alarm goes off, it doesn’t ring some clown who’s supposed to dial 911 for you; it rings right inside the cop shop.”