Mask Market b-16 Read online

  “If that’s all that counts, then most people don’t.”

  “Good boy!” she said, rewarding a dog.

  “W hy do you want to know?” she asked me, a few more miles down the road.

  “So I can learn.”

  “How bad do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know how to measure that.”

  “Did you ever fuck a girl outdoors? Like in a park, where anyone might come along and see you?”

  “What diff—?”

  “We’re trading,” she said. “You tell me, I tell you.”

  “And me first, right?”

  “Money in front,” Beryl said, giving me a whore’s wink.

  “T hose so-called feminists make me retch,” she said, lighting another cigarette. We were sitting at a wooden picnic bench at a rest stop. We were the only customers. “They say they’re all about choice—like abortion, how they adore abortion—but you’re only allowed the choices they say are okay. They whine about ‘empowerment,’ but you can only be empowered if you lap up every word they say, like a tame dog.”

  “You’re talking about—?”

  “You know what the great buzzword is now? The high-concept plot for the movie they all think they’re starring in? ‘Trafficking.’ This great evil that’s been set loose on the world. It’s all those kind of people can talk about.”

  “It’s not worth talking about?”

  “Why? Because, if enough people talk about it, someday they’ll actually do something about it? That was my parents’ line. All that ‘consciousness raising’ they wrote checks for.”

  “What’s your answer, then?”

  “My answer?” she said, twisting her lips to show teeth, not smiling. “I don’t even have a question. Because this ‘trafficking’ thing, it’s all just another mask. Read the papers. Watch TV. Go to a cocktail party. Nobody cares about trafficking in children so long as you’re going to use them the way they’re supposed to be used,” she said, planting the barb and twisting to make sure it hooked deep. “You know, like making them work in diamond mines, or sewing soccer balls, or plowing fields.”

  She turned to me full-face, her own beautiful mask crumbling against the acid of her hate.

  “Every kid’s nothing but property, anyway. If you want to sell your own property, who cares? The only time anyone bitches about it is when they get sold a lemon, like when some yuppies adopt one of those Russian babies with fetal alcohol syndrome.

  “And the media? The only time those whores get excited is when they can do a story on ‘sex slaves,’ because that’s what sells, okay? And you know what? Most of those girls, they’re not slaves at all. They’re just women who made a deal. A choice, okay?”

  “You mean, like to be hookers?”

  “You think that’s never a choice?” she said, mockingly. “You think every stripper is a domestic-violence victim? You think every girl who acts in a porno movie is a drug addict? You think every escort was sexually abused as a child? You think Linda Lovelace didn’t like fucking and sucking?”

  “I wasn’t saying—”

  “That’s right,” she said, making a brushing-crumbs gesture. “You weren’t saying anything. All that ‘trafficking’ hysteria is just so much political bullshit, a good way for thieves to get grants. A woman grows up in a country where there isn’t enough food to eat. She makes a decision to come to a place where she can make more money on her back in an hour than her whole family could earn in a month—what’s wrong with that? She’s a whore to you, fine. But she’s a hero to her family.”

  “What about the girls who think they’re coming here to work in factories, not whorehouses?”

  “Grow up!” she snapped. “You really think even they believe that? You really think they’re going to pay twenty, thirty grand for the chance to earn five bucks an hour?”

  “That’s not an investment,” I said, my one good eye scanning her mask, looking for an opening, “that’s debt bondage. They have to work off the cost of their passage. And if they open their mouths, they get deported.”

  “Isn’t that a crying shame.”

  “Not enough to make you cry, I guess.”

  “Who cried for me?”

  “So that means—?”

  “It means I found my own way out,” Beryl said, pure self-absorption wafting off her like thick perfume. “You think anyone cares about slavery? There’s people in slavery all over the world, aren’t there? You buy something made in China, it was probably out of some forced-labor camp. Are you going to pretend that makes a difference to you?

  “Slavery, my sweet white ass. All anyone pays attention to is the sex part. And here’s a nice irony for you: That is a choice, okay? These women, they come here, like you said, they know they have to work off their debt. They can be maids, take them twenty years to get caught up. Or they can gobble some cock for a few months, and end up flush.

  “You think if you ‘rescued’ them they’d jump at the chance to be stuffed into some basement, sewing until their fingertips got paralyzed or they went blind from the lousy lighting? Fucking’s not just better paid; it’s easier work, too.”

  “Work?” I said, thinking back to how I had dismissed that woman in the blood lab as a “sex worker.” Not liking myself for it now.

  “It is work,” she said, as hotly composed as a high-school debater. “The higher up the scale you go, the better it’s paid. And safer, too. You know those legalized houses they have in Nevada? When’s the last time you ever heard of a girl being killed in one of them?”

  “I don’t think I ever did.”

  “Right!” she said, triumphantly. “Those serial killers, they grab girls off the streets, not out of houses.”

  “So an escort service is better?”

  “You know about that, too, huh? That was when I was still learning. I worked in houses, too. But, really, it’s all the same. You only have yourself. They promise you all the ‘security’ in the world, but when you’re alone in that room, it’s all on you.”

  I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t a strategy—her hate had just run me empty.

  “And it’s the same when you’re all alone in the world,” she said. Slowly, as if concerned I’d miss something important. “You know where I learned that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, that’s right, Mr. Knight in Shining Armor. In a little room. A little girl in a little room. All alone. That’s what you brought me back to. My hero.”

  W e stopped one more time, to switch places. The Porsche was supposed to be the lawyer’s car, not the client’s.

  I hit my phone. “It’s me,” I said, when it was picked up at the other end.

  “She was home an hour and fifteen minutes ago,” Toni said. “I dropped by with an even better offer. She wasn’t any more interested than she was the last time.”

  “You’re a doll,” I told her.

  She blew a kiss into the phone.

  T he woman who came to the door was dressed in workout clothes, a sweatband around her head, towel around her shoulders.

  “What can I—?” she started to say, then froze as her eyes went past me to Beryl.

  “Hello, Mother. You’re looking good.”

  “I…”

  By then we were inside. Beryl closed the door behind us as her mother stood there, mouth half open, as if frozen in the act of speech.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. Summerdale,” I said. Oil in my mouth, too-bright smile on my face. “My name is Mestinvah, Roman Mestinvah. I represent your daughter—”

  “Represent?” she said, voice hardening. “What do you think you have to ‘represent’ anyone about in this house?”

  “Let’s all sit down, Mother,” Beryl said, sweetly. “This won’t take long.”

  “It will take less than that for me to call the police,” her mother said, standing with her fists clenched at her sides.

  “Do it!” Beryl suddenly hissed at her. “Do it, you fucking cunt.

  Come on!”


  Her mother sagged like she’d been body-punched.

  We all sat down in the living room, like the civilized adults we were. Nobody offered coffee.

  Beryl lit a cigarette.

  “We don’t allow smoking in—”

  Beryl blew a puff of smoke in her mother’s direction.

  “Ms. Summerdale, I understand this all may be a bit…traumatic for you, seeing your daughter after all these years,” I said. “We came here in the hopes we can settle things without the need to…well, without the need to leave this room, frankly.”

  “What ‘things’?” she said, as Beryl flicked the ash from her cigarette into a crystal vase that held a single blood-red rose.

  “Reparations,” Beryl said, on cue.

  “What are you—?”

  “My client,” I said, holding up my hand as if to stop Beryl from saying anything more, “has a number of causes of action she intends to pursue, Ms. Summerdale. You would, needless to say, be the defendant in any such litigation. And please don’t tell me about the statute of limitations,” I went on, as if she’d tried to interrupt. “A team of eminent treatment professionals has already provided sworn affidavits that my client had suppressed all memory of the horrors inflicted on her until very recently. We are quite confident that we could survive any motion to dismiss.”

  “I don’t under—”

  “I told them everything, Mother,” Beryl said, vomiting the last word.

  “I have no idea what you think you might have ‘told’ anyone,” the mother said, strength coming back into her voice. “You have a very troubled history, Beryl. Your mental state was never—”

  “That’s what happens to little girls who get turned into trained dogs, Mother. Lap dogs, remember?”

  “You’re being—”

  “You still have your collection of baby-sized speculums, you filthy fucking bitch? You still have your model-train transformer? The one with the extra wires for bad little girls who don’t learn to make Mommy happy?”

  “You are insane,” the woman said. Emphatically enough, but I could hear the stress fractures in her voice. “You’ve been insane since you were a child.”

  “Nobody’s insane here,” I said, soothingly. “Nobody’s even unreasonable. You see, your husband—your ex-husband, I should say—was very forthcoming, Ms. Summerdale.”

  “He never knew any—” she blurted out, before she realized what she was saying, and clamped down on the words.

  “He knew more than you ever imagined,” I said, finishing her thought. “And it wasn’t just that he had an idea; he had proof. I wonder if the people who bought your house in Westchester ever found the wires for the microphones.”

  She sat there, stone-still, not moving a muscle. Her face was a frozen, expressionless mask.

  “Your ‘crafts room,’” I said. “The one with the lock on the door, the double-pad carpet, and the acoustical tiles on the walls. The room where you were teaching Beryl private mother-daughter stuff. The room your husband was never allowed in. You thought he bought that, didn’t you? Everybody needs their own space, right? And, after all, he had his den, didn’t he?”

  She still didn’t move. Didn’t react when Beryl dropped her burning cigarette butt into the vase, and immediately lit another.

  “There are over twenty boxes of cassette tapes,” I lied. “No video, but the audio makes it clear enough.”

  “I was in therapy for years and years,” Beryl said, on cue again. “But I could never figure out what was wrong. If it wasn’t for those tapes, I’d still be loaded up on antidepressants, walking around like a zombie. Good old Daddy. All those years, you thought you had him castrated. But he was doing just what you were doing, only coming at it from a different angle. You were both fucking me. Fucking your little girl. You did it for fun, and Daddy did it for money. Your money. Now it’s my turn.”

  “What do you want?” the woman said, dead-voiced. Speaking to me as if Beryl wasn’t in the room.

  “My client is going to need a lot of treatment,” I said, greasily. “Expensive treatment. This is much more important to her than digging up the past. What good would that do?”

  The mother’s mask shifted. “You think you can come into my own home and blackmail me, you grubby little shyster? I’ve got lawyers that would crush you like the cockroach you are.”

  “I’m sorry you characterize a sincere attempt to settle a viable case out of court as ‘blackmail,’ Ms. Summerdale,” I said, reaching for my attaché case. “I did warn you this was a possibility,” I said to Beryl.

  “I like it better this way,” she said, licking her lips. “I can’t wait.”

  We hadn’t even gotten to our feet before the mother caved.

  “H ow do I know you won’t be back?” the mother said, a half-hour later.

  “Because we’re going to give you not only a properly executed and fully binding release of any and all claims against you for any reason, covering my client’s life from birth to the present day, but a cast-iron confidentiality agreement, one that requires my client to pay you triple the amount of the settlement as liquidated damages should she disclose any of the…material we discussed.”

  “I…”

  “And,” I said, “something even better. A notarized affidavit from my client acknowledging that the…allegations we discussed were a complete fabrication. I have all the documents right here,” I said, soothingly, fondling the black leather attaché case. “You’re not settling a lawsuit; you’re agreeing to pay for your daughter’s desperately needed long-term treatment.”

  “It’s a lot of money.”

  “Oh, please, Mother,” Beryl said, in a teenager’s voice. “It’s, like, only a fraction of what you’d be leaving me in your will anyway, isn’t it? Just look at it as an accelerated inheritance.”

  “When do you expect to—?”

  “Right this second,” Beryl told her, both hands on the leash. “You’ve got a computer somewhere in this house. And you’ve got online access to your money, too. Maybe not all of it, but more than enough to cover what you’re going to pay me. A few mouse-clicks, and it’s all wire-transferred.”

  “Even if I could—”

  “Oh, you can, Mother. Come on, let’s go play.”

  B eryl tapped keys on her cell phone.

  “It’s there,” she said. “Move it out, and close the account down. Now!”

  “I never want to see you again,” the woman said, spent.

  “Oh, you won’t, Mother. Just one more thing, and we’re out of here forever.”

  “What?” she said, hollowed out way past empty.

  “The baby,” Beryl told her, a hideous smile playing over her lips. “After what you taught me, I always wanted a little girl of my own.”

  “You’re…”

  “You can just buy another one. And I know you will. After all, you haven’t even started ‘training’ this one yet. But I need more than money, Mother. I need to take something from you.” She clasped her hands in a prayerful gesture, said, “Oh, please, please, tell me you understand,” as soft-voiced as a scorpion.

  “S ign there…and there,” I told Beryl.

  “I still don’t see why I should have to split the money with you. It was me she did those things to, not you. And if you hadn’t brought me back…”

  “We went over all that. You keep what you got from Parks; we split what we got from your mother.”

  “Maybe I changed my mind.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Haven’t you already stolen enough? From me, I mean.”

  “You already played that card.”

  “I always thought my so-called father was the most pathetic man on earth,” the beautiful viper said. “Thanks for showing me otherwise.”

  “Sign both,” I reminded her, pointing at a line on the papers below which her name and Social Security number had been typed. An embossed notary’s seal was al
ready on the page.

  “What do you want that baby for?”

  “What do you care?”

  “I don’t,” she said. I believed her.

  Her silver Porsche pulled away, leaving me on the downtown sidewalk with a baby girl in my arms.

  Toni’s Corvette came around the corner.

  I punched in a twelve-digit number. When Yitzhak answered, I said, “I have something for you.”

  “S he has all of it?” he asked me later that night, out on the prairie.

  “I don’t know how much ‘all’ is,” I said, reasonably. “But she has out-front assets of something like thirty mil. On paper, it was all supposed to have come from her father’s business, but all that paper’s bogus…just a screen.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Daniel Parks wasn’t just stealing from you,” I said. “He had a whole long sucker-list. But he had to find a place to stash the money. Spend some money yourself, check out the divorce papers his wife had filed. Parks had a mistress. Her name, her real name, is Beryl Summerdale.”

  “Beryl Summerdale,” the Russian repeated carefully, committing the name I’d given him to memory.

  “That’s right. And I’ve got something else for you, too. She’s got access to her money online. Right over a modem. If you could get her to tell you the right numbers…”

  T he AP wire said, “Luxury Home Firebombed!”

  Beryl Summerdale’s neighbors hadn’t heard a thing until the house on Castle Crescent suddenly burst into flames at approximately three in the morning.

  It took the local Fire Department only minutes to respond to their frantic calls, but the house was already incinerated.

  The Arson Squad said a highly sophisticated series of incendiary devices had been used, but no more information could be released at this time.

  The crime-scene investigators said “human bone fragments” had been located.

  The lead detective on the case said that the house was known to have been owned and occupied by Ms. Summerdale and her infant daughter. Both were presumed to have perished in the explosion.

  The Special Agent in Charge of the local FBI office said that speculation about terrorists targeting the wrong house “has, to the best of our knowledge, no basis in fact at this time,” although he acknowledged that the neighborhood was home to several prominent D.C. insiders.