Pain Management

by Andrew Vachss

  “But the note. It said—”

  “Yeah. Look: One, the cops never saw that note. Two, anyone could have written it—it wasn’t even in her handwriting. Three, even if Rosebud did write it, she might still be with a boyfriend . . . and he springs this ransom thing on her after she’s already left. No way she wants to come back and admit her big adventure was a flop. Or maybe she’s got some resentments. . . .”

  “You don’t have any idea of how close we . . . are,” he said. “Buddy and I . . . You’re going in the wrong direction.”

  “All right. Like I was saying, the two hardest things about a kidnapping are keeping the person alive and healthy while you negotiate . . . and collecting the ransom without getting caught.”

  “But you just said—”

  “Sometimes, you get a girl who runs away voluntarily. But when she wants to go back . . .”

  “I never thought of that.”

  “There’s no reason to think about that. Yet. That is, unless you’ve heard from—”

  “Of course not. If Buddy had called me—”

  “Not your daughter. Anyone else who . . . anyone who’s telling you something like they might be able to locate her—an opening like that?”

  “Nothing,” he said, sadly.

  “All right.”

  “Can’t you . . . ?”

  “What?”

  “Sometimes money isn’t the answer to everything,” he said, not so cryptically.

  “If I thought leaning on one of the street kids would help, I’d do it,” I told him. “But all that would do is make everyone nervous, keep me from getting close.”

  “It seems so . . . hopeless now.”

  “You want me to call it a day?”

  “I . . . don’t know. Do you think you’re getting any closer?”

  “Yeah, I do. But I couldn’t tell you why, or give you any specifics, so I wouldn’t blame you if you thought I was just hustling you for a few more weeks’ work.”

  “Jennifer said she would speak to you,” he said, suddenly.

  “The girl Rosebud was supposed to be spending the—”

  “Yes. I wanted to clear it with her parents first.”

  “When?”

  “This evening.”

  “Okay. I’ll come by—”

  “Seven,” he said. “And . . . no disrespect, but could you wear your suit?”

  “Jenn will be down in a minute,” the guy who had introduced himself as her father told me. He was shorter than me, but much wider through the chest and shoulders, with an amiable face and eyes as warm as ball bearings.

  “What do you need to talk to her for?” a kid who I figured for her brother asked. He was taller than his father, leaner, with an athlete’s grace to his body.

  “Michael . . .” the father said, gently. He turned his attention back to me. “The police have already been here,” he said, as if that disposed of the matter.

  “Yes, sir, I understand,” I told him. “I don’t know how much you know about investigations—”

  “I’m a forensic psychologist,” he interrupted.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know,” I told him. But I know something about you, pal. Any Ph.D. who doesn’t introduce himself by sticking “Doctor” in front of his name doesn’t have a self-confidence problem. “What’s your specialty?”

  “The effects of incarceration on mental health,” he said, holding my eyes.

  “Fascinating,” I said, my voice as flat as his. “Anyway, the core tool is the same, right?”

  “I’m not certain I follow you.”

  “Interviewing. That’s it, isn’t it? Whether you’re doing an evaluation or debriefing a source or questioning a suspect, it all comes down to the interview.”

  “Well, there are various tests as well as—”

  “Sure. No argument. But you’d always want an interview if you could get one, wouldn’t you?”

  “I would,” he agreed.

  “And interviewing, it’s a special talent, fair enough to say? Some of it you can teach, but some of it’s a gift . . . combination of instinct and experience.”

  He nodded silently, a professional’s way of telling me to keep talking.

  “And, bottom line,” I said, “it’s not mechanical. One interviewer could get information another wouldn’t even ask about.”

  “That’s true. So what you’re saying, Mr. . . . Hazard, is it . . . ?”

  My turn to nod.

  “. . . is that you would do a better job than the detectives.”

  “That’s been my experience,” I said. “And I’ll bet it’s been yours, too.”

  “Sometimes.” He chuckled. “Not always.”

  “Joel, you said he could—” Kevin started to say.

  “Your daughter, you let her go out on dates?” the psychologist interrupted Rosebud’s father.

  “Uh . . . yes.”

  “So that’s the permission piece. But you still want to meet the young man, don’t you? Kind of make up your own mind right on the spot?”

  “Well . . . yes, sure.”

  “What I told you was that you could have somebody come here and talk to Jenn. You brought this gentleman with you. I wanted to talk to him first. Is that okay with you?”

  Kevin didn’t say a word. He knew the last sentence hadn’t been a question.

  “Go get your sister,” the psychologist said to his son.

  “What did you do time for?” he asked me, as soon as the kid left the room.

  He may have been guessing, or he may have smelled it on me. Didn’t matter. I sensed that if I didn’t give him what he was looking for, his daughter wasn’t going to be interviewed.

  “Violence for money,” I said, trying to cover it all in as few words as possible.

  “Where?”

  “You got a glass?” I asked, giving him a thumb’s-up signal.

  Kevin looked confused.

  “Your investigator is offering his fingerprints,” the psychologist explained to him.

  “Is that really—?”

  He shrugged. Then barked, “Michael!”

  The kid came into the room with what I took to be his older sister, a strikingly pretty girl, who didn’t seem aware she was.

  “Daddy, why are you bellowing?” she said, a smile in her voice.

  “I thought you were still upstairs,” he said sheepishly.

  “Hi, Mr. Carpin,” she said to Rosebud’s father. “Hello,” she said to me. “I’m Jennifer.”

  “B. B. Hazard,” I said, getting to my feet and holding out my hand. She took it, squeezed gently, and pulled away.

  “Mr. Hazard wants to talk with you about Rosebud,” her father said.

  “Yes, Daddy. You told me. We’ll talk in my room, okay?”

  “I’ll be right down here,” he said. As clear a threat as I’d heard in years.

  Jennifer’s room was smaller than Rosebud’s, but it looked as if it got a great deal more traffic. She pulled a one-armed panda bear off an old easy chair like a maître d’ showing me to my table. I sat down and she jumped into the air, spun around, and landed facing me on the bed.

  “How can I help?” she asked. Her father’s daughter.

  “Well, you can tell me what you know.”

  “About Rosa?”

  “Rosa?”

  “Yes. That’s the name she liked. Not everybody called her that, but I did.”

  “You’ve already told me more than I knew when I came.”

  “Oh. All right . . .”

  “What did they tell you?” I asked.

  “The police?”

  “Or her father.”

  “Well . . . they seemed to think Rosa had run away. But they weren’t sure.”

  “But you know, don’t you, Jennifer?”

  “Me?”

  “Sure. You and Rosa were very close.”

  “You didn’t say that like it was a question.”

  “It’s not. I know you were.”

  “How?” she challenged. />
  “You told her father that Rosa had never come over to spend the weekend with you at all.”

  “That’s right. She hadn’t. . . .”

  “But you told him after she didn’t return on Sunday night.”

  “That’s when he asked me.”

  “I know. But if he had asked you, during that weekend, you would have told him Rosa was around somewhere. Or in the bathroom. Or at the movies. Whatever you agreed on. Then you’d have called her, given her the heads-up, and she would have called home.”

  “Why would you say—?”

  “She needed you for a running start. Probably figured nobody would ever check—she seems like a very smart young lady, and she would have been planning this for a while. But she had a backup plan in case they did.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “You mean I can’t prove it, don’t you, Jennifer? They’re not the same thing.”

  “I’m not saying anything,” she said, folding her arms.

  “Okay. Tell me about the crow girls, then.”

  She narrowed her eyes, trying to read mine. Someday, she’d be even better than her father, but right now she wasn’t in his league. “What about them?” she finally said.

  “Charles de Lint . . .”

  “Yes, sure. I mean, everybody knows that. But what are you asking me?”

  “How could I read about them?”

  “The crow girls? Why, they’re in all . . . Wait!” She bounced off the bed, walked over to a short bookcase suspended over her computer terminal, pulled down a book, and handed it to me.

  “Moonlight and Vines,” I read aloud. A different title from the one I’d gotten at the bookstore.

  “There’s a separate story just about them—the crow girls—in there.”

  “Thanks. I’ll bring it back to you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, Jennifer . . . thanks for taking the time to talk with me.”

  “That’s all? I mean, you aren’t going to—?”

  “No. There’s no reason for you to trust me. I was trying to think of a way I could convince you that I’d never do anything to hurt your friend. I just want to find her, make sure she’s all right. If she doesn’t want to come back home, I wouldn’t try to make her. But I see you’re not ready to believe me.”

  She tried to polygraph my eyes again. Then asked, “Are you going to say anything about—?”

  “Your phone relay system? No.”

  She nodded slowly. “It was just for that weekend,” she said quietly. “The number is no good anymore.”

  “No answer when you called the next week, Jennifer? Or was it disconnected?”

  “How did you—? Oh. It was a pay phone. On the street. Whoever answered it told me that.”

  “And the next time you tried it?”

  “The next time, it was a different person. Just someone passing by in the street.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I want Rosa to be okay.”

  “I know. Me too.”

  “Will you tell me?”

  “Tell you . . . what?”

  “If you find her. If you find her and she won’t go back, would you let me know? First, before you . . . do anything?”

  “I promise.”

  “Be careful,” Jennifer’s father told me by way of goodbye. His son didn’t say anything; he was too busy cracking his knuckles and memorizing my face.

  “What was that all about?” Kevin asked me on the way back to where I’d left my car.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That business with Dr. Dryslan at the end. He almost seemed to be . . . I don’t know . . . warning you or something.”

  “He’s a father. Jennifer’s his daughter. You know how that goes.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Maybe he convinced himself.

  “I must go to work soon,” Gem said. She absently twirled a towel into a turban for her just-washed hair, oblivious as always of her own nudity.

  “Tonight?”

  “I do not mean for one night. Back to work. With Flacco and Gordo.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes. In another few days, we must go.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You have no questions?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Not where I am going? Not when I will return?”

  “No.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “So . . . where you go, what you do, when you would be back . . . that would be none of my business, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are my husband.”

  “Gem—”

  “It is not for you to say; it is for me to say.”

  “Is that right? How would you like it if some guy came up to you and said, ‘Hey, bitch, you’re my wife’?”

  “It is not what I say,” she said calmly. “It is what happened. Between us.”

  “But you just said—”

  “Those are just words.”

  “This isn’t making any sense.”

  “That is your choice,” she said, walking out of the room.

  I went back into the night, looking for a working girl working alone. When I finally spotted one, she was wearing orange hot pants, standing hip-shot in invitation.

  Right next to the black Subaru parked at the curb.

  I figured whoever was in the Subaru had her covered, but I could live with that. I nosed the Caddy alongside her, hit the power window switch with my left hand, and slid my right over the grip of the Beretta.

  She stuck her face all the way into the car so that her heavy breasts draped over the sill, made a kissing sound at me.

  “Where’ve you been, baby?”

  “Looking for you,” I told her. Her hair was raven black, bowed out around her cheekbones and curving back sharply just past her chin. Couldn’t see much of her features in that light.

  “Well, you found me. Now what do you want to do with me?”

  “Talk.”

  “I’m not out here to—”

  “Talk for money,” I cut in quickly. “Buying your time, same as anyone else. Only you keep your clothes on.”

  “But not my mouth shut. Sounds like a date to me.”

  “I don’t care what you call—”

  “Unlock the back door,” she said, suddenly.

  I hit the switch, heard the distinctive thunk. She pulled herself out of the window. I heard the brief clacking of her stacked heels as she walked around to the back. The door opened as I turned to look behind me. She leaned in, sprayed the interior with a little pocket flash, then pulled her head out and slammed the door.

  I glanced toward the passenger window. Blank. Caught something moving up on my left side. I was about to stomp on out of there when I recognized her.

  “I’m going to walk around the front of your car,” she said in my left ear. “So you can get a real good look at me in your headlights, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “So you’ll know what you’re passing up with all this talking stuff,” she said.

  She dropped into the Caddy’s front bucket seat butt-first, taking her time about it. The orange hot pants were worthy of the name, but the “For Sale” tattoo I knew was underneath them doused any flame before it could flicker. She spun around to face me, crossing her fishnet-wrapped legs.

  “Take the first right,” she said.

  I flicked the lever into gear and pulled off, slow, my eyes on the dark street.

  “Two more blocks, then watch for a red house on the left.”

  “Yours?”

  “Sure!” She laughed. “Just the driveway. And that’s a rental, understand?”

  “Yep. Pretty slick. The cops can sweep the street, but off-road is off-limits. You pay by the night, or by the trick?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “If it’s by the trick, whoever owns the house has to stay up and keep count.”

  “You sound lik
e you know the game.”

  “Not me,” I assured her. “Is that it, coming up?”

  “Yes. Just . . . what are you doing?”

  “I feel more comfortable backing in, all right?”

  “The customer’s always right.”

  I reversed the Caddy and backed a little way into the driveway, just past the sidewalk. Then I killed the engine. The power door locks would work even without it running.

  “Like I said,” I told her, “I just want to talk.”

  “Whatever gets you there, honey.”

  “It’s not like that. I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for someone. A girl. She might be—”

  “I know,” she interrupted.

  “How do you—?”

  “We already talked about it, Mr. Hazard,” she said, pulling the midnight wig off her head and shaking out a short, tight mass of auburn curls.

  “Well, if it isn’t the fake Peaches herself.”

  “Surprised?”

  “Yeah,” I lied. Age switches aren’t that big a deal for some women. Gem did it all the time, for her work. It’s easier for Asians-facing-Caucasians, but they aren’t the only ones who can pull it off. “You went to a lot of trouble for nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “The deal’s the same as I told you when you were playing teenager. Or are you playing grownup now?”

  “I’m thirty-one,” she said, as if that was some kind of credential. “And I’ve got my own deal.”

  “Which is?”

  “What do you know about wires?” That one came out of left field, but it didn’t surprise me as much as her undoing the snaps on her blouse.

  “Enough to know you need them in that bra,” I told her.

  “Very funny,” she said. She shrugged out of the blouse and popped the clasp on the front of the black bra. Her heavy breasts gleamed creamy in the darkness. She slipped her arms out of the bra in a smooth fluid motion, and tossed it across the console into my lap. Then she raised her arms above her head. “See any place I could carry a recorder?” she asked me.

  “Not from the waist up.”

  “Help yourself,” she said, undoing the top of the hot pants.

  “No thanks,” I told her.

  “You’ll take my word for it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to say anything the police couldn’t hear. You already know I’m not a trick. And I already knew you weren’t selling it.”

  “And you knew that exactly how?”

  “You’d be the first hooker I ever saw who didn’t carry something to put money in.”