Vengeance: Mystery Writers of America Presents

by Lee Child

  “You know where Cabbagetown is?” he said as his lady driver slid in behind the wheel.

  “Sho’ do,” Loretta said, cranking the engine. “I know where e’thing is. North to Buckhead, east to Conyers. You ain’t really blind, is you?”

  “How could you tell?”

  She was looking at Earl in the mirror. “I seen blind folks; they’s always hesitant. You seem to know where you goin’. Dog’s somethin’ else, though. Playing along like a regular little con man.”

  “He’s the one that’s blind,” Earl said.

  “You say! I saw the way he come jumpin’ off the bus. Must trust his master somethin’ fierce.”

  “We’ve been together for a while,” Earl said.

  They had come off Forsythe Street onto Memorial Drive heading east. It had been forty years since Earl had last been in Atlanta, the place of his birth. The city didn’t seem much different really from what he remembered. Maybe a few more glass-and-chrome buildings was all. It still had the same shady streets, the same sleepy feel to it. LA, by comparison, never seemed to stop.

  “What’s your name, big man?” Loretta asked, nosing the cab through traffic.

  “Earl . . . Earl Lilly . . . but most people call me Little Earl.”

  “Cause you so tiny and all,” Loretta said, metering out the sarcasm.

  “Yeah, ’cause of that,” Earl said.

  “So, what brings you two good-looking dudes to Hotlanta? Come to howl at the moon?”

  “I think we’re both a little too old to be howling at anything, except in pain. Actually, I’m here to find someone,” Earl said. He fished a photograph from inside his jacket and passed it across the seat to her. “You ever seen this young lady?”

  Loretta looked briefly at the photo, keeping an eye on the traffic ahead. “She a beautiful young woman. One of yours?”

  “She’s my granddaughter,” Earl said. “I’m sure you get around;you ever run across her, by chance?”

  “She look a little familiar. But then, I see a lot these young girls on the streets. They’s all just faces after a time. Know what I mean?”

  “I guess I do,” Earl said.

  “Still, I should remember this one. Pretty an’ all.” Loretta took a last look at the photo and passed it back. “What she do?”

  Earl had little to go on, just the name of a gentlemen’s club where his granddaughter worked and a return address on her letters, presumably where she lived. “She tells me she’s going to school during the day. Wanting to become a physical therapist. And dancin’ nights to pay her way. A place called Bo Peep’s Corral. You ever hear of it?”

  “Peep’s? Yeah, I know somethin’ about the place,” Loretta said. Her response was heavy with disdain. “Might not look it now, but I used to dance there myself. Was a good-paying job, but I got fed up with the owner. Always trying to get me to do things I didn’t want to do. If you know what I mean.”

  “Still the same owner?”

  “Ray Tarvis,” Loretta said, a nod to Earl in the mirror. “Red-neck asshole from the word go. She dancin’ there, huh?”

  “That’s what she tells me.”

  “Your grandbaby got a name?”

  “India,” Earl said.

  “That her real name?”

  “What she tells me.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Actually, I didn’t even know I had a granddaughter until a few months back. I’ve never met her mother — my daughter. I went off to prison a month before she was born. After I got out, my wife and I just never reconnected. Somehow, little India ran my address down and started to write to me. Says her mother is probably dead or eaten up by the streets.”

  “This town can do that,” Loretta said, grim eyes looking back at him in the mirror. “Either you claim it or it claims you.”

  Earl considered the woman driver in the seat ahead of him. It appeared the town had claimed her. She may have, in fact, been pretty once. But she looked nothing short of used up these days. She was possibly only thirty-eight, thirty-nine, but could pass for fifty. She was painfully thin. Deep lines were etched in her forehead. Her eyes were darkly cratered.

  “So, you were sayin’?” Loretta said.

  “Well, I was getting letters from her almost every day. Exchanging pictures and the like. Then about four weeks ago they just stopped coming. Then I got one last letter asking for my help.”

  “Help in what?”

  “That’s just it. She didn’t say.”

  “An’ you jumped on a bus and rode all the way out — what? three, four days? — just to see what she want? You gotta be grandpappy of the year, sugar. Have to hand it to you.”

  “Well, I haven’t had anyone in my life for a good long time. ’Cept Melon.”

  Melon lifted his head at the sound of his name. Earl gave the dog a stroke for reassurance.

  “I was enjoying her letters,” Earl continued. “Made me feel connected a little. See, my life hasn’t been what you would call exemplary. You get to a certain age, you start adding up your markers. I added mine and found I didn’t have all that many. I don’t know how much time I’ve got left. Me or my dog.”

  “I guess I see what you sayin’.”

  “I’m guessing she needs money. I’ve got a little tucked away from my photography,” he said, lifting the camera for her to see in the mirror. “I figure maybe she wants help with her tuition and all.”

  “You take pictures?”

  “Photos of life on the streets. Things that just happen. Some of my work hangs in a gallery in Beverly Hills. It’s all on consignment, but now and then one of them brings a price.”

  “Well, I hope financial support is all your grandbaby is asking for. ’Cause that joint, Bo Peep’s, is no place for a fine little African princess like your granddaughter. You find her, you tell her to get her ass over to Starbucks or someplace. Or” — Loretta caught his eye in the mirror to make sure he was paying attention —“she end up like me. This here’s Cabbagetown, you got an address?”

  They had rolled into an aging area of the city known for the cotton mill that once turned out bags for the agricultural industry; Loretta told him all about it as she drove. There were remnants of shotgun houses along the streets — little box huts that looked like they might have housed dwarfs or something. They were intermingled with modern apartment buildings. The mill had been converted to lofts. “We becoming yuppies,” Loretta said. “That number again?”

  “Six-six-two,” Earl said, consulting the envelope from his granddaughter’s last letter.

  “Here you go,” Loretta said pulling the taxi to the curb.

  Earl ran his eyes along the series of stores on the street; 662 was a glass-fronted building sitting right ahead of them. “That’s a postal service.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Loretta said.

  They sat with the engine idling. Earl double-checked the address on the envelope and compared it to the numbers along the street. He’d come all this way to find a PO box.

  “You want to try the club where she works?”

  “She says she works nights. I’ll have to wait until this evening,” Earl said. “You know of a hotel? Something cheap for the night?”

  “I think we can find you something,” Loretta said.

  Loretta routed them back a dozen blocks to the Savoy Hotel. It was a dingy old three-story, stuck between a liquor store and a dry cleaner’s. Earl paid her across the seat back, then pulled Melon to the opposite side so he could slide out first. When he was on the sidewalk with his carry-on, he called, “Out!” and Melon obeyed, leaping blindly to the sound of Earl’s voice.

  “Can you wait till I see if they got a room?” Earl said to her, her window rolled down to see him off.

  “Just tell ’em Loretta sent you. They’ll have somethin’, sugar. Say I pick you up around eight tonight. We go check out Bo Peep’s together.”

  “You sure?” Earl asked.

  “Yeah, you got Loretta’s curiosity up. Have to see how
this mystery turns out.”

  Earl nodded, and Loretta pulled away, leaving him and his dog alone on the sidewalk.

  Earl took a moment to survey his surroundings. They were on the dark side of town, as he thought of it, not far from where he had once lived. It was mostly cut-rate, by-the-week rooming, filled with the city’s black aging and infirm. There were a few independent shops, their storefronts covered in gang graffiti, their windows secured behind iron bars. A pair of homeless men sat on the sidewalk leaning against the wall of the Savoy, their backs against the bricks. All this beneath the gleaming glass skyline that was today’s modern Atlanta.

  “I told you it’d be different. And not different. Didn’t I say so?” Earl asked his dog.

  Melon nosed against his pants cuff with a whimper, and the two made their way inside.

  At the desk, Earl was greeted, more or less, by a kid with spiked hair. He told the kid Loretta had sent him.

  The kid didn’t seem all that impressed and didn’t ask about the dog neither. But he handed him a card to fill out — his name, address, and phone number. “One night, thirty dollars.”

  Earl paid in cash.

  “Number four, upstairs. Second door on the right.” The kid slid a key onto the counter. He hadn’t looked at Earl once during the entire exchange.

  Earl took the key and made his way to the stairs, bag in hand. Melon followed, keeping Earl’s pants cuff against his face. “Step-step . . .” Earl said.

  They reached their room. Earl let them inside.

  The space smelled of mildew and urine. The bedcovers were stained a permanent yellow. “Jump,” Earl said. And, with unquestioning trust, Melon leaped onto the bed he couldn’t see.

  “My man,” Earl said, feeding his dog a treat from his coat pocket.

  Earl removed his dark glasses and laid them on the dresser. The last letter from his granddaughter had been unsettling. It had been more than just a call for financial assistance, as Earl had implied to his lady cabdriver. It had been a desperate cry for help. There was something troubling going on in her life, something he couldn’t ignore.

  Her letters had started coming earlier that year. First one was a polite introduction; he wrote back, and they’d grown into a pen-pal friendship as they learned of each other’s lives.

  India had been consistently optimistic in her letters, looking forward to a degree from a real college. A better life. Maybe outside Atlanta, she’d hinted. Leaving the idea hanging at the end of an ellipsis, waiting for his response.

  Yeah, maybe he could help her find a job, he’d written. LA being “exciting” and all for a young woman.

  The last letter had been nothing like the previous correspondence. It was one word. Help! Nothing more. It was in an awkward blocky print, almost as if a child or someone of limited education had written it.

  Earl took his camera from around his neck and crossed with it to the window. Beyond the tattered curtains, the buildings cast their late-afternoon shadows across Mitchell Street. He focused, framing the shot to capture the disparity between the richest-of-rich and the poorest-of-poor. Maybe he’d do a series of photos on the theme. He clicked off four shots in rapid succession.

  He’d been told on occasion that his work looked like crime scene photos. The style had come to be known as urban evidentiary, a term the good-looking Beverly Hills gallery owner had coined to give Earl’s work a brand. Earl didn’t know what it meant exactly. But he had to admit, most of his work had a haunting, disturbing quality. Maybe something of his past, his own life, was wrapped up in it.

  Earl let the curtains fall shut. He was tired and had a dark sense of foreboding about his granddaughter. Melon was already lying quiet on the bed, maybe absorbing his dark mood from his master.

  Earl crossed back to the bed and set his camera on the nightstand. He stretched out on top of the covers next to Melon and closed his eyes.

  It was a little after four. He would nap until dark, then set out to find the girl.

  Just as she’d promised, Loretta was waiting at the curb when Earl and his dog came out of the hotel. It was a little after eight.

  She drove them north into midtown, telling Earl a little about the place they were headed. “Bo Peep’s Corral, mostly just topless lap dancin’ and all. But they’s a VIP room where you can get just about anything you want, you got enough money. You best watch yourself, though. This place,” she warned, “no place for a black man. This is still the South, sugar. And Peep’s is filled with rednecks.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Earl said. “I just want to see if she’s there and know she’s all right.”

  “Just the same,” Loretta said.

  They arrived at the gentlemen’s club, which was in the trendier part of the city. A beefy young bouncer in a tuxedo that was tight across his chest stood, arms folded, at the entrance.

  “Maybe I better wait,” Loretta said.

  “I’m not planning on any personal services. I won’t be long.”

  “You want to leave your little buddy with me?”

  “No,” Earl said. “I almost lost him in a fire once. Now he goes where I go.”

  Earl slipped his dark glasses on and adjusted the camera around his neck. He withdrew a retractable white cane from his belt for good measure and extended it, then stepped out. “Jump!” he called. And Melon followed.

  At the entrance, the bouncer stopped him with a hand on his chest. He lifted Earl’s camera and looked at it; studied the dog at Earl’s side a minute. “Okay,” the bouncer said, and let them pass.

  The place was dark and smoke filled. Heavy-metal music blared from loudspeakers. A tall brunette, undressed down to her G-string and high heels, was on the runway, grinding her pelvis provocatively against a brass pole mounted center stage. Young women paraded past in scanty attire. Waitresses — Bo Peeps, one and all — moved about the room in exaggeratedly short blue-and-white-gingham skirts and belly-tied blouses. Young white boys lined the runway, mesmerized by the woman above them on the stage. Others sat brooding at tables in the dark, beyond the lights.

  Earl was the only black man in the place, he noticed. He tapped his way with the cane to the back. Melon followed at his cuff until Earl found a seat, then he curled up beneath his chair.

  “What can I get you?” a waitress said, appearing almost magically and before Earl’s butt had even adjusted to the hard chair. She was bent toward him, her tail jacked high by her spiked heels, showing lots of cleavage. A routine.

  “Glass of water,” he said, staying with his own routine, eyes off and distantly focused.

  “There’s a two-drink minimum. I’ll have to get you two and charge them like they’re beers,” she said.

  Earl nodded.

  The waitress went off to get his order.

  Earl sat, eyes skyward, pretending to use his ears to draw life from the sound-filled room. From time to time he would sneak glances at the faces of the young dancers who passed. There were two black girls among the exotic mix of women. One was just mounting the stage as the music shifted to a sultry beat, replacing the brunette who gathered up the tossed dollar bills on her hands and knees before slinking off, liquid-hipped, toward the back. The other black girl was just starting a lap dance for a table full of young professionals in suits and ties. The group cheered her on as she lavished attention on one of their comrades. Neither of these two women was his granddaughter, and neither was half as pretty.

  Earl considered the possibility that there were other young women offstage, in the dressing rooms or someplace. And from where he was sitting, he could see through parted curtains into the VIP room. It was currently unoccupied. It occurred to him that maybe it was India’s night off. But it was a Friday and more likely that all of the staff would be on duty. He waited. The waitress brought him his two glasses of water and Earl gave her a twenty without looking up.

  Earl sipped his water.

  “You want a dance?” a young blond woman asked, appearing over his shoulder. She was
dressed in a sheer camisole and white lace panties. Earl waved her off without looking directly at her.

  He sipped some more water and watched the room for signs of India.

  Only minutes had passed when Earl noticed a man at the corner of the bar looking at him with interest. He was barrel-chested, balding, midsixties maybe, with a mass of dark chest hair showing through the open front of his Hawaiian shirt. Earl had the impression the man had been observing him for some time.

  He pretended not to see. He sipped his water, eyes turned skyward.

  But now the man was sliding off his stool and coming Earl’s way. This was Ray Tarvis, the owner. Earl was sure of it.

  The man pulled a chair close to his.

  Tarvis said nothing at first. Then he nudged Earl to get his attention. “Hey!” he said.

  “Who’s there?” Earl asked.

  “I’m the owner of this place,” Tarvis said. “I noticed you’re not interested in my girls dancing for you. You’re not here to drink. I’m wondering to myself just what the hell a blind man gets from spending twenty bucks for water.”

  “I like the music!” Earl said, swaying his head in time to the beat.

  “Yeah, well, you can get music a number of places, pop. But I don’t allow cameras in my club.”

  “Don’t intend to take no pictures,” Earl said. “How could I?”

  “Then what are you doing with it?”

  “Was a present from my sister. A little joke among us. I like the way it feels.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, we don’t allow dogs neither. I think you best go.”

  “You mean you don’t allow Negroes.”

  “If you weren’t fucking blind you’d see I keep a number of young black girls in my employ. I’m trying to be nice.”

  “Nice would be allowing me to stay,” Earl said, not backing down.

  “All right!” Tarvis said; his patience had run out. He rose to his feet, dragging Earl up by the elbow. “You can take your water with you. Just get out!”

  Melon suddenly came out from under Earl’s chair, baring his teeth and issuing a deep, sustained growl at the voice that had become threatening.