Mask Market (17 page)

“So?”

“So maybe Charlie’s found himself another line of work.”

“As a Judas,” Michelle said.

“Even if that is so, it wasn’t Burke he betrayed,” the Mole said, reasonably.

“There’s a hundred other possibilities,” I said, lamely. “I just want to talk to him.”

The Mole gave me a look.

“You have a photograph?”

“I’ve got nothing,” I told him. “And a physical description wouldn’t do any good—it’d fit a million guys. All we’ve got is that address I told you about. If it’s still good, he spent a long time building that nest. That’d give us something to bargain with.”

“So you
want
a photograph?”

“Exactly.”

“Couldn’t you hook up some kind of—?” Michelle started to say, but I cut her off with: “No, honey. Now that I think about it, Wolfe’s right. Surveillance isn’t the way to go. No way we could put a stranger into a neighborhood like that, it’s too—”

It was the Mole’s turn to interrupt. “I know,” he said.

We were all quiet for a couple of minutes. Fine with me. I liked sitting out there in the fresh sunlight, my hand resting on the back of Simba’s neck.

“You have one of those new phones?” the Mole asked Michelle. “One that takes pictures?”

“Mais oui,”
she said, insulted that anyone would think she was a fraction of an inch off the cutting edge…of anything.

“Everybody has them now,” the Mole said, as if Michelle had just made his point.

“So it wouldn’t make Charlie nervous, seeing one,” I said, picking up the thread.

“No,” the Mole said in a voice of finality. Then he launched into a string of Yiddish. The only word I recognized was
landsman.

T
he bistro was called Le Goome. Before I could say a word, a guy who looked like he should be bouncing in a waterfront dive—except for the lavender satin shirt with the first three buttons undone to display a hairless swatch of chest—walked over, said, “Mr. Compton, yes?” His voice was right out of a cellblock.

“That’s me,” I told him.

“Michelle is very special to us,” he said, making it sound like a warning. “We have a lovely, private table for you, away from the window, yes?”

“That’ll be great.”

“And the lady?”

“Her name is Sophia. She’s tall, with—”

“She’ll ask for you, yes?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll bring her to you, sir,” he said, about as servile as a bull elephant during mating season.

“I
’m sorry I’m late,” she said, as I got up to greet her.

“Don’t give it a thought.”

The waiter was androgynous, of no apparent age, wearing a lavender satin shirt. Maybe it was a theme.

“I always feel guilty in a place like this,” she said. “I eat so little, and they charge so much.”

“Food’s just fuel,” I told her. “People come to places like this for the experience.”

“Oh, that’s just right!”

I made a toasting gesture with my glass of vitamin water, telling her I was glad she agreed, but I was done talking….

She got it as if I’d spelled it out in neon. “I know you must want this,” she said, sliding a folded piece of paper across to me.

I opened it. One glance and I knew it was a dud. Jeremy Preston’s last known address was care of a law firm in Manhattan. They might know where he was now, but they wouldn’t be telling if they did.

“I’m sorry,” she said, telling me she knew what she’d given me was useless.

“That’s okay,” I told her. “I might be able to work with this. My company’s no stranger to lawyers.”

“It was just an excuse,” she said, looking down at her French manicure.

“I’m glad,” I said, lying.

B
y early evening, the Ralph P. Compton number had been nuked, the phone itself sledgehammered and tossed into a vacant lot. A new name was in the slot at the office building. Michelle’s lavender-shirted pal would respond to any questions with the blank look he’d probably learned in reform school.

And if I’d guessed wrong on the range of security cameras at Sophia’s house, and Hauser ever got a call about his license number, he’d pass a polygraph that he’d left the car at the station that morning, and it was right there waiting for him when he returned.

But all of that was reflex—I knew Sophia wasn’t going to be looking for me. Just the opposite. She’d had her sad little adventure; Ralph would get the message when she never called again.

Of course, she couldn’t be 100 percent sure that Ralph wouldn’t come looking for her. Get angry, demand an explanation, insist on seeing her again. That would have frightened some women, but not Sophia. Action like that would have buzzed her neurons. She was a junkie who needed a risk-fix every so often. And Ralph Compton had disqualified himself.

“You know what I always wanted to do?” she’d said, walking around the hotel room like she was thinking of buying it.

“This?” I guessed aloud, giving her the chance to pretend this was her first time with a stranger, if she wanted it.

She didn’t. “Did you ever do it outside?”

“You mean, like, in a car? When I was—”

“No. No, that’s not outside. I mean, like…we came up in the elevator, but there’s stairs, too, aren’t there?”

“There have to be. In case there’s a—”

“We could go out there,” she said, leaning back against the wall. “It would be so…exciting. Why do you think I wore this skirt? I could just…” She slowly turned her back, tugged at the hem. By then, I wasn’t surprised to see she was naked beneath it.

Part of me wanted to tell her I never had sex indoors until I was a grown man. Alleys, cars, rooftops—that’s where kids like us got it on. One girl I had was so much shorter than me that I used to stand her one step higher on the stairs, come into her from behind.

I didn’t tell Sophia that. And I didn’t tell her about the sex I didn’t want. When I was small, when I couldn’t stop them from doing whatever they wanted with their property. Not their property, actually—I belonged to the State. But the State was always very generous about loaning out its possessions.

No, I just told her doing it outside the hotel room was too much for me. She’d almost walked out then, disgusted. But I guess she figured she’d already made the trip, so…

T
hat night, I paid another installment on the malaria I’d bought with my stupidity so long ago. Fever dream. They come when they want to, but less and less over the years. Usually, they’re just jungle visions: running, pieces of earth blowing up in chunks, blood in the ears so thick you can’t hear the gunfire, fear rising like ground fog, clouding your eyes and imprisoning your mind. Sometimes the location shifts. I’m not always in a jungle. But that ground fog is always there, hungry.

I was my old self in the dream. I mean, I looked like I did before my face got rearranged. It was years ago—I knew that because I was in the downtown meat-packing district at night, and it was deserted. So it had to be before the place turned itself into Club-ville, like it is now.

I parked my car—my old car, a 1970 Plymouth four-door sedan so plain it made vanilla look exotic—off Gansevoort Street and started walking. It was as if I was watching from behind myself—I could see with my eyes, but I couldn’t see my face.

There was no music to the movie. It was like watching a man in an aquarium.

“You looking for a date, mister?”

I saw a girl’s face, peeking around the corner like she was playing hide-and-go-seek. Not one of the tranny hookers who had made the area their personal stroll; this was an XX-chromosome package. I remember thinking,
How do I know that?
But I never answered my own question.

She was under five feet, way short of a hundred pounds. Wearing a baggy pink sweatshirt over jeans and pink sneakers. Her hair was in pigtails. A teenager, trying to look even younger.

“Maybe,” I said, to bring her closer. “Would it be an expensive one?”

“That depends on what you want to do on your date,” she said, biting her lower lip and looking a question at me in the darkness.

“You have a place?” I asked her.

“It’s a nice night out,” she answered, as if she’d been expecting the question. “And back here”—she shot an unrounded hip in the direction of the alley she’d come from—“it’s real private.”

“I don’t…”

“Oh, you’ll
love
it, mister. You don’t have to get undressed or anything.” She stepped closer. “Just let me take it out. A man built like you, I’ll bet you’ve got a
big
cock.”

I had her then, left hand clamped on the back of her neck.

She didn’t panic. “All I have to do is scream,” she said, calmly. “My man’s back there, and he’s a real—”

“Scream,” I said, pulling my .357 Mag loose.

“Oh God!” she said, very, very softly. “You’re a cop, aren’t you? Please, please, please, please, please.”

“Just come with me,” I said, watching the mouth of the alley.

“Please, please, please.” She was crying with her voice, but her eyes were dry.

“Please what?”

“I can do it in your car. I’ll suck your cock until it
explodes,
” she whispered against me, groping with her hand.

I turned slightly, guarding my groin.

“No, no, no, mister. I just wanted to show you how good I can be. Come on,
please.
I always wanted to suck off a cop. You see how good I am, you’ll come back, right? Anytime you want, I’ll be right here.”

“Come on,” I said, clamping down a little tighter to get her moving.

“Please!”
she hissed at me. “It doesn’t have to be like that. I’ll do anything, mister. I’ll take it in the ass, if you want. Anything.”

“You’re not being arrested,” I told her. “I’m just going to take you—”

“No!” the girl begged. “
Please.
I never did anything to you, did I? And I’ll do anything you want.
Anything.
Just don’t take me back.”

“Back where?”

“You know,” she said, accusingly. “Back home.”

I woke up coated in sweat. I felt a white-hot wire somewhere in my brain, writhing like a stepped-on snake.

U
nless Beryl’s father was deep underground, any of the Internet “public records search” services would turn him up in an hour. Their best customers are stalkers, and they cater to their clientele with a wide variety of options. They’ll give you access to DMV records—there’s an extra charge for states where that’s against the law—tax rolls, employment history, student-loan databases. If you want, they’ll even send you some photos of the target’s house.

You don’t have to be a celebrity to make the list. There are humans who worship property rights.
Their
property. Some of them see therapists with their “abandonment issues.” Others visit a gun shop.

All stalkers have one thing in common: a profound, overwhelming, all-encompassing sense of entitlement. Leaving them is worse than an affront; it’s an act of deadly aggression, a threat to their core. Punishment is required.

Most people who flee don’t have the resources to really get gone. They have to work for a living. Open a bank account. Rent an apartment. Get a driver’s license.

Ex-cons talk about “getting off paper,” meaning no wants, no warrants, no detainers, no parole, no probation. But the one paper nobody ever gets off is a stalker’s “to do” list.

For some disturbos, the relationship they think was “broken off” never existed in the first place. A true erotomaniac can construct the illusion of reciprocated love out of a celebrity’s autograph, a form-letter answer to fan mail, a “shared moment” during a public appearance. Or from secret messages the victim sends in a magazine interview, a line he writes in a novel, a gesture with his hand during a TV show. Messages only the “special one” can decode.

There’s nothing so dangerous as an armed narcissist, but the gun’s no good without an address. That’s why the highest level of threat assessment is reserved for the ones protection experts call “travelers.” Some stalkers get their rocks off writing letters; travelers always deliver their messages in person.

The search services never ask customers what they intend to do with the information they buy. After all, people are entitled to their privacy.

“W
hen I was in high school, girls got a name for what they’d do.

Or wouldn’t do,” Loyal said.

“It was a small town?”

“That’s right. But I don’t see why that would make any difference. When I was in school, if you ever went all the way with a boy, just once, every other boy in school would expect you to do the same with him.”