Sigma Curse - 04 (9 page)

“Let me tell you something, soldier. I’m a Marine. I know what it’s like to serve the US in a military capacity. You may be Army, but the basic ethos is the same. Your job is to serve. To do what’s right for the citizens of this country. The citizens who, collectively, pay for your training and your food and shelter and your guns. What your job does not involve, is making judgment calls about how another person lives. You’re allowed to have opinions, of course. Even bigoted ones. Hell, it’s a free country. But when somebody lives their life in a way that’s at odds with the opinions you’ve formed, lives their life without hurting anybody else in the process... well, then you bite your tongue. You suck it up. Because it’s none of your business.”

He let go Craddock’s collar and the man’s head thunked against the asphalt.

Venn rose to his feet once more. He stared down at Craddock grimly.

“You’re lucky you’re not wearing a uniform right now,” he said. “Because you’d have disgraced it. And I’d see to it, personally, that you never wore it again.”

Venn turned to look down at Austin, who was by now sitting up. His eyes were hooded and not yet fully focussed.

“The same goes for you, asshole,” said Venn. “Though there may be hope for you yet. I get the feeling you’re not quite the son of a bitch your pal here is. Which leads me to assume that you’ve gone along with him, with his gay-baiting, because you’re too chickenshit to speak up against it. Which in turn makes me wonder if you’ve got any balls.”

Without a backward glance, Venn walked away to his Jeep.

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H
er name was Alice Peters.

She was around twenty-eight or thirty years old, stood five-two even in slightly raised heels, and weighed perhaps a hundred pounds.

And she had the Sigma curse on her.

Sally-Jo studied her across the room, trying not to stare. It was hard not to. She was so perfect, so ideal, Sally-Jo had to remind herself from time to time to keep breathing.

Although there was a lectern up in the front of the hall, Alice Peters ignored it, simply standing without visual aids or notes of any kind and talking freely, fluently, while the audience listened, hypnotized by the cadences of her voice. She was plainly, casually dressed in jeans and a sweater.

Alice Peters had cafe au lait skin, smooth and clear. Most of the audience were African American or Hispanic, but there was a scattering of white people, too, including Sally-Jo herself.

After a full half hour of unbroken monologue, Peters came to a natural stop. She didn’t thank the audience, or ask them if there were any questions. Instead, the silence hung heavy in the hall, until the first handclaps started.

They rose like a swelling wave and broke over Peters. She didn’t look awkward or embarrassed or self-congratulatory. She simply smiled gently, gave a little nod of her head, and turned slightly to the reverend, who’d risen from his chair off to one side and was advancing toward her, joining in the applause himself.

The reverend hugged her in his great, bear-like arms, whispered something in her ear. Then he turned to the audience, some of whom were on their feet by now.

He said, his voice a rich, rolling bass: “Thank you, Ms Peters. Now, I guess there’ll be one or two questions?”

From her seat toward the rear of the hall, Sally-Jo watched in fascination as the forest of hands shot up, with some people taking a few steps forward in their eagerness to be noticed. The reverend laughed and pointed randomly to a young woman in the middle.

It went on for another half hour, the audience asking their questions and Alice Peters answering clearly and warmly. Every one of the questioners, without exception, thanked her for her moving story.

Sally-Jo learned a great deal about Alice Peters in that half hour, without asking a single question herself.

Peters had been giving talks and seminars at the church hall in Sugar Hill, and elsewhere across the city, for the last six months. It seemed her sessions had become so popular that busses were being laid on to transport people from as far afield as New Jersey. The demand was so great that Peters was booked up at the center for the next year.

She was a part-time teacher to kids with learning disabilities, as well as a motivational speaker. She was twenty-nine years old. Nine years ago, things had been very different. From the age of thirteen, Alice had been a prostitute and a heroin addict. She’d first been arrested at the age of nine for shoplifting, and then again several times through her teens for vandalism, pickpocketing and disorderly conduct in public. Petty offenses, but they built up on her rap sheet. By age sixteen, she was well and truly hooked on the needle, and was living a semi-conscious, mostly nocturnal existence in a condemned slum tenement in Harlem along with seven other girls, kept like a zoo animal by a gang of pimps who readily resorted to violence if Alice or any of their other slaves tried to escape or to defy them in any way.

When she was nineteen, Alice’s best friend, one of the other girls she was housed with, died of a heroin overdose after being beaten up by one of the gang. It was never clear whether the overdose was accidental or not. In many ways, as Alice said, it didn’t matter.

That was when she decided to turn her life around.

She’d gotten out one night by hitting the john she was with over the head and escaping though a window, to avoid the pimp sitting in the car outside. Utterly bewildered by the maze of Manhattan streets she found herself lost in, Alice had undergone a night like Virgil’s journey through hell in Dante’s Inferno. It wasn’t helped by the fact that she hadn’t had a fix in over twelve hours – the pimps always withheld the treat until after the girls had finished a job, as an incentive for them not to pull a double-cross.

Eventually she’d wound up at a refuge for battered and abused women near Tompkins Square, and the process of recovery had begun. It had involved a prolonged period of hospitalization, during which she’d undergone opiate detox and been treated for a variety of illnesses including several STDs and a mild pneumonia. Alice had at times fought against the process, longing for the comfort and certainty of the life she’d been living. But she’d stuck with it, and gradually, painfully, her life had changed.

She’d gone back to school. Achieved a diploma in teaching. And, through it all, she’d been determined not to turn her back on her old life, but to face it. To understand what she’d been through, and to help others break free.

She spoke, in her talk and in the questions afterward, of hope. Hope for those in the audience who had kids or siblings or friends who were trapped in the brutal spiral of addiction and exploitation at whatever level. Hope for the younger people listening, who might feel their lives were heading that way. But her message wasn’t just a supportive, emotional one. She also provided hard, practical advice on what to do: phone numbers to call, drop-in centers to visit. She was candid about what she’d found useful and what not.

Sally-Jo couldn’t help but be affected by Peters’ tale, and the way she told it. She felt a stirring within her, deep down and primal, which she didn’t try to deny. At several points, she felt a tightening in her throat, the sting of tears in her eyes.

It almost caused her to abandon her plans.
Almost.

Sally-Jo had been searching for the past two days, wandering the streets in the more run-down parts of New York, seeking out centers just like this one in the hope of finding somebody suitable. She’d lucked out with Alice Peters, had never imagined she’d find somebody who fit the bill so perfectly.

Sally-Jo was dressed in a heavy, shapeless coat several sizes too big that she’d picked up in an Army surplus store on Canal Street. Her tracksuit pants were dirty and a little frayed, and her chestnut hair was bundled up under a wool beanie with the Yankees emblem. She wore no makeup. Her naturally pale face, her shambling, hangdog gait, made her invisible. Nobody so much as glanced at her as she strode the streets, not even the men.

An ability to disguise herself, to hide who she really was, had always been one of her strong points, Sally-Jo reflected.

The audience began to drift out, many of them passing by Alice Peters to thank her. Peters stood with the reverend, drinking coffee and chatting with him and a couple of other workers at the church. Sally-Jo hung around awhile, not wanting to approach Peters yet – the reverend or one of the others might remember her – before picking up her rucksack and shuffling outside and loitering down the block. She pulled the hood of her jacket over her beanie and hunched against the biting cold and watched the entrance to the center.

Twenty minutes later, Alice Peters emerged, bundled up in an overcoat and scarf. Sally-Jo was in luck: the woman was alone.

Peters turned right, away from Sally-Jo, and headed up the street toward the subway station on the corner. Sally-Jo set off after her, keeping well back. She saw the woman disappear down into the station and picked up her pace a little.

Sally-Jo had no particular aptitude for tailing people, but Alice Peters was easy to keep up with, mainly because she carried herself with an air of serene openness, as if it would never cross her mind that somebody might be stalking her. It was late morning, and the subway carriage was moderately full. Peters took the train south, then the cross-train toward Brooklyn. On the way she busied herself with an iPad, as if she was checking notes or preparing a presentation.

She alighted at Prospect Avenue and hesitated at the exit from the station, looking about as if uncertain of her surroundings. That was good, Sally-Jo thought. It would be easier to take her in an unfamiliar setting.

Peters studied her iPad, then set off at a brisk pace down the street. Sally-Jo thought she’d probably oriented herself using Google Maps. The district was a bohemian, slightly grungy one, teeming with locals more than obvious tourists. They provided good cover for Sally-Jo as she followed Peters.

The woman paused halfway down the street, then took a left through the gates of a park after consulting her iPad again. A shortcut, Sally-Jo assumed. She crept after Peters and entered the park.

A wide path skirted a pond covered in a jigsaw of ice sheets. On either side, rolling lawns led up to a ring of dense trees. Usually, in a park like this at this hour, there’d be early lunchers sitting on the benches or picnicking on the lawns, thought Sally-Jo. Now it was just too cold for that. The only people around were mothers pushing strollers containing bundles of woolen clothes inside which babies were hidden, and the inevitable jogging fanatics, pounding by with red faces.

Peters made her way swiftly across the park, angling left. Sally-Jo examined the environment quickly, aware of her quickening heartbeat. This was going to be a difficult one. She’d have to move fast.

She broke off the path and headed across the lawn in an arc, ending up walking parallel to Peters but thirty yards away from her. Sally-Jo skirted the treeline, keeping Peters in sight. She glanced into the thicket of trees. There was nobody there she could see.

She saw Peters disappearing toward the other side of the park and another gate there. Quickly, Sally-Jo ran across the lawn after her, waiting till she got close before she cried out: “Miss? Can you help me?”

Peters whirled, fear in her eyes. She relaxed a fraction when she saw it was a woman approaching her, but the wariness was still there.

Sally-Jo stopped short a few feet from Peters. Her own eyes were wild, and she’d set a look of panic on her face that she thought was convincing, judging but the way Peters’ expression was rapidly turning to one of concern.

“What’s wrong?” Peters said.

“It’s... my boyfriend,” Sally-Jo gasped, feeling hysteria rising inside her. “He’s... he’s...”

This time Peters took a step closer, staring at Sally-Jo all over. “What is it? Has he attacked you?” Peters gazed past Sally-Jo over her shoulder, as if seeking out a pursuer.

“No, no.” Sally-Jo shook her head frantically. “He’s - I think he’s ODed. Smack. I think he’s taken an overdose.”

That pushed Alice Peters’ buttons immediately. She took another step forward until she was at Sally-Jo, and she gripped her arms, firmly but not painfully.

In a low, calm voice, she said, “Where is he, honey?”

Sally-Jo gestured frantically back across the lawn. “We were over there. In the trees. He just... collapsed. Started spitting, frothing. I can’t wake him up.
I can’t wake him up.
”

Sally-Jo knew she was running a risk. The woman might pull out her cell phone right there and call 911, and then the whole thing would have to be abandoned. Sally-Jo would have to make her excuses and run off, and hope no more was said about it.

But Peters pulled on her elbow and said, “Come on. Show me,” and Sally-Jo felt a surge of triumph.

She led Peters over the lawn, not running – that would attract the attention of anybody who might be passing by – but instead moving in a stumbling lope. Peters didn’t rush her. They reached the tree line and Sally-Jo began to claw her way through the depleted foliage.

She stopped, stared around her as if unsure of the way. Peters too was gazing about.

“Where is he?”

Sally-Jo pointed uncertainly. “I think – that way...”

She pointed past Peters, who set off in the direction she’d indicate. It meant Sally-Jo was slightly behind her.

When they were ten feet or so into the woods, Sally-Jo glanced quickly behind her. The trees obscured the view of the lawn, and so, she hoped, the view from the lawn. She could see nobody in the immediate vicinity.

She moved in swiftly behind Peters’ back and whipped the rope from her rucksack where one end was protruding and looped the ends through her fists and flipped the rope over Peters’ head and round her neck.

Peters was stopped short and almost lifted off her feet. She fell back against Sally-Jo, but she was small and slight, and Sally-Jo absorbed the impact of her body. Peters’ hands came up instinctively and she clawed at the rope. Sally-Jo pulled it tight, needing to choke off any screams. All she heard from Peters’ mouth was a faint, high-pitched keening. It was still too loud. She twisted the rope tighter.