Terminal (9 page)

“I
t happened in 1975,” the other man’s voice said. “It was late summer. Maybe two-thirty, three in the morning. I hear a car pull up. I figured it was probably one of the local rich boys, looking to score some weed. My light was on, so—”

“Your light? Outside your house? Meaning you were open for business?”

“Exactly! Everyone in town knew that signal.”

“Which means the cops did, too.”

“Sure. And so what? The kind of kids I sold to, you think the cops would’ve done themselves any favors busting
them
?”

Silence on the tape. I could see the AB man on the screen in my head, making a “keep talking” gesture.

“There were three of them. I knew them all. From dealing. But they weren’t there to score weed—they were scared. Scared to death. You know how some people get so scared they actually
stink
from it?”

On that screen in my head, I could see the AB man. Just sitting there. Staring at the sniveler, not saying the obvious.

“I got them calmed down. Best I could, anyway—one of them, he couldn’t stop crying like a baby. What they told me was this: There was this girl in their neighborhood. A little younger than them, but
way
filled out, and she knew it. The oldest one, he had his own car. You know what that kind of thing means to kids. And this girl, she wasn’t even fourteen, okay? But when he asked her to go someplace with him—the movies, I think it was—she just laughed in his face.

“It wasn’t like she had a boyfriend or anything. She was just one of those natural-born cock-teasers. You know the kind I mean. She let one of the other two—the one who couldn’t stop crying, in fact—hold her tit once. In the backyard of her own house—
big
house, with a gazebo—you know what that is…?”

Sound of a match scraping. Flame. Cigarette being lit. Exhale. Figuring that was all the response he was going to get, the stranger picked up his story:

“Well, anyway, here’s the thing. He had to kiss her ass first. I don’t mean be nice to her; I mean, get down on his knees like a bitch and actually kiss her ass. And he did it. Me, I would have—”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, it does. I’m trying to show you what kind of—”

“It doesn’t matter what
you
would have done.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s…Anyway, she was—to hear them tell it—like some kind of devil-bitch. She gave the other one—not the crying one, not the guy with the car, the third one—a hand job once. But she stopped before he got off. And
then
she told him, if he ever wanted another one from her, he had to finish that one himself…and let her watch. You see what kind of cunt she was?”

Sound of a cigarette exhale.

“They spent a lot of time on her. Like they had some sort of club. Sick bastards. They took pictures of her. One even broke into her room, took a pair of her panties. Next day, the cunt sees him, tells him he should have taken a pair from the hamper—they’d smell better.

“All they could do was think about what they wanted to do to her. Tie her upside down and whip her until she begged. Begged for everything, I mean. The guy with the car, he kept talking about how he wanted to fuck her in the ass, make her
scream,
you know?”

Exhale.

“They followed her everywhere. She knew it, but she wasn’t afraid of them. She wasn’t afraid of anything, the way they told it. One night—the night they came to my house—they caught her alone. They decided they were going to do it. All of them. One after the other, then all at the same time. Teach the dirty little whore a lesson she’d never forget.

“They took her to this place they had all set up. A house that was empty for the summer. One of them had the keys—he was supposed to water the plants or something. They even had this old rug they were going to lay down on the floor. When they were done, they were just going to roll her up in it, and unroll it on her front lawn.

“They had cameras. Polaroids. If she ever opened her mouth, the whole school would see them. See her on her hands and knees, one cock in her mouth, another up her ass.

“It worked just like they thought it would. They grabbed her, took her to the place. And they all did her. She wasn’t such a mouthy bitch then. Even posed for the pictures. Only…only she died.”

Exhale.

“That’s when they went nuts. They never figured on…something like that. She just stopped breathing. They knew it was all over then.”

“Why come to you?”

“I was a little older than them.”

“How little?”

“What difference does that—?”

Silence.

Cigarette exhale.

“Twenty-two,” the stranger said, just the faintest hint of defensiveness in his tone. “They knew I was a man—they were boys, just little punks—they knew I could get things done. I told them, yeah, I could take care of it. Take care of everything. But it would cost them. Cost them big.”

“How much?”

“I didn’t say. They didn’t ask. They just said, ‘Do it, Thorn.
Please
do it.’ And I did.”

“Did what?”

“Just what they planned, only in a different spot. I rolled her body up in the rug, carried her out to this place in the woods I knew. I pushed a big log over her, covered the body with stuff from the ground. Didn’t take long.”

“They never found the body?”

“Oh, they found it,” the stranger said, bitterness almost overpowering his voice. “Assholes didn’t give me enough time to do a professional job. I would have put her through a woodchipper or in a furnace. Or gutted her and dumped her in the lake. But it didn’t matter. The cops never had a suspect. Never made an arrest.”

“Her parents had money?”

“A
lot
of money. Everybody there had money. Even
my
parents had money…not that you’d know it from the way I had to live. They—the cunt’s parents—they hired private detectives, even got the FBI involved, I heard. But there was nothing.”

“That big a case, maybe they still have tissue samples, hair, fingernail scrapings….”

“The kids were all wearing rubber gloves. Masks, too—I don’t know why—they told me she knew it was them from the moment they snatched her. Condoms. Like I said, they were planning this for a long time. Now, the rug—that I
did
burn. But they don’t know that. If I still did have it, the forensics guys might get enough stuff off it to bury them all.”

“What’d they end up paying you?”

“A 1976 Corvette Stingray,” the stranger said, reverently. “Brand-new. I ordered it with
everything.
All white, inside and out. Man, if I still had that car today, it’d be worth—”

It’d be worth crap,
I thought to myself. Maybe ten thousand, tops. The Vettes of the Gas Crisis era were sad little weaklings, about as “collectible” as Edsels. I filed the thought away: either this guy knew nothing about cars, or he was someone who kept his lifelong bitterness derma-close, hating the rest of the world for the opportunities he fucked him
self
out of.

“That was it?” the AB-OG said, in his machine voice.

“Well, yeah. I mean, later on I tapped them for little loans. That was
much
later, when things went bad for me. They were always happy to help out an old friend who fell on hard times.”

“You
don’t
have a tape, do you?”

“No. But they don’t know that. And they
sure
don’t know I don’t have that rug.”

“What
do
you have?”

“The Polaroids. Nice clean, sharp copies. And something else. Something special.”

I
didn’t know what the Mole had done to the cassette tapes the AB man had left with me—probably wouldn’t have understood if he had explained it, either—but the audio quality was like being in the room. I caught the Prof’s eye. His slight nod told me he was thinking the same thing I was. Max was buried in the transcript, still reading.

“You’re not from out here,” the stranger on the tape said, a little bit of confidence seeping into his voice. “New York, it’s got a set of laws you wouldn’t believe. Back then, anyway. Here’s the way it worked: you’re under age sixteen, you could walk into a church with an Uzi, mow down a few dozen people, and the worst you could get was juvie time.”

“Until you were twenty-one, right? Then they’d just put you—”

“Then they had to cut you loose!” the stranger’s voice said, proud to out-knowledge the man he feared. “There was this kid, I forget his name, but I know he was a mud; he killed a whole lot of different people, just because he liked doing it or whatever. He was the one that got the law changed. A reporter did this big story on him—for
New York
magazine, it was, I remember—about how kids could get away with murder.
That’s
what got the law changed.”

“So?”

“So that law, it was like standing between heaven and hell. Because, if you were under sixteen, no matter what you’d done, you’d never see a real penitentiary. But on your sixteenth birthday, you’re a man. None of this ‘transfer hearing’ stuff you read about in other states. You know, where the court gets to decide if you should be tried as a juvenile or as an adult. In New York, you turn sixteen, you go straight to criminal court. No social workers, no ‘best interests of the child,’ none of that crap. Trial by jury. And if you lose, you go down the same as any other adult.”

Exhaled cigarette.

“Don’t you see what I’m telling you, br—?”

I could
feel
the stranger stop himself before he slipped and called the cancer-ridden man “brother.” He was tiptoeing as it was—that deep of an insult could cost him a lot more than a refused offer. “Look,” he said, quickly, “two kids commit the
same
murder. I mean, they do the exact same things…say, shoot a guy in the head, using two different guns, and the coroner said either shot would have been fatal. Only difference between the kids is they were born twenty-four hours apart. One turns sixteen the next day; the other turned sixteen a few hours before the murder. It’s 1975, remember? The younger one gets kiddie camp; the older one gets life. Sixteen in this state makes you a man; and a man’s crime means a man’s time.”

“That’s the trick in this?” the AB man said. Not challenging, just making sure he understood what he was being told. “The fifteen-year-olds, they don’t have that much to worry about, but the one who’s sixteen, he gets The Book?”

“Right! So, if you go to one of the fifteen-year-olds—right now, today, I mean—he
knows
the one who was sixteen at the time is going to confess, cut a deal for himself. He
has
to. And if you go to the one who was sixteen, he knows the other two will talk—what would there be to stop them?”

“That law—that was then.”

“I know. But it still works. Look at that guy from Connecticut. He commits a murder, what, twenty years ago? He was just a kid when he did it. But when they finally bring him to trial, he goes down as an adult.”

Exhale.

“But before they did that, they had to give him a hearing, see? Like he was still a kid. To find out if he was a good candidate for rehabilitation. It was just a farce, sure, but they still had to do it. In New York, for the sixteen-year-old, they wouldn’t even have to go through that dance.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Between a few years and forever?” the stranger said, only fear keeping the sarcasm from his voice. “Are you kidding?”

“It’s really the same risk for all of them,” the AB man explained, patiently. “Whether they go down for five minutes or five hundred years, they’re done. Even if they beat the rap on some technicality, once the family of the murdered girl finds the right lawyer, they’ll all end up on Welfare.”

“Oh,” the stranger said. “I see what you mean. But that makes it even better, then, don’t you see?”

Exhale.

“I mean, now that I think about it, you’re right. What they did to that girl…I mean, they were stone fucking skinners. When I found the body, I almost threw up. I don’t go for stuff like that. I’m a thief, not a—”

Silence. Dead silence. The stranger had come perilously close to claiming in. To call yourself a thief in front of a real convict, especially a high-status one like an AB-OG, you were saying you were a righteous man. Trustworthy. Committed to The Life. Holding the values sacred. And this guy, he was just a low-grade scam artist who couldn’t even make a living at it. For some clubs, just
claiming
you’re a member could get you seriously dead.

“Look,” the stranger said, hastily. “I’ve got
everything
you need. You—well, anybody you sent—they wouldn’t be bluffing. It
did
happen. They
did
do it. They’re
all
guilty. And they’re all rich.”

Silence. Sound of a cigarette being lit. Exhale. Then: “I’ll get back to you.”

“Better make it soon,” the stranger said. “There’s other people who’d—”

“Don’t play that with me,” the AB-OG said. “Don’t
ever
do that.”

“M
aggot,” Michelle said, as quiet as acid in a beaker.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not all true.”

“Oh, I think it
is,
baby,” she told me. “They knew who to go to, the ones who did that little girl.”

“Being scum don’t make him dumb.”

“My father is correct,” Clarence said instantly. “I did a public-records search on some of the paper that man gave to you, Burke.”

“And?”

Clarence cleared his throat. “We have the names. The names this…person gave, anyway. Here:

“Donald A. Henricks, born February 7, 1960. He would have been fifteen at the time of the murder.

“Reginald William Bender, born July 31, 1960. He also would have been fifteen.

“Carlton John Reedy, born May 17, 1959. He would have been sixteen that night.

“And this…person. The one who wants to shake them down.
His
name is Percival K. Thornton. Born April 5, 1953. He would have been twenty-two—just as he said—on the night the child was killed.”

“Okay. You already checked—?”

“Do the three he named have money, mahn? The…informant was not lying there, either. Henricks owns so much real estate, through so many corporations, it is impossible to tell how much exactly, but—”

“Maybe he’s cash-poor?” Michelle said, looking over from where she had been copying all Clarence’s information onto more blank pieces of oaktag—one per name. She didn’t use the lilac marker for any of them.

“No, little sister. His house alone is worth several millions, and there is no mortgage. He owns two other homes: one in Montana, one in the Bahamas. No mortgages there, either.”

“Ah.”

“Yes. Now, Bender is an owner, too. Shopping centers, hotels—small ones, independent, very high-end—a horse ranch…too much to list, but he is wealthy, beyond dispute.

“And Reedy, he
declared
an income of thirty-one-plus million dollars last year alone. He is an ‘investor,’ which could mean anything.”

“That’s nice work,” I told him.

“Oh, there is something more, mahn. Terry and I”—if he caught the Arctic blast from Michelle’s eyes, he ignored it—“we ran that pattern-recognition software. You know, the one we designed when you were looking for that—”

“Yeah. And?”

“They were all born on a Sunday, mahn.”

“They? All three of the killers?”

“Them
and
the others. The man who wants to blackmail them. Even the little girl they killed. It was on a Sunday that they found her body, too.”

“Damn
that
church,” the Prof said.