Mask Market (29 page)

“What I had…what I had inside me, they said that was being possessed. Satan had my soul. But if I worked hard enough, if I prayed hard enough, if I did everything they told me to, I could drive it all out.

“Only I didn’t
want
it out. I wanted to be…I wanted to be myself. Me.”

I nodded my head.

“At first, I kept that to myself. When I finally said it out loud, that’s when the beatings started.”

She shifted position, opening her stance like a boxer loading up to throw the equalizer. Her voice dropped into a metallic baritone.

“They called it ‘correction.’ The rod, right out of the Bible they made me read after each time. My parents never knew. Part of the program was that they couldn’t have any contact with me for the first six months. ‘Total immersion in the Lord,’ is what they called it.

“I was only fifteen. And sheltered, too—my parents had taken me out of school years before that. Because of my…problem. So I didn’t know much about the world. But it didn’t take me long to understand. They taught me a lot in that place. And the first thing I learned was, those beatings, they
liked
doing that. It was exciting for them. Got them all…you know.”

“I do know,” I said, reaching for her hand. She let me take it, but didn’t return the squeeze I gave.

“We were at the zoo. To see the baby pandas. It was like a field trip. Only for students who had been good. Obedient, they meant. I knew how to be ‘good’ by then. That’s when I ran.

“I knew I couldn’t go to my grandmother’s—she would have just called my parents. And I didn’t have any other place to go. I kept seeing New York in my mind. The biggest city in the world. Magic was there, I was sure of it.

“Michelle found me on my second night. I was looking for a place to sleep. These two men were…taunting me. It was at this old empty building, right next to a pier, all the way downtown. But they had been there first, they said, so it was their home. And I had to pay rent.

“I would have done it. Whatever ‘it’ was, it would have been better than going back. And then Michelle just
burst
in. She’s so small—I was bigger than her even then, and the men were
much
bigger. But they were scared of her. She was so
fierce.
And she had a razor….

“I stayed with her for a few weeks. She worked nights, but we talked when she came home. Every day. I told her everything.

“One day, she told me she had to go away for a while. She promised she’d be back, and made
me
promise I wouldn’t go out while she was gone.

“I don’t know how she did it, but when she came back, she told me it was time for me to go home. I was so scared, but I believed her. And when I got home, it was like I had different parents. They
apologized
to me. My mother was crying, and my father was…well, I don’t know what to call it, but he was very, very determined.

“That’s when I started to become Toni. The doctor they sent me to was so good and kind. I couldn’t have the surgery until I was of age, but he explained I had to live as a girl for at least two years first anyway, just to be sure.”

“Your parents turned out to be really something.”

“They did,” she said, relaxing her shoulders, her hand soft and damp in mine. “They were Christians, but
real
Christians, like Jimmy Carter, not fundamentalist freaks. That…place they sent me to, it was out of ignorance. When my father found out what they really did in there, he…I don’t know exactly what he did. But I know there was a big lawsuit, and the place ended up closed.”

“That’s quite a story.”

“Oh, it’s a
long
story, I know,” she said. “But I told it to you for a reason.”

“Did you, Toni?”

“Yes. I wanted you to understand what I’m going to say now.”

I waited.

“Michelle said, anything I did for you, it would be the same as doing it for her. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“And I’d do anything for Michelle,” the big redhead told me. “That’s N. E. Thing. Understand now?”

T
oni dropped me off at a bowling alley. Luckily, they also had a few pool tables. I wasn’t even finished with the first rack before a pudgy kid in a short-sleeved shirt big enough to be a dust cover for a refrigerator wobbled over and asked me if I wanted to play some nine-ball.

The hustler was patient. I was up fifty bucks—the worm on the hook he was baiting—when Toni walked in. She sashayed her way over to me, snapping necks as she went, mane of red hair bouncing.

“How much have you managed to lose so far?” she said, hands on her hips, but smiling to show she was being the indulgent girlfriend, not a harpy.

“Hey! I’m up about fifty, right?” I said, turning to the fat kid for confirmation.

“That’s right,” the kid said, gravely, nodding his head to reluctantly acknowledge my clear superiority with the cue.

“Well, we are
late,
” Toni announced.

“Just one more game?”

“
One
more,” she said, warningly. Then she perched herself on a high stool, crossed her long legs, and cupped her chin in one hand.

“Double or nothing?” I said to the fat kid.

“Oh, hell, it’s the last game, let’s make it for a hundred.”

“Your break,” I said, winking at Toni.

The pudgy kid’s shot hit the rack like a cannonball going through crepe paper. The balls ran for cover—three of them so terrified they ducked down into the pockets. The cue ball was centered, a little short of the head spot. He cut in the one-ball, came three rails for perfect shape on the two, tapped it into the side, pirouetted like a bullfighter, and comboed the four-nine without drawing a breath.

“In between tournaments?” I asked him, as I paid up.

“You recognized me?” he said, caught between surprise and pride.

“Sure,” I lied.

“You’re pretty good yourself. Want to go one more time?”

“You see that girl over there?”

“I sure do, bro.”

“That’s all the luck I’m ever going to find in this place, son.”

“S
he was the third house I visited,” Toni said. “I’m a broker—for real; that’s what I do—Michelle must have told you. I told the woman I have a client who’s much more interested in the right neighborhood than in any individual house. He and his wife have three school-age children, and he’s done his research. I didn’t get where I am today by waiting for the right MLS to pop up—I go out in the field and scout around. Occasionally, you run across someone who wasn’t thinking of selling…until they hear the kind of money my client’s willing to put on the table.”

“
Very
nice,” I said, giving her a con man’s respect for a superior opening shtick.

“It’s actually true,” she said, smiling. “If someone were to make a phone call to my office, it would get verified, too.”

“Even better.”

“She was last on my list,” Toni said. “Fortunately, the first house I tried, no one was at home. And the second one, it was only the maid. But if anyone had been watching…”

“Beautiful.”

“The woman who answered the door isn’t your girl. Too old. Not that she doesn’t keep herself up—she was all toned-and-tucked, believe me—but she hasn’t seen thirty for a good long time. Has to be the mother.”

“Did you get the sense anyone else was there?”

“Well, there was at least one more,” Toni said. “The baby. More like a toddler…? I don’t know; I’m not good with guessing ages when they’re that small. Young enough for the mother to be carrying her around in one arm, anyway.”

“Did she act like—I’m not sure how to put this—did she act like the baby was
her
baby? Or a kid she was watching for someone else?”

“Oh, it was her baby. She had that…protective way of standing you see in mothers.”

“Some mothers.”

“Some mothers,” Toni agreed. “But there was more…. She was, like…I don’t know how to say it…. Maybe the way she talked, like the baby was in on the conversation. She didn’t
treat
her like a baby. Didn’t just make noises at her, she called her by her name. Elysse. That was her baby, Burke. I’d bet a month’s commissions on it.”

“She let you come in?”

“Not exactly. She didn’t tell me to get lost, but—this is all part of the way she was standing; I can’t quite explain it—she wasn’t going to give any ground. She acted like she had all the time in the world. Even took my business card. But she wasn’t offering me a cup of coffee. Not even when I said my client was a seven-figure buyer, all cash.”

“That’s great, Toni. You did a perfect job.”

“Thanks. I would have felt better if she’d let me in, but I didn’t want to push it.” She glanced at the dashboard, said, “If you’re not going back to see her today, we can still make your train.”

“Let’s get that train,” I told her.

“When you spend your life going in and out of houses, you get a feel for them,” she said. “That place was big, but it was empty, too. I got the distinct impression that she lives there by herself. Her and the baby, I mean.”

“Well, it was long odds.”

“She might have a cat. Everyone says cats are so curious, but some of them couldn’t be bothered to get up just because someone’s at the door.”

“But a dog…”

“That’s right,” she said, “a dog is different. My Samson—he’s a Jack Russell terrier—if you let a
mosquito
in the door, he’d have to go and see for himself.”

“Jack Russells are all lunatics.”

“That’s true!” she said, laughing. “But there was no dog in that woman’s house at all. I could just tell.”

I didn’t say anything, watching the scenery change as we got back inside the D.C. limits.

“Maybe she doesn’t think she needs a dog,” Toni said, as she pulled up to the station. “Just inside the front door, there’s a blue box on the wall. Some of my clients have the same one. It’s a central-station system. If that alarm goes off, it doesn’t ring some clown who’s supposed to dial 911
for
you; it rings right inside the cop shop.”

T
he next morning, the newscaster said Amtrak was taking the Acela out of service for a few months. Something about the brakes not being trustworthy.

Another man might have taken that for an omen.

T
he restaurant was Japanese, not far from the old tennis stadium in Forest Hills. The hostess had a treacherously demure smile, too much rouge, and glossy black agate eyes. She showed me over to a corner booth shielded from the rest of the place by rice-paper screens.

Charlie saw me coming, stood up, shook hands like we were business friends.

“Hello,” the dark-haired woman next to him said. Polite smile, wary eyes.

“John, I’d like you to meet my wife,” he said. “Galina, this is John Smith.”

She reached up and extended her hand. It wasn’t so much cold as neutral. Inanimate.

I sat down across from them, noting that Charlie had set it up so that I was facing the entrance, my back to the wall.

“Do you know my husband a long time?” Galina asked, as the waiter placed bowls of miso soup in front of us.

“More years than I care to remember,” I told her, smiling to show I wasn’t being hostile, just regretting my age.

All the way through the meal, we talked about everything except what I’d come for. A New York conversation, ranging from superficial to fraudulent. Taxes, real estate, crime.

“Dessert?” the waiter asked.

“Let us think about that,” Charlie told him, handing over some folded bills.

“He won’t come back until I call him,” he said to me.

That was my cue. Turning to face Galina, I said, “When I came by your house the other day, you told your husband I was there, then you went back inside. While you were there, you made a phone call.”

Her face was a mask of polite interest.

“Your husband promised you would explain that to me,” I went on. “I’m sure he told you how important…how very important this is.”

“Yes.”

“Then, please…”

She looked over at Charlie. He nodded.

“I am Ashkenazi,” she said. “You know what this is?”

“Jews born in Eastern Europe?”

A quick flash of surprise registered in her dark eyes, opening them to a new depth. “It is more complicated than that, but yes. I was born in Russia. My family, too. And their family. My ancestors
fought
the Nazis. In the Red Army. Many died. Those who lived, maybe they thought things would be different for them when the war was over. But it was not.