Pain Management (21 page)

“Thank you,” I said, keeping my face blank as the synapses fired in my mind, looking for the connection. Crow girls? Was that it?

The Indian woman gave me a look that said, “You better be telling me the truth,” and turned away just enough to be a dismissal.

Berto turned out to be a Latino kid—I guessed Panama, but it
was
a guess—maybe sixteen years old. As soon as Ann said “Borderland” to him, he led us over to a whole wall of paperbacks, and deftly plucked a copy of
Life on the Border
from a high shelf. It showed a young man and a girl dressed in a combination of street gear and club clothes, leaning against a telephone pole in front of an ancient Cadillac sedan with a taxi light on top and bullet scars all over its doors. It said the author was Terri Windling, and I was beginning to think the kid had confused the title when I saw Charles de Lint’s name up top, next to the title.

“How much?” I asked the kid.

He gave Ann a glance, his eyebrows raised in a question.

“Give him twenty,” she said to me.

I did it. The kid didn’t offer me a courtesy shopping bag. Or a receipt.

“Is that a rare-book store?” I asked Ann, examining my prize on the front seat of her Subaru.

“Not especially. They have some hard-to-get stuff there, but it’s not exactly antiquarian.”

“This one cost five bucks new. And it’s ten years old.”

“What’s your point?”

“Twenty bucks seemed a little steep.”

“They work on a sliding scale there. Kids pay whatever they can afford, like on the honor system. When . . . someone your age comes in, they try to get whatever the traffic will bear.”

“And that keeps . . . people my age out of there for the most part.”

“That, too,” she said, smiling. “Is the book going to help you?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“All right. You know where to find me.”

“That’s it? That’s all you got?”

“No, Mr. . . . Hazard, that’s what you call yourself, yes? . . . I’ve got a lot more. But you might as well see what this is worth first.”

“Fair enough. Whatever’s in this book, it might give me a clue or two, but it isn’t worth—”

“Here you are,” she said, as she slid the Subaru alongside where I’d left my car. “Things don’t have ‘worth.’ That’s a nonsense concept. Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them. You think a hit of street heroin is ‘worth’ what they’re getting for it?”

“That again.”

“Yes. That again. I told you—”

“Thanks for the book,” I interrupted. “I’ll let you know.”

As I was climbing out of the car, she said, “Madison might be a lot more willing to talk to you if she thought you and I were working together . . . ,” letting the words trail out behind her as she pulled away.

“What is that you are reading?” Gem asked me that night.

I held up the paperback so she could see the cover. “It’s a book about kids. Runaways. And this place called Bordertown that they all run
to.
It’s a place that runs on music and magic.”

“A fantasy?”

“More like a fable. About the kind of community kids wanted to build in the Haight-Ashbury days. Maybe the kind of community they saw in their heads if they dropped enough acid, I don’t know. It’s not one of those post-apocalyptic jobs—this is kind of a parallel universe. I mean, this Borderland, it’s not perfect. There’s a kind of racism—or species-ism, maybe—there’s two different species, and a third that comes from mixing. People have to have jobs or they have to scrounge. There’s a goods-and-services economy, just like here. But the kids are building something out of their own needs. Something real different from what’s out here for them now.”

“Why is this important?” Gem had been a child in a place where dreams kill as surely as bullets, only with a lot more pain.

“The note . . . the one Rosebud left. It said she was going to find ‘the Borderlands.’ Not Border
town,
like in this book. And not Borderland, singular. It says here there was a book of that title, by these same people. I think it means she’s looking for this kind of life. And there’s another connect, too. The crow girls . . . in that picture on her wall . . . they’re from a Charles de Lint book. And Charles de Lint, he’s one of the writers—I guess maybe one of the architects—of this Borderland thing. At first I thought the crow girls were supposed to be Rosebud and Daisy, but after I read it a couple of times, I don’t think so.”

Gem let her impassive face ask the question for her.

“The crow girls are . . . contemporaries. Not just sisters. They’re about the same age. Different personalities, but . . . a lot alike.”

“Who do you think the other one is, then?”

“I’m going to try and find out. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Your daughter lent me a book,” I told the psychologist on the phone that night. “I’d like to come by and return it.”

“You mean you want to talk with her again.”

“Yes, sir.”

He covered the mouthpiece with his hand, but I could still hear him yelling for his daughter. A few minutes passed. No music-on-hold.

“It’s too late tonight,” he said when he got back on. “Come tomorrow. Seven-thirty.”

“Thank you.”

“Mr. Hazard?”

“Yes?”

“Come alone.”

“Sure.”

“Alone,” he repeated. “That means by yourself. Unarmed. With no recording devices. Do you understand?”

“Completely.”

He hung up on me.

“You know what would be exciting?” Gem whispered to me around midnight.

“What?”

“To suck your cock while you read those books.”

“Why would that be so—?”

“Just read your books,” she said softly. “Keep reading them.”

I showered and shaved, put on a chambray shirt with a plain black knit tie under a cream-colored leather jacket. Looked at myself in the mirror and realized it was all for nothing—dressing me up was like tying a red ribbon around the handle of an ice pick.

As soon as I pulled into their driveway, I stashed the Beretta and its holster under the front seat. I even unclipped my carbon-black Böker sleeve-knife and left it on the dash.

The father-and-son tag team greeted me at the door. The father’s gaze was professionally flat. The son was having a little trouble with hostility management.

“Thank you for having me,” I said formally.

“You’re not a guest,” the kid said.

“Michael . . .” his father muttered, moving his arm to the side to show me where he wanted me to go.

We all sat down. “We’re not a family with secrets,” the man said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re a family without privacy. Do you understand?”

“I . . . think so. Whatever I say to Jennifer, it’s between her and me?”

“Up to a point,” he warned. “I promise you, Jenn’s a very smart young woman. She doesn’t
have
to tell me anything, but she’s
free
to, got it?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll get her,” he said, getting up.

“You play ball?” I asked the son, looking for an opening.

“You mean like football?”

“No. I mean . . . you look like an athlete to me; I was just making conversation.”

“You didn’t come here to talk to me.”

“Not specifically. But you seem to have some . . . negative feelings about me. And I thought, if we talked, maybe I could find out why.”

“So why didn’t you just ask me, straight out?”

“Because I’m an idiot,” I told him. “I should have seen you’re the kind of man that appreciates a direct approach.”

A grin flashed across his face. “My dad’s an athlete,” he said. “He was a wrestler.”

“He looks it.”

“Yeah. Now he plays basketball to keep in shape. From what the guys he plays with say, though, he’s still a wrestler.”

I chuckled at that, envious of the man who had such a son.

“Michael mention soccer to you?” his father said, coming back into the room.

“Not a word. You play that, too?”

“Me? Huh! Michael’s all-state. Striker. Tournament MVP in the—”

“Pop!” the kid protested.

“He’s got about a hundred scholarship offers,” his sister added, beaming at him.

“Aaargh!” the kid grunted, his face flaming.

Father and daughter sat down together. My envy went up another notch.

“Dad says you want to talk to me?” Jennifer said.

“That, and to return the book you lent me.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking the book I handed her. “Well?”

“I thought you’d rather . . .”

“I want my father to be here, this time,” she said firmly.

Michael shifted his stance, making it clear I’d have to deal with all of them.

“Sure,” I said. “Jennifer, I’m trying to figure this out. Rosa left her home for some reason. Some
good
reason, I’m thinking. She didn’t go far. She’s close by. And in touch, too.”

Two spots of color appeared in Jennifer’s cheeks.

“I don’t think you know all the answers,” I went on smoothly, “but I think you know some of them.”

“Let’s say I do,” she said, her mouth a straight line. “Why would I trust you with such . . . information?”

“That’s why I’m here,” I told her. “To try and convince you. I think I already did . . . a little bit anyway . . . or you would never have lent me that book.”

“I . . .”

“Or was it a test? To see if I could make anything out of it?”

“Not a . . . test. But I did want to see if you were really interested.”

“In finding Rosa?”

“No.
In
Rosa. In Rosa herself. As a person. Not just a job her . . . father gave you.”

“You don’t trust her father?”

She was silent for a few seconds. Then her brother came out with, “That’s right, we don’t.”

I watched a look pass between the two of them, tapped into the current, saw it for what it was. The kid didn’t give a rat’s ass about Rosebud’s father and knew even less—he was just backing up his sister.

“You think because her father is paying me—”

“Would you be looking for her if he wasn’t?” Jenn asked, rhetorically.

“No. I wouldn’t have known anything about any of this,” I said. “But now, after all this poking around,
now
I would, yes. And I meant what I said, Jennifer. I’m not dragging her back home, period. I just want to talk to her, listen to what she has to say. If she doesn’t want to go back, I’m not going to make her.”

The girl turned, looked at her father, said, “Dad?” He took the handoff as smooth as if they’d practiced the trick for years.

“If Rose’s father’s intentions are so legitimate, why go to a man like you?”

“Like me?”

“What word didn’t you understand, Mr. . . . Hazard? There are plenty of PIs in this town.”

“I’m employed by his lawyer, Toby—”

“Right. I’m not saying what you’re doing is illegal. But why would Kevin go off the books?”

“He tried a PI firm. They didn’t get anywhere.”

“Maybe because of what they weren’t willing to do.”

“Maybe,” I said, shrugging. “Who’s your problem with, here?”

“You,” Michael threw in, his face tightening like he was going to make a move. “You’re bothering my sister, and—”

“And we’re dealing with it, Michael,” his father said, gently. “Nobody is going to bother Jenn, okay?”

The kid nodded, not entirely convinced.

“Here’s the problem,” the father said. “I don’t know you. I doubt Kevin knows you.”

“He doesn’t,” I said. Thinking this guy wouldn’t make the same mistakes an amateur like Kevin would, judge by appearances. I knew a guy in prison once. Ferret-faced, with a weak, trembly chin, and watery, frightened eyes. He was a stone life-taker. And I had the strong sense that Joel knew the same truths I did.

“So . . . what’s your word worth?” he asked. “That’s what it comes down to, you understand that?”

“I do.”

“And . . . ?”

“I haven’t got any references. None that would mean anything to you.”

“Try me.”

“I can’t do that, either.”

His pale eyes took my pulse. “Tell us what you can,” he finally said.

“I’ve been to prison,” I said. “But I always went in alone. Where I live, your word is your life. Good or bad. If you promise to do something . . . anything . . . you have to do it. Otherwise, your protection’s gone.”

“I don’t understand that,” the girl said.

“He means if you threaten someone you have to make good on the threat,” her father said.

I nodded to show he had it right. “That’s one side of it, sure. Not the only one. But . . . all right, here it is. I’ve done all kinds of things in my life. Some I think you’d approve of, others I know you wouldn’t. That’s okay, I don’t expect you to be my friends. Here’s what I
never
did: I never went out to hurt a kid. Or use one. Or turn one up for people who wanted to do any of that.”

“Is that because—?” Jenn started to say.

“Yes,” I cut her off. I didn’t want the empathetic pain that had suddenly flashed in her deep, dark eyes. “I was a runaway myself when I was a kid. Much younger than Rosa is now. More than once. And I would have rather died than go back to where I ran from. I give you my word that I will never bring her back if she doesn’t want to go.”

“I don’t know how to tell,” Jennifer said, honesty and fear mingling in her voice.

“I do,” her father said. “But I also believe in insurance. And I think it’s time to take you up on your earlier offer, Mr. . . . Hazard.” He turned to his son, “Michael, would you get me that little hand mirror your mother has on her dresser, please?”

After I’d rolled my thumbprint onto the freshly Windexed mirror, the father said, “Ask your questions.”

I nodded my agreement to the deal we’d never spoken out loud—he wasn’t going to show the thumbprint to anyone in law enforcement unless I broke my word. Turning to Jennifer, I asked, “Which one are you, Maida or Zia?”

“Oh!” Her blush turned her beautiful face into a work of art.

I waited, patiently, deliberately not pinning her with my eyes.

“Zia,” she finally said. “I thought you’d think . . .”

“That it was she and Daisy, yes?”

“Yes. They’re so close, those two. But . . . I should have known. Daisy is very . . . grown-up for her age, I think. But Rosa’s her
big
sister, you know?”