Pain Management (22 page)

“Yes.”

“I knew she was going to run,” Jennifer admitted.

I stole a glance at her father. If he was surprised at the revelation, I wouldn’t want to play poker with him.

“And it’s you who plants the letters for Daisy?” I asked her.

“Yes. But Rosa plants them for
me.
”

“I don’t follow.”

“I don’t
see
Rosa. She calls, she tells me where there’s a letter. I pick it up, and I leave it for Daisy.”

“You haven’t seen Rosa since she split?”

“No.”

“Did she tell you why she left, Jennifer?”

“Do you know about Borderland?”

“Just what I read.”

“That’s all any of us know.”

“So the note, the one Rosa left, it was legitimate?”

“I don’t know about any—”

“It said she was going to find the Borderlands.”

“Oh. Yes, that was what she said to me, too.”

“Jennifer, do you have any way to leave a note for
her
?”

“No. No, I don’t. I asked her . . . but she said it was too risky.”

“But she
does
call you, right?”

“Yes. When she wants me to—”

“Okay. I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Something that could work, and ease your own minds about me. How about if you ask her to meet with me, wherever she wants, but you and your father come along?”

“What about me?” Michael said, belligerence all over his voice.

“Oh, Michael, she doesn’t know you,” Jennifer told him.

“Not for her,” the kid explained patiently. “For him,” he said, pointing a finger at me.

“We’re not there yet,” his father cautioned.

“I’m . . . scared for Rosa,” Jennifer said.

“Because . . . ?” I tried to lead her.

“Because this wasn’t supposed to last so long. If you know about . . . Borderland, you know it isn’t an actual place. It’s more like a . . .” She groped with it for a few seconds, then said, “. . . collective state of mind.”

Her father beamed at her.

“That means more than one person, right, Jennifer?”

“I’m not sure I understand. . . .”

“A
collective
state of mind. Rosa, she’d have to find others who felt the same way she did, to make that work.”

“Yes,” the girl said, more confident now. “She said she
knew
they were out there. I think she had an idea where she’d be going. Not to any one place, exactly. Or even with particular people. But . . . kind of where she’d
find
them, do you see?”

“I think so,” I told her. “You said this was making you scared . . . ?”

“Rosa wasn’t looking for a
place.
Or even for people. She was looking for some answers.”

“To what?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said, her voice too full of truth to doubt. “She would never talk about it. But it was something big. Something very important.”

“She wasn’t . . . pregnant, maybe?” I asked, taking a stab.

“No,” she said, almost snorting the word.

“You’d know?” I probed gently.

“Yes. I would know. Maida and Zia, just like you said. She told me
everything.
Except . . .”

Another hour’s conversation didn’t get me any closer. The father walked me out to my car. “What’s your take on Kevin?” he asked me, way too casual.

“I don’t know the words you do,” I said, stalling.

“I get the impression that you do. But say it however you want.”

“He’s a wrong number. A fucking three-dollar bill.”

“What makes you—?”

“Just instinct.”

He gave me a long, slow look. “I don’t think so,” he said.

I shrugged.

He shifted his weight, rolled his shoulders slightly, like he was getting ready to try a standing takedown. But he didn’t say anything.

My move. “If
you
didn’t think so, you wouldn’t let your daughter talk to me,” I told him.

Then it was his turn to shrug. After a few seconds, a grin popped out on his face. “Jenn knows what she’s doing.”

“And
she
doesn’t trust—”

“Don’t go there,” he warned. “You’ve got your reasons. I’ve got mine. I’d like to protect Rose, but my own is where I draw the line, you with me?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s be sure,” he said, softly. “I like Rose. I really do. But I’d cut her loose in a second if I thought she was going to cause harm to Jenn.”

“I get it.”

“And you,” he said, moving very close to me, “if I thought
you
were going to hurt my child . . .”

I had a little information, a few possible promises . . . and not much else. My watch said it wasn’t even eleven. I didn’t want to go back to Gem’s. Didn’t feel like patrolling, either. Wherever Rosebud was, she wasn’t on the street—by then, I was pretty sure of that.

I decided to go see if Hong was at the joint where he hung out. Maybe he knew something about Ann he hadn’t told me.

Gem had pointed out Hong’s car the first time we’d met: a candy-apple Acura, slammed, with big tires and checkerboard graphics along the flanks. It was sitting in the parking lot.

I went through the door, poked my nose around the corner, spotted him in his booth. A girl was with him. They were sitting close together, side by side. Gem.

“You were asleep when I got in last night,” Gem said the next morning. “I was surprised—usually you are out so late. I did not want to wake you.”

“Thanks.”

“We must go away again. Soon.”

I knew she didn’t mean me. Gem, Flacco, and Gordo, they were professional border-crossers. I don’t know what they ran, but I know they were good at it. I met them through Mama. She didn’t know them personally, but an old friend, a Cambodian woman who ran a network similar to hers, had vouched heavy, her own rep on the line.

“All right,” is all I said.

“Before we leave, I will try to get you the information you want.”

“About Rosebud?” I asked her, surprised.

“No. But the . . . person who gave you the equipment to get into her father’s computer, he should have results for me soon.”

“Ah.”

“You do not sound enthusiastic, Burke.”

“It was a long shot.”

“What is not?” she said, sadness in her voice.

I did the math. The kind you do all the time in prison. Not counting the days—that’s okay for a county-time slap, but it’ll make you crazy if you’ve got years to go on a felony bit. The
balancing
math. Like when you’re short—getting out soon. What you want to do is stay down, out of the way, not do anything that would mess up your go-home. But word gets around the tier like flash fire. And some guys who wouldn’t have tried you when you still had heavy time to serve suddenly get brave. So you have to dance. Stay hard enough to keep the wolves off you, but not do the same kinds of things you did to send that message when you first came in.

Inside, if you’re
with
people, everything’s easier. Same out here. That was part of the math. I didn’t have people in Portland. Flacco and Gordo were good hands, but they were pros; bringing them into anything without money at the end wasn’t something you could do. Besides, they were with Gem, not with me.

I missed my own.

Ann’s whole ante was promises. Sure, she’d made the Borderland connect for me, but I would have stumbled across it anyway, sooner or later. Especially with . . .

Yeah, I had a lot more cards in my hand. Higher ones, too. Jennifer would help, now that her father had okayed it. She was the lifeline between Rosebud and Daisy, and the older sister wasn’t going to walk away from
that.
Maybe I couldn’t get inside Rosebud’s head, but I knew her well enough to put my chips on that number.

I had other things working. Bobby Ray. Clipper and Big A. Maybe even Madison. To some extent, I think they all bought it that I wasn’t Rosebud’s enemy. If they crossed paths with her, I was pretty sure they’d at least tell her how to find me.

I had money working for me, too. Talked to a lot of people like Odom, made it clear there was a bounty. Any of
them
stumbled over her, they’d call, quick.

As I learned Portland, the town got smaller. Maybe I was years away from the web of contacts and connections Ann had put together, and maybe I’d never have the credibility her mission brought her, but all that added up to was . . . she
might
have a chance to find the girl. And she wanted a lot in return.

I totaled it up. Not worth the risk.

I was in an upscale poolroom, watching Big A work a sucker. The kid was using a custom cue this time, but handling it like it was a status symbol, not a tool. Beautiful.

Clipper was giving me a rundown on the game when the phone in my jacket vibrated. I stepped off a few paces, opened it up, said, “Hazard.”

“It’s me.” Ann’s voice, some undercurrent to it I couldn’t catch.

I held back—no point telling her I wasn’t going for her deal if she was about to give me a locate. Said, “So?”

“Just tell me where you are now. I’ll come there.”

Not on the phone? Maybe she had . . . I told her the name of the poolroom. I was in the middle of giving her the address when the connection went dead.

She didn’t need anyone to announce her; the change in audio-pitch and the craned necks took care of that. She was wearing a black skirt about the size of a big handkerchief, and a red tank top that didn’t even make a pretense of containing her breasts. Red spike heels with little black anklets. And a flowing mass of blond curls. By the time she’d reached where I was standing, she’d paralyzed every man in the joint.

“Hi, cutie,” she said to Big A, giving him a little kiss on the cheek. The kid’s face flamed from the effort of trying to be cool about it.

“Hey, Ann,” Clipper greeted her.

“Making any money?” she asked him.

“A little bit.”

She shot a hip, turned to look at me over her shoulder. “We have to talk,” she said.

“Talk’s fine,” I told her. “But I don’t hold press conferences.”

“Then let’s go,” she said, taking my arm.

“Your car,” she told me, as soon as we hit the sidewalk.

I pushed the button on the key fob to unlock the Cadillac. I could have charged admission to watch her climb into the front seat.

“What’s this all about?” I asked her.

“Not here.”

“I’m not talking about whatever you’ve got to tell me. I mean the whole display.”

“Display?” She half-smiled, taking a breath deep enough to make the tank-top fabric scream for mercy.

“Not . . . you. That’s factory stock. I mean making sure everybody in that joint knows we’ve got something going.”

“Oh. That was for protection.”

“Mine or yours?”

“Both. Turn left up ahead.”

I followed her directions for a few minutes without saying another word. Parked where she told me to.

“Come on,” she said, getting out of the car.

I followed her up a driveway next to a three-story stone building. She unlocked a side door and climbed the stairs. The skirt climbed her bottom. She didn’t have to tell me to follow her.

At the top of the last landing, she produced a key and opened a plain dirty-beige door with no nameplate.

“This isn’t mine,” she said, stepping inside.

It didn’t look like anybody’s. Generic hotel furniture, even down to the Muzak-in-oil painting on the wall.

“Sit,” she said.

I took the seasick-green armchair. She pulled off the blond wig, shook out her own short auburn hair, pulled the tank top over her head, and tossed it on the mustard-yellow couch. Then she yanked the skirt up to her waist and fiddled with it for a second, and it came free in her hands. When she put one foot on a straight chair to pull off her shoe and the anklet, I could see she was wearing a simple black thong. Finished with her footwear, she walked over to a closet and starting rummaging around.

What looked like a couple of cafeteria tables were against the far wall, covered in stacks of paper. I took a casual look:
The Lancet, Scientific American,
the
Washington Post Health . . .

Ann came out of the closet with an armful of clothing. Without a word, she fitted herself into a black sports bra with straps that crossed over the back, then pulled on a baggy pair of white shorts and a white T-shirt. Barefoot, she came over to where I was sitting and perched herself on the end of the couch.

“That’s better,” she said.

“Speak for yourself,” I told her.

“Ah, you’re a silver-tongued devil, aren’t you?” she said, smiling.

“That’s me. All the moves.”

“Listen,” she said, dropping her voice. “Things have changed.”

“You know where she is?” I asked, stepping on what looked to be a long story.

“No.”

“You got any solid leads?”

“No.”

“You got
anything
new since the last time we talked?”

“No.”

“Okay. Look, you’re a girl who likes her games, I guess. And that’s fine. For that, you bring enough to the table, no question. But for what I need, no. I thought about it. But you know what? I don’t trade promises for performance. I appreciate what you did at the bookstore, but we can’t do a deal, you and me.”

“Don’t be so sure, B.B. You think I brought you here just so I could tell you I don’t have anything new?”

“No. I guess I—”

“—thought I was going to sex you into signing on? Grow up. A man who’ll steal for pussy will talk for it, too. If I’d scanned you as anything but a professional, I wouldn’t ever have talked to you.”

“All right. You tell me, then.”

“What I said before . . . about protection? I think you and me, we’re going to
have
to team up. And it would help you if people in the street think we’re together.”

“You don’t have anything to—”

“Yeah. I do. You’ve spent some time, thrown around some money—even impressed a few people. But you’re not plugged in.”

“And you are. And so what? You’re no closer to her than—”

“Not to the girl, no. But closer to the truth. And here it is, Mr. Hazard. You’re not the only one hunting her.”

I never try to Teflon a threat off my expression. Instead, I turn it into smoke, make my face a lattice, let it pass right through me. So I didn’t flat-eye her, or stay expressionless. I raised my eyebrows slightly and twisted my mouth just enough to show what I thought of street rumors.