Victims (32 page)

“Come out of the car. Both of you.” Miranda held her .38 Detective Special loosely in her right hand.

Quietly, without protest, they got out and submitted to her quick, fairly thorough frisk, standing, arms up on the roof of the car, as though they were all playing a game.

“Please,” Maria begged. “Come into the car with me, Miranda. There are things I want to show you that...”

Miranda looked around, shook her head. “No. You come to my car. Your boyfriend stays here, in clear sight.”

Maria reached for the rear door of her own car. “I have tapes to give you, photostats, evidence. I will not go with you. I do not trust you. I do not know who is in your car, what police you have hidden there.”

Reluctantly, instinctively aware of the fact that she should not consent to being in a confined place, Miranda got into the back seat of the car with Maria, and as the girl spoke she kept her eyes on the boyfriend, standing where she had told him, in front of the car, in full view.

Where they had come from, how many of them, from what direction: none of that mattered. What mattered was that within minutes, just long enough for her to draw a few steadying breaths, it all happened.

A series of cars pulled up, three? four? Dark, silent cars alongside the Volvo, across the front of it, behind it. Miranda dropped the notebook Maria had given her, let the tape cartridges fall to her feet. Her right hand tightened on her revolver, and she reached out for Maria’s arm, but there was so much commotion on all sides. She felt a rush of warm air as the car door was pulled open. She tried to pull free of the weight of Maria’s body, suddenly fallen against her, for a split second covering her face. Hands were on her wrist, pressing a sensitive nerve, preventing her from pulling the trigger to get off a shot, forcing her hand to fly open. She didn’t hear her gun hit the ground: it had been taken from her.

For a split second, she saw Maria’s face, then it disappeared as Miranda was pushed down to the floor. She heard Maria’s voice, a thick sob, “I’m sorry, I...” There were two men, one on either side, hands holding her arms, a heavy wool-smelling hood of some kind was yanked over her head, pulled down. Her head was pushed down until she felt a crackling at the nape of her neck. There were men in the front seat. She heard Maria, outside somewhere, crying, “Don’t hurt me. I did what he said. Please...”

Not one single word was spoken in the car; just heavy forced breathing sounds, grunts, a deep sob from her own throat. There was a series of noises, car doors slamming, motors churning, racing, cars lurching. Miranda felt her body jerk and roll on the floor of the car. She was steadied by rough hands and held in place by a booted foot.

This is not happening to me.

This is happening to me.

When the car stopped with an abrupt slamming on of brakes, again the foot held her, to keep her from rolling.

They were taking care not to hurt her. That was good. She held on to that thought.

She listened but did not hear any of the other cars. Doors flew open and hands reached down and dragged her up and out. She knew she should be experiencing pain. She had been battered and dragged and slammed around, and yet she felt none of it, not even discomfort. Her body was numb, responding on automatic, removed from the control of her brain. That was good. Her brain could function, and the hell with the rest of her. She would control her thoughts, then she could control her own actions, if not theirs.

It is a damp, sewery location, garbage, rot, decay: smell of abandonment. Rough hands on her shoulders, on her bound-together hands, behind her, steered her, pulled her, yanked her up when she stumbled, blind inside the woolen bag; up a step, a small distance and then another step, her shoulder hitting first one side and then another—through a doorway.

The familiar deep voice, startling but not really unexpected.

“Take that off her head. And take the ropes off her hands. That is not necessary,” Carlos Galvez instructed the others.

A hand reached up and grabbed the woolen hood at the top, pulled it up, her hair crackling and standing up with electricity. When her hands were freed, automatically she reached and stroked her hair, pressed it firmly to her head, held her hand there, feeling the familiar contour of her own skull.

He said something in a deep angry voice, not to her, to the others. He snapped his fingers, an imperious command, an emperor issuing orders. There was a moment filled with noise as the other men left, the door, metallic, heavy—steel? a storage shed of some kind?—slammed, flew open from the force and then was closed again more carefully.

She began to control her breathing, to consciously make contact again with her body, to experience the physical signs of pure terror without allowing herself to be totally incapacitated by the sensation.

He held her with the force of his personality, and it was easy and comforting to drift into his orbit. At the center of his huge, magnetic eyes, however, Miranda caught a flash of the cruelty of the mesmerist. She was in his power and she must not allow herself to slide away.

His hands went to her shoulders and he pulled her gently toward him, then stepped back until they were in the center of the small dark, ill-defined room. A shed of some kind, a storeroom, dank, dark, smelling of discarded things.

“Miranda,” Galvez said. His voice was soft and sad. Truly sad. He shook his head. “Such a beautiful young woman. Truly beautiful. What a terrible world that has not a place for such a singular person. You’re too good for this not-perfect world, Miranda. The world is not a good place and one must bend and twist and look off into the distance. You look people directly in the eye. You look the world in the heart, and then you tell what you see. Has no one taught you how to survive,
niña?”

A numbness spread down from her shoulders to her elbows. Her hands turned cold and useless. He was pressing his thumbs in some expert manner that rendered her powerless. Her knees buckled. Her body was betraying her. She blinked hard to get the shimmering tears out of her eyes so that she could see him clearly.

He reached up gently and wiped a tear from her cheek. “Tell me how you feel, Miranda. Tell me. Right now, tell me how you feel.”

“I feel frightened,” she said.

It was her forgotten voice, her child voice, her first-day-of-school voice when the tall, hollow-cheeked mother superior asked her what was the problem.

“Are you frightened that you might not be able to do the work here, Miranda? That you are in a school where only the brightest girls belong and you are the first black girl here? Are you frightened that you do not belong here, cannot do the work here, is that what you are frightened of?”

“Yes,” the child Miranda had said. No, her inner heart said. I am frightened of
you.

For the first time in all those years, the strong mask slipped and fell away. The child had been there, all those years, waiting. And always afraid.

“I feel frightened,” she said to Carlos Galvez.

She could hear the others outside, talking, moving around. There was no one in this room but the two of them. He had pulled two chairs up to an old, scuffed enamel-topped kitchen table. He gestured toward it.

He shook his head at her as she sat, and studied her with concern and sorrow.

“Let me ask you, Miranda Torres. Do you know what a million dollars is?”

“A lot of money,” she whispered.

“No. Not yet. Ten million dollars. A hundred million dollars. That’s a lot of money.” And then, slowly pulling back his lips as he shaped the words, leaning forward, forearms on the table, face ferociously intent on hers, he said, “A thousand, million dollars.
A thousand million dollars.
That is a
billion dollars,
Miranda. No one, no one can imagine what that is. And thirty, forty billion dollars, every year, untaxed, unaccounted for to anyone. There is no competition to this kind of money, this kind of power, anywhere in the world. And that is what you are up against. You, Miranda.”

They continued to stare at each other. His voice was very low, soft, almost comforting.

“Do you know what can be purchased with just
one
of these billion dollars?”

She shook her head, confused, wondering why he felt the need to tell her these things. Good. Good. Keep talking to me. Good.

“One can buy a man.” He snapped his fingers. This was nothing. “A community, a town, a city, a state, a government. With all the billions, a country. The whole world can be bought. Owned. Controlled. Has been bought. Will continue to be bought.” He studied her intently, then leaned back in his chair, his eyes never leaving hers.

“This is hard to visualize. To understand. Then, how much money do you think it would take to buy a journalist renowned for his integrity? Ah, no answer. Then I will tell you. Five hundred thousand dollars.”

Slowly, she shook her head. “I don’t understand. Buy him? For what reason? To what end?”

“To keep him out of areas that we do not want him to investigate. To keep to the point that took his interest initially: the indifference of the ‘good people’ of Forest Hills to the dying of an innocent young woman.”

Carlos Galvez knew everything. She didn’t know how, but she accepted as fact that he did know: that Mike Stein had learned the truth about Anna Grace’s death and somehow covered it up because he would not risk his last chance to achieve what he wanted in this world.

“It was all carefully done, Miranda. We are a careful people. Particularly when dealing with people of ‘well-known integrity,’ such as your Mr. Stein.”

His smile was bitter and hard. “Before he is tempted to go with your truth, Mr. Stein is approached by a young independent producer with impeccable credentials and available funding. For the rights to his book, and for his services as scriptwriter, Mike Stein is bought for five hundred thousand dollars. Of course, his script must reflect the fury his book will show, at the indecency of so-called good people who allowed this girl to bleed to death while they watched. The truth, of course, would have ruined Mr. Stein’s big comeback. So he was bought. Done for half a million. To him, a very good start back to whatever position it is he seeks in his life.”

Carlos shook his head and smiled contemptuously. He snapped his fingers. “A half million dollars, and
done!”

His voice changed as it did whenever he spoke to her about herself. “And you, Miranda. A beautiful young woman, with your eyes so clear, your head held so high, your heart so pure. So sure of yourself, of what you believe. Did you really think you,
you,
could change anything?”

She did not answer. There was no answer to give.

“Not so smart, little one. Not so smart. It would have been better if you had accepted the chance offered to you. You should have gone to the law school. There was a good future offered to you. It was a fair offer.”

Miranda felt shock, as sharp as the point of a nail, pull down the back of her skull, along her neck, down her spine. Her body jerked, her mouth fell open. She shook her head.

“There is no way you could know this.”

“Do not look so stunned. So unbelieving. I know everything. Do you not, even now, realize this?”

“You could not know this.”

“There would be just one way, yes? Just one person to tell me about this offer, and that you turned it down, and that there were no alternatives for you. Just one man.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Oh, yes you do. You believe it. You’re here because you turned down what he offered to you. Because
he
turned to me at this point.”

“No.”

Carlos stood up and turned away from her, exasperated. It was important to him that she believe him. Perhaps in the telling, she would realize that he was not a heartless man. It was only that she had used up her choices. Surely, she could understand his position. Miranda did not know why, but in some strange way she realized he wanted her to accept and understand his position.

He spread his large hands on the table and leaned toward her. His mustache, large and black, vibrated as he spoke.

“You worked with his brother, Kevin. From time to time, he made certain that his brother had some good drug arrests. Not great arrests, not important arrests, but good arrests. So you two built up a good record. That was his gift to his brother.” He raised his hand, anticipating her. “Oh, no, the policeman brother knew nothing. Nothing at all, truly. Kevin Collins was very much like you, Miranda. A true believer. Law and order and justice, and do the very best you can. And because you were good and kind and loyal, because you helped and protected his brother when he was ill, because of your loyalty, you were rewarded. A man truly appreciates these things. He took care of you. He had you promoted and transferred to a safe place, where you’d be out of it all: the drugs, the filth. And look what happened! Here you are, in the middle of it. And then he gave you a wonderful opportunity to get what you want in life, and you turned it down. So here you are, with me, in this room. Innocence, Miranda, regardless of what the good sisters taught you, does not protect you in the real world.”

“The sisters.” She clenched her fists. “They taught me many things.”

She felt him behind her, his hands on her shoulders, gently, rhythmically, pressing. Softly, she asked him, “Where is Maria?”

His hands tightened on her; her muscles felt suddenly cramped and injured. He released her immediately, then leaned and whispered into her ear. “No. Not a word. Not a tear for this Maria. Not from you, Miranda.”

She turned her head, confronted him. “But she is a young girl. She is...”

He walked away from her, quickly, as though it took great control to tell her, carefully, what he knew. His voice was hard and flat.

“She is
scum!
As was her sister. And that other one, the other airline girl.
Scum.
My cousin’s daughters, and I took them in and took care of them. They knew,
exactly,
what they were involved in. They loved the money and the fun and the excitement and then, fatally, the drug itself. This girl. This Maria. She lied to you every time you spoke to her.
Every time.
She and the others and that... Paul Mera. A man who pretends to be a rapist.” He spat the word in disgust, shook the thought from his head. “Lowest of the low. He drew them in until they turned on him. They feed on each other, these... these people. She set you up, this beautiful girl, this young girl. She brought you here, for what she thought was an exchange. Your life for hers.” The bitter sound, almost incredulous, was scornful laughter. “Sewage for purity.”