Protectors

by Kris Nelscott

He stopped in front of the table, dipped his head slightly, and for one dizzying second, she thought he was going to extend a hand and ask her to dance.

  “Mrs. Knight?”

  “Yes,” she said, and made herself swallow visibly.

  “I’m Justin Lavassier.”

  She picked up her gloves as if she were going to put them on. Instead, she waved them at the seat opposite her.

  “Please,” she said, “join me.”

  He nodded, then slipped into the booth. “I still held hopes that you would bring your husband.”

  Eagle shook her head slightly. “He doesn’t know about any of this.”

  “He’s going to have to know,” Lavassier said. “I can’t do business with only one parent. Unless you’re getting a divorce…?”

  Eagle’s eyes narrowed. A society matron would be insulted by that question, but she didn’t want to overplay her reaction.

  “No, of course not,” she said. “And I do not understand why my husband needs to be involved.”

  A waitress stopped in front of their table. Her white apron had a large coffee stain over one breast, and the pouch where she kept her pens and order pad looked a little greasy on the edges.

  “What can I get you, hon?” she asked Lavassier, as if Eagle didn’t even exist.

  “Coffee,” he said.

  “And water?” Eagle asked, but the waitress scurried off as if she hadn’t even heard.

  Eagle sighed and let some of her real exasperation show.

  “I’ve asked three times now,” she said.

  Lavassier shoved his silverware to one side and moved the coffee cup directly in front of him. Eagle tried not to look at it. She had planned to slip a sedative into it when he wasn’t looking, but now she would have to reach all the way across the table.

  He would notice that.

  “What did Mrs. MacGivers tell you?” he asked.

  “Only that you were expensive, but good,” Eagle said. “She said you gave them their daughter back. I understand she’s studying again.”

  “Good to hear,” Lavassier said, although his tone suggested that he really didn’t care.

  “I would like my Angela back,” Eagle said.

  “I’m sure you would,” Lavassier said, “but I don’t take every case presented to me.”

  Eagle’s lips thinned. Had she blown this already by not having a fake husband here at the table?

  “I do a lot of preparation,” Lavassier said. “I study the child, find out who she is, what her interests are, and where she went wrong. It’s valuable to speak to both parents about this, as well as some friends.”

  “Some of that will be difficult. We’re not going to be in San Francisco long.” Eagle deliberately got the name of the community wrong. “I don’t know most of my daughter’s friends. That’s the problem. Her high school friends are scattered all over the country. My husband—”

  “Let me finish,” Lavassier said. “I—”

  He stopped as the waitress approached. She was holding the coffeepot. She reached for his cup and saucer, but he intercepted her and handed it to her. She set the cup and saucer down on the edge of the table and poured coffee in the cup without sloshing.

  He lifted it back to the same position.

  Eagle had pegged him correctly. He liked to be in control of everything.

  Which was going to make sedating him hard.

  He waited until the waitress left.

  “I charge a lot of money,” Lavassier said. “I do not guarantee my work, nor do I offer a refund.”

  Eagle opened her mouth, wondering if normal society matrons protested here. Then she closed her mouth again.

  “I do, however, take payments in installments,” Lavassier said. “Since you live outside of California, I would take three installments. The first is half of my normal fee. The second installment would be my travel expenses should I have to bring the child—”

  “Angela,” Eagle murmured, partly to irritate him, and partly to play her role.

  “Should I bring the child,” he said a little stronger, “back to …?”

  “Lawrence,” she said. “Kansas.”

  “That’s some distance, and transporting her will be difficult. We might have to meet here, in California. Nonetheless, we’re still talking about a second installment of expenses, which might work out to as much as a quarter of the overall fee.”

  Eagle pulled her purse onto her lap. He watched the movement. It didn’t seem like he missed anything.

  “Are the expenses included in the fee?” Eagle asked.

  “No,” he said. “As you’ll discover if we decide to work together, I take a lot of risks. I need to be compensated for them.”

  “But you don’t guarantee your work…” she said, letting her voice trail off.

  “Of course not. I deal with human beings, not objets d’art.”

  His pronunciation of the French phrase was more Louisiana than Paris.

  “I can’t guarantee that I’ll bring your child back because I can’t guarantee that I’ll find her. If I do find her, I’ll bring her to you, but I can’t guarantee that she’ll listen to any of my persuading.”

  Your beatings, you mean, Eagle thought but didn’t say.

  “So, we’re taking all the risk here,” Eagle said, running her fingers along the side of her purse. Maybe she would ease it open. Maybe she would be able to palm some of the pills. But getting them to his cup was another matter. And he still hadn’t touched his coffee.

  He gave her a cold smile. “You’re not taking any risks at all, Mrs. Knight. I am. I’ve been bitten, kicked, tossed out of reputable places, had knives thrown at me, and been threatened with guns. Just because these kids are college-age doesn’t mean they’re running with a good crowd. Depending on what your daughter has gotten involved in, I can end up in a lot of danger.”

  “I meant financial risk,” Eagle said. “It seems there aren’t any guarantees.”

  “You seem awfully worried about money, Mrs. Knight,” Lavassier said. “I suspect we might not be able to work together.”

  She didn’t want to lose him. She needed to keep him here long enough to let Val and Pammy search his truck.

  “What do you charge?” she asked.

  “For this kind of job, with a kid who is an out-of-state college student? The job starts at fifteen thousand dollars and goes up dramatically if I believe that it’ll take additional work.”

  Eagle ran her thumb over the clasp on her purse. “So the price changes as the job continues?”

  “It has to,” he said. “If your child is involved in gang activity, I’m taking on great risk.”

  “She wouldn’t,” Eagle said.

  “If she’s taking drugs, guaranteed there are gangs involved,” he said. “Someone supplies the goods. And if she’s selling drugs—”

  “She wouldn’t,” Eagle said, partly because parents would say that, and partly because it felt like a sidetrack.

  “You don’t know what she’s doing,” Lavassier said. “That’s why you want to hire me. You’ve lost track of your daughter, and you need me to get her. Tell me, how old is she exactly?”

  Eagle was prepared for this question. “Nineteen. Her birthday was in February.”

  “Then we have eighteen months to find her and bring her back,” he said.

  “Eighteen months?” Eagle was legitimately confused.

  “There are things I can do for you as the underage child’s parent that I cannot do for you when she’s considered a full-fledged adult under the law,” he said.

  His words sent a chill through Eagle. The parents weren’t going to complain about Lavassier. They were complicit in his hire. And the underage college student had no legal recourse.

  “That’s why,” Lavassier said, clearly sensing the surprise in her hesitation, “you and I will have a contract that will bind us. It will be completed with the check. And that’s why we need your husband, Mrs. Knight. In California, I will need the consent of
the custodial parent to do this.”

  “We don’t live in California,” she said, feeling stunned. She had forgotten that some states did not allow wives to sign legal documents for issues that concerned the family.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lavassier said. “I’ll start my work here and, I hope, find your daughter here. I want a legally binding contract that will hold up in this state, not in your state.”

  Eagle bit her lower lip. This was something she hadn’t expected at all. She wasn’t even sure how to finesse it.

  “So,” Lavassier said. “Let’s get your husband on board, shall we? And then you and I can talk.”

  He started to slide out of the booth.

  “Wait,” she said. “Don’t you want my daughter’s picture? Don’t you want to know what I know about her, maybe so we can set some kind of price?”

  He gave her one of those patronizing smiles new doctors in Pleiku used to give her, before they realized just how much she knew and how much they needed her.

  “I’d prefer to have this conversation with your husband, Mrs. Knight,” Lavassier said. “Call me when you convince him to help your daughter. Otherwise, we won’t be doing business together.”

  He got out of the booth and was heading down the aisle before she could say another word. He walked fast.

  Eagle’s mouth had gone dry. She opened her purse and checked her watch.

  It was ten after eight. She had promised Val and Pammy half an hour. In fact, she had thought half an hour would be easy. And she thought there was a good chance he would be feeling the effects of a powerful narcotic by the time he reached the truck.

  None of that had happened.

  She opened her purse, grabbed three one-dollar bills, and tossed them on the table. Then she grabbed one of the hypodermic needles she had brought, this one filled with a drug cocktail she designed herself back in Nam. It subdued patients quickly, turning their limbs into rubber before they lost consciousness.

  The problem was, she had underestimated how big Lavassier was. She probably had a smaller dosage than would be effective.

  But she couldn’t worry about that right now.

  She moved the hypo to the top of her purse so that when she got close, she could just grab it. She didn’t want to run with it in her hand. That was too dangerous. She’d seen more than one nurse stab herself with the hypo trying to subdue a patient.

  Eagle had it down to a science, but even her method held room for error.

  He was already out the door.

  If she didn’t hurry, she wouldn’t be able to follow him. She wouldn’t find his truck.

  She wouldn’t get to Val and Pammy in time.

  58

  Val

  The cinderblock wobbled beneath my feet. I leaned on the driver’s door of Lavassier’s truck, my arms bent above my head, my purse slung over my back, and my hands holding the edge of the coat hanger tightly. Pammy stood behind a crumbling concrete wall, which gave her a partial view of Virginia Street.

  Lavassier had parked in an area that served as a partial loading dock for the school. The greenish gold overhang had seen better days. Someone had cleaned the area underneath it, but the trash cans smelled like someone else had been using them during the summer months.

  Lavassier had parked the truck with its nose pointed toward the back of the building, not sideways the way the painted lines indicated. That was why Pammy had been able to see it from the street.

  But she had only been able to see it because she was looking for it. Fortunately, I had seen her turn left on Virginia or I wouldn’t have known where she was going at all. I kept looking for evidence of the truck against the curbs, with the VW Beetles, the dented sedans, and the one or two new cars, parked in driveways half a block away.

  When I arrived, Pammy was already walking around the truck, looking for entry. She had her gloves on, and she was trying the passenger door. It was locked. The entire truck was locked.

  But that didn’t stop us from looking into the bed. It had been recently cleaned, but it was still a horror show. All along the frame, Lavassier had attached hooks.

  Pammy and I had looked at each other when we had seen that, but neither of us said anything. There was no reason to. We knew what he had used those for. He had tied the ropes to the hooks and then wrapped the ropes around his victims. That way, they couldn’t wiggle out of the back of the truck.

  They couldn’t untie themselves either.

  The inside of the cab, on the other hand, was filthy. Papers and food wrappings were strewn everywhere, along with some hats and tools. There appeared to be boxes stashed underneath the dashboard on the passenger side, but we wouldn’t know until we got inside, and that was up to me.

  Pammy had never unlocked a car with a coat hanger. I’d become skilled at it, mostly because when I was in law school, I was always distracted—an airhead of the first order, Marvella used to call me. I often locked my keys in the car, particularly in the winter, when it wasn’t wise to do so. Truman and I were married by then, and he had bought the car used, just for me. I never wanted him to know how often I locked myself out, so I carried a coat hanger in my backpack instead.

  And, since I had done this a lot in the winter, I was adept at using a coat hanger while wearing thick gloves. The gloves I had on now weren’t thick at all. I could feel the thin metal through the cotton.

  But that old car was easier to break into than this truck was. The car was lower, for one thing. I could reach the top of the window by standing on the ground. I’d had to climb on a cinderblock so that I could see what I was doing here.

  And the truck was newer and built better than my old car, so it was harder to squeeze the straightened coat hanger through the space between the top of the window and the arch of the cab.

  I had to get the right angle. It looked like I would have no trouble once I did, because the button was a little wider on the top, like a tiny mushroom. All I had to do was snag that.

  But once the hanger was inside, I had to stand on my tiptoes to move the wire around. My shoulders and upper arms ached, and the cinderblock kept shifting position every time I shifted my weight.

  Pammy kept looking over her shoulder at me instead of watching the street for Lavassier’s return.

  “Got it?” she asked.

  “Almost,” I said. “Don’t watch me, okay?”

  She turned back toward the parking lot, Virginia Street, and Curtis. It was getting dark, too, which was helpful. I doubted anyone could see us. If it got too much darker, though, I wouldn’t be able to see inside the truck. I had a flashlight in my purse, but I would have needed an extra hand to use it while I was manipulating the coat hanger.

  Finally the lock clicked open. I didn’t trust it though. I stayed on the cinderblock and pulled the door handle.

  It moved this time.

  So I jumped off the cinderblock and landed on the cracked concrete.

  “Bingo,” I said.

  Pammy turned around and started to come toward the truck, but I held up a hand.

  “Wait until I get the other door,” I said. “And double-check your gloves.”

  She frowned, then turned her back on me so that she could monitor the street again. The streetlights hadn’t come on yet. I hoped that the timer they were on was set for full dark, which would be about 9:00 p.m. I wanted that forty minutes or so of twilight to be ours.

  I slid the coat hanger into my purse and grabbed the flashlight. Then I shoved the cinderblock aside and pulled open the driver’s door. A waft of Old Spice mixed with cigarettes and old greasy food bags made my eyes water.

  I had to leverage myself into the cab. This truck really wasn’t built for a woman of my size. Once I had a knee on the seat, I reached up and unscrewed the dome light. Then I crawled across the seat to the passenger side and unlocked the door.

  I rapped on the window to get Pammy’s attention. She jumped as she whirled, cheeks flushed with panic. I waved at her.

  Then I turne
d on the flashlight. I wanted that box first.

  Papers were strewn all over the floor on the passenger side. Many of them were receipts from various stores and restaurants around Berkeley. A small open bag had coins inside as well as matchbooks from all over the county. For a man who made as much money as he did from each job, he was frugal about strange things.

  The handful of matchbooks on top were from the same motel, a place near Mount Diablo in Walnut Creek. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. We’d been hoping for a Walnut Creek connection. Now we had one.

  Pammy opened the passenger door just as I grabbed the box and pulled it forward.

  I wanted to see what was in that thing. I didn’t want her to look. I knew more about the things Lavassier had done than she did.

  “Take the driver’s side,” I said. “I’ll scooch over here.”

  “Okay.” She closed the door before I could tell her to leave it open. I wanted some fresh air to clear the smell out of the cab.

  I moved my legs forward, got off my stomach, and shoved some of the papers off the seat. Then I opened the box.

  Files and notes, and not all of them in the same hand. There were file folders, each with a different name written in black on the side. I opened the top one.

  Polaroids, high school pictures, notes, and in the back, a contract with a name I didn’t recognize written along it. There was a ledger sheet as well, with the first payment noted along with a check number, but no second payment.

  I grabbed another folder from farther down and saw a similar set-up. Only this one had notes in another hand.

  * * *

  …she spends most of her time at V.D.C. headquarters, stuffing envelopes and typing addresses. I think she lives nearby, but I haven’t been in the position to ask her for an address yet. She thinks I’m one of the V.D.C. hangers-on, interested in the men, so she sort of sees me as competition. I’m thinking coffee might change her opinion, and give you a chance to maybe follow her? Once I set it up, I’ll leave you a message on the answering service.

  —Darla

  * * *