Promise Me mb-8

by Harlan Coben

  Myron was about to say something when Big Cyndi said, “Kidding.”

  “I knew that.”

  She arched a shiny eyebrow and leaned toward him. The mountain coming to Muhammad. “But now that I planted that most erotic seed, Mr. Bolitar, you may find performing with a petite difficult.”

  “I’ll muddle through. Come on.”

  Myron stepped through the door first. A black man at the door sporting designer sunglasses told him to halt. He wore an earplug like someone in the Secret Service. He patted Myron down.

  “Man,” Myron said, “all this for a manicure?”

  The man took away Myron’s cell phone. “We don’t allow pictures,” he said.

  “It’s not a camera phone.”

  The black man grinned. “You’ll get it back on the way out.”

  He held the grin until Big Cyndi filled the doorway. Then the grin fled, replaced with something akin to terror. Big Cyndi ducked inside like a giant entering a kid’s clubhouse. She stood upright, stretched her arms over her head, and spread her legs apart. The white spandex cried out in agony. Big Cyndi winked at the black man.

  “Frisk me, big boy,” she said. “I’m packing.”

  The outfit was tight enough to double as skin. If Big Cyndi was indeed packing, the man didn’t want to know where.

  “You’re okay, miss. Step through.”

  Myron thought again about what Win had said, about accepted prejudice. There was something personal in the words, but when Myron had tried to follow up, Win closed down on the subject. Still, about four years ago, Esperanza had wanted Big Cyndi to take on some clients. Outside of Myron and Esperanza, she had been with MB Reps the longest. It sort of made sense. But Myron knew it would be a disaster. And it was. No one felt comfortable with Big Cyndi repping them. They blamed her outlandish clothes, her makeup, her manner of speech (she liked to growl), but even if she got rid of all that, would it have changed anything?

  The black man cupped his ear. Someone was talking to him through the earpiece. He suddenly put an arm on Myron’s shoulder.

  “What can I do for you, sir?”

  Myron decided to stick with the direct route. “I’m looking for a woman named Katie Rochester.”

  “There’s no one here by that name.”

  “No, she’s here,” Myron said. “She walked in that very door twenty minutes ago.”

  The black man took a step closer to Myron. “Are you calling me a liar?”

  Myron was tempted to snap his knee into the man’s groin, but that wouldn’t help. “Look, we can go through all the macho posturing, but really, what’s the point? I know she came in. I know why she’s hiding. I mean her no harm. We can play this one of two ways. One, she can talk to me quickly and that’s the end of it. I say nothing about her whereabouts. Two, well, I have several men positioned outside. You throw me out the door and I call her father. He brings several more. It all gets ugly. None of us need that. I just want to talk.”

  The black man kept still.

  “Another thing,” Myron said. “If she’s afraid I work for her father, ask her this: If her father knew she was here, would he be this subtle?”

  More hesitation.

  Myron spread his arms. “I’m in your place. I’m unarmed. What damage could I do?”

  The man waited another second. Then he said, “You finished?”

  “We might also be interested in a threesome,” Big Cyndi said.

  Myron hushed her with a look. She shrugged and kept quiet.

  “Wait here.”

  The man headed to a steel door. It buzzed. The man opened it and went inside. It took about five minutes. A bald guy with spectacles entered the room. He was nervous. Big Cyndi started giving him the eye. She licked her lips. She cupped what might have been her breasts. Myron shook his head, afraid she’d drop to her knees and pantomime lord-knew-what when the door mercifully opened. The man with the sunglasses poked his head out.

  “Come with me,” he said, pointing to Myron. He turned toward Big Cyndi. “Alone.”

  Big Cyndi didn’t like it. Myron calmed her with a look and stepped into the other room. The steel door closed behind him. Myron looked around and said, “Uh-oh.”

  There were four of them. Various sizes. Lots of tattoos. Some grinned. Some grimaced. All wore jeans and black T-shirts. None were clean-shaven. Myron tried to figure out who the leader was. In a group fight, most people mistakenly believe you look for the weakest link. Always the wrong move. Besides, if the guys were any good, it didn’t matter what you did.

  Four against one in a tight space. You were done.

  Myron found a man who stood a little in front of the others. He had dark hair and more or less fit the description of Katie Rochester’s beau given to him by both Win and Edna Skylar. Myron met his eye and held it.

  Then Myron said, “Are you stupid?”

  The dark-haired man frowned, surprised and insulted. “You talking to me?”

  “If I say, ‘Yeah, I’m talking to you,’ will that be the end of it or will you come back with ‘You talking to me’ again or ‘You better not be talking to me’? Because, really, neither one of us has the time.”

  The dark-haired man smiled. “You left one option off when you talked to my friend here.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Option three.” He held up three fingers in case Myron didn’t know what the word three meant. “We make sure you can’t tell her father.”

  He grinned. The other men grinned.

  Myron spread his arms and said, “How?”

  That made the man frown again. “Huh?”

  “How are you going to make sure of that?” Myron looked around. “You guys are going to jump me — that’s the plan? So then what? The only way to shut me up would be to kill me. You willing to go that far? And what about my lovely associate out in the front room? Are you going to kill her too? And what about my other associates”—might as well exaggerate with the plural—“who are outside? Are you going to kill them too? Or is your plan, what, to beat me up and teach me a lesson? If so, one, I’m not a good learner. Not that way at least. And two, I’m looking at all of you and memorizing your faces, and if you do attack me, you better make sure I’m dead because if not, I’ll come after you, at night, when you’re sleeping, and I’ll tie you down and pour kerosene on your crotch and set it on fire.”

  Myron Bolitar, Master of Melodrama. But he kept his eyes steady and looked at their faces carefully, one at a time.

  “So,” Myron said, “is that your option-three plan?”

  One of the men shuffled his feet. A good sign. Another sneaked a glance at the third. The dark-haired man had something close to a smile on his face. Someone knocked on the door on the far side of the room. The dark-haired man opened it a crack, talked to someone, closed it, turned back to Myron.

  “You’re good,” he said to Myron.

  Myron kept his mouth shut.

  “Come this way.”

  He opened the door and swept his hand for Myron to go ahead. Myron stepped through it into a room with red walls. The walls were covered with pornographic pictures and XXX-rated movie posters. There was a black leather couch and two folding chairs and a lamp. And sitting on the couch, looking terrified but unharmed, was none other than Katie Rochester.

  CHAPTER 43

  Edna Skylar had been right, Myron thought. Katie Rochester looked older, more mature somehow. She twiddled a cigarette in her hand, but it remained unlit.

  The dark-haired man stuck out his hand. “I’m Rufus.”

  “Myron.”

  They shook hands. Rufus sat down on the couch next to Katie. He took the cigarette from her hand.

  “Can’t smoke in your condition, honey,” Rufus said. Then he put the cigarette between his lips, lit it up, threw his feet up on the coffee table, and let loose a long plume of smoke.

  Myron stayed standing.

  “How did you find me?” Katie Rochester asked.

  “It’s not im
portant.”

  “That woman who spotted me in the subway. She said something, right?”

  Myron did not reply.

  “Damn.” Katie shook her head and put a hand on Rufus’s thigh. “We’re going to have to find a new place now.”

  “What,” Myron said, pointing to a poster of a naked woman with her legs spread, “and leave all this behind?”

  “That’s not funny,” Rufus said. “This is your fault, man.”

  “I need to know where Aimee Biel is.”

  “I told you on the phone,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  “Are you aware that she disappeared too?”

  “I didn’t disappear. I ran away. My choice.”

  “You’re pregnant.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So is Aimee Biel.”

  “So?”

  “So you’re both pregnant, both from the same school, both ran away or disappeared—”

  “A million pregnant girls run away every year.”

  “Do they all use the same ATM machine?”

  Katie Rochester sat up. “What?”

  “Before you ran, you went to an ATM machine—”

  “I went to a bunch of ATM machines,” she said. “I needed money to run away.”

  “What, Rufus here couldn’t spot you?”

  Rufus said, “Go to hell, man.”

  “It was my money,” Katie said.

  “How far along are you anyhow?”

  “That’s none of your business. None of this is your business.”

  “The last ATM machine you visited was at a Citibank on Fifty-second Street.”

  “So?”

  Katie Rochester sounded younger and more petulant with every response.

  “So the last ATM machine Aimee Biel visited before she disappeared was at the same Citibank on Fifty-second Street.”

  Now Katie looked genuinely puzzled. It wasn’t faked. She hadn’t known. She slowly swiveled her head toward Rufus. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Hey,” Rufus said. “Don’t look at me.”

  “Rufus, did you…?”

  “Did I what?” Rufus threw the cigarette to the ground and jumped to his feet. He raised his hand as if about to slap her backhand. Myron slid between them. Rufus stopped, smiled, raised his palms in mock surrender.

  “It’s okay, baby.”

  “What was she talking about?” Myron asked.

  “Nothing, it’s over.” Rufus looked at her. “I’m sorry, baby. You know I’d never hit you, right?”

  Katie said nothing. Myron tried to read her face. She wasn’t cowering, but there was something there, something he’d seen in her mother. Myron lowered himself to her level.

  “Do you want me to get you out of here?” he asked.

  “What?” Katie’s head shot up. “No, of course not. We love each other.”

  Myron looked at her, again trying to read distress. He didn’t see any.

  “We’re having a baby,” she said.

  “Why did you look at Rufus like that? When I mentioned the ATM?”

  “It was stupid. Forget it.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “I thought… but I was wrong.”

  “You thought what?”

  Rufus put his feet back on the coffee table, crossing them. “It’s okay, baby. Tell him.”

  Katie Rochester kept her eyes down. “It was just, like, a reaction, you know?”

  “Reaction to what?”

  “Rufus was with me. That’s all. It was his idea to use that last ATM. He thought it being midtown and all, it would be hard to trace to any spot, especially down here.”

  Rufus arched an eyebrow, proud of his ingenuity.

  “But see, Rufus has lots of girls working for him. And if they have money I figure he takes them to an ATM and gets them to clear out the cash. He has one of the clubs in here. A place called Barely Legal. It’s for men who want girls that are—”

  “I think I can put together what they want. Go on.”

  “Legal,” Rufus said, raising a finger. “The name is Barely Legal. The key word is legal. All the girls are over eighteen.”

  “I’m sure your mother must be the envy of her book group, Rufus.” Myron turned back to Katie. “So you thought…?”

  “I didn’t think. Like I said, I just reacted.”

  Rufus put his feet down and sat forward. “She thought maybe this Aimee was one of my girls. She’s not. Look, that’s the lie I sell. People think these girls run away from their farms or their homes in the burbs and come to the big city to become, I don’t know, actresses or dancers or whatever and when they fail, they end up turning tricks. I sell that fantasy. I want the guys to think they’re getting some farmer’s daughter, if that gets his rocks off. But the fact is, these are just street junkies. The luckier ones work the flicks”—he pointed to a movie poster—“and the uglier ones work the rooms. That simple.”

  “So you don’t recruit at high schools?”

  Rufus laughed. “I wish. You want to know where I recruit?”

  Myron waited.

  “At AA meetings. Or rehab centers. Those places are like casting couches, you know what I’m saying? I sit in the back and drink that badass coffee and listen. Then I talk them up during the breaks and give them a card and wait until they fall off the wagon. They always do. And there I am, ready to scoop them up.”

  Myron looked at Katie. “Wow, he’s terrific.”

  “You don’t know the real him,” she said.

  “Yeah, I’m sure he’s deep.” Myron felt the itch in his fingers again, but he swallowed it down. “So how did you two meet?”

  Rufus shook his head. “It ain’t like that.”

  “We’re in love,” Katie said. “He knows my dad through business. He came to the house and once we saw each other…” She smiled and looked pretty and young and happy and dumb.

  “Love at first sight,” Rufus said.

  Myron just looked at him.

  “What,” he said, “you don’t think it’s possible?”

  “No, Rufus, you seem like quite the catch.”

  Rufus shook his head. “This here, this is just a job for me. That’s all. Katie and that baby, they’re my life. You understand?”

  Myron still said nothing. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the picture of Aimee Biel. “Take a look at this, Rufus.”

  He did.

  “Is she here?”

  “Dude, I swear on my unborn child I’ve never seen this chick before and I don’t know where she is.”

  “If you’re lying—”

  “Enough with the threats, okay? What you got there is a missing girl, right? The police want her. Her parents want her. You think I want that trouble?”

  “You have a missing girl right here,” Myron said. “Her father will move heaven and earth to find her. And the police are interested too.”

  “But that’s different,” Rufus said, and his tone turned into a plea. “I love her. I’d walk through fire for Katie. Don’t you see? But this girl… she’d never be worth it. If I had her here, I’d give her back. I don’t need that kind of hassle.”

  It made sad, pathetic sense.

  “Aimee Biel used the same ATM,” Myron said again. “Do you have any explanation for that?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  Katie said, “About the ATM machine?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Myron kneeled down again. “Listen to me, Katie. I don’t believe in coincidences. There has to be a reason why Aimee Biel went to that ATM. There has to be a connection between you two.”

  “I barely knew Aimee. I mean, yeah, we went to the same school, but we never hung out or anything. I’d see her at the mall sometimes, but we wouldn’t even say hello. At school she was always with her boyfriend.”

  “Randy Wolf.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know him?”

 
“Sure. The school’s Golden Boy. Rich daddy who always got him out of trouble. Do you know Randy’s nickname?’

  Myron remembered something from the school parking lot. “Farm-boy, something like that?”

  “Pharm, not Farm Boy. It’s with a PH, not F. You know how he got it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s short for Pharmacist. Randy is the biggest dealer at Livingston High.” Katie smiled then. “Wait, you want to know my connection to Aimee Biel? Here’s the only one I can come up with: Her boyfriend sold me nickel bags.”

  “Hold up.” Myron felt the room begin to spin ever so slowly. “You said something about his father?”

  “Big Jake Wolf. Town hotshot.”

  Myron nodded, almost afraid to move now. “You said something about him getting Randy out of trouble.” His own voice suddenly sounded very far away.

  “Just a rumor.”

  “Tell me.”

  “What do you think? A teacher caught Randy dealing on campus. Reported him to the cops. His dad paid them off, the teacher too, I think. They all chuckled about not wanting to ruin the star quarterback’s bright future.”

  Myron kept nodding. “Who was the teacher?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Heard any rumors?”

  “No.”

  But Myron thought that maybe he had an idea who it was.

  He asked a few more questions. But there was nothing else here. Randy and Big Jake Wolf. It came back to them again. It came back to the teacher/guidance counselor Harry Davis and the musician/ teacher/lingerie buyer Drew Van Dyne. It came back to that town, Livingston, and how the young rebelled, and how much pressure there was on all those kids to succeed.

  At the end, Myron looked at Rufus. “Leave us alone for a minute.”

  “No way.”

  But Katie had some of her poise back. “It’s okay, Rufus.”

  He stood. “I’ll be right behind the door,” Rufus said to Myron, “with my associates. You got me?”

  Myron bit back the rejoinder and waited until they were alone. He thought about Dominick Rochester, how he was trying to find his daughter, how maybe he knew that Katie was in a place like this with a man like Rufus and how maybe his overreaction — his desire to find his daughter — was suddenly understandable.