by Harlan Coben
The girl began to melt.
It was the only way to describe it. The girl’s hair flips fell and blended into her flesh, her forehead sloped down, her nose dissolved, her eyes rolled back and then closed. Blood began to run down from the eye sockets, coating the face in crimson.
Myron bolted his chair back, nearly screaming.
The blood blanketed the image now, and for a moment Myron wondered if it would actually start coming out of the screen. A laughing noise came from the computer speakers. Not a psycho laugh or cruel laugh but the healthy, happy laugh of a teenage girl, a normal sound that raised the hairs on the back of Myron’s neck as no howl ever could.
Without warning, the screen went mercifully black. The laughter stopped. And then the Windows 98 main menu reappeared.
Myron gulped down a few breaths. His hands gripped the edge of the desk to the point of white knuckles.
What the hell?
His heart beat against his rib cage as though it wanted to break free. He reached back and grabbed the brown paper wrappings. The postmark was almost three weeks old. Three weeks. This awful diskette had been sitting in his pile of mail since he’d run away. Why? Who had sent this to him? And who was the girl?
Myron’s hand was still shaking when he picked up the phone. He dialed. Even though Myron had call block on his phone, a man answered by saying, “What’s up, Myron?”
“I need your help, PT.”
“Jesus, you sound like hell. This about Esperanza?”
“No.”
“So what have you got?”
“A computer diskette. Three-and-half-inch floppy. I need it analyzed.”
“Go to John Jay. Ask for Dr. Czerski. But if you’re looking for a trace, it’s pretty unlikely. What’s this about?”
“I got this diskette in the mail. It contains a graphic of a teenage girl. In an AVI file of some sort.”
“Who’s the girl?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll call Czerski. You head over.”
Dr. Kirstin Czerski sported a white lab coat and a frown as yielding as a former East German swimmer’s. Myron tried Smile Patent 17—moist Alan Alda, post-M*A*S*H.
“Hi,” Myron said. “My name is—”
“The diskette.” She held out her hand. He handed it to her. She looked at it for a second and headed for a door. “Wait here.”
The door opened. Myron got a brief view of a room that looked like the bridge on Battlestar Galactica. Lots of metal and wires and lights and monitors and reel-to-reel tapes. The door closed. Myron stood in a sparsely decorated waiting room. Linoleum floor, three molded plastic chairs, brochures on a wall.
Myron’s cellular phone rang again. He stared at it for a second. Six weeks ago he had turned the phone off. Now that it was back on, the contraption seemed to be making up for lost time. He pressed a button and brought it to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Myron.”
Pow. The voice walloped him like a palm blast to the sternum. A rushing noise filled his ears, as though the phone were a seashell clamped against him. Myron slid into a yellow plastic chair.
“Hello, Jessica,” he managed.
“I saw you on the news,” she said, her voice a tad too controlled. “So I figured you’d turn your phone back on.”
“Right.”
More silence.
“I’m in Los Angeles,” Jessica continued.
“Uh-huh.”
“But I needed to tell you a few things.”
“Oh?” Myron’s Smooth-Lines Fountain—he just couldn’t turn it off.
“First off, I’ll be gone for at least another month. I didn’t change the locks or anything so you can stay at the loft—”
“I’m, uh, bunking at Win’s.”
“Yeah, I figured. But if you need anything or if you want to clear your stuff out—”
“Right.”
“Don’t forget the TV too. That’s yours.”
“You can keep it,” he said.
“Fine.”
More silence.
Jessica said, “We’re being so adult about this, aren’t we?”
“Jess—”
“Don’t. I called for a reason.”
Myron kept quiet.
“Clu called you several times. At the loft, I mean.” Myron had guessed that.
“He sounded pretty desperate. I told him I didn’t know where you were. He said that he had to find you. That he was worried about you.”
“About me?”
“Yes. He came by once, looking like absolute shit. He grilled me for twenty minutes.”
“About what?”
“About where you were. He said that he had to reach you—for your sake more than his. When I insisted that I didn’t know where you were, he started scaring me.”
“Scaring you how?”
“He asked how I knew you weren’t dead.”
“Clu said those words? About my being dead?”
“Yes. I actually called Win when he left.”
“What did Win say?”
“That you were safe and that I shouldn’t worry.”
“What else?”
“I’m talking about Win here, Myron. He said—and I quote—‘he’s safe, don’t worry.’ Then he hung up. I let it drop. I figured that Clu was engaging in a little hyperbole to get my attention.”
“That was probably it,” Myron said.
“Yeah.”
More silence.
“How are you?” she asked.
“I’m good. And you?”
“I’m trying to get over you,” she said.
He could barely breathe. “Jess, we should talk—”
“Don’t,” she said again. “I don’t want to talk, okay? Let me put it simply: If you change your mind, call me. You know the number. If not, have a nice life.”
Click.
Myron put down the phone. He took several deep breaths. He looked at the phone. So simple. He did indeed know the number. How easy it would be to dial it.
“Worthless.”
He looked up at Dr. Czerski. “Pardon?”
She held up the diskette. “You said there was graphic on it?”
Myron quickly explained what he had seen.
“It’s not there now,” she said. “It must have deleted itself.”
“How?”
“You say the program ran automatically?”
“Yes.”
“It probably self-extracted, self-ran, and then self-deleted. Simple.”
“Aren’t there special programs so you can undelete a file?”
“Yes. But this file did more than that. It reformatted the whole diskette. Probably the final command in the chain.”
“Meaning?”
“Whatever you saw is gone forever.”
“Is there anything else on the diskette?”
“No.”
“Nothing we can trace? No unique characteristics or anything?”
She shook her head. “Typical diskette. Sold in every software store in the country. Standard formatting.”
“How about fingerprints?”
“That’s not my department.”
And, Myron knew, it would be a waste of time. If someone had gone to the trouble of destroying any computer evidence, chances were pretty good that all fingerprints had been wiped off too.
“I’m busy.” Dr. Czerski handed him back the diskette and left without so much as a back glance. Myron stared at it and shook his head.
What the hell was going on here?
The cell phone rang again. Myron picked it up.
“Mr. Bolitar?” It was Big Cyndi.
“Yes.”
“I am going through Mr. Clu Haid’s phone records, as you requested.”
“And?”
“Are you coming back to the office, Mr. Bolitar?”
“I’m on the way there now.”
“There is something here you might find bizarre.”
CHAPTER
When the elevator opened, Big Cyndi was waiting for him. She’d finally scrubbed her face clean. All the makeup was gone. Must have used a sand blaster. Or a jackhammer.
She greeted him by saying, “Very bizarre, Mr. Bolitar.”
“What’s that?”
“Per your instructions, I was checking through Clu Haid’s phone records,” she said. Then she shook her head. “Very bizarre.”
“What’s bizarre?”
She handed him a sheet of paper. “I highlighted the number in yellow.”
Myron looked at it while walking into this office. Big Cyndi followed, closing the door behind her. The number was in the 212 area code. That meant Manhattan. Other than that, it was totally unfamiliar. “What about it?”
“It’s for a nightclub.”
“Which one?”
“Take A Guess.”
“Pardon?”
“That’s the name of the place,” Big Cyndi said. “Take A Guess. It’s two blocks down from Leather-N-Lust.” Leather-N-Lust was the S&M bar that employed Big Cyndi as a bouncer. Motto: Hurt The Ones You Love.
“You know this place?” he asked.
“A little.”
“What kind of club is it?”
“Cross-dressers and transvestites, mostly. But they have a varied crowd.”
Myron rubbed his temples. “When you say varied …”
“It’s sort of an interesting concept really, Mr. Bolitar.”
“I’m sure.”
“When you go to Take A Guess, you never know for sure what you’re getting. You know what I mean?”
Myron didn’t have a clue. “Pardon my sexual naiveté, but could you explain?”
Big Cyndi scrunched her face in thought. It was not a pretty sight. “In part, it’s what you might expect: men dress like women, women dress like men. But then sometimes a woman is just a woman and a man is just a man. Follow?”
Myron nodded. “Not even a little.”
“That’s why it’s called Take A Guess. You never know for sure. For instance, you might see a beautiful woman who is unusually tall with a platinum wig. So you figure it’s a he-she. But—and this is what makes Take A Guess special—maybe it’s not.”
“Not what?”
“A he-she. A transvestite or transsexual. Maybe it is indeed a beautiful woman who put on extra-high heels and a wig to confuse you.”
“And the reason for this is?”
“That’s the fun of the place. The doubt. There’s a sign inside, TAKE A GUESS: IT’S ABOUT AMBIGUITY, NOT ANDROGYNY.”
“Catchy.”
“But that’s the idea. It’s a place of mystery. You bring someone home. You think it’s a beautiful woman or a handsome man. But until the pants are all the way down, you’re never sure. People come dressed to fool. You just never know until—well, you saw The Crying Game.”
Myron made a face. “And this is a desirable thing?”
“If you’re into that, sure.”
“Into what?”
She smiled. “Exactly.”
Myron rubbed the temples again. “So the patrons don’t have a problem with”—he searched for the right word, but there wasn’t one—“so a gay guy, for example, doesn’t get pissed off when he finds out he brought home a woman?”
“It’s why you go. The thrill. The uncertainty. The mystery.”
“Sort of the sexual equivalent of a grab bag.”
“Right.”
“Except in this case, you can really be surprised by what you grab.”
Big Cyndi considered that. “If you really think about it, Mr. Bolitar, there can be only one of two things.”
He was no longer so sure.
“But I like your grab bag analogy,” Big Cyndi continued. “You know what you’re bringing to the party, but you have no idea what you’re going to take home. One time a guy left with what he thought was an overweight woman. It turned out that it was a guy with a midget hiding under the dress.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
Big Cyndi just looked at him.
“So,” Myron continued, “you, uh, frequent this place?”
“I’ve been a couple of times. But not recently.”
“Why not?”
“Two reasons. First, they compete with Leather-N-Lust. It’s a different crowd, but we still draw from similar markets.”
Myron nodded. “The pervert pool.”
“They’re not hurting anybody.”
“At least nobody who doesn’t want to be hurt.”
She pouted, not a great look on a three-hundred-pound wrestler, especially without her mortarlike makeup. “Esperanza is right.”
“About?”
“You can be very closed-minded.”
“Yeah, I’m a regular Jerry Falwell. So what’s the second reason?”
She hesitated. “I’m obviously for sexual freedom. I don’t care what you’re doing as long as it’s consensual. And I’ve done some wild things myself, Mr. Bolitar.” She looked straight at him. “Very wild.”
Myron cringed, fearing she might share details.
“But Take A Guess started drawing the wrong kind of crowd,” she said.
“Gee, that’s surprising,” Myron said. “You’d think a place like that would be a natural for vacationing families.”
She shook her head. “You are so repressed, Mr. Bolitar.”
“Because I like to know my partner’s gender before getting naked?”
“Because of your attitude. People like you cause sexual hang-ups. Society becomes sexually repressed—so repressed, in fact, that they cross the line between sex and violence, between playacting and real danger. They reach a stage where they get off by hurting people who do not want to be hurt.”
“And Take A Guess attracts that kind of crowd?”
“More than most.”
Myron sat back and rubbed his face with both hands. He started hearing brain clicks. “This might explain a few things,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Why Bonnie finally threw Clu out for good. It’s one thing to have a string of girlfriends. But if Clu was frequenting a place like this, if he started leaning toward”—again, what would be the word?—“toward whatever. And if Bonnie found out, well, it would explain the legal separation.” He nodded to himself as he heard more internal clicks. “And it would explain her odd behavior today.”
“How so?”
“She made a point of asking me not to dig too deeply. She just wanted me to clear Esperanza and then drop the investigation.”
Big Cyndi nodded. “She was afraid this would get out.”
“Right. If something like this went public, what would it do to her kids?”
Another thought floating through Myron’s brain got snagged on some jagged rock. He looked at Big Cyndi. “I assume that Take A Guess appeals mostly to bisexuals. I mean, if you’re not sure what you’re getting, who better than someone who wouldn’t care?”
“More like ambisexuals,” Big Cyndi said. “Or people who want some mystery. Who want something new.”
“But bisexuals too.”
“Yes, of course.”
“How about Esperanza?”
Big Cyndi bristled. “What about her?”
“Did she frequent this place?”
“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Bolitar. And I don’t see the relevance.”
“I’m not asking because it gives me jollies. You want me to help her, right? That means digging where we don’t want to dig.”
“I understand that, Mr. Bolitar. But you know her better than I do.”
“Not this side of her,” Myron said.
“Esperanza is a private person. I really don’t know. She usually has a steady, but I don’t know if she’s gone there or not.”
Myron nodded. Didn’t matter much. If Clu had been hanging out in such a place, it would give Hester Crimstein more reasonable doubt. A rough trade place complete with a reputation for violence—it was a natural
recipe for disaster. Clu could have brought home the wrong package. Or been the wrong package. And there was the cash to consider. Blackmail money? Did a customer recognize him? Threaten him? Videotape him?
Yep, lots of murky reasonable doubt.
And a good place to search for the elusive girlfriend. Or boyfriend. Or in-between friend. He shook his head. It was not a question of the ethics or moral dilemma for Myron; deviancy simply confused him. Repugnancy aside, he didn’t get it. Lack of imagination, he supposed.
“I’ll have to pay the Take A Guess a visit,” he said.
“Not alone,” Big Cyndi said. “I’ll go with you.”
Subtle surveillance was out. “Fine.”
“And not now. Take A Guess doesn’t open until eleven.”
“Okay. We’ll go tonight then.”
“I have just the outfit,” she said. “What are you going to go as?”
“A repressed heterosexual man,” he said. “All I’ll have to do is slip on my Rockports.” He looked at the phone record again. “You have another number highlighted in blue.”
She nodded. “You mentioned an old friend named Billy Lee Palms.”
“This his number?”
“No. Mr. Palms doesn’t exist anywhere. No phone listing. And he hasn’t paid taxes in four years.”
“So whose number is this?”
“Mr. Palms’s parents. Mr. Haid called them twice in the past month.”
Myron checked the address. Westchester. He vaguely remembered meeting Billy Lee’s parents during a Family Day at Duke. He looked at his watch. It would take an hour to get there. He grabbed his coat and headed for the elevator.
CHAPTER
13
Myron’s car, the business’s Ford Taurus, had been confiscated by the police, so he rented a maroon Mercury Cougar. He hoped the women would be able to resist. When he started the car, the radio was tuned to Lite FM 106.7. Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald were crooning a sad lite staple entitled “On My Own.” This once blissfully happy couple were breaking up. Tragic. So tragic that, as Michael McDonald put it, “Now we’re up to talking divorce … and we weren’t even married.”
Myron shook his head. For this Michael McDonald left the Doobie Brothers?
In college Billy Lee Palms had been the quintessential party boy. He had sneaky good looks, jet black hair, and a magnetic, albeit oily, combination of charisma and machismo, the kind of thing that played well with young coeds away from home for the first time. At Duke the frat brothers had dubbed him Otter, the pseudosuave character in the movie Animal House. It fitted. Billy Lee was also a great baseball player, a catcher who managed to reach the major leagues for a half season, riding the bench for the Baltimore Orioles the year they won the World Series.
