Trader

by Charles de Lint

  “I can’t bring Nia back,” Julie said. “I don’t have the answers, so being here with you is all I can do to help.” When Lisa still hesitated, she added, “Let me at least do this for you.”

  “I do want you here,” Lisa said. “I just hate the idea of our starting off with me being so needy...”

  Julie shook her head. “This is a scary situation. Anyone would understand your needing some moral support. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I suppose.”

  Julie made her own call. She was quick and efficient when she got through to her own office, spending no more time than was needed to get the information across, speaking in a businesslike tone that expected no problems and got none.

  “There,” she said when she hung up. She leaned her elbows on the table, steepling her fingers. “So now I think it’s time we had a word with your downstairs neighbor.”

  The only reason Lisa hadn’t gone down to Max Trader’s apartment earlier was because Julie wouldn’t hear of it. Last night, when they finally realized that Nia wasn’t coming home, Julie felt it was too late. This morning, she insisted on waiting until the hour was reasonable.

  “Your life is in turmoil,” she said. “I know that and you know that. But other people aren’t necessarily going to feel the same way about it and won’t particularly appreciate being disturbed because of what they’d consider as nothing more than some teenager’s growing pains.”

  Remembering the reaction of the police, Lisa had reluctantly agreed, for all that she’d still wanted to run down to Trader’s floor and hammer on his door, more and more convinced, as the hours dragged by, that he was in on it, that he was harboring Nia, that maybe he’d even put her up to it. She knew next to nothing about the man except that Nia had what Lisa considered an unhealthy fascination with him. Yes, he seemed like a respectable businessman and Nia only visited him in his shop, not in his apartment, but she couldn’t see anything natural about their relationship. For one thing, he had to be at least three times her age. For another there was something almost too calm, too friendly about him, as though he was hiding something.

  A few weeks ago, she’d talked about it over lunch to Allison, one of her coworkers. Allison’s response had been what kept her from outright forbidding Nia to spend as much time as she did in the man’s shop.

  “I’ve read about this kind of thing,” Allison had said. Lisa had never known anyone to read as much as her coworker. “What’s probably happening is your daughter’s projecting a father fantasy onto him, which, considering her age and the circumstances, is perfectly natural. And that leaves you, who’s had to take up all the slack since her real father deserted the two of you, feeling jealous that this perfect stranger can just waltz in and reap the benefit of a kind of parental relationship without having to do a thing in terms of raising and looking after her.

  “I’m sure it's perfectly innocent. My own Rachel went through a similar phase with the owner of a bookshop that had me going crazy until she got over it.”

  “But you hear all these stories...”

  Allison nodded, very serious now. “Has there been anything to make you think he’s taking advantage of Nia?” she asked. “Anything at all?”

  “No.”

  And the truth was, ever since she’d spoken to Allison about it, Lisa had seen that she did resent Trader’s presence in her daughter’s life for pretty much the reasons Allison had put forward. The realization made her feel small-minded and not very happy with herself. It was too much what she thought her own mother’s reaction to the situation would have been, rather than her own.

  All of which made her nervous about going downstairs to talk to him now and more grateful than ever that she had Julie here with her to see things through if she got all tongue-tied. They went down to his shop, but even though it was past nine, the store was dark. Julie held her hand as they went back up to Trader’s apartment, giving her fingers a squeeze and letting go when Trader responded to their knock.

  “Hello,” he said as he opened the door. He wore a cheerful smile and gave them a once-over, gaze lingering too long below their necks before it finally rose to their faces. “What can I do for you today?”

  “It’s Nia,” Lisa began.

  The world felt out-of-kilter and she wasn’t sure if it was because talking about Nia’s disappearance brought the reality of the situation back into overly sharp focus again, or something about Trader himself. His good humor seemed relentless and totally out of keeping with how she was feeling.

  “How can I help?” he asked, smile reined in now, a look of studied concern coming over his features.

  Something about him rang a false note, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Maybe it was just because she didn’t know him well enough—certainly not as well as her daughter did.

  “Maybe you should come in,” he went on when she didn’t respond.

  Lisa shook her head. She gave Julie a quick glance. When she saw her friend’s pursed lips, the way Julie was studying Trader, she knew she wasn’t alone in how she felt.

  “No,” she said. “Thank you. I was just wondering if you’d seen her today or if she came by the shop yesterday.”

  “You’re my first visitors of the morning,” he replied, “and I never even got downstairs to open up yesterday.” He put a hand against his chest and gave a light cough. “I was feeling under the weather—stayed in bed the whole day.”

  What a phony cough, Lisa thought, and her worries returned. She wanted to push by him into the apartment, not as an invited guest, chained to politeness, but like a guerrilla, or a member of a TV-styled SWAT team, to tear the place apart, searching every room, every cupboard.

  “But happily,” Julie said, “you seem to be feeling much better today.”

  Her voice held an ironic tone that he didn’t appear to catch.

  “Yeah, well …” He shrugged. “You know, rum-and-lemon toddies— the miracle cure.”

  Why isn’t he asking about Nia? Lisa wanted to know. Why isn’t he showing any concern? The obvious reason terrified her. Her knees got watery, as though they were about to give way under her, and the vague sense of vertigo she’d experienced when he first opened the door returned more strongly, with a dizzying rush.

  “If you hear from her, or if you see her,” Julie said, “would you ask her to call? I don't have to tell you how worried we are.” She paused, allowing the heartbeat of silence to give significance to what she said next. “And of course, we’d like to be able to tell the police they can stop looking for her.”

  “The police?”

  Nothing changed in his face, in his eyes, in the way he stood, but suddenly everything about him seemed alert.

  “So it’s...that serious,” he added.

  Julie nodded. “She’s only sixteen and this can be a very dangerous city.”

  “You’re telling me,” Trader said. “Why do you think I’m living in this part of town?”

  “No place is safe,” Julie told him. “Some places just seem to have the odds more in your favor.”

  He made no reply to that beyond shifting his gaze from Julie to Lisa, back again.

  “Well, let’s hope for the best,” he said. “And listen, let me know when she gets back.”

  “And if you hear anything yourself—”

  “I’ll call you right away,” he assured her.

  “We’d really appreciate that,” Julie said. She waited until his door was closed and the two of them were going back up to Lisa’s apartment before adding, “What a creep.”

  Lisa nodded. “I think he knows something. Did you see the way he reacted when you mentioned the police? He seemed to go so still.”

  “I don’t know if he’s involved or not,” Julie said, “but he certainly strikes me as being capable of it.”

  “We’ve got to tell the police.”

  Julie stopped Lisa on the landing. “And tell them what?”

  “About him. So they can—you know, search his ap
artment.”

  “Lisa, we don’t even know if anything has happened to Nia.”

  “But—”

  “The police aren’t going to listen to us any more this morning than they did last night. If she’s not back by tonight, then I think they’ll start taking this more seriously. But until then, they’re not going to go breaking into anyone’s apartment looking for her.”

  All Lisa’s feelings of helplessness returned in an overpowering rush. “But what can we do until then?”

  “We hope. And we pray,” Julie said. She led Lisa back into the apartment, but left the door ajar. “And we listen to what your downstairs neighbor gets up to. If he goes out, we follow him. If he doesn’t...”

  Her words trailed off. Lisa gave her an anguished look, understanding that Julie knew no more than she did about what they could do. Wait. Hope. Pray.

  “What if he doesn't open the store again?” she asked. “That’d prove something, wouldn’t it? We could tell the police then, couldn’t we?”

  Julie sat back down at the kitchen table. “Tell them what? That he’s lazy? That he’s only pretending to be sick?” She shook her head. “All we can really do is wait.”

  She got up and steered Lisa into a chair at the table. Standing behind her, she kneaded the tense muscles at the nape of Lisa’s neck. Lisa leaned her head forward, appreciating the contact for all that it brought no real comfort. The possibility of any closer intimacy between them had been drowned in an ocean of worry and fear.

  Oh Nia, she thought. Why are you doing this to me? Why won’t you just come home?

  8 NIA

  Nia heard the boy long before she saw him. She was in an out-of-the-way section of the park, surrounded by old-growth cedars, their dense stands broken by granite outcrops pushing out of the earth like the limbs of buried stone giants. Here a shoulder, there a knee, grey body parts encrusted with moss and braided with roots. Her own perch was a rounded elbow that let her look down on a park path that ran by below.

  She’d watched the occasional cyclist wheel by, all of them in a hurry, heads bent over the handlebars, chasing moments that they’d probably never catch, they were so busy with the chase. Less often, there were in-line skaters, once a whole covey of bright spandex, the unpleasant plastic hum of their wheels on the pavement heralding their appearance long before she saw them. Until the boy, there had been no one on foot, not even any joggers, no one walking slowly enough to look around, or up, and see her on her granite perch.

  The announcement of his approach was verbal, a distant, nagging hum of a voice that turned into language, then finally understandable words as he came into sight. He was either talking to himself, or to someone Nia couldn’t see yet, every second word an epithet. As he drew closer, she saw he was alone.

  Unlike the other people she’d spied on from her vantage point, he wasn’t dressed for sport. Baggy jeans, the crotch hanging halfway to his knees. Paint-stained jersey, sleeves pushed up on his forearms. Air-pumped basketball shoes, the laces undone. Baseball cap worn backward, with hair like scarecrow straw sticking out from under it. His face was long and narrow with the look of a fox that was accentuated by a raggedy goatee. Eyes hidden behind shades. An old army-surplus knapsack hung from his shoulder by one leather strap. Nia couldn’t guess his age—somewhere around her own, give or take a couple of years.

  He paused under her stone elbow, attention drawn to her as unerringly as a predator’s to its prey. Nia held her breath. He cocked his sunglasses with one paint-stained hand, steady gaze settling on her face. She was surprised at how blue his eyes were, radiant with their own inner light. Or maybe he was just stoned.

  “Yo!” he called up to her. “So what are you supposed to be? A nun?”

  Her first intention had been to fade back into the cedars. To slip through the haven of their branches and leave only the pungent scent of the bruised leaves behind. But the peculiarity of his question held her in place, reminded her to breathe.

  “What do you mean, ‘a nun’?” she said.

  He shrugged. “You know. The all-in-black look. Hair’s too long for a Goth. The sun’s out, so you’re not one of the undead. You don’t have wings or feathers, so forget a crow. That only leaves a nun.”

  “In jeans?” she asked, unable to stifle a giggle.

  “Hey, why not? Who the hell knows what they do in their time off.”

  “I don’t think nuns have time off.”

  “Their loss.”

  “Why were you swearing?” she asked.

  “Fucked if I know.”

  He let his sunglasses drop back onto his nose. The strap of his knapsack started to slip and he shifted it higher onto his shoulder. Lisa heard a metallic sound, like cans rattling against each other.

  “So what d’ya see from up there?” he asked.

  Nia hesitated for a long moment before replying. “Why don’t you come up and find out?”

  “Thought you’d never ask.”

  Instead of going around behind, pushing through the cedars the way Nia had, he scrambled straight up the stone face of the outcrop, moving like a monkey. All he lacked was a tail.

  “Cool,” he said when he was sitting beside her.

  She knew exactly what he meant. It wasn’t the view so much as the sense of being outside the world proper. You could see anybody approaching you, but few people were going to look up and see you.

  “Got any smokes?” he asked.

  Nia shook her head.

  “Figures.” Long pause. “So what’s your tag?”

  Nia blinked in confusion.

  “When you’re throwing up,” he said. “Tagging. I saw you earlier, the beef you were having with Stetler. In the alley.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “So you’re not a writer.”

  It wasn’t a question and was spoken in a tone of voice that told Nia he was losing all interest in her. He looked out over the path, face blank, eyes unreadable behind his shades, then leaned back on his elbows.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It's a nice day. Be what you want to be, like I give a shit.”

  “What’s yours?” she asked. “Your...tag.”

  His head turned in her direction, pushed up the sunglasses with a stiff finger. The blue shock of his eyes rattled her.

  “TAMP,” he said. He pulled an aerosol paint can from his knapsack and sprayed the letters in a bubble-script on the rock between them, all caps, bright red paint. “Like that.” He looked up grinning. “So now you know me, right?”

  She didn’t know him, but at least she knew what he was talking about now. Graffiti. Like that in the alley where she’d spent the night.

  “Sure,” she said. “I guess everybody must know you.”

  That called up a smile. “Fucking-A. I got me more throwups than any writer in the city.”

  “The man in the alley," Nia began.

  “Stetler. He owns the Radio Shack on Bunnett. I got a beef with him goes way back so I make sure he sees my tag every chance I get, front and back. He cleans ’em up and I just throw ’em back up.”

  “He thought I’d done it.”

  TAMP laughed. “Yeah, well, fuck him. What does he know?”

  “My name’s Nia.”

  “We all got problems.”

  “What’s that supposed—”

  “Yo. Hang loose. Somebody boost your sense of humor?”

  Nia shook her head. She was beginning to wish she’d followed her first instinct and retreated instead of waiting for him to climb up to her perch. She didn’t like the fact that he’d spray-painted his name on the rock. Didn’t like the way he looked at her. Didn’t like being mocked.

  “So what’re you doing up here, Neee-ah?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing much. Just hanging out.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Wherever I want to.”

  “Runaway,” he said with a smirk.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Hey, d
on’t act like I’m in your face,” he said. “I’m just making friendly.”

  “It’s more like you’re making fun of me.”

  He shook his head. “You got to not take this kind of shit so seriously. It’s just talk. No beef. Nothing heavy. So happens we’re driving down the same highway. I just been on the road a little longer, that’s all.”

  “You ran away from home, too?”

  “Nah. Got my ass booted, but same difference, right?”

  “I suppose. So where do you sleep?”

  “Squatland.”

  Nia was impressed. Squatland was what kids had taken to calling the Tombs, that precinct north of Gracie Street where a developer’s bankruptcy had become the city’s disgrace. It was an eyesore of deserted tenements, empty lots and long-abandoned factory buildings that ran on for block after derelict block. The main streets, running north and south, were kept clear as they cut through the area, but the side streets were mostly impassable, choked with litter and rubble, junked cars and appliances. Runaways and homeless people squatted in some of the buildings, hoboes camped out in the garbage-strewn lots, but petty criminals, dealers and bikers owned its raggedy streets.

  You had to have nerve to dare that part of town—nerve Nia didn’t think she could muster. Half the murders and other violent crimes in the city took place in the Tombs, or on its periphery.

  “Isn’t it...dangerous?” she asked.

  “Get with the program,” TAMP told her. “So’s life.”

  “I guess.”

  “So you got any money?” he wanted to know.

  She had about thirty dollars in her backpack but she wasn’t about to tell him that. All she’d admit to was a couple of dollars and some change.

  “Too bad. We coulda scored us some cat, had a fine time.” He gave her a considering look. “A very fine time.”

  Nia pulled a face. “Yeah, like I’m going to stick something made with Drano and battery acid up my nose.”

  “What the fuck are you on about?”

  “Methcathinone. Don’t you even know what it’s made of?”