“We have to strike a deal,” he said. Now I was sure: no one had called. He'd been thinking.
“Tell me about the deal.”
“You're right about most of it. You're right about the Cap'n's and obedience school. But there's still something you don't know.”
“Is that so?” I said.
He drew a shaky breath, hoping he was right. “You don't know where they are.”
He was right. “I could always go to the cops,” I said. “They'd be a lot less gentle.”
“Oh,” he said, “give me a break. If you wanted to go to the cops, you wouldn't be on the phone now.”
“Then why am I on the phone?”
“Am I going to get Woofers back?”
“On a platter,” I said. The line crackled. “Alive and well, of course,” I added.
“You're on the phone because you expect to get something out of it,” he said, “and if you talk to the cops you won't get it. Maybe you just figured it out, I don't know, or maybe someone hired you to find one of the little shits. But if you talk to the cops, you can kiss it all good-bye.”
“Like I said, you can get Woofers back.”
“How about protection?”
“For whom?”
“For me, for heaven's sake.”
“I can try,” I said. “Depending on what you tell me.”
“I can tell you where they are. Which one are you interested in? Would you settle for one?”
“No.” I thought about the kids I'd seen at the Oki-Burger. “It's all or nothing.”
“Then I can tell you where they all are. Or, at least, where they'll all be eventually.”
I waited. When he didn't say anything, I asked, “Are they all in Los Angeles?”
“Most of them.”
“Are there any other dead ones?”
“Ella Moss,” he said promptly. “She was ten. It wasn't my idea.” He sounded desperate.
“I believe you. Where are the ones who are alive?”
“Tell Woofers to speak.”
“Like how?”
“Just say, ‘Speak, Woofers.’ ”
“Speak, Woofers,” I said. Woofers barked.
He made a sobbing sound. “Please,” he said, “take care of her.”
“That's up to you. Screw up, and she could be the main course in some Korean restaurant on Olympic Boulevard.”
“You want to know where they are. Don't you want to know how I got involved?”
Never interfere with the flow of a confession. “That'll do for a start.”
“It was Mister,” Birdie said.
“You've mentioned Mister twice. Who is he?”
“Mr. Brussels, of course,” he said waspishly. “He liked the little ones. He was crazy about Ella. That's why he got into this business in the first place. Being a kiddie agent is a pederast's paradise. All those pretty little girls with their ambitious mommies.”
“The agency was legit at first?”
“Of course,” he said. “Do you think I would have taken the job if it wasn't?” I let it pass. “It's still legit, for that matter, or at least part of it is.”
“When did it go sour?”
“When he realized that he could peddle the ones he got tired of. And then kids started running away from home and all the little babies hit the streets, and that was perfection, wasn't it? No parents, no guardians, nothing but profit.”
“And if they disappeared for good?”
“Well, they'd already disappeared, hadn't they? Most of them were hooking anyway. You wouldn't believe what you can buy on Santa Monica Boulevard if you know where to look.”
“Birdie,” I said, “right now there isn't much I wouldn't believe.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said impatiently. “We already know how smart you are.”
“So you were working for Mr. Brussels.”
He let half a minute slide by. “How do I know you're going to protect me?”
“You don't,” I said. “Listen, Birdie, let's look at the score. I know ninety percent of it, enough to put you somewhere where absolutely everyone is going to be bigger than you, where you can't buy shirts from the Philippines, and they don't take kindly to people who traffic in kids. In a month, no one will be able to tell you from a bean bag. And I've got Woofers. I'm holding out an olive branch to you. If I were you I'd take it even if it were only a twig.”
“Just asking,” he said.
“Well, don't ask again.”
“Can't we do this in person? My life is at stake.”
“Respectively, no, and tough shit. I might be able to protect you from the cops, but I can't do anything about your business associates.”
“You could kill them,” he said promptly.
“Yes,” I said, thinking about it, “there's that.”
“But will you?”
“Get me mad at them. We were talking about Mr. Brussels. Speaking of which, where's the missus?”
“With a legitimate client. She won't be back until later.”
“Mister,” I prompted.
“Mister started setting up his leftovers, renting them to producers and directors who like them little. There are lots of them. He was also doing a profitable line in video.”
“And you?”
“I was keeping the books,” he said defensively. “That's all.”
I didn't contradict him. “Only the books? What about the data base?”
“That was later. That was her.”
“When did she come on the scene?”
“He had a heart attack on top of some twelve-year-old. I managed to keep it out of the papers, and then they read the will and she found out she was bankrupt.”
“She was out of it until he died?”
“Was she ever. Helen Housewife, that's what she was.”
“And why was she bankrupt?”
“The agency account was empty. Twelve-year-olds are expensive. He'd been eating the profits, so to speak. And then, he had a weakness for cocaine.”
“Sounds like a nice guy.”
“You would have liked him,” Birdie said bitterly. “A guy who could kidnap a dog.”
“What about the money from the sideline? All those producers and directors?”
“Ahhh,” Birdie said, stalling.
I waited. “Maybe you'd like me to hang up again,” I finally said.
“No. Wait. It was in a secret account, one that had nothing to do with the real business. She came in and tried to run the agency, or what was left of it, and finally I told her about the other account.”
“And you explained where it came from?”
“That too.”
“Why didn't you just take the money and say bye-bye?”
“I couldn't,” he said in a grating voice. “She was the only authorized co-signer.”
“I thought you said she didn't know about it.”
“In those days, she didn't know shit from shirt buttons. She's a fast learner. He'd given her a bunch of papers to sign, and the signature cards from the account were among them. She would have signed a declaration of independence for the state of Alabama if he'd put it in front of her.”
“So you were stuck,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. “You couldn't get out because you couldn't get your hands on the money. How much was it?”
He hesitated. “Half a mil.” I was willing to bet it had been more.
“And how did she react when you told her about it?”
“You mean did she rend her clothes and tear her hair out? No. She didn't age before my eyes, either. She went home for two or three days and then she came back and announced we were back in business.”
“Birdie,” I said. The sun went back behind a cloud and Woofers cocked her head and looked up at the window. “She couldn't have done it without you.”
“Don't you think I know that?”
“You knew where the money was. You knew where the kids were. You knew the names of the customers. What did she know?”
�
��She couldn't keep track of which hand her rings were on.”
“So you were in the driver's seat.”
“Ummm,” he said. I could feel him retreat. “But she had access to the bank account.”
“What did she give you?”
He weighed the odds, so slowly that I could almost hear the mental subtraction. “I'm not sure I know what you mean.”
“The next sound you hear,” I said, “will be Woofers' last yelp.” I hung up.
It was well past lunchtime, but I wasn't hungry. I gave Woofers the cold hamburger I'd bought on the way home, by way of making up for the tug on her ear, and spent the next hour pacing and thinking things through. There was a delicate balance in play: not enough pressure, and he'd clam up. Too much, and he'd break. Broken, he'd be useless. Unless I wanted to start from scratch with Mrs. Brussels, who was a much tougher customer, Birdie was all I had.
At three I called him back. “Talk or listen,” I said. “You won't like what you hear if you decide to listen.”
“She gave me twenty-five percent,” he said, “and she took over the books. So how do I know what's really twenty-five percent? And she made me responsible for obedience school.”
And you enjoyed it, too, I thought. But what I said was, “It doesn't sound like enough.”
“Fifty percent wouldn't have been enough.”
“So why did you accept?”
“She had these big ideas,” he said. “Go interstate. Find a new distribution system. Stop dealing in Hollywood, where you might get busted, and expand your horizons. That was her phrase, expand your horizons. Get the kids here and send them there.”
“The Cap’n’s,” I said.
“This was a year later,” he said. “Like I said, she's a fast learner. The chain was going bust, and she bought six franchises. They were happy to get rid of them. They sold them for the cost of the structures and real estate only, and agreed to keep them supplied with that vile chicken.”
“The chicken orders are part of the data base,” I said.
“Sure they are. It's a smokescreen in case anyone ever plugs into it by mistake. They call the orders to us and we dump it into the computer. All she had to do was staff the joints and buy a few trucks. By then she could have bought a whole fleet of trucks.”
“So who do the customers call?”
“They call the local Cap’n’s.”
“And who do the stooges at the Cap'n's call?”
“That's cute,” he said in a tone that made me sure it had been his idea. “They call a local number, and there's a call-forwarding mechanism that plugs it into one of our lines.”
“Which line?”
He hesitated.
“Counting down,” I said. “Five, four, three-”
“Oh-six-four-five,” he said. “Same prefix, same everything, except no one ever answers it except the computer. If someone dials a wrong number, they just get this whine as the modem connects.”
“Smart,” I said. “So no one knows the real number.”
“You do,” he said. “You do now.”
“And you weren't getting enough of what she was making.”
“Gornischt,” he said, “I was getting gornischt.”
“You were getting ripped off. So you decided to talk to the kids while you were putting them through obedience school and find out everything you could about them. I'll bet you made them eager to tell you. I'll bet they were very talkative. And then you used what you'd learned to send ransom notes to their parents.”
“Off base,” he said. “Way off base.”
“The notes were her idea?”
“Of course they were. You don't think that I could think of anything like that.” Somewhere in his heart of hearts, Birdie still thought he was a nice guy. So does everyone. Emil Kemper, probably the most horrible of the recent rash of serial killers-a man who stored severed heads in his closet and cooked and ate intimate portions of his victims' anatomies-had described himself to the police as “too sensitive.”
“So she pocketed the ransoms?” I asked, not believing a word of it. With what Mrs. Brussels was putting away, it didn't make any sense.
“Every penny,” Birdie said virtuously. If I could have reached through the phone and torn out the little liar's larynx, I would have done it, except for one thing. I still didn't know where the kids were.
“Fine, Birdie,” I said. “I've got it. Mister started the whole thing going, he died, she came in and refined it, and you're getting cheated. If anyone is relatively innocent, you're it.”
“Amen,” he said.
“And I've still got Woofers.” He didn't say anything. “Here's the trade. You tell me where the babies are, and I'll give Woofers back to you. Deal?”
“And you'll protect me.”
“Look at it from my perspective,” I said, recalling something he'd said earlier. “If I don't protect you-if I turn you over to the cops, for example-how do I get my money?”
“You don't,” he said quickly. “You're planning to get it from their parents. Without me, you can't do it.”
“So where are they?”
“Which one are you looking for? The new one? Aimee?”
“That doesn't matter. Where are they?”
“Here,” he said, “in Los Angeles.”
“Birdie, that doesn't qualify as a bulletin.”
“Oh, golly,” he said hastily. “She's coming. Mrs., I mean. I heard her car. Come to my house tonight at seven. Bring Woofers. I'll take you to them. You're going to need a guide anyway.”
I weighed my options as rapidly as possible. “This conversation is on tape,” I said. “If anything happens to me tonight, the tape goes to the police. Got it?”
“Just be there,” he said. “Good Lord,” he added, “don't you trust me?” He hung up.
Woofers started to whimper when we were still two blocks away. When we turned onto Birdie's street she began to claw at the window, her tail wagging back and forth like a metronome gone mad.
“Slow down,” I said. “You'll see the little bedbug soon enough.” She ignored me completely, bouncing up and down onto her rear paws and scrabbling with her nails at the nearest solid surface. I guess my mother was right: there's someone to love everybody.
Janet Drive was as deserted as an abandoned landing strip. The clouds had broken, giving the moon a chance to caw triumphantly at the earth until the clouds gathered again to seal off its light. In the meantime, the houses were lighted with a cold, chalky glow. When I'd been a kid and my family had lived for a year on the east coast, I'd filled a jar full of fireflies and read by their light under the covers so my parents wouldn't know that I was still awake. Janet Drive was bathed in the same icy, slightly greenish light.
I pulled Alice up to the curb opposite Birdie's house and snapped open the glove compartment. The little.32 I'd brandished in the house near the airport slipped into my hand as though a surgeon had reconstructed my joints just to fit around the handle. It didn't make me feel much braver, but it was better than nothing. Woofers was standing on my lap and emitting little breathless yelps. I looked both ways and grabbed her collar before I opened the door, possessed by images of a two-ton semi squashing her into the pavement.
“You go when I tell you to,” I said. “Yorkshire terrier or not, I've grown to like you.”
All the lights in Birdie's house were gleaming in welcome. For all I knew, he might have laid out a platter full of French bread and Brie to welcome his child home. He might also have been waiting with a Thompson submachine gun. When I was sure that the street was empty I opened the door and clambered out, Woofers straining eagerly. She was making a peculiar gasping sound. After I realized that she was in danger of strangling against her collar, I let her go. She made it across the street in Olympic time and paused at the end of the lawn, looking back at me.
“Beauty before age,” I grumbled. “Just keep your mouth shut.” One of the many things I didn't need was a howl of canine enthusiasm alerting whoever m
ight be in the house that the detective had arrived.
“Stay,” I whispered, crossing the street. Miracle of miracles, she stayed. I gave the little gun an experimental heft, and then, having managed to cross Janet Drive without being run down by a speeding bus, I reached down and took hold of Woofers' collar again.
“We're in this together,” I told her. She looked up at me wisely, but her manic tail was a dead giveaway. The kid was not in control.
Walking bent over, one hand on the collar and the other on the gun, I negotiated the lawn. I looked like Rip Van Winkle before the kinks wore off. No one shot at me from the house before I reached the front door. No large men in chicken outfits bled through the bougainvillea to cut me into fingers, whatever they were.
The front door was ajar.
“Go,” I said, letting go of Woofers' collar.
She went. She shouldered her way through the door with more strength than it was possible for her to possess, and I snapped a bullet into position in the gun and prepared to follow. I had my foot against the door when she began to cry.
She was making rapid little high-pitched sounds. I pushed the door open, and she came out. Her ears were flat against her head, and her tail was between her legs. She went past me and onto the lawn without looking back.
“Woofers,” I said. “Come here, Woofers.”
She sat down with her back to me and threw a mournful yelp at the moon. The sound of it sent shivers down my back.
“Birdie?” I said, pushing the door open with my foot.
The place was immaculate. It had been clean before, but someone had gone over it with the ultimate dust rag. Surfaces shone as though they were newly minted. The masks on the wall had had their tongues polished.
He was in the bedroom, sitting doubled over on the bed.
The bed was a terrible reddish-brown, covered with crinkly little coils of gift-wrap ribbon. Birdie was wearing an ancient silk kimono that once might have been yellow. Now it was reddish-brown, like the bed. His awful hairdo hung limply over his face, turban renewal gone permanently awry. One hand grasped something long and silvery, an antique Japanese sword.
He'd committed seppuku, Japanese ritual disembowel-ment, one of the world's most painful means of suicide. The gift-wrap ribbon spread over the bedspread was his intestines.
The little shit had had more guts than I'd thought. He'd also had the last laugh.
Everything but the Squeal sg-2 Page 26
