by Rex Miller
And he said, "Ummm."
And she giggled and toked, holding it in as he took a hit and they went, "Mmmm . . . " at the same time, and smiled, laughing on the inside as they let all that white smoke out thinking how awesome it was.
And Greg thought three things, oh, yes — it is good, and flat little-boy tits, and let this awesome shit turn you out, darlin' — all three thoughts simultaneously. And with crack, thought is deed.
"Umm," she said softly as he pulled up her shirt and ran his fingers softly over the boyish chest feeling the nipples harden as his fingertips lightly brushed over them, looking at her breasts.
"Ummmmmm." She was flying way, way out there, and it was all so good and so right for the moment and so magical.
"Oh, yeah," he whispered to her, absentmindedly taking the nipple gently and just holding it between thumb and finger, holding it tenderly and knowing that he could squeeze, not squeeze pull touch kiss suck lick do any fucking thing he wanted they were all his and his power surged through his fingertips and she felt and sensed the heat as it penetrated the smoke and she winced a little as the hotness of it surprised her, and he let the magic flow from his touch and through her breast, a suffusive warmth spreading instantly up her chest and throat and into her face, and he saw it and leaned forward to kiss the hot places, expertly, laughing his cracked laughter and thrilled by the enormity of his power.
Last night there had been a candlelight-and-wine dinner, but that would soon be only white wine under the bridge, because she was going "on the set" for the first time. Even now she sat there in what he called her "ho outfit," a ridiculously short mini hiked all the way up to her treasures, and high stiletto-heel boots. The hooker wet-look. She hadn't stopped to question where he got the money for the clothes, or the wine, or the candles, or the smoke. The commitment had been made.
It wasn't the con that had worn her resistance down so much as the crack. Her whole being loved and craved it. She had to have it again and again. It made things so beautiful and right and warm and wonderfully manageable. It made order out of disorder and gave life a new meaning; it was the master plan of the addict religion. The purpose and joy of life in two words: get more.
It was what made her a princess again, and safe, and in the arms of a lover who was going to protect her and hold her and give her all the love in the world and never leave her. And for that kind of a lover you have to make a few sacrifices.
"Easy money, doll." That's what he'd said to Tiff. It was one of his key phrases, constantly repeated, that would keep echoing. He used it to describe the prostitution and the dope deal, interchangeably. It was like his "highest form of love" con, used as a mini-argument in itself, reinforced by repetition, and later she'd have time to realize the heavy irony as easy money's resonance rang in her ears.
"Movie-star money," was the phrase the john had used. She'd remember what these men said later. Her men, she thinks. The men who helped her earn that easy, movie-star money.
But bathed in the cracking, white smoke screen of a new love, the prospects of her frightening new career had lost a lot of the former onerous-ness. It was now merely oppressive as opposed to unthinkable. Crack was self-propelling. It generated serious money. All it took was that initial nest-egg score. She needed to make some fast money. Easy money. And she was fourteen, and what had been ludicrous was now reality, and she looked at the curls and heard him say, "Pretty pussy," and her cat's eyes blinked, and she looked up at the magic mirror on the wall. And the mirror was clouded with smoke and did not reply to her stare.
And Greg watched her, looking over at her in her work clothes, looking at her with his West Coast eyes with the improbable lashes and smiling his white, Beverly Hills grin, thinking how boring little girls always became. He already had his eye on someone else. He'd cut Tiff loose just as soon as he got some fuck-you money.
"Stand up a minute," he commanded. Obediently she stood. "C'mere. Walk over here and let me look."
She stood right in front of him, standing between his spread legs. Her eyes closed and she tilted her head from side to side as he nuzzled her, moving her head the way you do when you have a stiff neck. Her fingers tangled in his long, curly hair.
"Ummmf." She couldn't hear what he said as he held her up close against him, running his smooth, hot hands up and down her tanned legs, cupping her cheeks and running his hand down her thighs and the back of her legs and feeling the tops of the slick, high-heeled boots, saying something to her, and the words muffled and lost as he pressed his mouth against her. Thinking to himself, What a guy.
Disconsolate, and for the first time in his adult life in fear of losing the only thing he has ever valued, Spain dedicates himself to finding her and bringing her back. Even he has no idea as to the vast amounts of time and energy, or the staggering sum of money that such an exhaustive search entails. He only knows he wants Tiff back. His daughter has disappeared like a puff of smoke. And he must use what tools he has at hand: the hunter's eye, enormous financial resources, and a web of contacts in the dark places.
When Spain did a piece of work he generally did not have to track an individual down to — as the jargon has it —"access" them. However, the few exceptions involved his subcontracting that aspect of the job to some ancillary worker or agency. He could not remember a time when he worked otherwise, even early in his career. There were so-called bounty-hunters around the country working for or as bail bondsmen. A number of these were notoriously willing to travel less-legal avenues if the fees were righteous enough. He had a couple of former cops working in other fields whom he'd also farmed subordinate action out to, and he considered the options confronting him.
He knew what he had to do. He'd stay legal with it. There was too much open here. He was too vulnerable already because of all the notoriety involved. Too many people had come into this no-longer-private matter. There would be a paper trail. Questions. Police intervention, perhaps. He would have to go the legit route. Find a top private-detective firm and put them on some outrageous retainer. Let them reach out for her. The trail was already cold and the clock was ticking.
He knew the sort of private sleuth he was wanting. Spain called an attorney who was connected and who owed him, and added a few names to the list of possibilities he'd already worked on. He narrowed it down to a list of five firms who had big reps in child-custody work, deprogrammings, kidnapping cases, and the like, and then he got on the phone and started touching base.
Within a few hours he'd eliminated two of the names, one of whom was into big security work now, and the other an agency run by someone who struck Spain as too stupid. There were three left. He eliminated one of those in the course of conversation; the manager appeared to be too enamored of electronic gadgetry and Spain always went with his vibes in these matters. He ended up flying two guys in.
Each of them had a substantial national rep. He sent each man a down payment consisting of five crisp hundreds, just to get their attention, with ticket for a round-trip turnaround, and he was picking up the whole first-class tab: hotel, food, all expenses. Two thousand easy bucks, cash, for a twenty-four-hour consultancy and back home. No strings. An easy deuce.
His first interview was with "Beechie" Meeks, a Detroit private op who'd been with Wells and Pinkerton, two of the big four, and then gone out on his own with good success. He'd become famous for rescuing the fifteen-year-old son of a senior executive who'd been lured out to the West Coast by a religious cult, and whom Meeks had also subsequently managed to get deprogrammed from his former zombielike state. The kid proved to be actively, vocally antizealot and was sufficiently articulate and newsworthy that media gave it lots of ink and the odd name "Beechie" Meeks got a week of heavy press.
Beechie Meeks made a great first impression. He looked like a private eye in the movies. Good-looking guy with a tough, intelligent appearance and demeanor. Dressed to the nines in a beautifully tailored three-piece banker's charcoal-gray and a conservative Countess Mara under a snowy-white sh
irt collar, he looked like he might be a successful young attorney who was a former rodeo cowboy, now specializing in corporate mergers — the Marlboro man dressed up for church.
And then he had to spoil the initial impression by opening his mouth. Isn't that always the way? Superficially at least, Beechie Meeks was overly assertive, offensively venal, and absurdly hyper. A kind of megalomaniacal, Napoleonic little dude who sat there pontificating to Spain in his toy-store suit and diminutive wing tips, letting him hear the unabridged, complete Beechie Meeks Story, chapter and verse.
Still, he could probably get the job done. He didn't rule the little man out just because he was a self-promoter or because he acted like Jimmy Cricket wired on speed. Sometimes these cocky little guys were good. And that was the main thing here, getting it done. The problem was Beechie didn't strike Spain as trustworthy. Number one, he'd be a money funnel, no question. That was acceptable, but the serious problem would be later. What guarantee would he have that Meeks wouldn't tell all ex post facto? He was too fond of media. Too much the entrepreneurial hype man. And Spain didn't want publicity. Pass.
He brought in a private investigator from Cleveland whose name was Mel Troxell. The lawyer had told him, "Troxell is damn good but he's gonna be hog-high."
Spain said, "Mr. Troxell, you come highly recommended. But to give us a place to start, what can you do for me that I can't do myself?"
"First I'd like to know who recommended me," the man replied, somewhat crisply.
"I have to protect my sources just as I'm sure you do. But let's just say it was someone I trust."
"Well" — he shrugged —"fair enough. I always like to know who makes a recommendation. That's valuable information."
Spain was already making his judgment call. He clocked the guy as practiced, very experienced, touchy maybe, a hard case, not too smooth. Spain thought he'd use him. He smiled a little and said, "Can we just say it was someone I have faith in — somebody in the law-enforcement community."
That seemed to placate him and he tilted his head a bit, shrugging again with a little imperceptible movement of the upper torso and saying, "Sure. Yeah. Okay. Answer your question. I can do a hell of a lot of things you can't do."
"Such as?"
"Such as ask questions. I can put operatives on the girl's friends. You can't approach them yourself and hope to get much. Obviously the girl . . . What's your daughter's name?"
"Tiff. T-I-F-F."
"Obviously Tiff ran away from home. For whatever reason. You've told me a little about the situation here at home with your wife leaving. That may play a part in it. Whatever. Point is, her friends are not going to open up to you the way they will to my people. So the first thing I would do is try to build up a background of information from her friends and acquaintances. I have ways we can do that that you would find impracical if not impossible. The boys she apparently went with, they're going to have talked to somebody. Kids like to brag about where they're going. It just takes work, but that's the kind of thing we're able to do."
"What else do you plan to do to locate her?"
"Oh, I don't know offhand particularly." He was right, the guy was touchy and defensive. "I have a lot of standard places I look for clues, but every case is so different. Every case is totally unique. I'd go through her room, examine everything she left behind. We go through her papers, scrapbooks, just a lot of things that take time and work. Anything that gives us a starting place." He was brusque, somewhat hurried. He was telling Spain with body language. Come on, quit the bullshit, let's go.
"I notice you said clues. What kind of clues is a kid going to leave?"
"Oh . . . Hell, I dunno. The phone bill, for example. I take a look at the phone bill. You'd be surprised at how often we can find somebody just by looking at the unusual long-distance calls. It's all right there in black and white for you if you know how to look for the clues. You don't. I do. My operatives do."
"I'm sorry to want to know all this stuff," Spain said. "It probably is a little Mickey Mouse to be asking you how you're going to find Tiff, but all I know about private detectives is what I've seen on TV" — he let himself smile a little —"you know, the old skip-tracer image."
"Well, I don't even use the phrase skip-tracing. I mean, that went out in the 1940s, I think. We leave the bounty-hunting and the divorce frames and all that shit to the little mom-and-pop shops all over the country. Guy calls the one in the Yellow Pages with the ad that has a big eye emblem or something. He thinks he's gonna get Sam Spade."
"What kinds of jobs are you mostly involved with?"
"We work for big corporations, as you probably already know. I do a lot of security stuff, video surveillance, industrial stuff."
"Homicides?"
"Jesus!" Troxell chuckled. "You know how many homicide cases I've been on in thirteen years? One. That's the television bullshit. That crap is all bullshit. The police do homicides. PI firms don't touch 'em. Oh, once in a blue moon some aspect of a murder might, uh, have to do with insurance liability, but I ..."
As he spoke, Spain concentrated on the man, not the words, as he had been doing as he asked the first random questions that had occurred to him. This was what Spain had learned to do. He could read you as you responded, and he did it visually and intuitively. And suddenly he got the clear picture on this man. He could see this man was extremely intelligent. He was having to work not to use larger words in his responses. He was having to alter his vocabulary as he spoke, and the bluff, touchy exterior was role-playing. He used this, Spain figured, to create a slightly false impression. To help you drop your guard while he assessed you himself. At that instant Spain decided he'd use him for sure.
"Well, the only reason I asked, I noticed you were wearing a firearm there." He glanced toward the gun and the man slightly pulled his sport coat over the piece. "And I didn't know private individuals could still get gun permits."
Spain noticed he looked rough, but in the facial features. The clothes said smooth. He knew the shoes must have gone for about a hundred and a half. The guy was making money or dressing like it.
"Yeah. We can carry in Cleveland. Got a thing there called the Private Police Commission, licensed by the City of Cleveland. You take these firearms courses 'n' that, and when you graduate, they let you apply to carry. And you can get a permit, and you can operate in that fashion ..." He trailed off.
"These boys that took her. I have no idea if they are dangerous or what problems your people might encounter in getting her back safely. Is it legal, then, for you to" — he glanced toward where the man carried the gun — "protect yourself or someone else in that kind of situation?"
"The same laws apply toward us as anyone else. We're private citizens who in this case have the ordinary misdemeanor arrest powers or powers to ensure the reasonable safety or well-being of another person. If an individual threatens that safety openly, uh, or is exhibiting hostile or aggressive actions, naturally we got to act in defense. Just as you would if somebody menaced you at the supermarket. You would protect yourself or your daughter. We have the right to act in that same manner. You have to use your head, you know."
"I've heard about some of these cults and how the deprogrammers have to use force and I wondered —"
"We're empowered to utilize a reasonable degree of force in protecting ourselves or our clients."
"How difficult do you think it will be to get my daughter back?"
"The degree of difficulty depends on luck. How much hard work we have to do. The breaks. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you have to pour the man-hours in. It's all how fast the clues develop. Did they have a car? On the phone you said, Yes, they did. That might make it harder, it might make it easier. Usually kids that age go down to the bus station or whatever and they're easy to trace. If they hitch rides, if they do this, or that — see, it's always different. But eventually we find them."
"It just seems so hopeless to me," Spain said truthfully. "I just don't see how you can find a fourtee
n-year-old girl when we don't even have an idea which direction she went."
"All I can tell you is that it depends on you more than me. I always make my clients a guarantee. If you bankroll me — and by that I mean, if you are willing to keep shoveling the buckets of money in to me, and I warn you it does take buckets of money — if you bank-roll me to that extent, I can find anybody. Anywhere on earth. I guarantee it."
"I can't imagine how," Spain said rather quietly.
"Money. Like I just told you. That's how I find 'em. The same way you got me here. You give me enough money to do the job, and you got her back. I mean, if you're willing to give me an open bankroll. No problem. We'll find her and bring her back."
Spain just looked at him, his face a cold, blank, and immobile stare.
"Money talks."
The experienced hooker would have wondered about the john whose first act on entering a motel room was to turn up the volume on the bolted-down television set.
"We gonna watch soaps?" She'd asked him the question semiseriously, the kid inside her hoping they could kick back and watch the latest As the World Turns or some nitwit game show, anything instead of the thing she was having to do to get Greg his easy money.
An experienced whore would have been on her guard. But this was no forty-five-year-old bimbo with ten years' pros experience at dodging freaks, vice cops, and the whips and scorns of time. We're taking about a fourteen-year-old girl. She hadn't even looked up at the guy's face she was so scared and nervous.
It hadn't been so bad so far. Roger and Greg had set her up on the first one. He came on like Mr. Suave. They'd made a deal with him — a freebie if he'd take it super-easy. Yeah, sure, he said. No problem. He loved fourteen-year-olds. He could damn near get off on just the idea. A good-lookin' little piece of tail like that for free? Hell's bells, boys, he promised, I'll be gentle as a lamb.
The second dude had been a married guy she'd picked up outside the bar of a hotel downtown. He couldn't believe his luck. She was so young and innocent looking. And it was such a refreshing change from all the aging broads and uglies that he shot like a skyrocket. All of two minutes on top of her banging away and that's all she wrote. If they were all as fast as the first two, it was going to be easy money, she decided. If she could just keep herself from thinking about it. A little girl dressed in Mommy's clothes and four pounds of eye shadow.
