Pain Management b-13

by Andrew Vachss

  “Nothing?”

  “The deal’s the same as I told you when you were playing teenager. Or are you playing grownup now?”

  “I’m thirty-one,” she said, as if that was some kind of credential. “And I’ve got my own deal.”

  “Which is?”

  “What do you know about wires?” That one came out of left field, but it didn’t surprise me as much as her undoing the snaps on her blouse.

  “Enough to know you need them in that bra,” I told her.

  “Very funny,” she said. She shrugged out of the blouse and popped the clasp on the front of the black bra. Her heavy breasts gleamed creamy in the darkness. She slipped her arms out of the bra in a smooth fluid motion, and tossed it across the console into my lap. Then she raised her arms above her head. “See any place I could carry a recorder?” she asked me.

  “Not from the waist up.”

  “Help yourself,” she said, undoing the top of the hot pants.

  “No thanks,” I told her.

  “You’ll take my word for it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to say anything the police couldn’t hear. You already know I’m not a trick. And I already knew you weren’t selling it.”

  “And you knew that exactly how?”

  “You’d be the first hooker I ever saw who didn’t carry something to put money in.”

  “Maybe I put it in my—”

  “No. You don’t. Besides that, it’s three in the morning. You’d have been out here for hours, but you smell like you just stepped out of a bubble bath.”

  She was silent for a long minute. “I know some things about you, too,” she said, finally.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. You do things for money.”

  “That’s why they call it work.”

  “I don’t mean just . . . this. Looking for the girl. Things.”

  “What ‘things’ are you talking about?”

  “Does it really matter? If the money’s right . . .”

  “Sure, it matters. I would never do anything illegal.”

  “Yeah, you’re just a model citizen, huh?” she whispered. “Want to give me back my bra?”

  I handed it over, my thumb telling me I had been right about the underwire.

  “Can I have one of your cigarettes now?”

  I gave her one. She leaned over the console so I could light it for her. Her perfume reminded me of raw sugarcane.

  “Thanks.”

  I keyed the ignition enough to activate the electronics, zipped her window down.

  She leaned back and enjoyed her smoke. Didn’t say a word all through it. “That was good,” she said, snapping the butt out her window into the darkness. “I haven’t had a Kool since the last time I was locked up.”

  Sure. Nice of her to spell it all out for me. And in such big letters.

  “Want me to take you back to where they’re waiting for you?” I asked her.

  “Where would that be?”

  “The Subaru.”

  “Okay, then; who would that be?”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “No. I’ve been following you. For quite a while. In the Subaru. It’s mine. There’s no one in it now.”

  I pulled alongside the sleek black car. She opened her door, turned to face me.

  “This one’s on the house,” she said. “The girl’s not strolling. I can help you find her if she’s anywhere in Portland. You don’t believe me, ask around.”

  “I already did that. And you didn’t come up aces . . . Peaches.”

  She poked a finger into one of the thick bands at the top of her fishnets, took something out, and handed it to me. A poker chip, it felt like. “Ask again,” she said.

  She got out, slammed the Caddy’s door closed with a well-padded hip, and climbed into the Subaru in one smooth motion.

  I would have wondered about her leaving her car unlocked in that neighborhood, if I hadn’t seen the shadows shift in the front seat when we’d pulled up.

  I’d imagined all kinds of exotic things for the little disk I’d been carrying around in my shirt pocket for a couple of hours. Embedded microchips, the female half of a set, maybe some mystical symbols to a code I’d be expected to crack . . .

  But when I finally took a look at it under the lamp over my chair, it turned out to be a plain white plastic disk with milled edges, lettered in black. Just “Ann O. Dyne,” with “Pain Management” underneath, like it was a specialty of the house. On the flip side: “cell/page/cyber,” with separate numbers for each.

  I rolled the poker-chip business card between my fingers, trying to get something from it beyond the words. I knew a hundred ways to say S&M, but “pain management” was a new one on me. If that’s what it was . . . and I didn’t think so.

  I might have asked Gem, but she wasn’t around.

  The kid was small and slender, lady-killer handsome, with blond hair, big liquid brown eyes, and a gentle smile. He circled the table slowly and deliberately, eyeing the scattered balls like an I Ching hexagram he was decoding. “You’re done,” he said to a tall, scrawny guy in his twenties.

  “You going to jump it in?” the scrawny guy sneered. “I don’t think so.”

  I took a look. From where I was sitting, I could see the cue ball frozen to the short rail at the foot of the table. The green six ball was hanging on the pocket, but the black eight blocked the shot. The scrawny guy was right; the balls were too close together to jump the cue into the six.

  “Massé,” the kid said.

  “Right!”

  “You don’t think so?” a man asked, echoing the scrawny guy’s words.

  I turned to look at the speaker, a well-put-together man in his thirties with a shaved head, black-rimmed glasses, and a bright, shallow smile. He sat calmly against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “No, I don’t fucking think so,” the scrawny guy responded.

  “How sure are you about that?” the man challenged.

  “Real sure.”

  “A hundred bucks sure?”

  “Oh yeah,” the scrawny guy assured him, affirming the side bet.

  The man with the shaved head got up slowly, took a pair of fifties out of his pocket as if he’d been carrying them around just for such an occasion. He put them on the table at the other end from where the kid faced the shot. The scrawny guy came up with his ante. Everybody moved back to give the kid room.

  He took one more look. Chalked his cue absently. A couple of teenage girls giggled together, sharing a secret. The kid stepped to the table, held his cue almost perpendicular to the green felt surface. He gripped it overhand as he stroked a couple of times to get the rhythm, then snapped it down and back as smooth as a punch press. The cue ball made a quick semicircle around the eight, gently nudged the six ball home, then reversed at the long rail to give the kid perfect position on the seven ball.

  “Big A!” his backer congratulated him, offering a palm to slap.

  The scrawny guy nodded his head, as if finally understanding something that had been explained to him many times.

  The kid ran the seven, eight, and nine without drawing a breath. The scrawny guy didn’t stay for the finale.

  The two teenage girls argued over who was going to rack the balls. I sat down next to the backer. “You taking on all comers?” I asked him.

  “Someday we will,” the backer said. “Not today.”

  “Why not today?”

  “Big A’s not ready. Another couple of years, yeah.”

  “He looks ready to me.”

  “He’s got the stroke,” the backer said. “And he’s got the eye. But he’s still learning the game. And stamina’s an issue, too—some of the pro games can go for hours, day after day.”

  “That’s the plan, to turn him pro?”

  “It is. He’s not old enough to play in tournaments yet. By the time he is, we’ll be ready.”

  “You’re Clipper, right?”

  “Uh-huh
. And you’re . . . ?”

  “B.B.”

  “Oh yeah. I’ve heard about you.”

  “Then you know what I’m looking for.”

  “Runaway. At least, that’s what people say.”

  “For once, then, word on the street’s true.”

  “I’m a businessman,” he said. “Not a social worker.”

  “Sure. That’s what I want, to do business.”

  “You think I know where—?”

  “No. But I’ve been here for a while, and I noticed a few things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like how your boy works with a house cue, very slick. And the way he pulls girls like a rock star.”

  “He does,” Clipper said, proudly.

  “So I figured I could maybe talk to him, show him this picture I’ve got of the—”

  “Lots of people out here looking for runaways,” he interrupted.

  “What’s your point?”

  “I don’t know you, that’s my point.”

  “Fair enough. But I’m not asking you to turn the girl over. Or even to tell me where she is. Just to get a message to her.”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “Money.”

  “I’ve got enough money, pal.”

  “All right, then. How about if I show you a crack in your boy’s game?”

  “What kind of crack?”

  “He’s still a kid.”

  “So?”

  “So let’s him and me play. Nine ball, like he’s been doing. A ten-spot per game. And I side-bet you a hundred I get him out of his rhythm before I drop the same amount.”

  He leaned back in his chair and gave me a long look. “Big A doesn’t intimidate,” he said quietly. “Not with me around.”

  “That’s not my style. What do you say?”

  I refused to lag for break. It was his table; I figured I’d have a better chance with a coin toss.

  “Rack them tight,” I told the chubby little girl in a Hard Looks T-shirt. She nodded, tongue protruding in concentration.

  Instead of breaking from the far end and stroking low to stop the cue ball near the center, I came off the side rail slightly off-center, striking high. It was a sucker move—good chance I’d leave myself snookered even if I pocketed a ball. But it was the best way to swing for the fences.

  The cue ball attacked the rack, driving deep, compressing the balls until the yellow-and-white-striped nine popped out like a mouse out of a hole and squirted into the left-hand corner.

  The kid just chuckled.

  For the next game, I went to a more professional break. This time, I pocketed the seven in the corner and the one in the side, leaving myself clear on the two at the other end. I dropped it home. Then passed up a fairly easy line on the three in favor of a long combo to the nine. It didn’t drop.

  The kid chuckled again. Too quickly. I’d left him a no-look at the three. He went two rails for the hit, but he couldn’t pocket anything.

  My turn. I lined up on the three, whacked it hard with enough draw to come all the way back down the table, and almost kissed the nine ball in.

  “Stroooke!” one of the young guys watching barked.

  The kid nodded his head, on to my game now. He ran the table, pulling us even.

  For the next hour, it went like that. I went slap-and-slam, kiss-and-combo, almost always playing the nine ball, no matter what was open. The kid played straight pool—one at a time, methodical. He should have been way ahead. He wasn’t.

  And I was having a lot more fun.

  Another hour. The kid started to take some chances. He had a beautiful stroke, but he hadn’t trained for extreme English on the ball. He was a little more accurate; I was a lot more radical. And the watching crowd was into radical.

  After a while, the kid started to put more muscle into his breaks. A mistake—his game was finesse, not power. Twice, he scratched, leaving me easy. I vultured those racks . . . then broke even harder than I had before.

  By two in the morning, the kid was tired. And playing more cowboy all the time. He was working the crowd, showing off, beating me at my own game . . . almost.

  He was sixty bucks ahead when Clipper said, “Let’s get something to eat.”

  “I’d like to play you again,” the kid told me. We were sitting in a diner, working on a nighthawk’s breakfast.

  “He already played you, Big A,” Clipper told him.

  “Yeah. But I—”

  “Played you, understand?”

  “What?” the kid demanded, annoyed.

  “You’re a lot better than me,” I said. “You should have wiped me out.” I was flat-out lying—the margin was actually pretty thin. But when you’re hustling, ego is the first thing you shed. “You know why you didn’t?”

  “Sure,” he said, high-confidence, proudly reciting what he’d been taught. “A slop player can beat a pro any one time. That’s why nine ball is such a perfect sucker’s game. Luck can change the result. Sometimes. It’s the pool version of gin rummy. But over the long run, I’d always get your money.”

  “Not the way you played,” I told him.

  His fair complexion made the angry flush clear, even in the diner’s dim light. “My game—”

  “You didn’t play your game, Big A,” Clipper said, gently. “That’s what Mr. . . .”

  “Hazard.”

  “. . . Hazard is trying to tell you, son. You got caught up in the crowd. Remember how you learned? Nine ball is nothing but one-rack rotation, right?”

  “Yeah. I know. I was just—”

  “I know what you were doing,” I told him.

  “What?”

  “You were having fun.”

  “Huh?”

  “People do things different when they do them for fun. The way you play, it’s work, right?”

  “Sure. Me and Clipper—”

  “I know. Thing is, it was fun, wasn’t it? Combos, kisses, heavy draw, billiard shots . . . slamming through on the break . . . ?”

  “Yeah,” he said, flashing a smile.

  “And we were playing for chump change, so you could relax, let the crowd get into it?”

  “Maybe . . .” he admitted, grinning now.

  “Only thing is, you can’t do that, Big A,” Clipper told him firmly. “You can’t do your work for fun. It changes your game. Those little things, they creep in around the corners when you’re not looking. Next thing you know, your edge is gone. Remember how many times we talked about focus?”

  The kid just nodded, solemn-faced now.

  “It’s not your fault,” Clipper told him. “This guy”—nodding at me—“he conned you into it.”

  “He won’t do it again,” the kid said. He turned to me. “Were you a pro, once?”

  “I was a gambler.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “A gambler plays all the time. A pro makes a living at it.”

  “Heh!” The kid chuckled. “We make a living. Well, maybe not yet, we don’t. But we will, right, Clipper?”

  “Guaranteed.”

  “What do you think?” he asked me.

  I knew what he wanted. “In two, three years, if you stay inside yourself, if you practice only on pro-standard tables, if you listen to your father here . . . you’ll make your mark on the circuit.”

  “How did you know Clipper was my father?” the kid demanded. “We’re not—”

  “My family’s the same kind as yours,” I said.

  Big A and Clipper looked at each other, then nodded a silent amen.

  “Well?” I asked Clipper, while the kid was in the restroom.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “You said you’d show me a crack. And you did.”

  “It’s not a deep one. And it’s not permanent, either.”

  “You’re right. You got a picture of the girl?”

  I showed him what I had. He didn’t react . . . but I wouldn’t have expected him to, even if Rosebud’s face rang a bell.

  “Here�
�s my card,” I said. “All I want is for you to ask her to give me a call. Twenty-four/seven.”

  “She doesn’t know you?”

  “No.”

  “So why would she want to call?”

  “Because I have a message for her. From her father. All she has to do is listen to it, then she can do whatever she wants; fair enough?”

  “It’s not up to me.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ll ask around. If she does call you, don’t waste your time with a trace—it’ll be from right here,” he said, unhooking a cell phone from his belt and holding it up.

  “The kid . . .”

  “. . . Big A.”

  “Big A. He’ll maybe know . . .”

  “If he does, we’ll ask her. Don’t worry. Me and Big A, our word is gold.”

  “You’re not just teaching him pool, huh?”

  “I’m teaching him everything I know,” Clipper said.

  Another thing Clipper knew was the address of a safehouse for kids trying to get off the street, or out of The Life. I knew the phone number; I’d seen it posted all over town. But the address was something else again.

  I thought about trying it right away. Sometimes people on night duty get lonely, and they’re easier to talk to. But safehouse antennas extend higher when darkness comes, and I decided to take my shot in the daytime.

  I thought about going home. But nobody would be there. And it wasn’t my home.

  I had another idea, but it stumbled into the generation gap. When I was a kid on the streets, one place you could always find open in the middle of the night was a church. Not all of them, but there would always be a couple.

  Not the ones I tried.

  When Pansy had been with me, we sometimes watched the sun come up together. Facing the day. Now I watched it come up alone. And went to sleep.

  It was a little after three in the afternoon when I rang the bell on the side of the three-story blue clapboard house. A woman, maybe in her twenties, answered, her body language making it clear that I wasn’t going to be invited in.

  I gave her the same spiel I was handing out all over the streets. She nodded, not saying anything. I handed her a photo of Rosebud. She took it without even glancing at it. I thanked her for her time and left.