Little Girls Lost (13 page)

Truman shrugged the worry from his shoulders. The way he’d handled those yokels was brilliant; he could have pissed in their mouths and they’d have thanked him for the lemonade. Still, he was glad they had gone; something about that big ape gave him chills.

He picked up the broom and resumed sweeping the dust and crumbs and torn edges of Rose’s power-bar wrappers.

Sandhill and Ryder drove two blocks and parked in the rear of a Popeye’s restaurant. The smell of fried chicken poured into Sandhill’s truck like hot fog. Ryder watched a stray dog feast on chicken scraps at the edge of the asphalt.

Sandhill said, “So what’d you take from the guy?”

“He seems like a typical photographer, but something’s hinky. Probably has nothing to do with the abductions, but he’s got a worm somewhere in his gut. He was jumpier than he looked.”

Sandhill nodded. “Smug little bastard thought he was leading us around like carnival ponies.”

“What was in the back cabinets?” Ryder asked.

“One held tripods, conduit, switch boxes, reflector stands. The other was a snack stash: three industrial-size cases of Cheezos from one of those discount joints. Plus paper towels and cleaning supplies.”

“I saw you snatch something from the floor.”

Sandhill used the nails of his thumb and forefinger to extract several pieces of silver paper from his pocket. A car behind them pulled out and Ryder waited until it was gone before leaning close.

“What is it?”

Sandhill shook his head, staring at the paper. “No idea. I saw a bunch of them in a pile of sweepings. I was just thinking, the way you tear something like this off…” Sandhill mimed ripping the end from a package.

“Yeah, perfect for thumb and forefinger prints. I’ll take it to the lab tonight,” Ryder said.

“How about you drop me at Nike’s? I want to check on her.”

There was a long pause; Ryder contemplating a question he’d had for a couple of days. “Can I ask you a question, Sandhill? Something I’ve been wondering about?”

Sandhill raised an eyebrow. “And the subject?”

“How Jacy came to be with Nike Charlane…”

Sandhill looked away, out the window. “Jacy’s real mother died. Ovarian cancer. The kid was three. Nike’s the girl’s aunt and she—”

“Not that. I know you and Nike Charlane are friends, but I’m feeling something more between you two, something deep and complex. Were you two ever lovers?”

Sandhill sighed. “Not Nike…Thena. Thena and I were lovers.”

“Thena?”

“Nike’s older sister, Athena—Jacy’s mother.
It ended years ago. Almost a decade. We were together less than a year. Then Thena split for someone more her style, I guess.”

“Were they much alike, Nike and Thena?”

“Nike is pragmatic. Thena was metaphysical. New Age-y spiritual: Tarot cards, crystals, whatever.”

Ryder raised an eyebrow. “What kind of work did she do?”

“Made jewelry from precious metals and polished stones. We’d be walking in a park and she’d reach down and grab some dusty chunk of rock. Two days later it would be set in silver and shining like a rainbow.”

“Where’d you meet her?”

“The Church Street Cemetery, behind the library. I’d taken out some books and headed to the grave-yard to read. Thena waltzed into the cemetery wearing a rainbow skirt, brocaded vest, hoop earrings, silver bells tinkling from a bracelet. Hair a mane of wild curls. She was happy as a kid at the circus, smiling, touching gravestones like old friends. I thought…”

—
that woman’s crazy. Or on something. But wow
…

“A good-looking woman, I take it?”

“The regal bones of Nike with larger, gentler eyes. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. A few minutes later she jangled by a few feet away.”

—
What cloud are you on, lady?

“She moved like snow, floating. I went back
into the library to exchange one book for another. When I came out she was cross-legged on the hood of my truck holding a deck of Tarot cards.”

—
Excuse me, lady. My truck has an appointment and wants me to drive it there.

—
Here, hold these cards. Come on, they won’t bite. No, tighter. That’s it. Now pass them back. My, your hand is cool for such a warm day. Take three cards from the deck
…

—
I don’t have time for games, lady.

—
Are you scared? A big man like you?

—
One, two, three. Three cards. Now what?

—
Lay them face up in front of me.

—
Whatever you want, lady. Here’s a guy in a crown, an old bum in rags, and a woman with a set of scales. We done here?

—
Oh my.

—
Oh my what? Look, lady, I’ve got to be
—

—
The King of Cups, the Hermit, and the card of Justice. That’s very…unusual.

—
Could you stop staring at me? And maybe tell me how long you’re going to be squatting on my hood?

—
I’m not sure. How many notes are in a song?

“She sounds like an original,” Ryder said.

“Somehow we ended up ended up having supper at that seafood joint on the causeway. She was vegetarian, sat there smiling over her salad watching me chow down on snapper and filet until I felt—Jesus—guilty.”

—
Two hours and I don’t know your name.

—
Is it important? Athena Diana Charlane. From mythology; my father loved the stories. Friends call me Thena.

—
Athena is the goddess of war, isn’t she?

—
Of many things, including handicrafts—more to my taste. And Diana is generally regarded as the goddess
—

—
of the hunt. What do you hunt, Thena?

—
The heart of the matter. Or hearts.

Ryder said, “I have a hard time visualizing you with someone so…different.”

“We were fire and water. Or earth and sky. Pick any opposites you want. By all rational rights we should have run from one another the second our eyes met. But I was…enchanted.”

—
What are you feeling, Conner?

“She drove me nuts at times, Ryder, always asking, ‘What are you feeling, Conner?’ I’d say, ‘I’m not
feeling
anything, Thena, I’m thinking.’ She’d get that damned elusive smile on her lips and say, ‘So how do you feel about what you’re thinking?’”

“How did it fall apart?” Ryder’s voice was a whisper.

“One day Thena said she’d been called to a mission and would have to go away for a while.”

“Mission? You didn’t try to—”

“It was her life, not mine. My thinking was she happened on another guy like she’d happened on me. Someone more touchy-feely. Jacy was born a year after she bailed, as I later discovered from
Nike. Thena’d found what she’d been hunting. Or who.”

“Was it love between you and Thena?”

Sandhill looked away, said, “Let’s git.”

Ryder cranked on the engine, put the truck in gear, and pulled from the lot. They were fifteen blocks from Popeye’s before Sandhill spoke again.

“It was good, Ryder. I’ve never felt that good since.”

“We can’t stay closed through this, Conner,” Marie scolded.

Sandhill had returned to the restaurant to find the
CLOSED
sign replaced by
OPEN
4
P.M. TO-DAY
.

“I don’t have time to deal with the place, Marie.”

“I’ll handle everything today; tomorrow I got Dora coming in. I talked to her about working full time for a while and she said she’d do anything.”

“Marie, I don’t want you to—”

“I need to do something, Conner. If I sit around I just shake and cry. And we need the money, you know we do.”

She was right, as usual, Sandhill admitted, heading to the kitchen to check the gumbos. He’d been in the kitchen a half-hour when the phone rang.

“Conner?”

It was Nike, her voice weary, but not so ragged.

“Nike. How are you? Can I—”

“That damned Turnbull’s over here wanting to hold a candle-fucking-light vigil or something. There must be fifty people in the street. Why would anyone hold a freaking candlelight vigil in broad daylight?”

Sandhill’s watch confirmed his opinion: 4 p.m. “To get it on the five o’clock news.”

“I don’t want that bastard using me like that, using Jacy like that.”

“If it’s peaceful there’s nothing you can do.”

“He’s got a bullhorn and he’s yelling ‘Save our babies’ over and over. I don’t think I can take this, Conner.”

Nike fell silent and Sandhill heard amplified ranting in the background. “Do you want to come over here? Or go to Marie’s?”

“I’d feel better at your place, Conner. Please come get me. I can’t deal with this kind of craziness now.”

“I’ll call Ryder. He and Roland Zemain can walk you out. I don’t think a heavy police presence would be good.”

“Hurry, Conner. Please hurry.”

Sandhill called Ryder, who’d already gotten word.

“The brass is still discussing what to do, Sandhill. On one hand those people have the right to peaceful assembly; on the other—”

“Screw the brass. Nike wants out of there. Can you do it? I want to scope out the crowd; the abductor may be drawn to the action.”

Ryder said, “Squill send me? Not a chance.”

“I’ll have Nike call and say she wants to leave. But only with you.”

Ryder said, “Squill’ll be bad pissed.”

Sandhill noted Ryder sounded elevated by the prospect. “Squill was born pissed. Can you take Nike to my place?”

“Done. By the way, there were latents on that silver wrapper. A full thumb and index and a partial middle. They didn’t belong to Truman Desmond.”

“Desmond’s got prints in the system? For what?”

“Anyone doing business with the schools gets printed. Desmond’s clean, no record. Not even a parking ticket. And whoever left the prints is just as immaculate.”

“Shit. I was hoping photo-boy’d have some type of sexo beef—weenie wagging or something. Give you a chance to toss his place.”

“Can’t do it,” Ryder lamented. “Desmond’s clean as a new whistle.”

Walter Mattoon’s various in-port dealings often required local phone directories and he’d collected nearly thirty of them. He checked his watch, made the time corrections, and figured it was just past noon in Mobile. He had the communications engineer make the satellite connection, then sat back at his desk and listened as connections fell into place, tapping the small ad in the Mobile Yellow Pages.

A leisurely drawl danced through the phone. “Bridgett’s Bridal Fashions.”

“I need to speak to someone in charge,” Mattoon said.

The woman said, “That would be me. Bridgett Boistellier, the owner.”

“My name is Ernest Martel. I’m with Angel Productions, an independent film company currently shooting a commercial in the Mobile area.”

“Yes sir. How can I help you?”

“Let me give you the scenario. A little girl is dreaming of the day she gets married. But time is mixed up and she dreams herself in a wedding dress while still youthful. We have a dress that was made for her, but I don’t think it’s right. It’s far, far too contemporary.”

“Clean, straight lines? No lace or ruffles?”

“I don’t want strict traditional, but a more formalized elegance.”

“Full veil, sleeves, lace at the bodice, a layering effect from the waist down…”

“Exactly. No veil, though. I—the camera needs to see her face.”

“I can do that. I’ll need the girl in for a fitting, of course.”

“No can do. She’s being flown in from Tallahassee just the day of the filming. I can call back with her exact dimensions…uh, measurements.”

“If that’s the only way.”

“There’s one other little thing, a slight time constraint.”

“When will you need it, Mr Martel?”

“Four days from now.”

“I’m sorry, Mr Martel. Four days is way too little time to—”

“How much do you normally charge? A general range.”

“We’re probably talking about twelve to fifteen hundred dollars, but like I said about the time—”

“Have it ready in three days and I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars. We can send your bank a down payment within minutes. Now, Miss Boistellier, how does that sound?”

A throaty chuckle. “Like I’m going to be working nights.”

Seconds after Truman sat, a black waitress waltzed by with a tray of full gumbo bowls in one hand, a pitcher of tea in the other, yet somehow managed to set a blue paper menu in front of him. She looked tired.

“I’ll be right back to get your order, hon.”

Truman felt a thrill as he looked past the menu at the restaurant. According to the news, it was owned by some guy supposedly watching Jacy Charlane when she was taken. The girl’s mother was out of town visiting relatives, went the reports. Now that Truman had beaten the cops, he felt safe to do as he pleased, and it pleased him to eat at
The Gumbo King.
He wondered if the man was
in the kitchen. He also wondered why the front window had been replaced with a sheet of plywood.

The waitress returned. “Now then, hon, what’ll you have?”

He ordered crab gumbo, salad, and sweet tea, angling his chair for a better look at the kitchen area. The waitress disappeared through the swinging doors but he saw no one else but customers, a third of the tables taken by diners, a mix of ages, races and genders. Truman was disappointed; he’d seen the mothers and one father of the other girls on television, but he’d never personally seen anyone affected by his actions. He thought it would be exciting, and had told Rose to meet him at the restaurant. Truman checked his watch; the idiot was always late.

His salad appeared before him: romaine, endive, and bibb lettuces studded with gleaming tomatoes, chunks of feta cheese, and pepperoncini. He picked the peppers up by their stems and, when no one was looking, tossed them beneath the table. He flooded the salad with Italian dressing, emptied two packets of sugar over it, and began eating.

As he chewed, he considered how well his business was going. The secret was specialization. Every possible taste lurked in the cyberwilderness where he once traded in playground photos, but it was the specialists who pulled the top dollars. Truman decided to specialize in young, exceptionally lovely black girls, offered not as photos, but as ownable
merchandise. His list of potential buyers was small, those who made enquiries even smaller, the buyers’ list smaller still.

But the money was so big.

He was also planning on repeat business. Hadn’t it happened already—the buyer for the Charlane girl the same man who’d purchased Darla Dumont, the test girl, last year? A very wary man, demanding double encryption, sending Tru the key, taking days to nail down the details of the purchase. Last year, before wiring the down payment, he’d demanded proof the operation wasn’t a scam, and Tru had sent copies of news stories about the abduction along with photos of the bound and waiting product.

The transfer had taken place on the Mobile River, a dark pier above the State Docks, and had worked flawlessly.

The waitress reappeared at Truman’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, hon, we don’t have crab today, it’s shrimp gumbo. We didn’t make as much gumbo as usual and—”

Truman picked up the single-sheet menu and poked at it with his fork. “It says right here, ‘crab gumbo’.”

“Like I said, I didn’t get a chance to—”

Truman leaned back and rolled his eyes. “What kind of place is this? Promise one thing then not deliver.”

“I’m sorry. Today we just have shrimp, chicken and andouille, shrimp and andouille, and okra. We have seafood etouffeé; it has fresh crab in it.”

“Yeah, gimme that.”

She chugged away. Truman looked up to see Rose pushing through the door in split-sided denim shorts and a sleeveless white sweatshirt. A slender wreath of gold chains encircled his massive pink neck. Several customers watched Rose discreetly, one woman at a corner table nudging her female companion and pointing with her eyes as Rose crossed the room. Truman studied the women; they were pretty, with shining hair and suntanned legs crossed beneath the table. Truman detested the looks Rose’s muscles generated, but felt visceral gratification at being seen with him.

If you girlies knew what I know…

He knew that Rose—who drew steady and unashamed stares from women and flickering, unsettled glances from men—was terrified by any woman past adolescence. Tru had set Rose up with women in the past only to watch the slab-bodied behemoth blush and stutter, sweating like there was a lawn sprinkler beneath his clothes.

Rose bent his knees and lowered to the chair as if readying for a clean-and-jerk. “Isn’t this the place where—”

“Yes.”

Rose looked around and laughed. “Too cool.”

The nearest other patrons were two tables away. Truman leaned toward Rose as he sat. “How’s our last piece of product?”

Rose said, “I fed her and she went to sleep.”

“The buyer posted a message. He wants us to
get her measurements. Like how tall she is and how long her legs are and things. A shitload of measurements. He wants them by this afternoon.”

“What the hell for, Tru?”

“I didn’t ask, Rose. A man pays quarter-million bucks for a product, I’ll measure anything he wants. That’s the way a service business works.” Truman speared a forkful of salad. “Hey, you been watching the kid on your new TV and milking the mongoose?”

Rose colored and looked away. “No. Fuck you.”

Truman smiled slyly. “I thought that’s why you spent all that money on the camera hookup to the shelter.”

Rose started to stand. “Fuck you again. You want to eat alone?”

“Sit down. Get a sense of humor, Rose. Jeez.”

The waitress spun by, moving fast. “I’ll be with you in a minute, hon,” she said, unable to hide the microsecond double take at Rose.

“Don’t order the crab gumbo; the menu’s a lie,” Truman said, making sure it was loud enough for the waitress to hear as she bounced her fat tits past the table.

“When’s…little princess get picked up?” Rose asked over the top of the menu.

“Three days. Or four. I get the feeling that the buyer’s on some kind of schedule. Like maybe a business trip or something. It was like this last year, remember? The waiting, then all of a sudden the phone call and—”

Truman paused and cocked his head.

“What?” Rose asked.

Truman spun toward the kitchen and looked at the swinging doors and the server’s window. “A voice from back there. It reminded me of…”

Sandhill burst through the doors.

“Christ!” Truman spat, jerking his head toward the wall, trying to hide his face by pretending to scratch it.

“What is it?” Rose asked.

“Get up and stand between me and that guy over there—don’t look at him!—quick, like you’re showing me something in your wallet. Do it!”

Rose positioned himself between his brother and the big man in the floppy crown, pulling from his wallet the first thing he touched, a photo of himself oiled up and posing. He bent and pretended to explain some aspect of it to Truman.

“What the hell’s going on, Tru?”

“Shhh!”

From the corner of his eye Truman watched the crowned ape stride to the beverage station where the waitress was filling drink cups. The ape and waitress whispered back and forth, then the ape shot out the door.

“He’s gone, let’s go,” Truman whispered.

“Who was that, Tru? What’s wrong?”

Truman stood and pulled a five from his wallet. He grabbed Marie’s hand as she passed and jammed the bill into it. “We’re out of here. I think
I got food poisoning from that rotten fucking salad.”

Truman pulled the van from the curb, his hands tight on the wheel. “That guy in the restaurant. He was one of the cops that came by today. The ones I told you about.”

“He’s a
cop
?”

“He said he was. No, wait…” Truman replayed the afternoon’s events in his head. “He didn’t say he was. And he didn’t show me ID, either. I think he faked me out.”

“What’s going on, Tru?” Rose’s voice was up a register, like speaking through helium.

Truman thought through the scenario. “It means the cops were bringing the big guy around hoping he’d see someone he knew, someone the cops were trying to identify.”

“What does that mean?”

Truman’s face slowly lit in a grin. “It means I passed inspection, brother, just like I said I would. How’s about giving me a high five?”