Pain Management (35 page)

“What else?” I asked her.

“One, the girl
is
with Clipper and Big A. She’s been there almost from the beginning.”

“If he turns her over like he—”

“B.B., just listen, all right? I think her father did something to her.”

“I know he did.”

“But she still loves him.”

“Sure. I know. That’s not so unusual.”

“You act like you know all about this.”

“It’s no act. What else?”

“This car,” she said, handing me a scrap of paper, “picked up street girls. A bunch of times.”

“So?”

“So . . . I don’t know what your whole game is, B.B. I’m not sure why you want the girl . . . the runaway so bad. I don’t know who you’re really working for, or even what you do. But I know you want . . . something. I saw . . . I mean, I know the way you . . . when that freak cut me. I get this strange idea that maybe you’re looking for a killer. The one picking off all the street girls.”

“Lots of people get ideas. Don’t make more out of me than I am.”

“Uh-huh. Okay, here’s what I have. You don’t want it, throw it away. That piece of paper I gave you? It’s a license number. The car picks up girls. And it’s a woman who does the asking. A man driving, but a woman making the deal; understand?”

“Yes. But all the girls they picked up, they came back, right?”

“Not all of them. One didn’t. She went by Merlot. . . .”

“Like the wine?”

“Yes. And, the way it was figured, she was holding out on her pimp and made a break one night. It happens.”

“So the only thing you have is that it was a man-and-woman team—”

“That’s
not
all. The license plate . . .”

“What?”

“It showed up a few times. On different cars.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Maybe that’s nothing by itself, but . . .”

“You’re not wrong, Ann.”

“So it
is
worth something.”

“It could be, anyway.”

“This
certainly
is,” she said, holding up an envelope.

“Pretty small envelope for a hundred grand.”

“That’s in the trunk,” she said. “In a Delta Airlines bag. Just like you said: all hundreds, used, random serial numbers. This,” she told me, waving the envelope, “is the title to the Subaru. I signed it over. You can register it any way you want, but it’s yours now.”

“I . . .”

“Take it, B.B. I know you don’t have a car.”

“How could you—?”

“Either you’re fabulously wealthy and you’ve got a whole stable of vehicles . . . which I don’t
think
so . . . or you borrow cars all the time. Anyway, where I’m going, I won’t be able to use it.”

“Why?” I asked, despite myself.

“I told you. It’s
all
going to change from here on out. I don’t want anything tying me to Ann O. Dyne. She was always a myth. Now she’s going to disappear.”

“All right.”

“Aren’t you going to check your money?”

“I know it’s there,” I said. And knew I was right even as I spoke.

“You ever think about . . . ?”

“What?”

“Making a change, too. Starting a new life. Starting over.”

“I can’t start over,” I told her. “I’m not a myth. I’m me. Forever.”

“But people can . . .”

“No, they can’t, girl. Not all of them, anyway. Not me, for sure.”

“I’ll know you if I see you again,” she said, getting to her feet. “But you won’t know me. Without these,” she chuckled, reaching down and hauling the sweatshirt up over her head, “probably nobody would.”

“I’d know your eyes,” I told her.

She stepped close. “You probably would. You looked there, often enough. Tell me something, B.B. When you were a kid, when you . . . did it outside, how did you do it?”

I took her shoulders, gently turned her around so she was facing away from me. Then I put my hands on her waist and cranked my thumbs forward until she was bending over, her hands on the fender of the Subaru. “Like this,” I whispered in her ear. “That way, we could keep watch while we were . . .”

Later, she told me to just take off. By myself. Whoever was waiting on her was close by.

She stood on her toes, gave me a goodbye kiss. “You can find your own way back,” she said.

I wondered if that was true.

“What do you want for all this?” Hong asked me, fingering the slip of paper Ann had given me.

“Your throwdown piece,” I told him.

“You think this is New York?”

“I think cops are cops.”

“Well, I don’t carry one,” he said, huffily.

“All right.”

“You have a drop?” he asked.

The next morning, under the loose cinder block in the corner of the garage Gordo and Flacco used, I found a brand-new Browning Hi Power 9-millimeter. The Mark III, with the nonglare finish, still in the original sealed carton. And two boxes of shells.

Not exactly the most powerful man-stopper on the planet, but a beautiful, expensive weapon. And maybe Hong was trying to send me a message by not going with the same caliber of slug the autopsy team would have pulled out of the black guy who’d tried to smoke Ann in that vacant lot.

I night-swept with the Subaru a few times, the tinted windows clouding anyone’s view of who was doing the driving. Maybe it would buy Ann a little more of a head start if people thought she was still around.

I hadn’t changed anything about the Subaru, but I’d done one thing to make it mine. The license-plate number Ann had given me was taped to its dash.

“Now.” Joel’s voice, on the cellular. My watch said it was six-thirty in the morning.

“Where?”

“Just come here. I’ll take you.”

Joel’s car was a green BMW Z3 with a tan canvas top, one of the early ones. He drove aggressively, keeping the little car in its lower gears until the tach asked for mercy. He braked late for corners, occasionally kicking the tail out, but always catching it smoothly. By the time he got to where I recognized a few landmarks, I knew where we were headed.

“She wants the meet where Daisy picks up her letters?”

“Yes. She said you already know about it, but nobody else does. She feels safe there.”

“Is that where she spent the night?”

“She spent the night at my house,” Joel said, in a “Want to make something out of it?” tone. “Jenn drove her over while it was still dark.”

“So Jenn’s with her?”

“Yes.”

“And Daisy?”

“No. Rose was quite adamant that Daisy
not
be present.”

“She’s calling the shots.”

“Speaking of shots . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I think you better let me hold your gun.”

“Why is that?”

“You’ve made no attempt to conceal that you’re armed. I’m concerned it could frighten Rose.”

“You know how to use a gun?”

“I . . . no.”

“Then I’m keeping it. It’s out in the open because I didn’t want to hide anything from you. But it’s not to scare Rosebud, it’s for her protection.”

“You think it’s that bad?”

“I know it is,” I told him.

Jenn and Rosebud were sitting together on the stone wall. They watched us approach, whispering urgently to each other.

“Maida and Zia,” I said, greeting them.

I was expecting a smile, hoping for a giggle. Got neither.

“What do you want to tell me?” Rosebud asked. “You already know I’m not going back.”

She looked like she was ready to jump off the stone wall and make a run for it any second. And Joel looked ready to try one of his wrestling moves if I made any attempt to stop her. I had to toss one of my aces on the table, quick.

“Rosebud, if I wanted to bring you back, if I didn’t respect what you’re doing, I could have just grabbed you and been done with it.”

“That’s pretty big talk,” she said. “You’ve been looking for me for a long time. Lots of people have.”

“Lots of people, yes. Me, no. I always knew where you were, Rosebud. I just went through the motions so I could keep your father from doing something real stupid.”

“Where was I, then?” she challenged.

“With Clipper and Big A,” I said, quietly. And as I said the words, I finally figured out who’d been making the dead drops for Rosebud.

Her mouth made an O, but no sound came out.

“I know why you went to Madison, too,” I said, closing in. “And I have the answer you want.”

“Madison wouldn’t—”

“She didn’t,” I said. “I put it all together. From the beginning. I know why Kevin is
really
looking for you, too.”

Rosebud turned to Jenn, a look of pain on her face so deep I didn’t think another human being could ever touch it. But Jenn gathered her in. They rocked together, both of them crying, Jenn saying “I know,” and “Daddy can fix this,” and a bunch of other stuff I couldn’t follow.

Joel stood beside me, as still as the stone wall. And less movable.

The two girls finally turned to face me, holding hands. I didn’t bother to ask Rosebud if it was okay to talk in front of the others.

I told her the truth.

When I was done, she looked at Jenn, who nodded agreement.

“It’s right here,” she said, handing it over.

“You understand what I’m going to trade it for, Rosebud?”

“Yes. How could he
do
that? How could he be a . . . traitor?”

“And that, if it works,” I said, ignoring her questions, “you understand you’ll never see him a—?”

“Yes! I have to do this. Daisy needs me. Jenn . . . ?”

“Yes,” Jenn said. Adding her vote.

“You take Rose back,” Joel told his daughter. “Mr. Hazard and I will go see Kevin. It will all be over soon.”

“You’re not going with me,” I told him on the drive back.

“The hell I’m not.”

“Listen to me, doc. You got no idea how much respect I have for you. I see the way your kids look at you; I feel so jealous, I can’t put it into words. You’re a standup man. But I have to do this one alone.”

“Why?”

“Because I made the girl a promise. And I’m going to keep it.”

“I’m not follow—”

“How much more do you want me to say? If Kevin goes for the deal, Rosebud will never see him again, right?”

“Right.”

“But if he
doesn’t
go for the deal, she
still
won’t,” I said; soft and slow, so he’d understand what I was telling him. “You want to be in on that?”

“I’ve got her,” I told Kevin on the phone.

“Oh God, that’s
great!
When can you—?”

“Tomorrow morning, maybe. If you can guarantee your wife and Daisy are out of the—”

“No problem! She’s going to drop Daisy at camp and then she’ll be—”

“—gone by seven-thirty?”

“Absolutely!”

“See you then. Leave your garage door open. We’ll come to your office.”

“Okay, okay, sure. Do I have to—?”

I hung up on him.

“What are you going to do?” Gem asked me that night. “Now that you know you were correct about him.”

“Depends on him.”

“Does that mean . . . ?”

“Yeah.”

“Burke . . .”

“I’m doing it, Gem.”

“Can you not trust me anymore?”

“Trust? Sure. Hell, I trust
everyone.
If I have to do it, I’ll be using this,” I said, taking out the pistol Hong had left me. “And if your boyfriend Pearl Harbored me, if this piece is hot, I’m fucked.” I didn’t bother to mention that I’d test-fired it, just to make sure Hong hadn’t given me a bunch of blanks.

She got to her feet, the anger gone from her face. “He is not my . . . boyfriend. I said you were my husband long ago. I meant that.”

“But the past can become the future.”

“Yes. You understand. But it was not a threat. And it was not about Henry. It was about you. Your past. Your future. I know how you hate it here.”

“I don’t hate it here. It’s kind of nice, actually. Portland’s, what, a tenth the size of New York? But it’s got more blues bars, and . . .”

“But even that. It is not really
your
music, is it?”

“The blues? Honeygirl, I was born to the—”

“No. I don’t mean the . . . feeling. Remember the music you told me all about. Doo-wop, yes?”

“That’s right. The Brooklyn Blues, sure.”

“New York music.”

“I . . . guess it is. When I think of blues, I think of Chicago. Or Detroit. Or even the Delta. But I grew up with
a capella
sounds in the subway tunnels, on the street corners, in the shower rooms of the institutions—it was everywhere.”

“And it is not here.”

“Ah, it’s not much of anywhere, anymore. And the weather’s better here. The people are the same, but I’d have to change planets to fix that.”

“So it is your family.”

“That’s it, Gem. My family. I . . . I need to be there with them. Not next door or anything. I don’t have to see them every day. But I’ve got no . . . life here. I’m not a dentist or a lawyer. I can’t get an Oregon license for what I do.”

“I know all this.”

“When I finish with Kevin, I’m going back home,” I said.

“I know that, too. I have known for a while. And I shall go with—”

“No. No, Gem. Not yet. I don’t know how it’s going to be, a man who’s supposed to be dead, coming back.”

“It does not—”

“It matters to me. And that’s not the whole of it. I . . . I don’t know if I want to be with . . . anyone.”

“I see.”

“And I think there are things you need to—”

“Don’t put any of this on me, Burke.”

“Fair enough.”

“I will not wait for you forever. There is always another border for me to cross.”

“I don’t want you to wait at all.”

“Yes, you do,” she said.

There was no way to tap Kevin’s phone. And even if I could, he had access to too many of them. But I was in his neighborhood at four-thirty the next morning. As I drove by, I spotted Clipper’s red Durango and pulled next to it.

“We’ve been in place since you called last night,” he said. “Rotating shifts. Nobody’s been to the house. No cars, no cabs, nobody on foot. Nothing.”

“Thanks.”

“We’re all with Rose,” Big A said.

“I’ve got it from here,” I told them. “Don’t come back.”

I was behind the house before five. If anyone else showed up, I’d know. And I’d had Clipper’s crew in place half an hour before I’d called Kevin. Not perfect, but the best I could manage.