River of Glass (12 page)

She looked up at me and blinked. Then recognition dawned in her eyes, and her mouth stretched to reveal a jumble of stained and rotting teeth. Meth mouth.

“Hey, baby.” Her voice was husky, an emphysema hack. “Ain’t seen you around in a while. Heard you was off the job.”

“Gone private.” I pulled a chair out from the table for Khanh and slid into the one beside Amber. A bored-looking waitress took our orders and came back with a pair of Budweisers for me and a Kirin for Khanh. I pushed one of the Buds toward Amber and kept the other.

Her chipped nails picked at the skin of her forearms, where a patch of scaly green skin said she’d been mainlining krocodil. Known as a poor man’s heroine, the Russian drug was made from codeine, gasoline, paint thinner, and other toxins, and was known for rotting the user’s body from the inside.

Amber was walking dead. She just didn’t know it yet.

Or maybe she did.

She squinted at me through the cigarette haze. Didn’t flinch when I touched the skin beneath her eye, where there was a bruise too dark for the makeup to hide.

I said, “Jerome do this to you?”

She waved my hand away. “Could be. Or maybe some john. All the same, you know? What brings you here, baby? Slumming?”

I showed her both pictures and ran down the story, and when I’d finished, she sat back in her chair, scratching at her cheeks like she had bugs under the skin. “I seen that guy around.”

“He a john?”

“Maybe, but I never did him. Not his type, I guess. And I’m not sorry, either. Dude got crazy eyes. Mean, you know?”

“Where can I find him?”

She shifted in her seat, breasts pushed out, legs spread. “Little somethin’ to make it worth my while?”

I gave her a twenty from my new wallet.

“Big spender,” she said, and stuffed it into a pocket sewn inside the waistband of her skirt.

“It’s pretty generous, considering you haven’t actually told me anything. If what you’ve got pans out, I’ll bring you another one.”

“I seen him at Ray Salazar’s place. You know, down off Broad. Adult videos, sex toys, peep booths in the back. I was givin’ a little show, and this guy comes in. I remember on account of the tattoo.”

“He watched your show?”

“For a while. He jerked off, and then he laughed this real mean laugh and called me some names in another language and got up and left.”

“What other language?”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t Spanish or French. Or Chink or German. He sounded kind of like Dracula.”

“Then how did you know he was calling you names?”

“The look on his face, he sure as hell wasn’t calling me sweetheart.” She scratched at her arm, then held up a bloody fingernail and grimaced. “This guy targets working girls? Should I be worried?”

“We don’t know enough to tell, but I’d say it’s just as well for you you’re not his type.”

The waitress drifted by, and I paid for the drinks. Then Amber walked out with us so anyone watching would think I’d paid for services rather than information. We stood under a leaky awning and waited fruitlessly for the drizzle to dissipate. “Need a ride?” I said, finally. “Drive you to rehab.”

She barked a laugh. “Been there, done that. Didn’t take. Besides, I still gotta bring in another couple hundred or Jerome’ll—” She stopped, looked into my face. “I forgot what a Boy Scout you are. You get any redder, you’re gonna bust a vessel.”

I drew in a calming breath, blew it out. The Zen detective. “He’ll kill you one of these days. If the kroc doesn’t get you first.”

“No great loss. Might be a relief, I guess. But just as likely he’ll get himself offed.”

“And then?”

“There’s always another Jerome. A girl’s got to have somebody watchin’ out for her.”

“He’s watching out for you, all right. He’ll watch you right into the boneyard.”

For a moment, anger cleared the glaze from her eyes. “Two years, I don’t see you. Now you wanna come here and get all up in my business? Fuck that. Fuck rehab. And fuck you.”

Khanh watched her go, then looked at me and said, “She like you wallet. But not so crazy about you.”

15

R
ay Salazar’s Adult Emporium was wedged between a comic book store and a barbershop. There was a narrow alley beside it and a poor excuse for a parking lot behind. The asphalt had buckled, and weeds grew up through the cracks. The security light came on when I pulled in and parked between Salazar’s junker and a burgundy Impala. Ours were the only vehicles in the lot.

Salazar carried erotic novels, movies, and sex toys, but video was his stock-in-trade. He sold commercial titles and a lowbudget porn series he filmed in his basement. He’d done time a few years back for trading in snuff films, but now he swore he was out of the death business.

I turned toward Khanh. “You sure you don’t want to wait in the truck? Could be embarrassing.”

“Not care embarrassing.”

“Suit yourself.”

We went through the alley and around to the front door. I pushed it open, and when the bell rang, Salazar, who was ringing up a stack of DVDs for a blushing middle-aged couple, looked up.

At first I thought he was wearing a dirty turban. Then I got closer and realized what I’d thought was a turban was a tattoo. A realistic depiction of a rattlesnake.

“What have you done to your head?” I asked.

He stroked his bald head. “You like it?”

“What’s not to like?”

The couple stared fixedly at the counter. The woman tugged at the man’s sleeve. Salazar tucked the DVDs and receipt into a plain plastic bag and handed it to the man, who clutched it to his chest with one hand and pushed the woman out the door with the other.

Salazar shook his head and grinned in my direction. “First-timers,” he said, and gave his head an affectionate pat. “I can see you’re wondering about the tat. This here’s a symbol of danger, mystery, and virility. Which is me, to a T.”

“Funny, I never thought of rattlers as particularly virile.”

“The serpent, man. You don’t really think God got all bent out of shape over an apple? Hell, no. That was all about sex.” He winked at Khanh. “What can I do for you two? I know you ain’t with the police no more, so I’m guessin’ this visit is personal?” “Not exactly. I’m on the private payroll these days. Khanh is my . . . client. Her daughter’s missing.”

His eyes went wary. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Not you. But maybe someone you know. Someone who’s into Asian women, likes to play rough. He’s killed at least one girl we know of.”

“I don’t deal in snuff films no more, man. And even when I was, it was strictly trade. I was never on the production side.”

“But somebody might ask to buy one. Or sell one. And if they do, maybe you could give me a call.”

He rubbed his head absently, thinking it over. “What’re you offering? Now that you’re on the private payroll?”

“Depends on what you deliver.”

“Ballpark.”

I looked at Khanh. Imagined my savings as a dwindling pile of dollar bills in a Scrooge McDuck bank vault. A tiny pile, getting smaller by the minute. “Two hundred if you give us something that pans out.”

“Shit. I seen rewards for dogs higher than that. Last week, I seen a thousand dollars for a lost Chihuahua.”

“I give you a thousand dollars, I’ll have to go live in a refrigerator box.”

“Five hundred, then.”

“Three hundred.”

“Four.”

“Three fifty, but only if we find her.”

“Done.”

I doled out another card and gave him a twenty for his time, which he tucked into his shirt pocket. Then I showed him Tuyet’s picture and the drawing of the man with the tattoo. “Ever seen either of these people?”

He squinted at both pictures. “The girl, no. The guy . . .”

“He’s been in here?”

“Yeah, I remember him. Who could forget that ink?” He jerked a thumb toward the back. “We got to talkin’, and turns out we use the same artist.” He gave his head a fond pat. “Soon’s I saw it, I figured as much. My guy got a distinctive style, you know? Anyways, this guy Ka . . . uh, Karl, he special ordered a video, so there’s a good chance I have his name and address on file.”

“You remember the video?”

“Something about prisoners of war, I think. Blondes with big bazongas and bad accents wallowing in the mud with rifles.” He came around the counter and pointed to a stained coffeemaker against one wall. “Be right back. Help yourself to coffee—if you like it strong and black.”

I took a pass on the coffee but glanced around at the wares. Videos to the left, books along the back wall, fetish gear to the right, and blowup dolls and sex toys in the center aisles. While Khanh glared at the floor, I picked up a pink rubber vibrator that looked like a squid. Put it down again.

Khanh rubbed at a stain on the floorboards with a toe. Her back was rigid, her mouth thin with disapproval.

I said, “What’s eating you?”

“What? I very quiet. Say nothing, even when you make deal with asshole for daughter life.”

Heat rushed to my face. “You think these people are going to talk to us out of the goodness of their hearts?”

“I—” She stopped. Lowered her eyes. “No. Not think that.”

“I’m going to do everything I can to find Tuyet. But I can’t promise what I don’t have.”

“You rich American. Big house. Nice truck. Two horse.”

“Jay owns the house, and Wells Fargo owns the truck. I plead guilty to the horses, but I’m a long way from rich.”

“You go bank, take out three hundred American dollar easy,” she said softly. “Seem rich to me.”

The door to the back swung open, and Salazar came out carrying a sheet of paper that looked like it had been ripped from a memo pad. He held it up, just out of reach. “Here you go. Karl Sanders. Got the address right here.”

I gave him another twenty, and he handed me the paper. I slipped it into my wallet.

With business out of the way, Salazar seemed more chipper. “That tattoo,” he said. “It’s called a manticore. Karl, oh uh, old Karl, he told me it was the perfect metaphor for a real man.”

“The perfect metaphor.”

“Body of a lion for physical strength, wings to rise above the shit life throws at you, tail of a scorpion, because a scorpion kills without mercy, and mercy is for the weak. And finally, the face of a man, for man’s superior intellect, the most dangerous weapon of all.” He chuckled, stroked his rattlesnake tattoo. “He’s a thinker, old Karl. Me, I’m more the primal type.”

He told me a story about a woman who had a fanged vagina tattooed onto each thigh and another about a woman who wanted a picture of her dead infant tattooed onto her stomach. Then he said, “I hit the jackpot in the movie biz, though. Zombie porn. It’s huge, man. I mean, huge. A few years ago, it was vampires and werewolves, and you sometimes still get some goobers askin’ for those, but zombies are the new vampires. Only, you got to be careful about the makeup, you know, cause you want the girls to be hot, and it’s hard to be hot when your skin is rotting off, you know what I mean?”

I told him I did.

When we left, he was stroking his head and reading a book called
How to Eat Another Man’s Wife.

That Salazar. All class.

16

I
t was after nine when we left, circling around through the alley and to the parking lot. There had been a security light on when we came in, and when we came out, it had gone out. The mist had stopped, and the full moon glowed through a veil of gray clouds. To either side of it, dark striations raked the sky like claw marks.

The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. Nothing psychic about it, just something registering underneath the surface, like a shadow within a shadow, or a faint disturbance in the air, perhaps caused by a stranger’s breath.

I looked around. Saw nothing.

Khanh rubbed her upper arms and shivered.

I pulled my keys out of my pocket and flipped to the truck key. Punched the unlock button. The headlights flashed, but there was no obliging click of the locks. I punched it again. Still nothing. I pushed the key into the lock, met resistance.

“Wrong key,” Khanh said.

“It’s not the wrong key.” I bent to get a closer look at the lock.

A shadow flashed past the corner of my eye. I started to turn, saw a figure in black coming up on my left, moving fast. Big. Bulky. His face was smooth and black, completely featureless. For a moment, I thought of Salazar’s zombies, then realized no, the man was wearing a mask. His arm came up, and the dirty light of the alley glinted on the metal pipe in his hand.

I threw up my left arm as the pipe came down, the thwack of pipe against bone like a rifle shot in the dark. A burst of pain shot from my elbow to my wrist. The arm went dead, and for a moment, my mind went blank. All I wanted to do was cradle the arm and vomit.

I choked back bile and shot a kick at his knee, but he was already moving. I caught his calf with the edge of my heel as he went by.

Khanh shouted something in Vietnamese and leapt onto his back, stump clamped around his neck, fingers of her left hand clawing at his mask. He grunted and bucked her off. She stumbled backward, hit hard on her tailbone. The pipe came down, and Khanh crabbed away as it swished past her ear.

I tugged the Glock out of my shoulder holster, tried to rack it, but my left hand was still numb. It didn’t want to cooperate. The masked man’s foot slammed into Khanh’s gut, and the breath went out of her in a whoosh. Her back slammed hard against the wall of Salazar’s shop, and she slumped against it, small and boneless in her poncho.

I hooked the rear site of the Glock on my belt loop and chambered the round. Pointed it at the guy in the mask. “Hey!”

He swung his head toward me, and his gaze froze on the gun. He hadn’t made a sound yet, but now he chuckled. “I do not think you will,” he rasped, a touch of Eastern Europe in his voice.

My finger twitched toward the trigger. If I killed him, we’d lose our only connection to Tuyet. While I wavered, he stepped into the shadows between the barbershop and the comic book store. The pipe clanged to the pavement, and he bolted for the alley.

I bolted after him, ignoring the throbbing in my arm. We plunged into the alley and down it, across a vacant lot. Brambles caught at my jeans. Bits of broken glass crunched beneath my feet. I splashed through a puddle, stumbled on uneven ground, twisted an ankle, bit back a curse.