Safe House

worked, a porno joint in lower Manhattan. “I won’t know any more until I’ve had a chance to debrief.”

“I’ll be here,” I told him.

I didn’t know if I had hours or days to wait. I felt like a convict who just got a parole date. Not the good part, the go-home part. No, the part where you had to walk real soft, stay out of trouble, turn away from challenges. One slip and it’s all gone. And every other guy in the joint knew it.

So I didn’t go back to my old grounds. Even stayed away from Mama’s. Waited at Crystal Beth’s.

That’s when the tour started. I didn’t ask her why she’d wanted me to come along, figuring it was a way to kill some time. And maybe make some money.

The young woman was wearing a tan cashmere sweater under a matching blazer of a slightly darker shade, nervously fingering a string of pearls as if she knew they were too old for her. “It started with letters,” she said, pointing at an expandable wine-colored leather portfolio sitting at her feet.

I pulled one out. It was on heavy stock, pale blue with marbled veining running random throughout. The writer’s name was engraved at the top left, small black lettering, all lowercase. At the bottom right: address, phone, fax and e-mail. The text was typed: justified margins, a heavily serifed font.

You have such beautiful boys. I can’t resist them. They are so seductive, so entrancing, I find myself drawn to them. But I assure you, my pedophilia is purely intellectual, a never-to-be-realized urge of which I am in full control. Please help me understand the objects of my love. Vital statistics would be such treasures to me. Their birthdays, their heights and weights. And I want to know them too. I already know Jonas loves model airplanes and Lance keeps tropical fish, but I want to know more. Please indulge me. Fantasies don’t hurt anyone. But the pain of not knowing more about your perfect boys is real indeed. Thank you for understanding.

It was unsigned.

“Jonas and Lance were heroes,” the woman said to me. “They saved a puppy from drowning. They got their pictures in the local paper. That’s when it started . . . when he started writing to me.”

“Did you ever answer him?” I asked her.

“Oh no. I was . . . terrified. I took his first letter right to the police. But they said he hadn’t committed a crime.”

“And the letters kept coming?”

“Yes. Not just to me. He wrote to the boys’ school and asked for copies of their report cards. The school turned his letter over to me. They never answered him either. He wrote to the newspaper, to the reporter who had interviewed the boys, and asked him for information too. He wrote to everyone.”

“But he never made contact?”

“He . . . Oh, I see what you mean. Not . . . direct contact. I’ve never seen him.”

“You have . . . financial resources?”

“Yes of course,” she said. “I know all about . . . him now. He’s never been arrested. He doesn’t work. Has some sort of private income. This kind of . . . thing.” She shuddered, then gathered herself. “It’s his ‘hobby,’ that’s what he told the investigators we hired. It’s not against the law.”

“So why did you—?”

“Run? He posted a reward. For information about the boys. Especially pictures of them.”

“Posted?”

“On the Internet. To one of those pedophile boards. I don’t know how he did it. I never saw it. But one of the bodyguards we hired for the children caught a man taking a video of them at a soccer game. He told my . . . investigators that there was a reward for the pictures, and he was just trying to make some money. That wasn’t against the law either.”

“And you figured it was just a matter of time before he . . . ?”

“Yes. I’m only here temporarily. We have . . . resources. As you said. But I found out where he got his money, and that . . .”

“The private income?”

“No, not that. He’s done this before. And one of the boys’ fathers . . . one of the other boys, I mean, the ones he . . . watched before . . . I really don’t know all the details . . . but he . . . the boy’s father . . . had this . . . man’s address and everything, and he went to his house and . . . hurt him, I guess. Beat him up or something.”

“I’m still not . . .”

“The man—the boy’s father, not the . . . man. He went to jail. For assault. And the . . . person who writes these filthy letters, he sued the boy’s father. And he got money. A lot of money. I can’t imagine why a jury would ever . . . but . . .”

“And you think that’s what he’s doing? Setting himself up for enraged parents to go after him so he can sue?”

“Yes! He lives in this little town. His whole family does. They’re very prominent. They’ve lived there for over a hundred years. And the police will protect him. They already have. There’s nothing I can do about . . . him. So we’re leaving.”

“You’re going to get new birth certificates for the kids, change everything just so he can’t find you again?”

“The only thing we’re going to change is our address,” the woman said firmly. “I know he could find us again. So we’re leaving . . . America. We’re going to live overseas. My husband already has a job . . . there. And my family will help us too. We’re going where he can never hurt my boys.”

“I—”

“Crystal Beth said you knew . . . these kind of people. About them, I mean. Would you feel safe? If it was your children?”

“No,” I told her honestly.

“My husband just wants to kill him, he’s so angry. But if he beats him up, we already know what’s going to happen. And nobody’s going to actually kill someone for writing letters.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I told her, lying as calmly as a mouse-watching hawk.

They didn’t all have children. They didn’t all run for the same reason. But they all ran from the same thing.

“I was walking home,” the woman said, her voice crackling like cellophane crumpled in a clenched fist. She had lovely skin, apricot flaring under cream. And long, lustrous light-brown hair, almost beige in the floor-bounced shine from the inverted gooseneck lamp. I couldn’t see her body—she was so wrapped in layers of clothing that it disappeared. But her eyes were pinwheeling with pain as she talked. “I don’t mean home exactly. To the bus. The bus stop. It wasn’t that late. Maybe nine o’clock. It was summer. Last summer. And it wasn’t even dark yet. Not really. I was tired from work—we had this big project to close and everyone had to stay late. The lawyers get to go home in limos—the clients pay for that. So they can discuss the case in the back seat or something, I don’t know. But the secretaries, we have to just . . .”

The thought to get her back on the subject hadn’t reached my lips before Crystal Beth warned me off with her eyes. I went back to waiting. It wasn’t long.

“There were two of them,” the woman said. “One was in a car. A dark car. The other came up right behind me. At the bus stop. The car stopped, the door opened, then the one behind me pointed a gun at me and made me get in.

“I thought they wanted my money. I mean, they took my money. And my watch. And a ring, not my wedding ring, just a costume ring. It wasn’t worth anything. When they found the ATM card in my purse, they drove me to one. Then they went with me and made me empty it out. It was only a few hundred dollars. Then they had some kind of argument. Between them, I mean. I couldn’t really understand it. I was in the back seat with one of them. While we were driving, he made me . . . He held the gun right by my face and he made me . . .”