Pain Management

it was the sun everything orbited around. But it was always there.

I knew my chances of just bumping into Rosebud at random weren’t worth much, so I concentrated on making friends. Financial friends. Bouncers at clubs, clerks in bookstores, swastika-inked tribalists, buskers, multi- pierced statement-makers, druggies, day-trip runaways.

Bobby Ray was always ready to talk with me, but he never came up with anything. I knew he was testing— pumping for info, back-checking to see if I told the same story twice—but I didn’t know if he was sitting on knowledge or just looking for some.

When you’re hunting, you tell different people different things. Or, at least, you drop different hints, let people draw their own conclusions. The bouncers thought I was looking for the kind of underage runaway that could only make trouble for them if they let her inside. But she could make them some real cash if they lifted the rope, and made a call while they had her boxed.

Other people got the idea Rosebud didn’t know her sister needed a bone-marrow transplant. The skinheads thought I was up to something privately ugly. I made sure they knew she wasn’t Jewish, and that if anyone but me hurt her, I’d hurt them.

One night, I passed by a couple of low-grade humans who thought that wearing stomping boots made them street-fighters. They were busy slapping around a tired old burnt-brain who lived out of garbage cans. I pointed the pistol at them and held the index finger of my left hand to my lips. They moved away quick. I figured, since the burnt-brain spent all his time on the street, he might have seen something. But whatever he saw he couldn’t bring out into words.

Every time he saw me after that, he gave me a gathering-spiderwebs-from-the-air kowtow. A fragment from an earlier part of his journey, maybe.

The punk who thought the snick! of his switchblade opening would paralyze me must have thought the neat round third-degree burn on his right hand happened by magic. That would be later, in the emergency room, after he’d stopped screaming. If he’d taken a closer look at the cigarette lighter I’d been toying with as we talked, he would have seen they make piezoelectric blowtorches real small nowadays.

I was getting the kind of shadowy reputation that can buy you anything from information to a bullet. But I wasn’t getting any closer to Rosebud.

In fact, I couldn’t be sure she was anywhere close by. Not one confirmed sighting . . . although plenty of people told me otherwise, thinking they’d see the color of my money before they actually went out looking. The color was all they got to see.

I had one idea, but it was as close to a hole card as I was holding, and I didn’t want to play it too soon.

“Any progress?” the lawyer asked me.

“It’s not like building a house,” I told him. “You can’t see it going up. I haven’t found her.”

“Yet?” the father asked.

“It’s always ‘yet,’ “ I answered him, not taking my eyes from the lawyer. “Until you get it done.”

“Can you at least tell me if she’s in Portland?”

“I’ll be able to tell you in a couple of weeks, max.”

“Why by then, particularly?” the lawyer wanted to know.

I shrugged.

“I’ve already spent a lot of money,” the father reminded me.

“Uh-huh,” is all he got back.

“Isn’t there any way to get more . . . aggressive about this?” the lawyer said, his academic tone designed to take some of the insinuation out of his words.

“Not much point hurting people for information they don’t have,” I said, bluntly.

“I’m opposed to violence,” the father said.

“Me too,” I assured him, catching the lawyer’s thin, conspiratorial smirk.

A pro burglar had trained me. I mean a professional, not a chronic. To the public, you do the same thing often enough, you’re a “professional,” no matter if you’re a total maladroit at it. The government feels the same way about the people who work for it.

The newspapers will call some congenital defective who sticks up a dozen all-night convenience stores in a month a “professional criminal,” but people who actually make a living from crime know better.

The old-timers knew how to ghost a house so slick, they could unload the pistol you kept on the night table in case of burglars and put it right back in place between your snores—just in case you woke up while they were sorting through your jewelry like an appraiser on amphetamine.

They prided themselves on never carrying a weapon, never hurting anyone, and never stealing anything they couldn’t turn over quick. Back then, if one of the black-glove freaks who combined house invasion with rape ever dared to call himself a thief, he might get shanked just for disrespecting the profession.

Today, your average burglar is like your average bank robber: an amateur or a junkie. Both, most likely. The take is always small, and the cops don’t even bother to dust for prints. They just give you an incident number, so you can lie to your insurance company.

There are still pro jobs being done, but they tend not to get reported to the cops; the victims aren’t big fans of law enforcement.

The guy who taught me said that a truly pro touch is when the mark doesn’t even know he’s been hit. Until, one day, he looks for whatever’s been taken, and comes up empty. The pro also told me that daylight jobs are the best, if you can blend into the area where you’re working.

I could do better than that, now that I’d code-grabbed the remote for Kevin’s garage door.

I watched the mini-bus with the day camp’s name stenciled on its side, as it stopped at the corner to collect Daisy. If the schedule held, the mother would be off within an hour or so. She always did the same things. Some leisurely shopping, lunch with friends, then maybe a salon for her hair and nails, maybe a bookstore. Aimless, time-killing stuff, but she appeared devoted to it. She never got home before four in the afternoon the whole week I kept watch.

I’d thought about borrowing Kevin’s Volvo for a couple of hours, but I couldn’t know if he would use it at lunchtime. Or if his neighbors would make it their business to mention they’d seen a strange car enter his garage. My impression of the neighborhood was that it wasn’t upscale enough for the pure-leisure class, and everything Gem had learned so far confirmed that. Best bet was that the houses were mostly dink—double income, no kids— occupied, and even the people that had kids worked during the day.

I had an additional layer of protection. Even if some suspicious citizen called the cops, my story would be that I was an invited guest, and I knew the father would back that up. He might not be happy about it, but he’d keep his mouth shut.

At a quarter to twelve, I was in position on the corner. I’d swapped the Caddy for the nondescript Ford again. If any nosy neighbors had seen it when I came to the house the first time, it would dull the edge of their suspicion.

I rolled just past the driveway, then reversed and backed in, triggering the remote as I rolled. The garage was big enough for three cars. And empty. I tapped the remote again, and I was alone in the darkness.

I made my way through the connecting passage to the house, carrying my equipment in one hand, sensors on full alert. Nothing. Rosebud’s room was exactly as I remembered it, curtains open to the light, but no way for any outsider to see in. I used the mini-camera’s flash just for fill—it was so faint it wouldn’t have spooked a parakeet.

I never thought about trying Daisy’s room. Any girl that maintained such an ungodly mess so diligently would know where every single little thing was. And she’d pick up any intrusion quicker than a motion-detector.

I went downstairs, then back up to the adult side of the divided house. The bedroom was apolitical, with that antiseptic, anonymous look that tells you they paid someone to pick out the furnishings. Lots of artifacts from the civilization they’d conquered—brand names on the clothing, jewelry from all the best places, severe-modern furniture. Even the bed linen screamed Designer! very tastefully.

If the mother was telling the truth about having no maid, she did a hell of a job. The place was as dust-free as an autopsy table.

Kevin’s den was as rabid as the bedroom had been sterile. The walls were papered like a wood fence around