Pain Management

“God. You didn’t see The Matrix?”

The way she said the words, like it was something sacred, I knew she was talking about a movie.

“No.” This time, it was the truth.

“Okay,” she said, as if pronouncing judgment. “Anyway, I can tell you something more about this . . . drawing. It is a drawing, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow. I didn’t know Geof Darrow even knew Charles de Lint.”

“Who?”

“See these crows? Well, they’re not birds. See where it says ‘Maida and Zia’? Those are the crow girls,” she pronounced.

“I didn’t see that movie, either.”

“Look,” she sighed, impatient with my cultural deficiencies, “the crow girls are recurring characters in books by Charles de Lint. He’s a fabulist.”

“A what?”

“A writer of fables. And he’s a musician, too.”

“A . . . Wait a minute, Madison. Would a teenage girl like his stuff?”

“You’re kidding, right? It depends on the girl, of course. But he writes beautifully. I adore his work.”

“Have you gotten any letters from—”

She got up to leave. I took it for an answer.

The Borders on Third Street was too damn big to stagger through one rack at a time. I was wandering aimlessly when a dark-haired guy came up and asked me if he could help. His face was too professionally unexpressive for him to be a clerk, so I figured him for the manager. I told him what I wanted, and he knew exactly where it was.

I sat down at one of the tables and got myself a tuna sandwich on what Portland thinks is a bakery roll. Then I started to read what the guy had told me was the latest of the dozen Charles de Lint books they had on their shelves.

It was set in one of those mythical cities that you recognize from the road map of your own experience. The style was realistic, but the narrative was full of magick and faeries and mystical connections between people and objects. All driven by a culture that evolved from street kids, intertwined with their music, their poetry, and their at-bottom goodness . . . almost as if the mysticism was in their gestalt, not their spells. I could see why Rosebud felt close to this stuff. And, reading it, I felt closer to her.

But no closer to where she was.

“I bought you a present,” I told Gem when she came in late in the afternoon.

“What?” she said. The last time I’d said those same words to her, she’d clapped her hands like a little girl and jumped up and down until I gave it to her.

“Just a book,” I said, handing her what I’d bought earlier.

“This is very nice,” she said, taking it from me. “I have not read it. Thank you.”

I wanted to ask her what the fuck was wrong, but I had a date with a pack of skittish whores.

The soft Pacific Northwest rain didn’t sweep the streets clean, but it did cut down on the traffic. I had no luck talking a lone hooker into the Caddy. So, when I spotted the Subaru ahead to my left, looking even more sharklike in the wet night, I tucked in behind and tried my luck there.

The black car ambled along in a gentle series of right-hand turns. If the driver noticed me on his tail, he sure wasn’t panicked about it. Fifteen minutes brought us back to the outer rim of the stroll. The Subaru glided to the curb. When I saw the chubby blonde girl climb out the passenger side, tugging her mini-skirt back down over her hips, I knew that either the driver was a regular or his approach was a lot better than mine.

The hooker was heading back up the street to where I was parked. The Subaru was pulling away. Snap decision. I hit the switch for the curbside window as the blonde came up alongside.

“You working?” I asked.

She glanced into the Caddy, a tired-looking woman who’d been promised diamonds and silk and gotten zircons and polyester. I let her have a good look. She glanced up the street to where she’d been headed. Then back to me.

“Some other time, honey,” she said.

I got back around three. The loft was empty. The Charles de Lint book was where Gem had put it down when I’d first given it to her.

“Can’t you . . . put on some pressure?” Kevin asked me the next day.

“Money’s the best pressure,” I told him.

“I understand that. You’re not saying I should increase the—”

“No. If somebody’s holding her, that could always be a factor. But if they were, you’d have heard about it by now.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“The two hardest things about a kidnapping have nothing to do with the snatch itself.”

“Kidnapping?”

“Look, am I getting confused here? You told the cops Rosebud was missing. They presume runaway, her age and all, but they have to be thinking something else, right?”

“Something else?”

“She either went away on her own, or not, okay? But, sometimes, it’s a bit of both. A boyfriend, maybe tells her he’s going to take care of everything. But what he thinks is, you’re going to be the one doing that.”

“I don’t—”

“This boyfriend,” I went on, like he hadn’t said a word, “he figures: you got a nice big house, fancy cars, in that neighborhood and all . . . you got to have serious money,” I said, choosing my words carefully. He wasn’t the type to be flattered by references to his money, so I put it out there as a mistake some kid could make. Me, I understood just how “working-class” he really was.

I waited for his nod, then went on: “By his standards, anyway. So he tells Rosebud they’re going to fake a kidnapping. Just to get enough money for them to go—ah, who knows where it is this year? Amsterdam? Paris? Daytona Beach? I don’t know. But you get the idea, right?”

“But the note. It said—”

“Yeah. Look: One, the cops never saw that note. Two, anyone could have written it—it wasn’t even in her handwriting. Three, even if Rosebud did write it, she might still be with a boyfriend . . . and he springs this ransom thing on her after she’s already left. No way she wants to come back and admit her big adventure was a flop. Or maybe she’s got some resentments. . . .”

“You don’t have any idea of how close we . . . are,” he said. “Buddy and I . . . You’re going in the wrong direction.”

“All right. Like I was saying, the two hardest things about a kidnapping are keeping the person alive and healthy while you negotiate . . . and collecting the ransom without getting caught.”

“But you just said—”

“Sometimes, you get a girl who runs away voluntarily. But when she wants to go back . . .”

“I never thought of that.”

“There’s no reason to think about that. Yet. That is, unless you’ve heard from—”

“Of course not. If Buddy had called me—”

“Not your daughter. Anyone else who . . . anyone who’s telling you something like they might be able to locate her—an opening like that?”

“Nothing,” he said, sadly.

“All right.”

“Can’t you . . . ?”

“What?”