Pain Management

“No relation.”

“Maybe it stands for Big Boy,” a blonde on his left said, giggling.

Kruger turned slightly in her direction. He didn’t say anything. The other girls got up.

“I . . .” the blonde girl appealed.

Dead silence.

She slid out of the booth and walked away.

Kruger leaned forward slightly. “It’s always difficult to determine what something is worth to someone else. A man like you, if a fly landed on the table, you’d probably ignore it. But if someone paid you, you’d slap your hand on that same table and crush it. The fly isn’t worth anything, do you follow me? But your time is.”

“Sure.”

“My time is valuable as well. And right now I’m afraid I can’t spare any of it. I’ve been quite preoccupied with this problem I’ve been having.”

“Yeah?”

“I am unsure as to the . . . dimensions of this problem, to be frank. But one aspect of it stands out rather clearly. He calls himself Blaze,” Kruger said, shifting his glance to Ann.

She nodded at Kruger. Dropped her hand to the inside of my thigh, squeezed hard enough to get my attention, said, “Some other time, then,” and twitched her hip against me to tell me to get up.

I held out my hand. Kruger made a “Why not?” face and shook it.

Flacco and Gordo dropped us off on a quiet block in the Northwest. The Cigarette purred off into the night. We got into Ann’s Subaru.

“I’ve got to go change,” she said. “I’ll tell you all about it there.”

She hung the burnt-orange sheath carefully on a padded hanger, put the black wig on a Styrofoam head, and sat across from me. She crossed her legs as casually as if she’d been fully dressed.

“You can smoke, if you want,” she said.

I made a “Thank you” expression, fired one up, and put it in a heavy crystal ashtray.

The smoke rose between us.

“You’re not an impatient man,” she finally said.

“It never changes anything.”

“Yes, it does!” she whispered harshly. “Me, I’m impatient. Tired of waiting for the government to do the right thing. You know my name. Do you know what it means?”

“Yeah, I know what ‘anodyne’ means,” I said. “I just look stupid.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I don’t think you could. We’re just talking about a different kind of patience. You ever been on a flight where the take-off’s been delayed? You know, you sit out on the tarmac for an hour or two, you know damn well you’re going to miss your connection, and the pilot comes on the PA system in that fake down-home accent they all use and says, ‘Thank you for your patience.’

“Some people get real angry at that. I don’t. That’s the kind of patience I have. When I got no choice, I wait. When it’s smarter to wait, I wait. But it’s not a religious thing. I don’t think people should wait for what’s theirs.”

“Like civil rights?”

“Or revenge.”

“I’m done waiting,” she said. “There’s a new drug, Ultracept-7. It’s only been out a few months. Another form of morphine sulfate, but this one’s supposed to be the most potent of all.”

“I never heard of it.”

“Why would you? But you’ve heard of Paxil, right? And Zyrtec, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone who’s ever watched TV has. Some drugs get advertised very heavily. Because there’s a big market for them. Anti-anxiety, impotence, allergies, baldness—lots of competition for those dollars. But pain? There’s no competition. Not much point convincing you to ask your doctor for a certain kind of medicine when it’s the dosage that’s your real problem.”

“This new stuff . . .” I put out there, to try and stop a rant-in-progress.

“It’s sensational,” she said. “Maybe ten times as potent as anything out there now. A tiny bit goes a real long way. But that’s not what’s so great about it. What’s so great about it is that I know where there’s going to be a lot of it . . . a whole lot of it.”

“And that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want. It’s got a much longer shelf life—much deeper expiration dates—than anything else out there. I get enough of it, it could last for years. Enough time for things to change, maybe.”

“I already told you—”

“I know. And here’s what Kruger was really telling you. There’s a crew, nobody knows how big, moving on working girls.”

“Trying to pull them?”

“No. They’re not pimps. They sell insurance. Operating insurance.”

“What tolls are they charging?”

“Nickel-and-dime. Literally. They must be crazy. Even if they got every girl in Portland to pay, at twenty bucks a night, how much could they be making?”

“I don’t know. But whatever they make from a lame hustle like that, it’s all gravy.”

“It’s not a hustle,” she said. “The one who calls himself Blaze? He cut two different girls. He’s got a white knife. Supposed to be so sharp the girls didn’t even know they were cut until blood started spurting all over the place.”

“He cut them for not coming up with twenty bucks?”

“Yes. And he may have done more. He told one girl he was going to fire her up, for real. Showed her a spray bottle, said it was full of gasoline. Said that’s where he got his name. Scared her out of her mind.”

“How come the local pimps don’t—?”

“I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, but it isn’t an organized thing here. Not many stables. A lot of girls freelancing. And for most of them, their pimp is their boyfriend. Probably even another addict like they are. Nobody’s exactly patrolling the streets looking for punks with knives.”

“So why does Kruger care? They cut one of his girls?”

“No. At least, not that I ever heard about. But nobody can be sure these guys can tell who’s who, and it’s got everyone nervous. It’d be good for his profile if he did something about it, anyway. His game is that he looks out for all the working girls.”

“You know anything else about this Blaze guy?”

“White. Young guy, but not a kid. Tattoos on his hands. Nobody got a close enough look to see any more than that.”

“His car?”

“No.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Not even a week.”

“And two girls cut already?”

“At least.”

“There isn’t much chance of catching a guy who operates like that. Nobody can watch all the girls all the time.”

“I know how to do it,” she said. “Let me show you something.”

I was sitting at the kitchen table in Ann’s hideout, a streetmap of Portland spread out in front of me. Ann’s hand rested casually on my shoulder. Every time she leaned forward to point out something, her breast casually brushed my cheek. Thewhole thing would have been a lot more casual if she’d had any clothes on.