Mask Market

“Agencies,” he corrected. “Two of them rather strongly suggested we call in the police. The third place we consulted told us about you.”

“Told you what, exactly?”

“They said you were a man who…who could do things they wouldn’t be comfortable doing.”

“What makes you think your daughter is with a pimp, Mr. Preston?”

“What?!”

“You didn’t want to come here,” I said, calmly. “Now that you showed up, you don’t like being here. You want to waste your money lying to me, that’s up to you. But there isn’t a PI agency in this town that would have recommended me—they don’t even know I exist.”

He sat there in silence, not denying anything. Back then, NYPD had a Runaway Squad, and I went back a long ways with the best street cop they had, a nectar-voiced Irishman named McGowan. His partner was a thug with so many CCRB complaints against him that the only thing keeping him on the job was that all the complaints came from certified maggots: baby-rapers a specialty. Guy named Morales. So the Commissioner teamed him with McGowan, and, somehow, they meshed into a high-results unit. Word was, if they had partnered Morales with the devil, it would be Satan who played the good cop in tag-team interrogations.

Years later, when McGowan finally retired, Morales went off by himself. He was an old-school street beast, a badge-carrying brute who’d always pick a blackjack over a warrant. He’d been dinosaured to the sidelines because nobody wanted to partner with a bull who knew every china shop in town.

In his eyes, I was always a suspect—which was nothing special for Morales—but I’d saved his life once, and he hated the debt more than he did me. It was Morales who planted the pistol and the bone hand, calling things square in whatever crazy language he used when he talked to himself.

It wasn’t just his feral honor that guaranteed Morales would never change the story he’d made up. When 9/11 hit, he was one of the first cops into the World Trade Center. When his body was recovered from the wreckage, the papers called him a hero. Down here, we know they got the answer right, but had figured it all wrong. Morales had charged into the flames with a semi-auto in one hand, a lead-weighted flashlight in the other, and a throw-down piece in his pocket, like always. The old street roller hadn’t been on any rescue mission; he’d been looking for the bad guys.

Jeremy Preston wasn’t the first parent McGowan had sent my way. He never came right out and recommended me, exactly—he just wove my name into one of his long, rambling accounts of the shark tank that was the Port Authority Bus Terminal then, each newly arriving bus discharging chum into the water, the pimps circling.

We’re not talking Iceberg Slim here. The Port Authority trollers were the low end of the scale: polyestered punks with CZ rings and 10K gold, not a Cadillac among them. They didn’t turn a girl out with smooth talk and sweet promises. For that breed, “game” was coat-hanger whips and cigarette burns. And gang rape.

I lit another cigarette, watched Preston’s derma-glazed face through the bluish smoke. Said, “Well?”

“Look, I don’t know for a fact that my daughter is with some…pimp.”

“I understand,” I said. “Just tell me what you do know, okay?”

By the time he was done, we’d agreed on a price. And I went hunting.

My first rescue had been an accident. One thing I had learned from my last stretch Inside: steal from people who can’t go to the Law. And stick to cash. I had lurked for days, watching for what I thought was a good target. When he made his move, I followed him and the teenager he had plucked off a bus from the Midwest. The derelict building he took her to was a couple of notches below slum, the kind of place where the mailboxes were all wrenched open on check day, and the despair stench had penetrated down to the last molecule. There was no lock on the front door. I followed them up a few flights, listening to the pimp saying something about how this was “just for tonight.”

The top floor was all X-flats—cleared of occupants because the building was waiting on the wrecking ball. The pimp had put his own padlock on the door. I figured he had another one on the inside, so I didn’t wait. I came up fast behind them, shouldered them both into the apartment, and let the pimp see my pistol—a short-barreled .357 Mag—before he could make a move.

“What is this, man?”

“I’m collecting for the Red Cross,” I said. “They take money or blood, your choice.”

“Oh,” he said, visibly relaxing as the message that this was a stickup penetrated. “Look, man, I’m not carrying no real coin, you understand?”

“A major mack like you? Come on, let’s see the roll. And move slow—this piece could punch a hole in you the size of a manhole cover.”

The girl stood rooted to the spot, her eyes darting around the vile room, taking in the stained, rotted mattress in one corner, the white hurricane candle in a wide glass jar, the huge boom box, and the word “Prince” spray-painted in red on a nicotine-colored wall.

The pimp reached…slowly…into the side pocket of his slime-green slacks, came out with a fist-sized wad of bills. At a nod from me, he gently tossed it over.

I slipped the rubber band with my left thumb. A Kansas City bankroll: a single hundred on the outside, with a bunch of singles at the core.

“Where’s the rest?” I said, gently.

“Ain’t no ‘rest,’ man. I’m still working on my stake.”

The girl walked over to the closet, head down, as if some instinct told her not to look at my face. She opened the door, gasped, and jumped back. I glanced in her direction. Inside the closet was a single straight chair. Draped over the back were several strands of rope and two pairs of handcuffs. On the seat of the chair was a thick roll of duct tape, and one of those cheap Rambo knives they sold all over Times Square.

“Get the picture?” I said to her, nodding my head at the other item in the closet—a Polaroid camera.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“What?”

But she just kept saying “I’m sorry,” over and over again.

So much for my big score.

“Turn around,” I told the pimp.

“Look, man, you don’t gotta—”

“I’m not going to shoot you,” I said. “I’m a professional, just like you. Thought you’d be carrying heavy coin. Now I’ve got to get out of here. So I’m going to put those handcuffs on you. Your friends will get you loose soon as they show up.”

“I ain’t got no—”

“Friends? Yeah, that’s right, you probably don’t. But you’re expecting some company, aren’t you, Prince?”

“Shit, man,” he said, resignedly. He turned around, put his hands behind his back.

The Magnum was a heavy little steel ingot in my right hand. I stepped close to him, tipped his floppy hat forward with my left hand. He was still saying “What you—?” as I chopped down at his exposed cervical vertebrae with all my strength. He dropped soundlessly—his head bounced off the wood floor and settled at an angle that looked permanent.

“Come on,” I said to the girl.

She followed me without a word.

On the walk back to the Port Authority, I said, “You know what was going to happen to you, right?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I—”

“Don’t say another word,” I told her. “Not until you get back where you came from.”

“I don’t have any—”

“Where did you come from?”

“St. Paul. I thought I—”

“Shut your stupid fucking mouth,” I said.

Inside the terminal, I bought her a one-way ticket to St. Paul, handed her two ten-dollar bills, said, “I’m going to watch you get on that bus, understand? If you ever come back here, you’re going to get hurt worse than you ever imagined.”