followed Pender into the office, where Pender showed him Casey's mug shot.
Ng, who was nearly as tall and broad as Pender, shrugged. “Don't know him.”
Pender sighed. “Very good. I'll be sure to pass the word along to my numerous underworld contacts that Ng is a real stand-up guy. Now tell me everything you know about this murdering sack of shit before I open up a can of soup on you.”
Not exactly your textbook affective interview, but Pender's head was starting to throb again.
“Soup? What're you talking about, soup?”
“Alphabet soup. You know: FBI, ATF, DEA, IRS, INS…”
Ng weighed his options. It didn't take him long-the Fed seemed serious as a heart attack, and the murdering sack of shit was only a one-time casual acquaintance. “He said his name was Lee. He gave one of our gir-He gave a friend of mine a hard time. I kicked his ass. We had a drink, talked about martial arts. I don't remember much-it was like a year ago.”
“I already know you didn't kick his ass,” said Pender. “He kicked yours. Next thing you tell me that doesn't jibe with everything else I already know, you're going to find out how much trouble an FBI man with a hard-on can make for you.”
The roll of muscle above Ng's massive supraorbital ridge lowered in concentration. “I asked him how he whipped me. He said speed plus surprise equals power.”
“What else?”
“Said he coulda had a black belt only he wouldn't kiss the sensei 's ass.”
“Black belt where? In what?”
“Karate. Said he also wrestled in high school, boxed in Juvie.”
Juvie, thought Pender. Juvenile Hall. An institutional past-pure gold. “Where? Did he say where?”
“I don't… Wait, hold on,… Someplace in Oregon? Yeah, that's it-Oregon. I remember he said it like ‘Organ.’ a ranch. Said he learned a move there. He even pulled it on me, this move. We're sitting at the bar. He says, tell me when you're ready, I'm gonna bust a move on you and you won't be able to stop me, even if you know it's coming.
“So I'm looking right at him, no way somebody's gonna get to me, I'm ready for him. But sure 'nough, next thing I know- shoop!” Ng's hand, stiff as a trowel, shot toward Pender's throat, stopped just short of his Adam's apple.
Pender's head jerked back ineffectually-he understood that if Ng had meant to kill him, he'd be drowning in his own blood by now.
“He wouldn't tell me how he did it. Said this kid called Buckley taught him in Juvie.”
Oh-ho, thought Pender. “Buckley-would that be a first name or a last name?”
“Dunno. Only reason I remember, back in school I used to date a sistah named Chaniqua Buckley.”
It didn't matter, for Pender's purposes. Databases could be searched either way. First thing in the morning, he decided, he'd put a call in to Thom Davies, the database whiz. Then he remembered that tomorrow would be Sunday. Not that it made any difference-he'd just have to wake up early enough to catch Thom before he left for the golf course.
49
The parlor wallpaper was patterned with delicately scrolled dark green vines on a pale pink background the color of flesh. A brass floor lamp with a rosy stained glass shade provided a cozy light. In the corner near the stone fireplace a grandfather clock that had traveled westward from Philadelphia by covered wagon ticked off the seconds; a handmade myrtlewood rocking chair creaked at regular intervals.
After all those hours in Maybelline's trunk, Irene found herself enjoying the gentle, reliable motion of the rocking chair-at least it was under her control. Still she couldn't get Maxwell's words out of her head. Welcome to your new home, Irene.
He'd left her alone in the parlor half an hour earlier, with a chillingly understated admonition: “Stay here, make yourself comfortable. I have some business to take care of, but if you leave this parlor, I'll know.”
So here she sat, though she'd clearly heard the front door slam when he left the house. It was partly because she was afraid of him that she obeyed him, and partly because she was exhausted physically and worn out emotionally, but there was also an element of wanting to please her captor, or at least to avoid displeasing him. Stockholm syndrome, early stages, she told herself-how strange to be able to put a name to one's behavior, to diagnose it clinically, and yet to be unable to alter it.
So she rocked, and waited, and when she heard someone moving around in the kitchen down the hall, Irene congratulated herself on her restraint. Somehow he'd been able to sneak back into the house without her hearing him, she decided. If she had left the parlor, he'd have caught her for sure.
Unless of course it wasn't him. Oh lord. Irene quickly braked the rocking chair with her feet, intent on the sounds coming from the kitchen, though her heart was pounding so violently that the pulse in her ears nearly drowned them out.
Someone was moving around in there, all right. Whisking eggs in a glass or ceramic bowl, boiling water in a whistling kettle, sizzling up some bacon-now she could smell it. Soon she heard footsteps, light, shuffling footsteps, leaving the kitchen, coming down the hall toward the parlor. Irene's chair faced the fireplace. She sensed a presence behind her, heard raspy, tortured breathing in the doorway, but would not, could not, turn around.
Then she heard a silken rustle. Irene kept her eyes fixed resolutely on the round hooked rug at her feet. The skirt of a floorlength black dress entered her field of vision, then a pair of fleshless claws covered with a taut mottled patchwork of shiny pink scar tissue and smooth white grafted skin lowered a supper tray onto the chess table next to the rocker.
And Irene knew somehow, as she steeled herself to look, that the woman was steeling herself to be looked at.
“I thought you might be hungry.” The diction was overprecise, the voice thin and muffled behind a black silk surgical mask cut from the same cloth as the woman's high-necked dress. It was impossible to read her age: the flesh around the edges of the mask resembled melted candle wax, all drips and ridges and runnels, mottled ivory in color, but streaked with blue-black soot, while her eyelids had evidently been surgically repaired, and her glorious strawberry blond hair, though glossy and abundant and apparently made of human hair, was obviously a wig.
You're a doctor, Irene reminded herself, struggling to keep the horror she was feeling from showing on her face. You've seen disfigurements before. “Thank you. I'm Irene Cogan.”
Instead of introducing herself in return, the woman extended one of her gruesome claws as if for a handshake. But when Irene reached out to take it, she snatched it away, grabbed a lock of Irene's frosted blond hair between her skeletal thumb and forefinger, and yanked.
“Ow!” Irene yelped and drew back. “What did you do that for?”
The woman ignored her. “A clever boy, that Ulysses,” she muttered aloud, calmly examining Irene's roots by the rosy light of the stained-glass lamp. “Wicked, but clever. Now finish your supper, and I'll show you to your room.”
Welcome to your new home, thought Irene, scalp stinging, sudden tears blurring her vision.
50
In rooms 15 and 19 of the Sleep-Tite Motel, the whores and johns came and went. In room 17, Pender stuffed his thirty-twodecibel-proof foam plugs into his ears and began mapping out the initial computer search in his head.
Step one: Juvenile records were sometimes expunged, but not if the juvenile went on to become an adult criminal. Assume that was the case with Buckley-a statistically supportable assumption. Then look for hits on criminals with a first or second name of Buckley who'd done time in juvenile facilities anywhere in Oregon
