I smiled at her. “Saucy wench, and you a mother now.”
She giggled through her nose, it came out a snort.
“Let’s see what’s in the other 2001 folder,” I told her.
She clicked to open it. Inside were over forty mpeg files. Video. Before I could say anything, Tigger double- clicked one at random. “Wait!” I yelped.
Had it been my computer, there would’ve been a time lapse of anywhere from five seconds to fifteen minutes during which I could’ve stopped it or at least given her a more coherent warning. But Tigger’s computer was a hundred times faster and more modern, and so with ruthless efficiency the video clip sprang to life on the screen.
In the upper-right corner of the picture appeared superimposed the same logo from the Excel file: TWEENSLAND. A line at the bottom said
A rangy twelve-year-old girl with shoulder-length chestnut-colored hair entered the frame beside an afghan- covered couch. She mumbled something, but it wasn’t in English, nor was the reply she got from a coaxing female voice from behind the camera’s lens.
Sweeping her hair out of her face, the girl looked into the camera, then unbuttoned and stepped out of her loose-fitting blue jeans. They fell in a heap at her bare feet. She tugged her brown sweater up over her head in a single cross-armed motion, ruffling her hair and revealing early breasts, small and nubby. Her skin was pale and smooth and iridescent; the curving innerwall of a seashell. Behind her on a small table stood three narrow cylinders on end—one flesh-colored, one kitchen-utensil white, one silver-enamel like a child’s toy missile—and an uncapped bottle of baby oil. She lay down naked on the couch and reached for—
Tigger shut down the media player and the image instantly vanished—from the screen, at least. I had expected something like it but still been unprepared. I was frozen, transfixed—like a butterfly pinned to a collector’s board.
Only 20 seconds into the clip, longer if measured in heartbeats. I felt wrung out, twisted.
Tigger didn’t say anything. I didn’t dare say anything.
Her printer went on spitting out the 92-page document.
She pushed back her swivel chair, steadied it, and stood up. She walked into her kitchen, where I saw her bend to take something from under her sink. She came back carrying a claw-head hammer.
I was tempted to defend my head with my hands, but she walked right by me, plucked the iPod out of the docking cradle and dropped it on the floor. She squatted beside it and smashed it with the hammer. I didn’t stop her. After five direct hits, it was ground up pretty good.
I said, “I think you got it.”
She turned on me in a flash, such a look of black fury on her face, I did cover my head suddenly with my hands, afraid that she might lash out indiscriminately.
She shook the hammer like Thor.
“Payton, whatever you’re involved in, take it out of here!”
“Look, I had no idea—”
She raised the hammer and I shut up. I heard her baby-daddy groan in the bathroom, but if any of the others had woken up, they remained quiet.
Tigger said in a tense whisper, “People lose their kids for having shit like that on their computer, and you brought it in here—”
The last page sent to the printer stopped abruptly. The sheet of paper came out only three-quarters complete. The machine made a frustrated grinding sound, like a gnashing of teeth, before finally spitting out the interrupted page unfinished.
I took the pages from the tray, squared them on the desk like a deck of cards. Tigger put her hammer down on the nearest mousepad. We both just breathed in and out for a bit.
She said, “Sorry, Payton, but—”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Everyone has lines they don’t cross. Or they should.”
Tigger asked, “Was it important evidence?”
I shrugged. “I saw more than enough.”
The girl’s nakedness flashed in my mind again and I re-squared the printed pages.
“What’s going on anyway?” Tigger asked. “All the dates are like seven or eight years ago. Is the outfit that made those videos still in business?”
I shook my head. If the stories I’d heard were true, the head of the modeling agency had been arrested shortly after Owl left the country and the whole operation shut down.
“I think we’re looking at a different sort of business now,” I said. “I think someone’s using this info to contact former customers. Maybe asking them how much they value their wives, their bosses, their parishioners never finding out what sort of videos they like looking at.”
“Someone,” Tigger said.
“Sayre,” I said.
“Well, I’m no fan of blackmail normally, but if your girl’s out there blackmailing pedophiles, making their lives hell, she’s aces in my book.” Her voice dropped. “But I don’t know, Payton. I don’t much like this. I just hope you’re on the right side of it.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Listen, Tig. I’m sorry about—”
“—the mess? I made it.” She prodded some of the fragments that had once been an iPod. “But do you see now why I’m moving out of New York? I don’t want my daughter growing up in the middle of…all this.”
There are bad men in the suburbs, too, I almost said. But didn’t. Why piss in her bouillabaisse?
I thanked her, apologized again, told her I’d call her later. But I wouldn’t, not unless she called first. I’d brought kiddie porn into her home—unintentionally, but I done it. I’d tainted her sacred trinity of computers with it. A stain, worse than any physical one I could’ve left. She would have found it easier to forgive me puking on her rug.
It felt like my bridges were burning, behind me as well as in front. But more important to me than making sure I landed on the right side when the smoke cleared, was not getting stuck anywhere in the middle with flames rising at either end.
I scooped up the bits of smashed iPod onto the stack of printed pages. I felt like that hapless rube left holding the bag at the end of the magic trick involving the handkerchief, the pocket watch, and the mallet.
I walked away, leaving Tigger in front of her computers. The screensaver reappeared on the monitors, but the little train would have to roll over a lot of track before that other image was completely erased.
I went back down to my office.
No more Googling for answers. I was sick of what the Internet had to offer. I was going to get my information the old-fashioned way.
Earn it.
Chapter Fourteen: RESULTS MAY VARY
It was four o’clock. I called Paul Windmann to tell him that I was coming to return his stolen iPod. He said it wasn’t a good time, that he’d come to my office later and get it.
I said I’d see him in ten minutes and hung up.
I put his four orange 50 Euro notes in my pocket in case he wanted a refund. And I took my gun, if the money wasn’t enough.
Outside my building, the blond kid, FL!P, was loitering, seated on the brass-covered Siamese standpipe. He was holding his skateboard with two hands, scraping one edge against the concrete. Engrossed in what he was doing, he didn’t see me until I was flagging down a cab. He ran over shouting, “Hey, dude, wait. I got something to
