Brolan didn't blame him.
Two framed photographs stood on the desk. In one two blonde little girls grinned at the camera. They were dressed for winter. One was missing her two front teeth. The other looked sad in a certain distant way. The other photograph showed a thirty-ish woman in a swimsuit. She was too fleshy for so small a suit, and her hair was cut so short, it only emphasised her sagging face. The same sadness in the little girl could be glimpsed in the mother.
Brolan had no idea what he was looking for. Something. Anything. He sat down in the swivel chair and started pulling out desk drawers.
The drawers were as messy as the desktop. Paper clips and half pieces of gum were thrown in with pencils and erasers and dozens of pink, cheery phone messages. One drawer held maybe twenty fast food coupons, everything from Hardee's to Domino's.
Thinking he heard something, Brolan stopped. Frozen. He felt like a small boy, sweaty and guilty and shaken.
A male voice called, 'Tim? You back here? Tim?'
Brolan recognized the voice of a media buyer named Meyers. Culhane and Meyers often had lunch together.
'Tim?' Meyers called again. His voice sounded disappointed in the rolling silence of the big room.
Meyers came closer. His steps were big and flat, like a clown's. He paused, maybe ten feet away, said, 'Tim?' and then waited a few seconds for an answer, then said, 'Shit' to himself and left.
Brolan went back to the drawers.
All the drawers but the bottom one were the same jumble of business odds and ends.
The bottom one held very explicit girlie magazines and a deck of playing cards that made Brolan sick in a very judgmental way. He tried to believe that anything consenting adults cared to do was their business, and basically he did believe that. But he had never been able to quite accept sadomasochism. The notion of pain equalling pleasure was not something he could grasp. He always had the sense that this was the sort of experience that could quickly get out of hand. Fun turned fatal.
The girlie magazines were harmless enough if you liked the type. The girls weren't pretty, and many of them were tattooed, and most of them were fat. All of them had their legs spread and showed you their wet pink sex. During the dreary days following his divorce, Brolan himself had bought magazines such as these. Not Penthouse and Playboy, which he still bought, but the down-and-dirties. At that time they'd held a curious appeal for him-their ambience seemed to be part danger and part sorrow. The women looked like the type who always turned up floating in a river somewhere. They bore no resemblance to Hefner's Playmates, with their radiant smiles and radiant bodies.
Done with the girlie magazines, he set the cards on top of the desk and proceeded to thumb through them. The men and women pictured wore leather get-ups that managed to make them look kinky and silly at the same time. Sometimes the girls held the whips; sometimes the guys held the whips. A few of the photos depicted people with fake blood smeared all over them.
All he could think of was Emma and what she'd looked like when he was setting her in the freezer. Her body cut up so many ways, so many times. He wondered if this was what all these people in the pictures wanted-either to be the killer or the killed.
Down near the bottom of the deck, he found the card that had the power to shock him. Even with a domino mask on, she was obviously Emma. She was being whipped by a fleshy man.
He put the cards in the pocket of his suit jacket, replaced the magazines, and then left the office.
In ten minutes he was inside his own office, the door closed, writing a letter to his partner, Foster.
I've decided, pally, that I need to stay home and get some work done.
I hope you understand.
I'll check in from time to time.
When he was finished with it, he took it down the hall to Foster's office. He folded it in half and set it on Foster's desk.
Then he was in the elevator and on his way to see his old enemy, Cummings.
He knew he was running out of time. He had to start searching. He just wished he knew what he was looking for.
13
Her second night in the neighbourhood she'd seen two old drifters go at each other with switch-blades. In a way, scary as it was, it was funny, too. The guys were so old and so drunk on Ripple that they could scarcely get around. But they went at each other pretty good, there in a small circle of light supplied by a light bulb over a warehouse door. It seemed the two old farts had been sleeping in the same boxcar-there was a railroad siding maybe a hundred yards to the east-when one woke up, found he'd drunk nearly all his wine, and then decided to blame the missing wine on the other drifter.
In all the fight went ten minutes, and neither one of them laid a blade on the other. Not that they didn't try hard. Not that they didn't want to. They were both truly mendacious sons of bitches, hard-core types who'd probably spent a good number of years in the slammer, and who were dying out their days lost amid the urban homeless. In her six months since leaving St. Louis and wandering through the Mid-west with just her little for-hire body and her soft night prayers to keep her going, she'd met a lot of such people.
Denise thought of all this as she headed that morning for Papa's Place, a grungy restaurant near the sleeping room she crashed in when she had money from turning tricks. In her coat pocket rode the billfold.
She thought again of the guy who tried to strangle her the previous night. She still couldn't decide if the attempt had been real or if it had just been part of getting his kicks. Maybe at the very last second he would have let her go. Maybe.
Papa's was filled, as always, with working-class guys breaking all the rules about cholesterol by ordering three eggs, ham, and American fries. This was the meal Denise liked herself. Spend a few bucks on a breakfast like that, and you didn't have to worry about food the rest of the day.
In the back, in the booths, were the drifters and the hookers, female and male alike. Papa's was one of those very old places with a pressed-metal ceiling, two big wooden-paddle fans to move around the greasy, sluggish air, a wall-length of counter and stools, and a wall-length of booths. Against the back wall were pinball machines that looked kind of neat when they were all lit up at night. Next to them was a jukebox. The guy who ran the place was always arguing with the runaways. He claimed that his real 'paying customers' liked country and western. The kids, of course, wanted Madonna and rap music and things like that. Apparently he didn't consider buying a Pepsi or two an horn: proper qualification for being a 'paying customer.'
The kids were dressed for winter. The sexy clothes of summer had been replaced by heavy coats and pullover sweaters. There were ten of them scattered over three booths drinking, variously, pop and coffee. At the sight of Denise they waved and nodded but without much enthusiasm. Denise wasn't a particular favourite. She had a tough time talking about her feelings, and she distrusted almost on principle anybody who tried to get close to her. She'd been close only to her mother. But then her mother died. Denise had never forgiven her.
She went over to the last booth, where Polly sat. Denise hated the name Polly. It didn't fit the girl at all. A seventeen-year-old runaway from Ogden, Utah, Polly was, despite a few extra pounds, a classic beauty. Pretty as Denise was, she envied Polly her regal looks. But Polly was more than good-looking. She was the smartest runaway Denise knew.
Polly sat with Bobby, a handsome, dark-skinned boy, who was a favourite of men who cruised for boys. Bobby was seventeen and from a farm town up near the Canadian border. With his fashionable haircut and his cute, knowing face, Bobby gave the impression of being very sophisticated. But when he talked, you could tell he was a hick, with hick tastes. Bobby's big dream was to live in one of those condos near St. Louis Park and have a girlfriend. Bobby was always talking about girlfriends. He didn't want any of the kids to think he was gay just because he went with men.
'Hey, kiddo, how's it going?' Polly said. She always called Denise kiddo. For some weird reason Denise liked
