misdemeanor arrest powers or powers to ensure the reasonable safety or well-being of another person. If an individual threatens that safety openly, uh, or is exhibiting hostile or aggressive actions, naturally we got to act in defense. Just as you would if somebody menaced you at the supermarket. You would protect yourself or your daughter. We have the right to act in that same manner. You have to use your head, you know.'
'I've heard about some of these cults and how the deprogrammers have to use force and I wondered —'
'We're empowered to utilize a reasonable degree of force in protecting ourselves or our clients.'
'How difficult do you think it will be to get my daughter back?'
'The degree of difficulty depends on luck. How much hard work we have to do. The breaks. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you have to pour the man-hours in. It's all how fast the clues develop. Did they have a car? On the phone you said, Yes, they did. That might make it harder, it might make it easier. Usually kids that age go down to the bus station or whatever and they're easy to trace. If they hitch rides, if they do this, or that — see, it's always different. But eventually we find them.'
'It just seems so hopeless to me,' Spain said truthfully. 'I just don't see how you can find a fourteen-year-old girl when we don't even have an idea which direction she went.'
'All I can tell you is that it depends on you more than me. I always make my clients a guarantee. If you bankroll me — and by that I mean, if you are willing to keep shoveling the buckets of money in to me, and I warn you it does take buckets of money — if you bank-roll me to that extent, I can find anybody. Anywhere on earth. I guarantee it.'
'I can't imagine how,' Spain said rather quietly.
'Money. Like I just told you. That's how I find 'em. The same way you got me here. You give me enough money to do the job, and you got her back. I mean, if you're willing to give me an open bankroll. No problem. We'll find her and bring her back.'
Spain just looked at him, his face a cold, blank, and immobile stare.
'Money talks.'
The experienced hooker would have wondered about the john whose first act on entering a motel room was to turn up the volume on the bolted-down television set.
'We gonna watch soaps?' She'd asked him the question semiseriously, the kid inside her hoping they could kick back and watch the latest
An experienced whore would have been on her guard. But this was no forty-five-year-old bimbo with ten years' pros experience at dodging freaks, vice cops, and the whips and scorns of time. We're taking about a fourteen-year-old girl. She hadn't even looked up at the guy's face she was so scared and nervous.
It hadn't been so bad so far. Roger and Greg had set her up on the first one. He came on like Mr. Suave. They'd made a deal with him — a freebie if he'd take it super-easy. Yeah, sure, he said. No problem. He loved fourteen-year-olds. He could damn near get off on just the idea. A good-lookin' little piece of tail like that for free? Hell's bells, boys, he promised, I'll be gentle as a lamb.
The second dude had been a married guy she'd picked up outside the bar of a hotel downtown. He couldn't believe his luck. She was so young and innocent looking. And it was such a refreshing change from all the aging broads and uglies that he shot like a skyrocket. All of two minutes on top of her banging away and that's all she wrote. If they were all as fast as the first two, it was going to be easy money, she decided. If she could just keep herself from thinking about it. A little girl dressed in Mommy's clothes and four pounds of eye shadow.
She'd picked the next one, or rather he'd hit on her when she was back on the street a few minutes after leaving the second john's hotel. Just walking around like a little kid. Not thinking about the fact her clothes were selling the product and surprised when this old dude goes, 'How much for a party?' And she almost told him to fuck off but caught herself in time.
Greg would be so happy. She already had a wallet filled with money and it was easy money just like that man of hers promised it would be.
'Movie-star money,' the john told her in the room. But she could not foresee what was in store. She could not read the signs that a woman of experience might have seen and understood. She was Spain's mixed-up child of a fourteen-year-old daughter. Pure cherry and the third horse out of the chute is a bad one.
It is a business of numbers pure and simple. Hooking is all math. Bucks. Numbers. Sex numbers. Minutes in the saddle. Speed. Fast service and turnover, like a fast burger franchise. All by the old numbers. And the probabilities of problems are numbers again. It becomes a percentage thing. So much chance of getting ripped off. So much chance of a vice bust. So much chance of being hurt. So much of a percent you'll be crippled or offed by a psycho. Numbers.
Rip-offs. Johns. Whackos. Vice collars. Pimps. The life of a street ho is obviously marvelous. One reason why they do it. The bucks. Numbers again. Hers could have would have should have been number three hundred and seventeen or something. That was the john she might have been street-wise enough to protect herself against. But he was number three.
He moved in front of her and inserted the key in the lock and turned the knob and held the door open for her as she moved in, thinking in her mind how much she'd be bringing Greg tonight and wondering how many times she'd have to do this before she could go to him. Idly she speculated on the time of day it would be, hoping he'd take her out to a fancy dinner like last night. She would want to put all of this out of her mind.
It wasn't too bad if you thought about something else. She thought guys would take an hour or something like the kids did when they balled each other in their folks' cars. She didn't know that screwing and lovemaking were two separate things. The john would seldom need more than three or four minutes of a pro's expertise, and that would be it.
The main thing was she had to remember what Greg had taught her, the saying they'd rehearsed over and over, and his clever words kept playing back to her as she popped her gum and entered the strange room.
'Get money first, clean him off, get him off, get out fast. Get the money first, clean him off, get him off, get out fast .... Get the —' Saying it over and over to herself like a speed litany, chewing her sugar-free and feeling her palms get sticky, and then getting the saying mixed up in her head already in the nervous excitement of the moment, fear smearing it. 'Get out fast, get the money —'
'Um. Hey, uh, could I like have the money now, please?' she said sweetly, not liking to ask like that but saying it so it wouldn't be just a question either, a tricky moment she thought, a tricky moment with a trick; she still hadn't looked at him.
'Sure, baby.' He reached in for a huge roll and peeled a hundred off the outside, but she couldn't see what was in the roll. For all she knew or cared it could be newspaper in there. All she wanted was the hundred to put in Greg's trap money. 'But now I gotta li'l favor to ask in return. No offense, but lose the gum, okay?'
'Huh?' she said, thinking he'd said lose the gun.
'The gum in your mouth, sweetheart. Get rid of the gum, please. It's like a little turnoff, okay, dear?'
'Oh. Yeah. The gum. Oh, sure.' She plucked it out with her teenybopper fingernails and threw it into the wastebasket next to the bed.
'Excuse me. I have to go in the bathroom a minute, please,' she said, and he smiled and nodded as he gestured expansively at the door. Get the money first, clean him off . . .
'While I'm getting undressed, would you please take your pants off? Thanks.' She blurted it out as she closed the door behind her. What embarrassment. She'd never get used to asking a stranger to undress, but she knew what she had to do. Get the money clean him off get him off. One thing at a time. She wished that her case of nerves would ease up before she did something dumb. She tried to think calm, and then, as she was running water, she realized she had some Libriums in her purse. Mother's Librium. She came out of the bathroom with the hot washcloth, lightly soaped, the cloth dripping as she walked, still repeating her litany over and over to herself, and the guy hasn't budged. He's standing just where she left him like he's in shock.
'Come on now. Please let Tiff wash you off nice, huh?'
He pulled her over to him and took the cloth from her. 'I'll sure do that in a second, hon, and I'll skin it back and clean that big ole devil real good for ya, but before we git to that, I jes' gotta have a little kiss from my sweet ole sugarbuns.' He pulled her in close and she pushed away a little involuntarily as he relaxed his death grip on her arms. He was muscled like a weight lifter.
