nine months ago, before Tamar had got her recording contract.
They had left the Rinker at the Fairfield Street dock, all the way downtown in the Old Quarter of the city, taking with them only any personal items, and the masks, and the weapons, transferring all and sundry into the Ford. Avery was now driving. Cal was sitting beside him. They were moving slowly through the fog and the deserted streets, observing the speed limit, stopping at any red traffic light or full stop sign, but not traveling so slowly as to attract police attention. That was the last thing they needed at this stage of the game.
The tendrils of the fog embraced the car as if to crush it. Fog frightened Kellie. You never knew what might come at you out of a fog.
“When they pay the ransom,” Avery said, still on the case, “we’re supposed…”
“
“They’ll pay it, don’t worry. But then we’re supposed to return her safe and sound. If we send her back with her face all bruised…”
“Ain’t no bruises on her face,” Cal said.
“Girl’s face is her fortune,” Kellie said from the back seat.
“Ours, too,” Avery reminded her.
“Tits ain’t so bad, neither,” Cal said and grinned.
“Hey, cool that shit,” Kellie said.
“The way you hit her,” Avery said, refusing to let go, “her face is gonna swell up like a balloon.”
“Black and blue already,” Kellie said, looking over at Tamar and nodding.
“How’s she doing otherwise?” Avery asked.
“Still out like a light,” Kellie said. “We got a blanket or something? She’s half-naked here.”
“That ain’t our fault,” Cal said. “She stripped her own self buck ass naked. They can’t blame us for that.”
“They can blame you for swatting her,” Avery insisted.
“How’d you like my swatting the monster, huh?” Cal asked, grinning, turning to look at Avery. “Or didn’t you like that, either? Him crouched and ready to spring for our throats, how come
“Because we agreed no violence.”
“That was our agreement, yes,” Kellie said.
“You go in with 47s,” Cal said, “you got to expect violence.”
“Not if we agreed beforehand.”
“That was before I knew anybody was gonna go for my throat.”
“I don’t think he was about to go for you,” Avery said reasonably. “He was just assessing the situation. He heard you yelling, he naturally wondered what was going on, him being on the floor and all, where he couldn’t see. So he lifted himself up to take a look. You shouldn’t’ve hit him and you
“Tell him,” Kellie said.
The car went silent.
The fog embraced it.
“Any questions?” Avery asked.
“Yeah. How do you get out of this chickenshit outfit?” Cal said, and laughed at his own witticism.
Nobody laughed with him.
IN THIS CITY,the facades of the buildings conceal a multitude of endeavors, many of them criminal. Whore houses flourish on any avenue or side street, blatantly advertising themselves in the trendiest magazines as massage parlors, offering up to the tired businessman or the restless college kid a variety of pleasures to satisfy the most obsessive connoisseur. Here in this carnal candyland, the night stalker can find whatever he desires, at whatever price. Nor is this American flesh bazaar limited to the big bad city alone. Travel to the so-called heartland. Open the yellow pages of the local telephone directory, or surf the Internet in your hotel room. It is there. It is everywhere. It is available.
Many of the hidden warrens in this and other American cities now house drug pads to shame the ancient opium dens of China. Where not too many years ago, you could smoke a crack pipe in one of these places for a mere five bucks, this cheap cocaine derivative has now mysteriously fallen out of favor, to be replaced by heroin as the drug of choice, an ascendancy that no doubt thrills the poppy growers in Afghanistan now that they’ve been liberated by American soldiers. A sharp loaded with a heroin hit now cost almost three times as much as a puff of crack used to cost. You lay on a narrow cot, and an attendant wrapped a rubber tube around your arm and serviced you. It was like getting blown by a Korean whore in a similar shabby little apartment two blocks away, only better.
Early Sunday morning, far from the sordid city scene, in a gray-shingled beach house on a fog-shrouded beach in Russell County, miles from where the abduction on the River Harb had taken place, Tamar Valparaiso was just regaining consciousness.
3
SOMETHINGwas covering her eyes.
She could not open her eyes because whatever it was—a cloth blindfold, duct tape, whatever—was so tight. Her first instinct was to reach up with her right hand to pull it free, whatever it was, but she discovered at once that her hands were bound behind her back. Her next instinct was to scream, but there was a gag in her mouth, as tight as the blindfold over her eyes. Run, she thought, run!, and tried to get to her feet, but her ankles were bound, too. She struggled for a moment, angrily, panicking in her helplessness, kicking out at nothing, and then lying still and silent, breathing hard, trying to figure out what was happening to her here.
All at once, she remembered.
Two men coming down the steps just as she was finishing the number. One of them hitting her. The other one clamping a sweet-smelling rag over her nose.
She lay still in the darkness.
Remembering.
She knew even before she began exploring with her legs, reaching out with her legs and her sandaled feet to touch the boundaries of the space she was in, knew somehow even before her feet touched the confining, defining walls, that she was in a closet. Lying on the hard wooden floor of a closet, her shallow breathing seeming to echo back at her in a small airless cubicle.
She almost panicked again.
She kicked out at the walls, tried to scream again, almost choked, tried to cough out the gag, tried to force her eyes open, her lids fluttering helplessly against the blindfold. She tried to calm herself. Sucked in great gulps of air through her nose. Lay still and silent for several moments, regaining her cool, telling herself to relax, be still.
She eased herself up into a sitting position, her back to what she supposed was the rear wall of the closet. Exploring with her feet, she located what she guessed was a hinge, the thin sole of her slightly heeled sandal catching on something that jutted from the otherwise flat surface, yes, it had to be a hinge, yes, she was indeed facing the closet door.
Bracing both feet hard against the floor, she inched her back slowly up the rear wall of the closet, banging her head on what was obviously a recessed horizontal shelf, but easing her way up and around it, and struggling to her feet at last. Her hands tied behind her back, her feet bound, essentially blind and mute, she used her head and her shoulder to explore the hinged side of the door, locating another hinge higher up. Using her nose as a pointer, she zeroed in on a small protruding knob at the top of the hinge.
The blindfold ended just above her cheekbone. She pressed the side of her face against the hinge, and tried to hook the edge of the blindfold over the knob. She was about to give up, when—on the eighth or ninth attempt
