Megan Abbott - Wall Street Noir

“Okay,” said the little girl, “I understand. You come to my house tomorrow night and I will bring your proof. Other girls, too, to tell their stories.”

Trisha had reached into her bag to give money to Linda.

“No! No! Not now!” the girl shouted in English. Then in Spanish to Pete, “Jorge will just take it. Bring it tomorrow night. Bring money for all the girls.”

When she clutched Trisha’s hand and kissed her fingers, Trisha found it hard to take a breath.

The rain had gone from biblical to drizzle. Pete picked her up in front of the hotel at 9:00. Trisha got in the backseat. There was someone in the front with Pete. He was a bull-dog-faced fellow of thirty with red skin, thick arms, and flat affect.

“This is Paolo,” Pete said. “He works for me. He’ll have your back. He speaks perfect English. Right Paolo?”

“Very perfect. The best,” he said in an accentless mono-one.

“What about you? Aren’t you—”

“I wish I could, but I’ve got business of my own to handle. And besides, the two of us in that area at night... We’d attract too much of a crowd. The wrong kind of crowd. You’ll be much safer with Paolo. Trust me. No one is apt to fuck with him. Isn’t that right, Paolo?”

“They wouldn’t dare.”

Please, please, Pete, forget your business. I’m scared out of my mind. I’ll do anything if you come with me. I’ll do anything...

“Okay,” she said.

They drove into the mountains that surrounded the city. Trisha was numb, frightened about getting into a situation over which she would have very little control, but remained silent. When Pete turned off the main road and into a neighborhood of cuarterias it was hard for Trisha to know if these were the same slums she had been to the previous day. Places, times, dates... It was all starting to run together into another indistinguishable blur.

“It’s right over there,” Pete said, pointing to a shabby door as he rolled by. “I’m going to leave you and Paolo off at the end of the row. I’ll be back for you in...” he checked his watch, “half an hour, tops.” He reached over the seat and squeezed Trisha’s hand reassuringly. “You’ll be fine. Paolo will see to that. Right, Paolo?”

“I’ll take good care of the lady.”

“Good,” Pete said. “I’ll be right back in this spot in a half hour.”

Paolo and Trisha got out of the Jetta. Pete beckoned Trisha to his rolled-down window. She knew he wanted her to kiss him, which she did with little enthusiasm, the rain pelting her cheeks. He smiled at her when their lips parted. There was, she thought, something disquieting about his expression. Then, as she watched his taillights disappear, Trisha shook it off. It was her own discomfort, she thought, projected onto Pete.

“Let’s go,” Paolo urged, placing his meaty hand around her bicep.

Paolo didn’t bother knocking and just pushed back the shabby door to the harelipped girl’s house. The inside was lit by a string of bare bulbs. The tamped-down dirt floor was not muddy, but was dark with moisture. The room was crowded and noisy and smelled of a sickening mixture of wet garbage and feces.

Linda sat on a crude bench, a young baby wrapped in a blanket cradled in her twiglike arms. There were children of varying ages all over the place, the older ones staring at Trisha and the big man at her side. The younger ones cried or played, happily ignoring the strangers. There were adults too, mostly haggard old women, probably not nearly as old as they looked. There were a few younger women as well, but no one, in Trisha’s estimation, who looked like the whore who had sold her child into a life of slavery and rape.

“Ask her where her mother is,” Trisha told Paolo.

He did as she requested and translated the answer. “She’s out sucking strangers’ cocks for some lempira .”

Some of the women laughed. Trisha failed to see the humor.

“Okay, ask her if these are the girls and women who will talk about PriceStar.”

“Yes,” Linda answered herself.

Again some of the women laughed. Again Trisha failed to see the joke.

“You have the money?” Linda asked in perfect English.

Trisha removed an envelope which contained five hundred American dollars in twenty-dollar bills.

“Let me see it, touch it,” Linda said in Spanish. Paolo translated.

Trisha Tanglewood slowly removed the cash from the envelope and placed it in Linda’s bony left hand. Linda showed the money to the baby in her arms and cooed something in the child’s ear. Then, when she was done, she looked up at Trisha. On the harelipped girl’s face was a cruel, almost feral smile. It made Trisha’s blood run cold. She could feel herself blanch, feel the strength run out of her through the soles of her shoes and seep slowly into the shifting wet earth under her feet. All the individual sounds in the little room became a muted ringing in her ears. A wave of nausea slammed into her and she nearly fainted.

Linda’s malformed lips and darting tongue shaped words which Trisha’s eyes read but could not understand. They repeated the words again and again. She was shouting them. Now everyone was shaking their fists at Trisha, shouting, but the shouts just blended into the ringing. Somehow Trisha found the strength to ask Paolo, “What are they saying? What are they saying?”

Paolo turned to look Trisha right in the face. His flat affect seemed to vanish, replaced by a broad mirthful smile. “Baby thief. They’re calling you baby thief. Run!” he screamed. “Run!”

In a quieter cuarteria , no more than a mile away from where Trisha Tanglewood was now running for her life, Peter Dutton was taking cover and comfort in the house of a sixteen-year-old whore. He found her disappointing. Even at sixteen she was so experienced as to be robotic, but he let her finish what she had started. He needed at least another five or ten minutes. He wasn’t much for regrets, but he had really enjoyed fucking the broad from New York. What she lacked in expertise, she made up for in enthusiasm. A shame, he thought, to waste that kind of talent.

When he finally came, he yanked the Honduran girl by the hair to make sure she swallowed. He couldn’t abide spitters. He zipped up and threw two twenty-dollar bills onto the damp earthen floor. She smiled at him with more feeling than she’d displayed the whole time he’d been there.

The skies had opened up once again, and as he closed the driver’s side door, Pete could hear the cries of Baby thief! Baby thief! spreading through the slum like an airborne virus. Not a soul noticed as he drove off into the blackness.

Trisha kept herself in great shape, and she’d gotten a good lead on the mob. Unfortunately, a good lead when you have no idea of where you’re going, or the terrain you’re going on, or what lurks around the next dark corner, is of limited value. Suddenly, a searing pain tore through her left shoulder. A rock! Shit, they’re throwing stones. They’re going to stone me to death! Trisha picked up her pace, but to no avail — the next rock caught her square in the jaw. Only adrenaline and her instinct for self-preservation kept her legs moving, and then only for a few more steps.

She toppled face-first into the mud, and into the netherworld between consciousness and coma. Things she heard, things she felt, all seemed like they were happening to someone else. She could sense her body move with each kick, but the pain was remote. Above her, buried in the clouds, she heard the roar of an ascending jet. She could not distinguish what kind of aircraft. It suddenly occurred to her that the flight attendant, Kathy, had never gotten back to her with the answer to her question. It’s funny what you think about. Then something bounced violently against her skull and the world turned a silent shade of black.