Timothy Hallinan - Everything but the Squeal

“I'm looking for a little girl,” I said. When Bruner figured out that I was through, he took a metallic-foil packet out of the pocket of his immaculately tailored jacket, peeled it back to free a couple of Maalox tablets, and chewed them like they were potato chips.

“That's what I said,” he said in the same quiet voice. “You're not a cop.”

“A1,” I said, “I've had enough today without the Scarlet Pimpernel here. What's with the gorgeous suit, anyway? Working undercover at Bijan?”

Hammond threw back a pound of peanuts. “Shut up, Simeon,” he said, “and, Max, if you don't mind my saying so, you shouldn't get all twisted. With your stomach you got to be careful. I'm telling you, he's okay. Simeon helped me out when they sent me to records.”

“Is that so?” Bruner said neutrally.

“Max has been in records too,” Hammond confided. “He was taken off the street for trying to put a pimp's finger into the fan belt of his squad car.”

I thought about engines. “The fan belt?” I asked. “Didn't the fan get in the way?”

Bruner sat back, distancing himself from the conversation. “Yes,” he said. “It did.”

“If it hadn't, he might not have wound up in records,” Hammond said. “By the time they found the asshole's fingertip they'd developed a bad case of witnesses. And then the eleven-year-old veal chop on the pimp's string decided to side with the pimp.”

“Why’d she do that?” I asked.

“He,” Bruner said.

A pall descended on the table. “Oh,” I said. Bruner took a sip of soda, his eyes on the middle distance. I found myself warming to him. “Why a finger?” I asked, just to fill the silence.

“He'd done something with it I couldn't condone,” Bruner said softly. Hammond's big heavy shoe caught me on the shin, telling me to change the subject. “Max got out of records,” Hammond said, “but the doilies in charge wouldn't put him back on the street. Gave him a desk job in the underage vice task force.”

“She's thirteen,” I said. “From Kansas City. Gone about six weeks. Showed up briefly at the Oki-Burger.” Bruner's blue eyes ignited briefly like a gas flame and then subsided. “She isn't there anymore.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I've been sitting there for the last week.”

“How’d you like it?” he asked.

“I preferred it to rectal cancer,” I said, “but just barely.”

He nodded about a sixteenth of an inch, the biggest reaction I'd provoked yet. “Is she pretty?”

I gave him one of the yearbook pictures. He looked at it and sighed. He sighed periodically. It added to his air of melancholy. “Too pretty,” he said. “Haven't seen her, though.”

“You girls drinking or just talking?” Peppi said, laying a gnarled hand on Hammond's shoulder. “They’s people who'd like this table, you know?”

Hammond guiltily drained his drink and half of Bruner's. I had raised my glass to my lips when I caught Bruner's stare. He was looking up at Peppi, and his face was absolutely expressionless. She tried not to look as though she knew she was being stared at, but gave up after a beat and turned to face him.

“Peppi,” he said in the same hushed voice. “Go away. Don't come back until we call you.”

Two spots of color appeared on Peppi's cheeks. “What's with your friend, Hammond?” she asked, trying for a light touch. “Didn't he get lunch?”

Bruner reached over, lifted Peppi's hand from Hammond's shoulder, and let it drop. “Look at me, Peppi,” Bruner said. She did.

“Are you tuned in?” She nodded. “Good,” Bruner said. “Bring Lieutenant Hammond and his friend another drink and then leave us alone until one of us calls you over. If none of us calls you over, Peppi, stay the fuck behind the bar. If you don't, we're going to strain you through those stockings and use you to make chicken stock.”

Peppi nodded slowly. “What I need,” she said, “guys with balls you couldn't get through a basketball hoop.” Bruner gave her a gentlemanly smile. “Drinks coming up?” he said.

“On the way.” She pivoted and marched to the bar, her legs muscular and bunched in the mesh stockings.

“Caliban in the net,” I said to myself.

“Ah,” Bruner said, ” That's a brave god and bears celestial liquor. I will kneel to him.’ ” He raised his soda to his lips. “Or, in this case, her,” he added.

“ ‘Him’ will do,” Hammond said. He was not noted for his sensitivity toward those who belonged to minority sexual genres.

“ The liquor is not earthly,’ ” I quoted back at Bruner. I took a swallow. “In fact, it's demonic.”

“Poor Caliban,” Bruner sighed. “Running away from a stern father figure and falling into the clutches of a couple of drunks. It happens all the time.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Hammond demanded.

“Who are the monsters?” Bruner asked. “The parents who make the kid run away, the ones who prey on the kid, or the thing the kid becomes?”

“Glad you guys are getting along,” Hammond said, feeling left out.

“The pimps are the worst,” I said, giving vent to my newest grudge.

“They get my vote,” Hammond said.

“They're the easiest ones to hit,” Bruner said, sipping again at his soda. “Who's going to file a complaint because you smacked some pimp? Nobody cares, or if they do, they'd just as soon hand you a bouquet. But who are the pimps? Half the time they're just the kids who were lucky enough to get old enough to get managerial. Being this kind of cop is like raising wolves. You try to protect the young ones from the old ones, and then when the young ones get old, you try to protect the new young ones from the ones you tried to save in the first place. There are times when you just want to let them eat each other.”

“Wolves don't kill their young,” I said.

“Sorry,” Bruner said, sighing again. “It was a metaphor.”

“What's a metaphor?” Hammond said.

“It's like an allegory,” Bruner said as Peppi, acting huffy, put fresh drinks on the table.

“And what's an allegory?” Hammond asked stubbornly. He looked like a man who needed his blood pressure taken.

“A dangerous amphibian,” Bruner said. “Like Caliban.”

“Jesus,” Hammond said, putting his glass down sharply. “Thanks for inviting me to the class reunion. I think I'll find someone who speaks English.” He got up and went to the jukebox, parting the sea of dancers before him like a shark in a school of cod.

“Anyway,” Bruner said, watching him go, “the pimps just fill the vacuum we've created. It's classic capitalism.”

At the jukebox, Hammond fished around in his pockets and pulled out the roll of quarters that he usually saved for wrapping his fist around, opened it, and fed coins into the slot. He punched some buttons. When the machine didn't respond quickly enough, he kicked it.

“What do you mean, they fill the vacuum? Surely they help to create the vacuum in the first place.”

Bruner shrugged his elegantly clad shoulders. “There are always going to be immature men who want immature sex partners,” he said. “Whether they're straight or gay, they're not able to handle another adult. They need someone they can dominate, someone who's physically smaller, someone who makes them feel powerful for a change. Child prostitution is an international trade, like coffee or oil. But we make it worse here. We contribute to the vacuum.”

“How?” I finished my drink and looked for Peppi. Hammond's invariable first choice, the Iron Butterfly's “Inna-Gadda-da-Vida,” pumped through the loudspeakers.

“We're so very progressive,” Bruner said. “Child labor? Unconstitutional. Cruel and unusual punishment. There's no legal work a kid can do without his or her parents' permission. So for a kid who's run away, what's left? Illegal work. And of all the illegal ways for a kid to make a living, none pays better than hustling.” He picked up his soda water and sipped it distastefully, then chewed two more Maalox tab- lets. He had little flecks of yellow foam at the corners of his lips.