Timothy Hallinan - Everything but the Squeal

By then the sky was beginning to pale, and some L.A. birds were coughing in the trees. I got up, thankful to have awakened alive, and made a quart of coffee. Half an hour later, Wyatt called for the first time.

In addition to the fact that I felt sleepy and lousy, I was pretty much out of things to do. It was only Wednesday, the second day of the four-day ransom period, and I'd done just about everything I could think of that wouldn't directly endanger Aimee, on the remote chance that her kidnapper actually intended to release her after he picked up the ransom that had been mailed- mailed? — to him. I didn't believe for a second that he would. I had to wait, but I felt like I was waiting for the second coming of a deity whose first coming I had never accepted.

So I sort of cleaned the house again and hoped that Morris would call to announce that he'd broken the code on Birdie's disks. He didn't, and I couldn't call him: I didn't have his number, and there were no Gursteins listed in Topanga. Since I was sitting by the phone, I called once more the three numbers that had been answered by some guy saying “Cap’n’s.” On the first two, I got the same response. I hung up. The third, the one in my area code, just kept ringing. Well, that meant that the various Cap'ns kept something like business hours, so I hadn't entirely wasted my time.

But I still didn't know what the Cap’ns’ business was. What do Cap'ns do, anyway? The one in California might possibly have been a nautical man, but it seemed unlikely that the Cap'ns in Arizona and Idaho discharged their duties on the breast of the briny deep.

I staved off my identity crisis for a few hours by pulling on my shorts and a pair of battered shoes and running about six miles on the softest Pacific sand I could find. The clouds were back and there was a chill in the air that was the meteorological equivalent of a horse laugh at the idea of spring. My calves were on the verge of cramping permanently when I headed Alice into the main entrance of UCLA, still clean and empty because of Easter break, and headed for the saunas. When I got back to Alice, whom I'd parked in one of the dim underground lots that the state built for the convenience of rapists, it was ten-thirty, and I was showered, gleaming, and as pink as the pig in my nightmare.

Well, I thought, since I'm in town anyway, let's drive the streets and soak up the atmosphere. Maybe it would provoke an idea. What it provoked was an almost suicidal sense of futility. Even at that hour, even in the cold, the kids were out on Sunset and Santa Monica, both boys and girls, their thumbs extended to snag twenty dollars, a beating, or a nice case of AIDS. Without thinking about what I was doing, I pulled into the Oki-Burger. Since I was no longer under cover, I parked in the lot.

“You're kidding,” the Mountain said, using his nauseating cheesecloth to swab at one of the many spots on Alice's fender as I got out of the car. He'd been standing forlornly in the center of the asphalt sumo ring, waiting for a fat guy to come along and challenge him. All the fat guys were still in bed, tucked warmly away in the gray morning, and he'd come over to the car the moment I drove in. “I haven't seen one of these since I rented LaBamba .”

“I wish I were kidding,” I said. I assuaged the twinge of disloyalty I felt by patting Alice on the driver's door. “She drives okay.”

“One of the players drives an old Chevy, too,” he said, wiping a headlight. “He's a real jerkoff.” I suddenly remembered Junko's pimp's car.

“Hey, Mountain,” I said in my best Wednesday-morning voice, which wasn't much, “how about I buy us both a burger?”

The Mountain lived on burgers, and he always wanted one or, more usually, two. Two it was. He set mine down in front of me and both of his in front of him, gave me a big yellow smile, and took the first burger like an aspirin.

“So?” he said around a mouthful of beef, bread, and onions. It actually sounded more like “Fo?” Some mustard landed on his plaid shirt, adding a nice touch to the edible Jackson Pollock that decorated it.

“What's his name?” I asked.

“Mark Intveld. A knife boy. Likes to call himself Marco. Got a little Okinawan girl. Tommy just about shit, first time he saw her.”

“Junko.”

The Mountain raised his eyebrows in acknowledgment.

“He's scared,” I said.

“Marco? Good. Hope he gets scared to death. He ever comes around here, I'll turn him inside out and use him for rubber gloves.” He amputated half his second burger in a single bite. “What's he scared of?”

“Me,” I said, “and this is between us.”

“Muumph,” he said, chewing.

“I'm serious. I'm not supposed to be talking to anybody. The truth is, I think I may need some help pretty soon.”

The Mountain made a gesture like he was zipping his lips closed and then realized that his mouth was wide open to take another bite. He lowered the hamburger with a supreme act of will and completed the gesture.

Although the place was empty, I leaned toward him and lowered my voice. “There's a bunch of people who are dealing in kids. Not street pimps. This is a real business, not a cottage industry. They put the kids through something called obedience school to break them, and then they pass the kids around somehow. Whatever they do at obedience school, it scares the shit out of the kids. They also mark them by burning them with a cigar.”

The hamburger remained in his lowered hand. His little pig eyes glowed. I could have seen them across a dark room. “Who are they?”

“I don't know, exactly. I mean, I think I know, but I can't prove anything. They've got the little girl I was looking for.”

‘The little blondie?”

“That's the one.” The Mountain started to say something and then looked up.

“Whoops,” said a throaty contralto behind me. “E1 copperino.”

I turned to see Velveeta and Tammy. Tammy had finally gotten something warmer to wear, a ratty thrift-shop chinchilla that had probably begun life as a small herd of musk-rats. They were out pretty early, for them, and they both looked like they'd had a bad night.

The Mountain got up. It was like Mount Fuji taking wing. “What do you two want to be called today?” he asked. “Boys or girls?”

“Girls,” Tammy said primly.

“Well, girls, scram. We're closed to pre-ops until four. New health rule.”

“Jeez,” Tammy said. “Not even coffee?”

“To go,” the Mountain said.

“Come on, Tammy,” Velveeta said, tugging at the fur. Some of it came away in her fingers. “We'll take our trade elsewhere. Who wants to eat with cops anyway?” The two of them wobbled on their high heels back into the parking lot. The Mountain turned his attention back to the remainder of his burger.

“I think they pretend to be talent agents,” I said. “They tell the kids they're going to make stars out of them, take their pictures, fill their heads full of stuff. Then, I guess, they put them through obedience school and use the pictures to sell the kids to whoever’s on the circuit. Listen, do you remember a little Mongoloid girl on the streets a few years ago?”

“Anita,” he said promptly. Something like pain squeezed his features. “Sheeze. Hispanic, but everybody thought she was Oriental. She was only here a few days. I got her to go home, but her parents didn't want her, can you believe it? She was back in a week. Kid was seriously mental. Couldn't even get dressed right without help.”

“They got her too,” I said. “She did something wrong, and they killed her.”

The Mountain sat back and blinked heavily. He looked around at the empty tables as though he was trying to remember where Anita had sat. Then he picked up the remaining half-burger and threw it across the room. It hit another table with a flat, splatting sound.