Richard Aleas - Little Girl Lost

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Yes you did. But that’s okay. It’s your job, prying.” We started walking again. “Speaking of which, you know, it’s not like your job is a whole lot better.”

Why did it hit me so hard? It was nothing but the truth. Who the hell was I to ask her why she worked for tenth-rate clubs when I was working for a twentieth-rate detective agency?

“No, it’s not,” I said. “You’re right.”

“So there you go. You work where you work and I work where I work. Maybe we both deserve better, but we take what we can get. That’s all I’m saying. We’re not in such different positions.”

“You know what the difference is?” I said. “The man I work for? I’d trust him with my life.”

“Yeah, well,” Susan said. “You’ve got me there.”

“Maybe you should try that agent again,” I said, but she was already dialing.

“Busy,” she said. She closed the phone.

“At least that’s a good sign. Means he’s there.”

“Or that someone else was leaving a message for him.”

“We’ll try again in a few minutes,” I said.

We turned uptown, headed toward Ninth Street. “If you were Jocelyn,” I said, “where would you go?”

“If I had half a million dollars in stolen money and a couple of killers coming after me?”

“She may not think they’re still coming after her.”

“I would, if I were her.”

“Okay,” I said. “A couple of killers coming after her.”

“And you.”

“And me.”

She thought for a second and then shook her head. “I don’t know. We don’t even know where she lives. She might go there. She might go back to Tracy, depending on how things ended between them. She might have some other girlfriend, or boyfriend. She could rent a hotel room.”

“Or she could get on a plane and fly to Peru,” I said. “All true. But what would you do if you were her?”

“Me?” She thought for a second. “I’d go home.”

“Even though you could be traced there?”

“I might not stay there, but I’d go there. That’s where all my stuff is, I can crash there, get my bearings. It’s where I’d feel safest.”

She’d go home. It made a certain amount of sense. But where was home for Jocelyn? Unfortunately, we had no idea. I didn’t even know where home was for Susan, for God’s sake.

It suddenly struck me that Susan’s address was the least of what I didn’t know about her – I still didn’t know her last name, for instance.

“Susan,” I said, “this may sound strange, but-”

“What?”

“What does the ‘F’ stand for?” I held up my cell phone. “Susan F.”

“That’s okay. It’s not strange,” she said. “It stands for Feuer. F-E-U-E-R. My dad’s family was German. Mom was French-Canadian, but you wouldn’t know it from her name, which was Stine.”

“Feuer-Stine,” I said. “Firestone.”

“Give the man a cigar.”

“Where did you get Rachel?”

“I just liked it. Susan is so plain-Jane. I always wanted something more exciting.”

“I think Susan is pretty exciting,” I said.

She took my hand, squeezed it. “Listen,” she said, “I know how this goes. Next you’ll want to know where I live, and how I got into stripping, and what was my childhood like, and you know what, maybe one of these days I’ll want to share all that with you, but not today, okay?”

“Okay.”

She squeezed my hand again.

“So, who could tell us where Jocelyn lives?” I asked. “Did she have an agent?”

“Not according to Cimino. He said she and Miranda handled their own bookings.”

“Have you heard about any friends they had?”

She waved her phone. “This Tracy is the first I’ve heard about.”

“Relatives?”

“Nobody mentioned any.”

“There’s her parents, but if she hasn’t seen them in six years, I don’t see her going back to them now.”

“Probably not.”

“But maybe?” I said. “I guess it’s worth checking.” I pulled up my phone’s menu of incoming calls, scrolled back to the last call I’d received from Daniel Mastaduno. “Why don’t you try Kodos again?” She was dialing when I heard Daniel pick up.

“Mr. Mastaduno, this is John Blake-”

“Have you found anything?” I heard the eagerness in his voice and I knew there was no good news. He wouldn’t sound like that if she’d come back.

“No, I’m afraid not. I was hoping you might have.”

“Me?”

“We believe Jocelyn was in New York recently, and we thought there was a slim chance she might have gotten back in touch with you.”

“No, Mr. Blake, she hasn’t. I have a feeling her mother and I are the last people she’d get in touch with.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “If you do hear anything, though, will you please give me a call?”

“Of course,” he said. “But Mr. Blake – I wouldn’t wait for it.”

“No,” I said. “I won’t.”

I hung up and turned to Susan. “Nothing,” I said. “You?”

She held up one hand. “… four o’clock? That’s fine. Eighth floor, I’ve got it. Thanks. See you then.” She was smiling as she closed her phone. “I got him,” she said. She sounded excited. It reminded me of how I’d been when I started working for Leo, when each small success had felt like a major triumph. “I told him we’d heard about Tracy and wanted to hire her for a new club we’re opening in the West Village. He said she was booked through the end of February, so I said that was fine, we weren’t opening till March, but we’d want to talk to her now, and he said okay, she’d be in his office later today anyway, we could come by.”

“That’s terrific.”

“This detective stuff isn’t so hard,” she said. “Maybe we should trade jobs.”

“I’d look lousy in a g-string.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said.

The doorman waved us past when we got to my mother’s building, then came running up to us before we could get in the elevator. He held out an envelope with nothing but “14-A” written on it. “I forgot. Someone dropped this off for you.”

“For me?”

“Yeah, a woman. Asked me to give it to you.”

“What did she look like?”

He shrugged. “Dressed up warm. Winter coat, hat, earmuffs, scarf, sunglasses. Couldn’t see much of her face, to tell you the truth.”

“And she said to give this to me?”

“You’re John, right? Margaret Blake’s son?” I nodded. “Well, that’s who she said to give it to.”

“Thanks.”

I waited till the elevator door closed, then tore the envelope open. I read the single piece of paper inside and passed it to Susan.

In plain type on a sheet of plain paper it said, Stop looking for me, or you’ll be sorry.

“How could she know about this apartment?” Susan asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe she followed us.”

“From where?”

“I don’t know!” I tried to get my voice under control. “Maybe one of the people you called is still friendly with her and passed her this phone number. She could have looked up the address in a reverse directory-”

“But I didn’t leave this number anywhere,” Susan said.

“Then I don’t know.” I finished checking the windows in the living room – they were all locked. Not that it mattered when you were fourteen stories up, but somehow it made me feel a little less uncomfortable. I pulled the blinds down.

“How she found out doesn’t really matter,” I said. “What matters is that she did. I can’t leave my mother alone now. Or you, for that matter.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“How, if you’re on the street and she comes up to you with a gun, or a knife?”