Andrew Vachss - Mask Market

It was almost two weeks before I got word that someone had a girl to sell. Not to rent, sell. Supposedly, an eleven-year-old virgin with a hairless pussy who loved to suck cocks and was looking for a permanent home with the right man.

I called the number I had gotten from a guy who ran a private camera club—“The girls will pose any way you tell them, gentlemen. No film allowed.” As soon as I heard the voice on the other end, I knew this could be for real: He was a young guy with a sociopath’s chilly voice, talking from a payphone.

“I don’t know you, man. All I know, you could be The Man, you know what I’m saying?”

“So meet me, wherever you say, and I’ll prove I’m a legitimate purchaser,” I said, softening my voice as I pictured myself as the seal-sleek, middle-aged man who had told me how much money there was in “unbroken” little girls.

The sleek man had come into my life just after I first got out. I thought he’d be the start of my career as a scam-master. Instead, he turned out to be a still-unsolved homicide. It took me a long time to get still enough inside myself so I could listen to one of his tribe without having to hurt him.

“How you gonna do that?”

“Surely you don’t expect me to say on the phone?”

“I—Yeah, all right, I see where you coming from. This number’s no good for me after today, man. Leave me one where I can call you, when I got it set up.”

“I’ll give you a number, but I am rarely there in person. My assistant will always know how to reach me, and I’ll get back to you within an hour or two, fair enough?”

I raced back to Michelle’s stroll, saw her getting out of a white Oldsmobile. By the time I closed the distance between us, she had taken a slug of the little cognac bottle she always carried with her, rinsed and spit, and was already snake-hipping her way back toward the underpass. I took her over to Mama’s, set her up in my booth, and told her there was a hundred in it for her to just sit there until the last payphone in the row against the wall that separated the kitchen from the customers rang. The line was a bridge job, forwarded from one of the dead-end numbers I always kept for emergencies—the Mole had set it up so I could divert it by calling and punching in a series of tones.

The phone rang while Michelle and I were still having our soup; the dealer was getting anxious to unload his merchandise.

“It’s him,” is all Michelle said when she came back to the table.

“Quick enough?” I said into the receiver.

“You want to see quick, just fuck with me, and watch how quick you get yourself a problem, man.”

“What’s all this?” I said, hardening my voice. The kiddie-trafficker whose ticket I had canceled had been steel under the sealskin. Stainless steel. If I acted too intimidated, it would be out of character; might spook the bottom-feeder I had on the end of my line. “I thought we were going to do business,” I said, “not sell wolf tickets.”

“I ain’t selling no fucking tickets, man. I’m just saying—”

“Just say where and when, all right? Then you can satisfy yourself I’m straight up, and we can do what we have to do.”

“You know,” he said, barely suppressing his admiration for his own cleverness, “this jewelry we talking about, it’s expensive, man.”

“I heard it was twenty.”

“Twenty- five, man.”

“If it’s as fine as you say it is—”

“It’s finer. You’ll see.”

“When?”

“Tonight, maybe. If you check out. I’m nobody to fuck with, man. ’Long as you understand.”

The pathetic amateur gave me the address of a vacant lot behind a deserted tool-and-die plant in South Jamaica. That wasn’t the amateur part. Telling me about a midnight meet at four in the afternoon, that was.

B y the time I pulled into the back lot behind the wheel of a gunmetal Mercedes four-door, Max was dialed into the molecular vibrations of the empty building as if he’d been part of the first concrete poured into the foundation. The Mole had dropped him off, driving one of those Con Ed trucks he seems to be able to “find” whenever he needs one. Probably the same place he had found the Mercedes.

I got out, dressed in a dark-gray suit, a white silk handkerchief in the breast pocket matching the white shirt I wore without a tie. I spotted the target, but acted as if I hadn’t. He was lounging in the shadows of the back wall, cleverly dressed all in black. I lit a cigarette and paced in tight little circles, glancing at my watch: 11:51.

He let me wait a few minutes. Not because he was a pro, but because making people do what he wanted made him feel more like himself.

He rolled up on me out of the darkness, like some movie ninja. I jumped back, fake-startled.

“You got something to show me?” he said, voice swollen with confidence now that he was sure he was dealing with exactly what he expected—a nervous man with a heavy fetish and a heavier wallet.

“Sure,” I said, keeping my voice soft.

“I got to search you first,” he said. “You know the routine.”

“What do you—?”

“Oh, fuck it, man! Just turn around, assume the position. I got a piece, see?” he said, holding up some little pearl-handled popcorn-pimp special. “You do anything stupid, and— pow! —that’s all they is for you. Way out here, nobody find your body for a month.”

“Listen,” I said, standing with my arms extended away from my sides, “just take it easy, okay?”

His pat-down was just like him—rough and stupid.

“All right, man. You can turn around.”

“Can I see her now?” I said, a little too eagerly.

“You know what I got to see first, right?”

“Sure, sure. I brought it.”

“You brought twenty-five K with you?”

“Yes. I didn’t want to…drag this out. You’re not going to rob me, are you?”

“I fucking should, dumb as you are, man. Show it to me.”

“It’s in the trunk. I put it in a briefcase, so you could—”

“Well, open it, motherfucker.”

“Sure. Just don’t—”

I unlocked the trunk. As it slid up, I stepped aside, and the nose of the Prof’s double-barreled sawed-off went jack-in-the-box on the pimp.

“Surprise!” the little man said.

“Hey, man. I—”

Max had him by then. The little pistol dropped from the pimp’s nerve-dead hand.

The Prof climbed out of the trunk, the sawed-off never wavering from the pimp’s midsection.

“I think we should talk now,” I said.

I nside the building, I used my pencil flash to illuminate a clear spot. Max crooked his left forearm around the pimp’s neck, grabbed his own right biceps, and curled his right hand over the top of the pimp’s head.

“All he has to do is squeeze now,” I said. “You understand?”

“Look, man—”

“Sssh,” I said, gently. “There’s nothing for you to be worried about. I kept my word, didn’t I?”

“I—”

“Ssssh,” I said again. “You know I’m not a cop now, right?”

“Yeah, man. I was—”

“But you, you do have the girl, right?”

“Nah, man. I was just trying to run a game, you know?”

“If that’s true, you’re a corpse,” I said, not raising my voice.

I brought my thumb and forefinger together. Max tightened the noose. The pimp’s eyelids fluttered. I moved my fingertips apart.

The pimp gasped a few times.

“Want to try again?” I asked him.

“It ain’t what you think, man. I swear! It was all her idea.”

“ This ‘her’?” I said, showing him the photo with my flashlight.