Andrew Vachss - Mask Market

A business-class ticket on the Acela Express gave me access to the “quiet car”—the one place on the train where cell phones were banned. I had figured it would be packed—the cars I walked through to reach it sounded like they were full of magpies on angel dust—but it was just about empty.

I cracked open my newspaper. A human—the paper called her a “mother”—in Florida had been prostituting her little girl for years. Twenty bucks a trick. Extras were extra. Her older daughter, almost twelve, had finally resisted the beatings. So the mother just sold her outright. A used car plus five hundred in cash, and some lucky vermin got to make his slimy dreams come true.

I wished I had a bullet for every one of them. Not a simple death-dealer, a magic bullet—the kind that would take one life and give back another.

In my world, you get even because you’re nothing if you don’t, but it’s never enough. It can’t be. You can’t really get even. You can make someone who hurt you dead, but whatever they took from you is never coming back.

The ride was less than three hours, right on time. Even more on time was the canary-yellow Corvette convertible waiting at the curb outside, a truly spectacular redhead behind the wheel.

“Toni?” I said, as I walked up to her.

“Who else?” she answered, grinning.

S ome women get annoyed if you stare at their breasts. This gorgeous Titan didn’t care where I looked, so long as it wasn’t at her Adam’s apple.

“So you’re Michelle’s big brother,” she said, appraisingly. “Somehow, I thought you’d be…”

“Better looking?”

“No!” she giggled, patting my thigh.

“More sophisticated? Smarter? Taller?”

“Stop it! I just meant…Well, you know Michelle. She’s so…refined. You look a little rough around the edges, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“You’re not the first. And most don’t say it so euphemistically.”

“ That’s what I was looking for! Michelle said you were a real intellectual.”

“Is that right?” I said, reaching into the breast pocket of my Harris-tweed jacket and slipping on a pair of plain-glass spectacles.

“Oh, those are perfect! You’re some kind of investigator, aren’t you?”

“I guess I am.”

“Well, anyone who works with that husband of hers must be smart. That Norm, he’s a genuine genius, she says.”

“She’s not lying,” I promised, finally learning the name Michelle assigns the Mole for social occasions that require bragging. “He’s way past being a genius. Their son’s going to win a Nobel Prize someday.”

“Terry? That’s if Hollywood doesn’t grab him first. That is a gorgeous young man!”

“That’s outside my area of expertise.”

“What exactly are we doing, you and me?” she said, making it clear she was just curious—the answer would have no effect on her participation.

“We’re going to look at a house. You already have the address.”

“A house you’re thinking of buying?”

“No. There’s a woman living there; it’s her I’m interested in,” thinking, Michelle said she was one of us. “Interested in professionally.”

“Oh?”

“Michelle told you what I do for a living?”

“Well, of course. Like I said. You’re some kind of investigator, aren’t you?”

“An investigator who doesn’t know one end of this part of the country from another.”

“Toni the Chauffeur, at your service,” she said, saluting.

“I appreciate it, Toni. Very much. But this isn’t about finding a house as much as it is finding a way inside it, do you follow me?”

“In broad daylight?” she said, sliding the ’Vette through an intersection on the caution light.

“We’re not talking about a burglary here. I want to talk to the person who’s inside—who I hope is inside. Not because she’s the one I’m looking for; because she can…maybe…lead me in the right direction.”

“And you don’t think she’ll be, what’s the word you guys use, ‘cooperative’?”

“I can’t even guess,” I said, truthfully.

“So where do I come in?” Toni asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” I told her. “I was hoping you might have some ideas.”

“T his neighborhood is first-tier,” Toni said, her sheer-stockinged legs flashing in the sun as she changed gears. “Not absolutely top of the heap—the plots are too small for that. But these are all seven-figure houses.”

“There’s slums in New York where you could say the same thing.”

“Oh, I know. Michelle showed me around the last time I was up. I couldn’t believe it.”

I looked down at the map spread open in my lap. “What’s a ‘crescent’?” I asked.

“If you mean when they use it for an address, it’s just a fancy name for ‘street.’ Probably shorter than most, maybe a cul-de-sac. How far…?”

“Next left.”

“How fast do you want to go by?”

“Like we’re just passing through. On our way to somewhere.”

“What number?” she asked, turning in.

“Twenty-nine.”

“Be on your side.”

The house was two stories with an attached garage. Dark green, with white shutters around the windows.

“Nothing special,” Toni said. “Four bedrooms, three baths, probably. But they spent seriously on the landscaping.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I said. We were at the end of the block, and Toni turned the Corvette onto a slightly wider street.

“Those back trees are old growth,” she said. “The way the plantings were arranged beneath them, it’s almost like outdoor bonsai, with the flower beds and those hedges and all.”

“A privacy thing?”

“Could be. You think whoever you’re looking for could be staying there?”

“You should consider a change of careers,” I told her.

“You mean I’m right?” she said, flashing another smile.

“On the money.”

“Let’s get coffee,” she said.

“T his is her?” Toni asked, holding the blown-up photo of Beryl Preston. The redhead’s long nails were beautifully manicured, heavy bracelets concealing wide wrists.

“Yep.”

“How long ago was this taken?” A woman’s question. A suspicious woman.

“I don’t know exactly. But she’d be in her early thirties now, so it looks recent, don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” she said, grudgingly.

“I was going to just walk up and see who answers the door. But…”

“What?”

“Well, you’re about the age of the girl I’m looking for. A bit younger, sure, but close enough.”

“Yes?” she said, widening her improbably greenish eyes.

“If you were to just ring the bell, and say you were looking for Beryl, who knows? Her mother—that’s the woman who lives there—might just call her downstairs or something. Hell, it might be Beryl herself who answers the door. She’s got no reason to think anyone would be looking for her here.”

“But she does know people are looking for her?”

“Oh yeah.”

“This isn’t a—?”

“What did Michelle tell you?” I said, letting my voice harden.

“I know,” she said, working her lips like she was making a decision.

I sipped my hot chocolate, feeling the minutes slow-click against the clock in my mind.

“Let’s talk outside,” she said.

“I was a runaway,” Toni said. “I didn’t know what I was, but I knew what I wasn’t. Do you understand what I’m—?”

“Yeah,” I said. And I did.

“I…My family had money. They sent me to…professionals. That didn’t work: I was still a girl inside, no matter what they called it. I was…I was sad, but I wasn’t suicidal. Until they sent me to the healer.”