Andrew Vachss - Mask Market

“You think if you ‘rescued’ them they’d jump at the chance to be stuffed into some basement, sewing until their fingertips got paralyzed or they went blind from the lousy lighting? Fucking’s not just better paid; it’s easier work, too.”

“Work?” I said, thinking back to how I had dismissed that woman in the blood lab as a “sex worker.” Not liking myself for it now.

“It is work,” she said, as hotly composed as a high-school debater. “The higher up the scale you go, the better it’s paid. And safer, too. You know those legalized houses they have in Nevada? When’s the last time you ever heard of a girl being killed in one of them?”

“I don’t think I ever did.”

“Right!” she said, triumphantly. “Those serial killers, they grab girls off the streets, not out of houses.”

“So an escort service is better?”

“You know about that, too, huh? That was when I was still learning. I worked in houses, too. But, really, it’s all the same. You only have yourself. They promise you all the ‘security’ in the world, but when you’re alone in that room, it’s all on you.”

I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t a strategy—her hate had just run me empty.

“And it’s the same when you’re all alone in the world,” she said. Slowly, as if concerned I’d miss something important. “You know where I learned that?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, that’s right, Mr. Knight in Shining Armor. In a little room. A little girl in a little room. All alone. That’s what you brought me back to. My hero.”

W e stopped one more time, to switch places. The Porsche was supposed to be the lawyer’s car, not the client’s.

I hit my phone. “It’s me,” I said, when it was picked up at the other end.

“She was home an hour and fifteen minutes ago,” Toni said. “I dropped by with an even better offer. She wasn’t any more interested than she was the last time.”

“You’re a doll,” I told her.

She blew a kiss into the phone.

T he woman who came to the door was dressed in workout clothes, a sweatband around her head, towel around her shoulders.

“What can I—?” she started to say, then froze as her eyes went past me to Beryl.

“Hello, Mother. You’re looking good.”

“I…”

By then we were inside. Beryl closed the door behind us as her mother stood there, mouth half open, as if frozen in the act of speech.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Summerdale,” I said. Oil in my mouth, too-bright smile on my face. “My name is Mestinvah, Roman Mestinvah. I represent your daughter—”

“Represent?” she said, voice hardening. “What do you think you have to ‘represent’ anyone about in this house?”

“Let’s all sit down, Mother,” Beryl said, sweetly. “This won’t take long.”

“It will take less than that for me to call the police,” her mother said, standing with her fists clenched at her sides.

“Do it!” Beryl suddenly hissed at her. “Do it, you fucking cunt.

Come on!”

Her mother sagged like she’d been body-punched.

We all sat down in the living room, like the civilized adults we were. Nobody offered coffee.

Beryl lit a cigarette.

“We don’t allow smoking in—”

Beryl blew a puff of smoke in her mother’s direction.

“Ms. Summerdale, I understand this all may be a bit…traumatic for you, seeing your daughter after all these years,” I said. “We came here in the hopes we can settle things without the need to…well, without the need to leave this room, frankly.”

“What ‘things’?” she said, as Beryl flicked the ash from her cigarette into a crystal vase that held a single blood-red rose.

“Reparations,” Beryl said, on cue.

“What are you—?”

“My client,” I said, holding up my hand as if to stop Beryl from saying anything more, “has a number of causes of action she intends to pursue, Ms. Summerdale. You would, needless to say, be the defendant in any such litigation. And please don’t tell me about the statute of limitations,” I went on, as if she’d tried to interrupt. “A team of eminent treatment professionals has already provided sworn affidavits that my client had suppressed all memory of the horrors inflicted on her until very recently. We are quite confident that we could survive any motion to dismiss.”

“I don’t under—”

“I told them everything, Mother, ” Beryl said, vomiting the last word.

“I have no idea what you think you might have ‘told’ anyone,” the mother said, strength coming back into her voice. “You have a very troubled history, Beryl. Your mental state was never—”

“That’s what happens to little girls who get turned into trained dogs, Mother. Lap dogs, remember?”

“You’re being—”

“You still have your collection of baby-sized speculums, you filthy fucking bitch? You still have your model-train transformer? The one with the extra wires for bad little girls who don’t learn to make Mommy happy?”

“You are insane,” the woman said. Emphatically enough, but I could hear the stress fractures in her voice. “You’ve been insane since you were a child.”

“Nobody’s insane here,” I said, soothingly. “Nobody’s even unreasonable. You see, your husband—your ex-husband, I should say—was very forthcoming, Ms. Summerdale.”

“He never knew any—” she blurted out, before she realized what she was saying, and clamped down on the words.

“He knew more than you ever imagined,” I said, finishing her thought. “And it wasn’t just that he had an idea; he had proof. I wonder if the people who bought your house in Westchester ever found the wires for the microphones.”

She sat there, stone-still, not moving a muscle. Her face was a frozen, expressionless mask.

“Your ‘crafts room,’” I said. “The one with the lock on the door, the double-pad carpet, and the acoustical tiles on the walls. The room where you were teaching Beryl private mother-daughter stuff. The room your husband was never allowed in. You thought he bought that, didn’t you? Everybody needs their own space, right? And, after all, he had his den, didn’t he?”

She still didn’t move. Didn’t react when Beryl dropped her burning cigarette butt into the vase, and immediately lit another.

“There are over twenty boxes of cassette tapes,” I lied. “No video, but the audio makes it clear enough.”

“I was in therapy for years and years,” Beryl said, on cue again. “But I could never figure out what was wrong. If it wasn’t for those tapes, I’d still be loaded up on antidepressants, walking around like a zombie. Good old Daddy. All those years, you thought you had him castrated. But he was doing just what you were doing, only coming at it from a different angle. You were both fucking me. Fucking your little girl. You did it for fun, and Daddy did it for money. Your money. Now it’s my turn.”

“What do you want?” the woman said, dead-voiced. Speaking to me as if Beryl wasn’t in the room.

“My client is going to need a lot of treatment,” I said, greasily. “Expensive treatment. This is much more important to her than digging up the past. What good would that do?”

The mother’s mask shifted. “You think you can come into my own home and blackmail me, you grubby little shyster? I’ve got lawyers that would crush you like the cockroach you are.”

“I’m sorry you characterize a sincere attempt to settle a viable case out of court as ‘blackmail,’ Ms. Summerdale,” I said, reaching for my attaché case. “I did warn you this was a possibility,” I said to Beryl.