Read Online Mask Market by Andrew Vachss - Free Book Online Page A

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.
    “Yeah! She came up to me, man. This whole thing—”
    “That’s enough,” I told him. “We don’t care how it happened. Some people put up a hundred grand for her. So we want her, and we want her right now. It’s worth the twenty-five we promised, you turn her up, okay?”
    “She ain’t here,” he said.
    “We know that,” I said, barely above a whisper. “That’s not the question you were asked.” I held up my thumb and forefinger again, letting him see the gesture.
    “No, no, man! Listen, I prove it to you, okay? She’s at my woman’s house. Few minutes from here. But she ain’t tied up or nothing, she just sitting there, watching TV. How’s that?”
    “That’s real good,” I said, soothingly. “Now let’s go pick up the package.”
     
    “T his place where your woman has the merchandise, is it an apartment or…?” I asked him. I was behind the wheel, the pimp seated next to me, Max behind him, the choke hold back in place.
    “It’s a private house, man,” he said, a wire-thin twist of pride in his voice. “You know where Union Hall Street is? You just—”
    “I know where it is,” I told him, keying the ignition.
     
    “H ey, man, this ain’t the way to—”
    “Just relax. Be very calm. You know the payphone down that way?” I said, pointing with my whole hand, so the sparkler on my finger would calm him. “A few blocks past the boulevard?”
    “That one? Man, that one hasn’t worked for years. It’s all ripped out and—”
    “It works now,” I promised him. “I’m going to pull up right next to it. We’re going to get out, all of us. What you’re going to do, you’re going to call your woman, understand? You’re going to tell her everything went down just like you planned. What you need her to do is bring the girl outside. Nice warm night, let them sit on the front stoop, so you can see them when we pull up. Soon as we’re sure it’s the right girl, we hand you this,” I said, making a gesture with my right hand. The Prof handed over a hard-sided attaché case. “Look for yourself,” I told the piece of toxic waste sitting next to me.
    He unsnapped the case on his lap. “Damn!” he whistled. “You for real, man.”
    “This is just business, like I told you all along. Maybe a little different than you thought, but it’s the same payoff, right?”
    “Right!” he said. “Look, man, you don’t need this noose around my neck, okay? I’m a businessman, just like you.”
    “Maybe you’re right,” I said, making a sign. Max released his hold. “We’ll trust you that much. But hand the money back over; we’re not going to have you jump out and run.”
    “I wouldn’t—” he started to say, then interrupted himself to hand over the attaché case. I casually tossed it into the back seat, where the Prof caught it deftly.
    “You ever get more like her?” I asked him.
    “Me?” he said, slyly, a man who had just figured things out for himself. There was no reward for the girl he was holding. We weren’t working for her father. That was all cover; we wanted the girl as merchandise, and we expected to get a lot more than twenty-five grand when we retailed her. “Sure! A man in my line of work, I gets all kind of—”
    “Then maybe we can do business again, if your stuff is together enough.”
    “What you mean, together? Didn’t I—?”
    “This place where you’re holding the girl, you said it was a private house? You mean one of those up-and-downs, or are you the only one there?”
    “Just me. And my woman, like I said. It’s perfect, man. Nice and quiet.”
    “Your woman, she got any