Losers Live Longer (15 page)

“
So the grandparents hired George Rowell. He tracked the girl down after photos of her surfaced on a child pornography website based in the Ukraine. He went over, learned that the girl’s father had involved her with, what was it, a child modeling agency?” Elena nodded. “But not the sort of modeling agency you’d want your child working for. It was all porn, right? Photographing and videotaping naked girls between the ages of seven and sixteen.”

“
Six,” Elena said softly. “There was one girl who was six.”

“
And you,” I said, “how old were you?”

“
Eleven,” she said. “When I started.”

I thought back to being that age, what had I been up to? Moving my lips to an
Encyclopedia Brown
at the public library, not disrobing in front of a camera.

I cleared my throat and asked her, “These people kept you prisoner? Locked up?”

“
No. Not how you mean. We were…prisoners, but not locked up. Where I lived in my country, everyone was poor. These people, they offer us too much money for taking these pictures. Too much to refuse. And the girls, most didn’t mind. It was only being naked. Not sex. Not for most of us. For some girls, it felt exciting, even glamorous. I never liked it. But I had no choice. It was too much money. Cristy—that was the American—she’s like me, she don’t like it either. But she does it, every day, because, well, her father says do it, the other girls, they do it, I do it, what she gonna say, no, I refuse? So they roll tape, they say, ‘Pull, your panties down, darling, bend over, darling, blow a kiss, darling, sweetheart, princess,’ and she do it. I do it. We all do it, with a big smile, show all our teeth.”

I concentrated on keeping my expression neutral. I had to appear the seasoned professional—seen it all—but it was a strain to keep my jaw from dropping open and repeating over and over, “Omigod.”

“
Cristy,” Elena said, “she was living with her father. He would bring her to the studio for sessions. He give her drugs before they shoot, pills, you know, make her more relaxed. Then, end of day, he take her away again. Never told nobody where they lived. But Cristy and I, between shoots, we talk, we became friends. And she told me where they lived. Then later, when George come and say he’s there to take her home…”

“
You told him.”

She nodded.

“
It was like a movie, a spy movie. He need my help,” she said. “He choose me. No other girl, he pick me. I was in store shopping when he approach me the first time. He pretend he need my help buying soup, read the cans. He say, Oh, I’m so happy you speak English so good, can you tell me what this says? And this? And he take me down aisle where nobody is, and then he talk to me serious, say he’s gonna trust me, he’s looking for American girl and do I know her, will I help him?”

“
And you said yes.”

“
Of course I say yes. He was so clever and funny and brave. I liked him at once.” Her eyes were bright with memory, almost as if for a moment, for her, Owl was alive again.

“
All week, he say, he’d been watching the modeling agency, the girls coming and going. He look for Cristy and her father, but that week they don’t come. He don’t know where they are. So I tell him I know where she lives.”

She smiled broadly, remembering with pride.

“
George, he say, Help me get Cristy away from her father, I tell you what to do. You frightened? Of course I’m frightened, but I say no, I want to help. So he teach me a story I’m suppose to say to her father so he’ll let Cristy go out alone. George tell me the story, make me repeat, repeat, till I get it right.

“
Then he walk with me to their apartment. He hide while I ring bell. I was so scared! But when I hear her father’s voice out the intercom, asking what I want, I know what to say, I say what George tell me: the agency want me to take Cristy out shopping, buy clothing for special pictures. I tell him they give me money for the clothes, and for him, too. He buzz me in.

“
Upstairs, father takes the money George give me for him, tell Cristy get you coat, go out with this girl, come straight back, don’t stop nowhere, understand? And Cristy nods, okay, okay, and go downstairs with me. We go four blocks, to a craft shop George showed me. As soon as we walk in, there’s George, and Cristy’s grandfather and grandmother are waiting, and they ask her, Want to come home? And she can’t speak, she cries so much, she just keep nodding, yes, yes, I wanna go home. They put her in a car, go straight to airport.

“
Then George say to me, you gotta go, too. You stay, they hurt you, ’cause you help me. I am last person Cristy’s father saw with her so I am first person he’d come looking for, to ask what happened. I’d never be safe in my country. And George, he know this, he tell Cristy’s grandma and grandpa, you get this girl out, too. They’re very rich, they get me passport, visa. Week later, I am in United States, new name, new life. Not scared. Till now. Now I am scared again. First time since I come here.”

“
Why?”

“
Someone find me,” she said. “Someone from my past. From my country, from my old life. This woman.”

“
Who?”

She hesitated.

“
One of the older girls. I don’t remember her name.”

I didn’t believe her, but I let it pass for now.

“
And how did she find you?”

“
I don’t know!” Elena said. “Maybe it is accident, just walking down the street. She’s here in city now and she see me and find out where I live… and she’s angry, I think she want to hurt me, because I got out while she and the others were left behind. So I call George, tell him this woman’s bothering me, ask him can you help me? And he come. I feel bad when he show up. He look so old. He don’t need my troubles, too. So I say go home, I take care of on my own, but George say, no, if you need help, I help. No way to turn him off.”

I understood. I never could reach my off switch either.

“
So I say, Can you get this woman leave me alone? And George say, yes, we just need something on her, get some lever…”

“
Leverage,” I said.

“
Yes. And we get some. We get, and we are suppose to meet her at café, tell her what we got, George suppose to say leave Elena alone or we spill your beans. But now he’s dead…”

Meet her at café? Well, that told me who the woman was. “That’s what the meeting at Yaffa was supposed to be about?” I said. “Telling this woman to stay away from you?”

She nodded. “We were going to go together. But when I didn’t hear from George, I didn’t go.”

“
Instead you sent your boyfriend, Jeff?”

“
You know?”

“
I was there. I saw him follow Sayre Rauth.”

“
Sayre…? That what she call herself here? You meet her?”

“
I have.”

She tilted her chin at me. “And are you working for her?”

“
No.”

“
Then why are you collecting this for her?” And she nodded toward the black plastic bag on the floor, the one she’d tried to hand me when I came to the door.

“
A man named Paul Windmann hired me.”

She smiled.

“
Oh, Windmann. Did he enjoy his nap?”

“
So that was you then? The woman he picked up and took back to his place?”

“
Yes. It was George’s plan. How we get the lever edge.”

Elena beamed as she described how Owl had cleverly arranged it all. Setting up Windmann, providing the roofie, so they could steal his keys and break into Rauth Realty’s townhouse, where Windmann worked as her second-in-command. George, bless his 84-year-old heart, had done the actual break-in. I could almost hear him crowing about it, chuckling over how he’d neither lost his touch nor fallen behind the times in terms of tools. Once he’d gotten inside, he’d plugged an ordinary iPod into the USB port on her computer and used it to siphon information off her hard drive. The iPod that lay at the bottom of the black plastic bag. The iPod Windmann had hired me to get back for him.

“
But Elena,” I said, turning the plastic bag over in my hand, “if you and George stole her files so you’d have something to hold over her head, why did you agree to sell them back to Windmann? Why were you ready to hand them over to me at the door?”

“
Because everything’s gone wrong!” Elena said. “I can’t reach George, I don’t know where he is, he don’t call…I’m scared again. Maybe something happen to him, maybe if I stay something gonna happen to me. I know I have to go, run, get away. But for that I need money. So I contact Windmann and I sell the files back to him. Only thing I have left to sell, Mr. Sherwood. I’m not eleven anymore.”

She stopped talking. The silence pressed down on her. On both of us.

“
I need to know,” she said finally. “Did George suffer? Was he in any pain? How…”

“
He was dead by the time I got to him,” I said. “Less than a minute. He’d hit his head badly. I think it killed him instantly. I don’t think he suffered.”

Her face went waxy pale and she ran for the bathroom door. She was sick.

I took the iPod out of the plastic bag and powered it up. Brought up the menu. The device had a 40 gigabyte memory, but only one song was listed on the screen. One song, when a machine like this can hold ten thousand. What was on the rest of the machine’s memory? What sort of files had Owl found?

I set the bag aside and looked around the apartment. I opened the writing desk’s drawer. Inside were pens, loose change, utility bills addressed to L. Andrews, pink parking garage ticket stubs probably belonging to the boyfriend.

Hanging over the desk’s chair was a pair of grease-stained coveralls with the name “Jeff” stitched on them. Through the open closet door I could see another couple pairs hanging. I turned to the bookshelf Elena had pointed to earlier. Not searching for any particular title, just allowing my eyes to take them all in. One book on the third shelf down stuck out half an inch farther than all the others in the same row. Its spine was brown.

I pulled it out the rest of the way. It was a tall book titled
The Complete Guide to Tristan and Isolde
. Isolde. As in Enterprises, as in… I opened the cover and there in the upper corner of the first endpage was the owner’s name written in blue ink: “Lawrence J. Addison.” Law Addison.

And Michael Cassidy was the woman Addison had run off with when he skipped out on bail. The same Michael Cassidy who’d had a key to this apartment…

I could almost feel the gears shifting into place.

Owl wouldn’t just have recognized her when she walked in on them—he’d have made the connection between her and her fugitive boyfriend. If Michael Cassidy is back here in New York, he’d have thought, Addison’s probably with her, or not far behind. Or at least she’d probably know where he was.

So Owl must’ve confronted her, told her he knew who she was, told her that if he’d recognized her other people would, too; he’d have convinced Michael Cassidy that if someone was trying to kill her and she wanted to stay out of sight she’d be better off going with him than trying to hide on her own. It was something people said Owl had always been able to do, persuading people, getting them to follow his lead. It had been one of his strengths as a private eye, and now that he was a harmless-looking old man it must’ve been even easier for him—he could play on people’s sympathy, and even the most beautiful young woman wouldn’t worry about his intentions, about going back to this nice old man’s hotel room.

I noticed that the sounds of Elena’s retching had ceased.

I went and looked into the bathroom. She was asleep on the bathroom floor, curled next to the porcelain toilet.

I looked at her cut arm. The blood-soaked t-shirt was brown now, not red.

I let her sleep.

With the black plastic bag in my hand and the hardcover copy of the
Complete Guide to Tristan and Isolde
under my arm, I walked out of the apartment, letting the door swing closed behind me.

I’d come looking for answers. I’d found some, but now I also had a heap more questions. That was life, the deck was stacked; always the questions outnumbering the answers.

The corridor to the vestibule and the street door looked marginally different than when I had gone into the apartment. The telephone directories had been pushed aside and both doors shut. It was relatively quiet cut off from the street noise.