Frenzy (10 page)

Each of them had a substantial national rep. He sent each man a down payment consisting of five crisp hundreds, just to get their attention, with ticket for a round-trip turnaround, and he was picking up the whole first-class tab: hotel, food, all expenses. Two thousand easy bucks, cash, for a twenty-four-hour consultancy and back home. No strings. An easy deuce.

His first interview was with "Beechie" Meeks, a Detroit private op who'd been with Wells and Pinkerton, two of the big four, and then gone out on his own with good success. He'd become famous for rescuing the fifteen-year-old son of a senior executive who'd been lured out to the West Coast by a religious cult, and whom Meeks had also subsequently managed to get deprogrammed from his former zombielike state. The kid proved to be actively, vocally antizealot and was sufficiently articulate and newsworthy that media gave it lots of ink and the odd name "Beechie" Meeks got a week of heavy press.

Beechie Meeks made a great first impression. He looked like a private eye in the movies. Good-looking guy with a tough, intelligent appearance and demeanor. Dressed to the nines in a beautifully tailored three-piece banker's charcoal-gray and a conservative Countess Mara under a snowy-white shirt collar, he looked like he might be a successful young attorney who was a former rodeo cowboy, now specializing in corporate mergers — the Marlboro man dressed up for church.

And then he had to spoil the initial impression by opening his mouth. Isn't that always the way? Superficially at least, Beechie Meeks was overly assertive, offensively venal, and absurdly hyper. A kind of megalomaniacal, Napoleonic little dude who sat there pontificating to Spain in his toy-store suit and diminutive wing tips, letting him hear the unabridged, complete Beechie Meeks Story, chapter and verse.

Still, he could probably get the job done. He didn't rule the little man out just because he was a self-promoter or because he acted like Jimmy Cricket wired on speed. Sometimes these cocky little guys were good. And that was the main thing here, getting it done. The problem was Beechie didn't strike Spain as trustworthy. Number one, he'd be a money funnel, no question. That was acceptable, but the serious problem would be later. What guarantee would he have that Meeks wouldn't tell all ex post facto? He was too fond of media. Too much the entrepreneurial hype man. And Spain didn't want publicity. Pass.

He brought in a private investigator from Cleveland whose name was Mel Troxell. The lawyer had told him, "Troxell is damn good but he's gonna be hog-high."

Spain said, "Mr. Troxell, you come highly recommended. But to give us a place to start, what can you do for me that I can't do myself?"

"First I'd like to know who recommended me," the man replied, somewhat crisply.

"I have to protect my sources just as I'm sure you do. But let's just say it was someone I trust."

"Well" — he shrugged —"fair enough. I always like to know who makes a recommendation. That's valuable information."

Spain was already making his judgment call. He clocked the guy as practiced, very experienced, touchy maybe, a hard case, not too smooth. Spain thought he'd use him. He smiled a little and said, "Can we just say it was someone I have faith in — somebody in the law-enforcement community."

That seemed to placate him and he tilted his head a bit, shrugging again with a little imperceptible movement of the upper torso and saying, "Sure. Yeah. Okay. Answer your question. I can do a hell of a lot of things you can't do."

"Such as?"

"Such as ask questions. I can put operatives on the girl's friends. You can't approach them yourself and hope to get much. Obviously the girl . . . What's your daughter's name?" 

"Tiff. T-I-F-F."

"Obviously Tiff ran away from home. For whatever reason. You've told me a little about the situation here at home with your wife leaving. That may play a part in it. Whatever. Point is, her friends are not going to open up to you the way they will to my people. So the first thing I would do is try to build up a background of information from her friends and acquaintances. I have ways we can do that that you would find impracical if not impossible. The boys she apparently went with, they're going to have talked to somebody. Kids like to brag about where they're going. It just takes work, but that's the kind of thing we're able to do."

"What else do you plan to do to locate her?"

"Oh, I don't know offhand particularly." He was right, the guy was touchy and defensive. "I have a lot of standard places I look for clues, but every case is so different. Every case is totally unique. I'd go through her room, examine everything she left behind. We go through her papers, scrapbooks, just a lot of things that take time and work. Anything that gives us a starting place." He was brusque, somewhat hurried. He was telling Spain with body language. Come on, quit the bullshit, let's go.

"I notice you said clues. What kind of clues is a kid going to leave?"

"Oh . . . Hell, I dunno. The phone bill, for example. I take a look at the phone bill. You'd be surprised at how often we can find somebody just by looking at the unusual long-distance calls. It's all right there in black and white for you if you know how to look for the clues.
You
don't. I do. My operatives do."

"I'm sorry to want to know all this stuff," Spain said. "It probably is a little Mickey Mouse to be asking you how you're going to find Tiff, but all I know about private detectives is what I've seen on TV" — he let himself smile a little —"you know, the old skip-tracer image."

"Well, I don't even use the phrase
skip-tracing.
I mean, that went out in the 1940s, I think. We leave the bounty-hunting and the divorce frames and all that shit to the little mom-and-pop shops all over the country. Guy calls the one in the Yellow Pages with the ad that has a big eye emblem or something. He thinks he's gonna get Sam Spade."

"What kinds of jobs are you mostly involved with?"

"We work for big corporations, as you probably already know. I do a lot of security stuff, video surveillance, industrial stuff."

"Homicides?"

"Jesus!" Troxell chuckled. "You know how many homicide cases I've been on in thirteen years? One. That's the television bullshit. That crap is all bullshit. The police do homicides. PI firms don't touch 'em. Oh, once in a blue moon some aspect of a murder might, uh, have to do with insurance liability, but I ..."

As he spoke, Spain concentrated on the man, not the words, as he had been doing as he asked the first random questions that had occurred to him. This was what Spain had learned to do. He could read you as you responded, and he did it visually and intuitively. And suddenly he got the clear picture on this man. He could see this man was extremely intelligent. He was having to work not to use larger words in his responses. He was having to alter his vocabulary as he spoke, and the bluff, touchy exterior was role-playing. He used this, Spain figured, to create a slightly false impression. To help you drop your guard while he assessed you himself. At that instant Spain decided he'd use him for sure.

"Well, the only reason I asked, I noticed you were wearing a firearm there." He glanced toward the gun and the man slightly pulled his sport coat over the piece. "And I didn't know private individuals could still get gun permits."

Spain noticed he looked rough, but in the facial features. The clothes said smooth. He knew the shoes must have gone for about a hundred and a half. The guy was making money or dressing like it.

"Yeah. We can carry in Cleveland. Got a thing there called the Private Police Commission, licensed by the City of Cleveland. You take these firearms courses 'n' that, and when you graduate, they let you apply to carry. And you can get a permit, and you can operate in that fashion ..." He trailed off.

"These boys that took her. I have no idea if they are dangerous or what problems your people might encounter in getting her back safely. Is it legal, then, for you to" — he glanced toward where the man carried the gun — "protect yourself or someone else in that kind of situation?"

"The same laws apply toward us as anyone else. We're private citizens who in this case have the ordinary misdemeanor arrest powers or powers to ensure the reasonable safety or well-being of another person. If an individual threatens that safety openly, uh, or is exhibiting hostile or aggressive actions, naturally we got to act in defense. Just as you would if somebody menaced you at the supermarket. You would protect yourself or your daughter. We have the right to act in that same manner. You have to use your head, you know."

"I've heard about some of these cults and how the deprogrammers have to use force and I wondered —"

"We're empowered to utilize a reasonable degree of force in protecting ourselves or our clients."

"How difficult do you think it will be to get my daughter back?"

"The degree of difficulty depends on luck. How much hard work we have to do. The breaks. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you have to pour the man-hours in. It's all how fast the clues develop. Did they have a car? On the phone you said, Yes, they did. That might make it harder, it might make it easier. Usually kids that age go down to the bus station or whatever and they're easy to trace. If they hitch rides, if they do this, or that — see, it's always different. But eventually we find them."

"It just seems so hopeless to me," Spain said truthfully. "I just don't see how you can find a fourteen-year-old girl when we don't even have an idea which direction she went."

"All I can tell you is that it depends on you more than me. I always make my clients a guarantee. If you bankroll me — and by that I mean, if you are willing to keep shoveling the buckets of money in to me, and I warn you it does take buckets of money — if you bank-roll me to that extent, I can find anybody. Anywhere on earth. I guarantee it."

"I can't imagine how," Spain said rather quietly.

"Money. Like I just told you. That's how I find 'em. The same way you got me here. You give me enough money to do the job, and you got her back. I mean, if you're willing to give me an open bankroll. No problem. We'll find her and bring her back."

Spain just looked at him, his face a cold, blank, and immobile stare.

"Money talks."

The experienced hooker would have wondered about the john whose first act on entering a motel room was to turn up the volume on the bolted-down television set.

"We gonna watch soaps?" She'd asked him the question semiseriously, the kid inside her hoping they could kick back and watch the latest
As the World Turns or
some nitwit game show, anything instead of the thing she was having to do to get Greg his easy money.

An experienced whore would have been on her guard. But this was no forty-five-year-old bimbo with ten years' pros experience at dodging freaks, vice cops, and the whips and scorns of time. We're taking about a fourteen-year-old girl. She hadn't even looked up at the guy's face she was so scared and nervous.

It hadn't been so bad so far. Roger and Greg had set her up on the first one. He came on like Mr. Suave. They'd made a deal with him — a freebie if he'd take it super-easy. Yeah, sure, he said. No problem. He loved fourteen-year-olds. He could damn near get off on just the idea. A good-lookin' little piece of tail like that for free? Hell's bells, boys, he promised, I'll be gentle as a lamb.

The second dude had been a married guy she'd picked up outside the bar of a hotel downtown. He couldn't believe his luck. She was so young and innocent looking. And it was such a refreshing change from all the aging broads and uglies that he shot like a skyrocket. All of two minutes on top of her banging away and that's all she wrote. If they were all as fast as the first two, it was going to be easy money, she decided. If she could just keep herself from thinking about it. A little girl dressed in Mommy's clothes and four pounds of eye shadow.

She'd picked the next one, or rather he'd hit on her when she was back on the street a few minutes after leaving the second john's hotel. Just walking around like a little kid. Not thinking about the fact her clothes were selling the product and surprised when this old dude goes, "How much for a party?" And she almost told him to fuck off but caught herself in time.

Greg would be so happy. She already had a wallet filled with money and it was easy money just like that man of hers promised it would be.

"Movie-star money," the john told her in the room. But she could not foresee what was in store. She could not read the signs that a woman of experience might have seen and understood. She was Spain's mixed-up child of a fourteen-year-old daughter. Pure cherry and the third horse out of the chute is a bad one.

It is a business of numbers pure and simple. Hooking is all math. Bucks. Numbers. Sex numbers. Minutes in the saddle. Speed. Fast service and turnover, like a fast burger franchise. All by the old numbers. And the probabilities of problems are numbers again. It becomes a percentage thing. So much chance of getting ripped off. So much chance of a vice bust. So much chance of being hurt. So much of a percent you'll be crippled or offed by a psycho. Numbers.

Rip-offs. Johns. Whackos. Vice collars. Pimps. The life of a street ho is obviously marvelous. One reason why they do it. The bucks. Numbers again. Hers could have would have should have been number three hundred and seventeen or something. That was the john she might have been street-wise enough to protect herself against. But he was number three.