Frenzy (9 page)

"What do you want me to do?" she whispered.

"We've got to get some good bucks together fast. You're all I've got. Listen, I need you to pull a couple of dates with guys. Now don't hit the ceiling. I —"

"You WHAT?" She starts laughing. "You want me to
what?'

"I don't
want
it any more than you do. I don't particularly get off on the idea of my future wife having sex with other guys. But if you just —"

"Come on. Don't talk like this. You're nutsy."

"Like it's not such a big deal, anyway. Roger has this guy, nice-looking older dude with lots of money always wanting to get some young stuff. All you got to do is let him do it for a few minutes and we can —" 

"GREG! Stop it."

"Everybody hustles. Couple, three minutes with a guy. It's not like it was a big deal, and you'll come back to me and we'll do lines and fuckin' forget it. And pretty soon we'd have enough I can make our score."

"Fuckin' forget it, all right. You got that part right." She's still laughing at the absurdity of it. "You crazy nut."

"I'm not kidding you. You've got to do it to help us. I don't like the idea either, but we've got a big chance here. I love you, doll. I want to get a home for us. A new start. But it's never going to work if you keep telling me to forget it. How would you like it if, uh, when you told me you wanted me to take you away from that old man of yours, I'd said, Bullshit — forget about it. You wouldn't have liked it much, am I right?"

She looked over at him. He was serious about this. "I want us to be together but I want it to be right. This wouldn't make it right. If you're really serious, just put it out of your mind. I couldn't do it if I wanted to, which I don't. I'm not that kind of girl."

"I know that, angel. I
know
you're not that kind of girl." He began backing off it as he always did. He'd accomplished all he'd set out to do — put the germ of the idea in there for her to play with. He gave her a big smile. "We'll find a way. Don't worry about it." He lit the rock and took a lungful of the wonderful Dynamite White. A little piece of the rock.

"Ooof. Awesome," he said.

"Bastard," she chided him with a smile as he offered her the little glass pipe. "You really had me going." Greg looked as handsome as a movie star to her, she thought.

"Ummm." He smiled noncommittally.

She let out a big hit of it and they sat there on the edge of the bed together, listening to it crack as it cooked away, blowing both their minds with its magic, and they sat there quietly smoking, awed by the instant transformation. And the smoke made them both supremely intelligent, brilliantly wise, and impervious to the slings and arrows that wound lesser mortals.

As long as we're together we're never going to die, she thought, by chance quite correctly.

"How good is his shit?" Greg asked Roger.

"This is Cocaine MacNugget, my man."

"Do what?"

"Superpure and superpotent. Guaran-fuckin'-teed to kick your brain in the ass, and it's our shot."

"How cool is this guy?"

"Hey. He's fucking golden, man. He's never burned any damn body with this good shit of his. We can come out on top with this one. He's got the most unstoppable, unstepped-on Dynamite White you can buy. Shit we can cook up into the best crack on the street. Two ounces will make enough pellets for five hundred fucking vials, Greg, and that's not even counting our own smoke. It's a beautiful deal, man. But we gotta move on it.

"Fuck it. Let's do it."

"Turn the bitch out, champ. We need it soon as you get it."

"No sweat," he said, grinning. "She'll be a fuckin' gold mine down here."

The new junk disease was endemic to neither ghetto, barrio, locale, region, country, nor people. It was ubiquitous, nondiscriminatory, and omnipotent. It could be found everywhere from East Forty-second Street to East L.A., and it was available to everyone from street animals to Granny. It would write some beautiful stuff on the slate of your mind for a heavenly quarter-hour and then take you back down on a roller-coaster rush ninety floors down to the basement.

The problem is that your brain loves the shit, and when you come down almost as fast as you went up, your brain says, WHOA! Wait a minute now. Do some MORE of that. That was
good.
You want that rush again, and right away. And you don't stop to be logical. You just want the rush. And that's the place the kid was taking her, the first pit stop on the race to hell. And he was loving every minute of it. His friend was nudging him.

"So?" Roger said with his sly grin.

"Yeah?"

"Let's move on it."

"Yeah," Greg said impatiently. "I just said fine. No sweat. You say he's golden, he's golden. Do it."

"Shit, man, I DONE my part. I mean, you got to get the bitch cunt pullin' the train. I mean he ain't gonna wait forever."

"What the fuck you want a goddamn instant fucking
miracle.
You just told me about the deal and like I'm supposed to snap my fingers and produce the money in TWO FUCKIN' SECONDS?"

"Yeah." He laughed. "I'm the candy man, you're the dandy man. You got to get your fuckin' end earnin', champ."

"You tellin' me how to turn a bitch out, are ya?"

"Hey, take it easy asshole."

"YOU take it easy, ASSHOLE."

"I put up MY fuckin' end, champ. I got you down here, in
whose
fuckin' ride, right? I'm the one got us prime to score, nifty. YOU got the bitch. YOU got to get her ass off the dime."

"Whyncha' FUCKIN'
RUSH
ME a little more f'r crissakes." When Greg lost his cool he sounded like he was about ten years old, Roger thought. "She's OFF it awready."

"Calm down, Wonder Warthog. I just fuckin' with your head. But seriously, man, I know you realize if we want the double ounce we got to get up and POUNCE." He held out his hand and Greg didn't slap it for him. He was still pissed but Roger knew he'd get the message. The bitch was going onto the set.

It was celebration time after her decision last night and they were smoking, letting it take them right on out there and she was sailing and soaring, flying higher than she'd ever flown before, working without a net, smart and tough enough to do it, and the rush was so wonderful that all she could do was just sit there and look at it happening and go, "Ohhhhh."

And he said, "Ummm."

And she giggled and toked, holding it in as he took a hit and they went, "Mmmm . . . " at the same time, and smiled, laughing on the inside as they let all that white smoke out thinking how awesome it was.

And Greg thought three things, oh, yes — it is good, and flat little-boy tits, and let this awesome shit turn you out, darlin' — all three thoughts simultaneously. And with crack, thought is deed.

"Umm," she said softly as he pulled up her shirt and ran his fingers softly over the boyish chest feeling the nipples harden as his fingertips lightly brushed over them, looking at her breasts.

"Ummmmmm." She was flying way, way out there, and it was all so good and so right for the moment and so magical.

"Oh, yeah," he whispered to her, absentmindedly taking the nipple gently and just holding it between thumb and finger, holding it tenderly and knowing that he could squeeze, not squeeze pull touch kiss suck lick do any fucking thing he wanted they were all his and his power surged through his fingertips and she felt and sensed the heat as it penetrated the smoke and she winced a little as the hotness of it surprised her, and he let the magic flow from his touch and through her breast, a suffusive warmth spreading instantly up her chest and throat and into her face, and he saw it and leaned forward to kiss the hot places, expertly, laughing his cracked laughter and thrilled by the enormity of his power.

Last night there had been a candlelight-and-wine dinner, but that would soon be only white wine under the bridge, because she was going "on the set" for the first time. Even now she sat there in what he called her "ho outfit," a ridiculously short mini hiked all the way up to her treasures, and high stiletto-heel boots. The hooker wet-look. She hadn't stopped to question where he got the money for the clothes, or the wine, or the candles, or the smoke. The commitment had been made.

It wasn't the con that had worn her resistance down so much as the crack. Her whole being loved and craved it. She had to have it again and again. It made things so beautiful and right and warm and wonderfully manageable. It made order out of disorder and gave life a new meaning; it was the master plan of the addict religion. The purpose and joy of life in two words: get more.

It was what made her a princess again, and safe, and in the arms of a lover who was going to protect her and hold her and give her all the love in the world and never leave her. And for that kind of a lover you have to make a few sacrifices.

"Easy money, doll." That's what he'd said to Tiff. It was one of his key phrases, constantly repeated, that would keep echoing. He used it to describe the prostitution and the dope deal, interchangeably. It was like his "highest form of love" con, used as a mini-argument in itself, reinforced by repetition, and later she'd have time to realize the heavy irony as easy money's resonance rang in her ears.

"Movie-star money," was the phrase the john had used. She'd remember what these men said later. Her men, she thinks. The men who helped her earn that easy, movie-star money.

But bathed in the cracking, white smoke screen of a new love, the prospects of her frightening new career had lost a lot of the former onerous-ness. It was now merely oppressive as opposed to unthinkable. Crack was self-propelling. It generated serious money. All it took was that initial nest-egg score. She needed to make some fast money. Easy money. And she was fourteen, and what had been ludicrous was now reality, and she looked at the curls and heard him say, "Pretty pussy," and her cat's eyes blinked, and she looked up at the magic mirror on the wall. And the mirror was clouded with smoke and did not reply to her stare.

And Greg watched her, looking over at her in her work clothes, looking at her with his West Coast eyes with the improbable lashes and smiling his white, Beverly Hills grin, thinking how boring little girls always became. He already had his eye on someone else. He'd cut Tiff loose just as soon as he got some fuck-you money.

"Stand up a minute," he commanded. Obediently she stood. "C'mere. Walk over here and let me look."

She stood right in front of him, standing between his spread legs. Her eyes closed and she tilted her head from side to side as he nuzzled her, moving her head the way you do when you have a stiff neck. Her fingers tangled in his long, curly hair.

"Ummmf." She couldn't hear what he said as he held her up close against him, running his smooth, hot hands up and down her tanned legs, cupping her cheeks and running his hand down her thighs and the back of her legs and feeling the tops of the slick, high-heeled boots, saying something to her, and the words muffled and lost as he pressed his mouth against her. Thinking to himself, What a guy.

Disconsolate, and for the first time in his adult life in fear of losing the only thing he has ever valued, Spain dedicates himself to finding her and bringing her back. Even he has no idea as to the vast amounts of time and energy, or the staggering sum of money that such an exhaustive search entails. He only knows he wants Tiff back. His daughter has disappeared like a puff of smoke. And he must use what tools he has at hand: the hunter's eye, enormous financial resources, and a web of contacts in the dark places.

When Spain did a piece of work he generally did not have to track an individual down to — as the jargon has it —"access" them. However, the few exceptions involved his subcontracting that aspect of the job to some ancillary worker or agency. He could not remember a time when he worked otherwise, even early in his career. There were so-called bounty-hunters around the country working for or as bail bondsmen. A number of these were notoriously willing to travel less-legal avenues if the fees were righteous enough. He had a couple of former cops working in other fields whom he'd also farmed subordinate action out to, and he considered the options confronting him.

He knew what he had to do. He'd stay legal with it. There was too much open here. He was too vulnerable already because of all the notoriety involved. Too many people had come into this no-longer-private matter. There would be a paper trail. Questions. Police intervention, perhaps. He would have to go the legit route. Find a top private-detective firm and put them on some outrageous retainer. Let them reach out for her. The trail was already cold and the clock was ticking.

He knew the sort of private sleuth he was wanting. Spain called an attorney who was connected and who owed him, and added a few names to the list of possibilities he'd already worked on. He narrowed it down to a list of five firms who had big reps in child-custody work, deprogrammings, kidnapping cases, and the like, and then he got on the phone and started touching base.

Within a few hours he'd eliminated two of the names, one of whom was into big security work now, and the other an agency run by someone who struck Spain as too stupid. There were three left. He eliminated one of those in the course of conversation; the manager appeared to be too enamored of electronic gadgetry and Spain always went with his vibes in these matters. He ended up flying two guys in.