The Schwarzschild Radius (12 page)

t was on Tenth and Twenty-third among all the other vice dens that were displaced from forty-second Street under Mayor Giuliani.
PLEASURE PALACE
flashed in red neon with a purple nude girl lying down with one leg up.
LIVE GIRLS
flashed up a neon staircase. Buddy booths available. Today’s special was two DVDs for seven dollars. In the window, there were love dolls with their latex mouths open in a silent scream.

Detective McKenna flashed his badge at the goon at the door and asked to see the manager.

Zoltan Perlman came downstairs and said some words in Hebrew to his assistant. Another flash of the badge and McKenna asked if the girl called Tia Chan, AKA Olivia Wallen, ever worked here.

The Israeli glanced at the picture and replied, “For a few weeks. She quit months ago.”

“I need exact dates. You keep records, I assume.”

“Sure we keep them. Give me a minute.”

McKenna was standing in front of the sex toy rack. They sold latex cocks the size of salamis in a butcher shop. The owner came back with some papers.

“This is her application and driver’s license. She was over eighteen.”

“Why’d she quit?”

“She just stopped showing up, so I don’t have a termination date. But we hired another girl right after her. I think it was two months ago.”

“What about this girl?” McKenna showed him the picture of the other girl in the video.

“She works here.”

“She here now?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Perlman aimed his booming voice at the top of the stairs. “Ram, is Sonia here?”

“She’s with a customer.”

“Please get her over here,” said the detective to Perlman.

Not once did Perlman ask what this was all about.

The girl came down wearing a bathrobe, to McKenna’s relief. She looked way underage with long, dirty blonde hair cut straight across at her waist with Hannah Montana bangs. The detective could see the beautiful body moving beneath the terry cloth white robe.

“NYPD.” He flashed his badge. “You know this girl?” He held out the photo.

“We used to work together.”

“Not just here, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you did other work together. You made a video together.”

“Yeah. We did.” The girl tightened the belt of the bathrobe.

“She disappeared last week.”

“I know,” she said to the photograph as though talking to Olivia.

“Any idea where she is?”

She shook her head.

“She ever mention anyone she might be staying with? Anyone she had a problem with?”

“No.”

McKenna felt funny as the moaning from the porn booths appended itself to his every question.

“Look, you made a porn movie with her, I know you know more than that.”

She closed the neck of the bathrobe with her hand and McKenna thought that was pretty ironic considering what she did upstairs.

“I made lots of those movies. I don’t even know the names of the guys I worked with.”

“Could I see some ID, Miss?”

“I’ll have to get my purse.”

McKenna could bet money this girl was underage, no matter what that ID said. But that wasn’t what he was here for.
Doesn’t even know the names of the guys she works with. Christ.

She came back with a driver’s license that was a good fake.

“This says Hannah. He just called you Sonia. Stage name?”

She nodded. He gave it back.

“Who approached you about making the porn flick?”

“A guy came up to me in the street and asked if I’d be interested in doing some modeling. When I got there, he said he’d pay a lot more for adult movies. Then I asked Olivia if she was interested. She was.”

“What’s his name? The porn producer.”

“He just called himself Skip.”

Skip. That was about right
, thought McKenna.

“When was the last time you saw her or spoke to her?”

“About a month ago.”

“Here’s my card, Miss. Give me a call if you remember anything that could help us find her. She’s been gone over a week. That’s usually a bad sign.”

McKenna sat in his car and forced down the rest of the Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. It was tepid. He was losing sleep in the last few days and wasn’t sure if it was the extra coffee or the case. He had a hard time with missing kids. When adults got killed, he could still go home and turn on the football game. Not when he was working a missing kid’s case. He was estranged from his own daughter and he missed her, but at least he knew she was alive and safe. But to have a kid vanish on you. To not know if you’d ever see her again―he didn’t know how these parents dealt with it. Especially if they blamed themselves.

McKenna blamed himself for losing Brittany. He had always been short-tempered, but the whiskey had made him go ballistic too many times in front of her. She had seen him at his worst. That was the father she knew. She had told her mother that she was afraid of him. That he should go back to Afghanistan and do what he did best. That still hurt.

His one hope in life was to redeem himself in her eyes. He’d be happy to find himself a new wife, but he had to win his daughter back.

He looked at Olivia’s picture. The Pleasure Palace was another dead end. It was time to start at the beginning. Father Massey.

rom what Detective McKenna said, Sonia had to know more than she was letting on
, thought Rachel. There had to be a way to find out. There was always a way. She went to see Brother Horace about getting some new ID.

“I want to see Tarik about getting some paperwork,” Brother Horace said to the clerk in the New Amsterdam Smoke Shoppe.

The cashier jerked his head toward the back.

Rachel told him she wanted a driver’s license in the name of Lisa Barino, eighteen. Tarik took the order like a civil servant, then snapped a quick picture and collected the fifty dollars.

“Do people ever order a license and then never pick it up?”

“Not usually.”

“If Olivia Wallen ordered something here, I’ll pay for it and give it to her. Can you please look?”

The Pakistani looked through a leather satchel, then said, “No one by that name.”

As they left the smoke shop, Rachel said, “Brother Horace, I’m desperate to find her. You know what it’s like to lose someone. Isn’t there anything else you can tell me that might help?”

“‘Fraid I’m not much help there. But the police are already looking for her. What can you do that the police can’t do better? I have an aunt in Georgia. Whenever I needed something really bad I would call her and she would pray and it would happen. She does some powerful prayin’. I know it sounds like bullshit, but some can pray better than others. Some have it down. I’ll call her tonight.”

“Thank you.”

Rachel considered Brother Horace’s words.
What can you do that the police can’t do better?
The police couldn’t spend the night in a youth shelter or mix with runaways on the streets. And there was at least one more thing the police couldn’t do.

Rachel stood in the bathroom of a pizzeria next to the Pleasure Palace. She had changed out of her baggy runaway jeans and sneakers into a pair of Olivia’s tight black jeans and the black high heels she had bought for the prom, but never got to use. After brushing her hair straight down over her shoulders, she tied off the denim shirt under her breasts. Lots of girls had told her the boys thought she was nice-looking, but had to work on her wardrobe and do something with her hair. It never bothered her. She liked dressing like a librarian or a research scientist, which is what she was. Now, looking at the finished product, she was pleased with what she saw, but anguished over what she was about to do.