14

There was a missed call from Beatrice on my cell phone. I called her back from the Silverado, and she answered in a voice as warm and sweet as fresh-baked blackberry cobbler. “Got something for you, darlin’. How do you want it?”

“Can you fax it to my office?”

“It’ll be there in five. Just don’t forget about the meatloaf.”

We stopped at the office to pick up the fax. Seven pages, small print. It would take days to get through it. I faxed a copy to Jay’s home computer so he and Eric could narrow the field and pass the likely prospects on to me.

The new-message light on the answering machine was flashing. While Khanh stood in the doorway shifting from foot to foot, I punched the Play button. A man’s thin voice stammered a story about a cheating spouse. I could have used the money, but the resignation on Khanh’s face made me hesitate.

My father had failed her. Hell, life had failed her. Not wanting to be one more letdown on a long list of letdowns, I suppressed a sigh and called back to refer him to another agency.

Khanh gave me a tentative smile. “You good man. What now? Make more plan?”

“I don’t know enough to make a plan,” I said. “All I know to do is cast a wide net and hope we catch something.”

I stopped at the ATM and took out three hundred dollars in twenties. Then, with Khanh at my heels, I spent the afternoon questioning hookers, pimps, and self-styled businessmen on the wrong side of the law. Some I’d met when I was in vice, and some I’d cultivated after I went private.

The message I left was always the same: An Amerasian guy and the man in this picture kidnapped the girl in this other picture. Help us find her, and we’ll make it worth your while.

It was another cool, wet week, and we spent the better part of it dripping our way from one informant to the next. I bought Khanh an umbrella, and when the rain slanted in from the sides, found her a plastic poncho. Titans blue, with the team logo on the front. I exchanged my father’s leather jacket for an Australian stockman’s duster and a waterproof Outback hat with a broad brim. We made two more visits to the ATM, spreading around a chunk of my diminishing savings, twenty dollars at a time.

No one knew the man with the manticore tattoo. Their denials were sincere. No shifting gazes, no nervous tics. He might have been a manticore himself, more myth than man.

I asked about Helix too, with better luck. He had a reputation as a player, strictly minor league until about six months ago, when he’d stashed two high-end call girls in an uptown penthouse. He still kept his third-string girls in a cheap rent-by-the-month hotel, but he’d refurbished an old boarding house in East Nashville for his second string, each room decorated to facilitate a different fantasy. He was making a play for the high rollers, and if they wanted an Asian woman, he would either have one in his stable or find a way to come up with one.

It sounded promising, but if he had a partner, Amerasian or otherwise, either no one knew, or no one was willing to talk about it.

On Tuesday afternoon, the rain subsided into a fine mist that silvered Khanh’s hair in the light. As we climbed into the truck to warm up and dry out, she wiped the rain out of her eyes and said, “Why not go Helix house, see if Tuyet there?”

“It’s on the list.” I punched the heater on. “But right now nothing points to him. Nothing concrete.”

“Wish we check anyway. Make sure.”

“After we find the guy with the tattoo. The manticore. I want some leverage before I talk to Helix.”

“Bird in hand,” she said, tilting the vent up to warm her face. “Father say that too.”

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure which was the bird—the one we knew was involved but couldn’t find, or the one we could find but had no evidence against.

There were two more bombings that week, both meth houses, and by Thursday, For Justice T-shirts and bumper stickers had begun to crop up around town. A letter to the editor in the Tennessean called the bomber an American hero, filling a void left by an impotent law enforcement system. A guy selling shirts on lower broad waved one at us as we passed. It said: Justice: It’s a Blast!

Another showed a bald man in white holding a burning stick of dynamite: Mr. Clean—Keeping Nashville free from scum.

While Khanh and I worked our way through the city’s seediest pawn shops and strip clubs, Jay and Eric pinned posters on community bulletin boards across the city. Then they made their way down Beatrice’s DMV list, searching without luck for our Good Samaritan.

By Friday, Khanh and I had run out of things to say to each other. My feet hurt, and I wanted a hot shower and dry clothes. I wanted to find the tattooed man, too, but wanting something didn’t mean you got it. As my mother used to say, People in Hell want ice water.

“One more place,” I said, pulling into the parking lot of a dingy pink shoebox bar with peeling paint and a neon sign gone dim on one side. Khanh followed me to the front door, and when I opened it, a cloud of cigarette smoke rolled out into the wet night like a spume of volcanic ash. “I know a hooker used to work out of here, street name Amber. She used to get around, keep her ears open. If she’s not here, we’ll call it a day.”

But she was, sitting alone at a table near the front door, where customers would see her when they came in and again when they left. She looked older than I remembered. Bottle-blonde hair, still damp from the rain. Heavy makeup that didn’t quite hide the sores on her hollow cheeks. Thick eyeliner, false lashes, flame red lipstick over blistered lips. She wore a red suede miniskirt and a black lace blouse with a red bra underneath. Black heels and white lace stockings held up by garters. One leg swung up and down beneath the table, dissipating nervous energy.

She looked up at me and blinked. Then recognition dawned in her eyes, and her mouth stretched to reveal a jumble of stained and rotting teeth. Meth mouth.

“Hey, baby.” Her voice was husky, an emphysema hack. “Ain’t seen you around in a while. Heard you was off the job.”

“Gone private.” I pulled a chair out from the table for Khanh and slid into the one beside Amber. A bored-looking waitress took our orders and came back with a pair of Budweisers for me and a Kirin for Khanh. I pushed one of the Buds toward Amber and kept the other.

Her chipped nails picked at the skin of her forearms, where a patch of scaly green skin said she’d been mainlining krocodil. Known as a poor man’s heroine, the Russian drug was made from codeine, gasoline, paint thinner, and other toxins, and was known for rotting the user’s body from the inside.

Amber was walking dead. She just didn’t know it yet.

Or maybe she did.

She squinted at me through the cigarette haze. Didn’t flinch when I touched the skin beneath her eye, where there was a bruise too dark for the makeup to hide.

I said, “Jerome do this to you?”

She waved my hand away. “Could be. Or maybe some john. All the same, you know? What brings you here, baby? Slumming?”

I showed her both pictures and ran down the story, and when I’d finished, she sat back in her chair, scratching at her cheeks like she had bugs under the skin. “I seen that guy around.”

“He a john?”

“Maybe, but I never did him. Not his type, I guess. And I’m not sorry, either. Dude got crazy eyes. Mean, you know?”

“Where can I find him?”

She shifted in her seat, breasts pushed out, legs spread. “Little somethin’ to make it worth my while?”

I gave her a twenty from my new wallet.

“Big spender,” she said, and stuffed it into a pocket sewn inside the waistband of her skirt.

“It’s pretty generous, considering you haven’t actually told me anything. If what you’ve got pans out, I’ll bring you another one.”

“I seen him at Ray Salazar’s place. You know, down off Broad. Adult videos, sex toys, peep booths in the back. I was givin’ a little show, and this guy comes in. I remember on account of the tattoo.”

“He watched your show?”

“For a while. He jerked off, and then he laughed this real mean laugh and called me some names in another language and got up and left.”

“What other language?”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t Spanish or French. Or Chink or German. He sounded kind of like Dracula.”

“Then how did you know he was calling you names?”

“The look on his face, he sure as hell wasn’t calling me sweetheart.” She scratched at her arm, then held up a bloody fingernail and grimaced. “This guy targets working girls? Should I be worried?”

“We don’t know enough to tell, but I’d say it’s just as well for you you’re not his type.”

The waitress drifted by, and I paid for the drinks. Then Amber walked out with us so anyone watching would think I’d paid for services rather than information. We stood under a leaky awning and waited fruitlessly for the drizzle to dissipate. “Need a ride?” I said, finally. “Drive you to rehab.”

She barked a laugh. “Been there, done that. Didn’t take. Besides, I still gotta bring in another couple hundred or Jerome’ll—” She stopped, looked into my face. “I forgot what a Boy Scout you are. You get any redder, you’re gonna bust a vessel.”

I drew in a calming breath, blew it out. The Zen detective. “He’ll kill you one of these days. If the kroc doesn’t get you first.”

“No great loss. Might be a relief, I guess. But just as likely he’ll get himself offed.”

“And then?”

“There’s always another Jerome. A girl’s got to have somebody watchin’ out for her.”

“He’s watching out for you, all right. He’ll watch you right into the boneyard.”

For a moment, anger cleared the glaze from her eyes. “Two years, I don’t see you. Now you wanna come here and get all up in my business? Fuck that. Fuck rehab. And fuck you.”

Khanh watched her go, then looked at me and said, “She like you wallet. But not so crazy about you.”