Nineteen

“Did she say anything?” I ask.

Roxanne is in the armchair; a bullet wound bleeding antique white stuffing inches from her head. She’s drowning in a borrowed pair of fleece pajamas with her knees pulled up to her chin. Her bare feet are bruised, a purple-yellow cancer spreading from between her toes. Tension pulses in waves through her undernourished frame making her eyes practically bleed, and her dripping nose is that of a pouting child rather than a woman hardened in the kiln of neglect.

She sniffs and shakes her head.

“No note?” I press. “Nothing?”

She glares at me, angry at the repetition.

“OK.” I back off. “We’ll find her.”

The glare intensifies. “You think she’s gone to him, don’t you?”

I shrug, but there’s a reason I bet on horses and dogs rather than play poker.

“Don’t!” She hisses. “Don’t you treat me like a child. I grew up a long time ago.”

“I know you did.”

“Don’t do that either.”

“What?”

“Act like you give a damn. I don’t need nobody to care for me.”

“We all need someone—”

“I don’t! So stuff your caring. You think you can—” She looks away and scrapes at her eyes, but her skin is impermeable to tears. “You think you know me? You have no fucking clue. Do-gooders like you think it’s about sex. That sucking a dick is sucking a dick, and you can just put it behind you.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it, only pain. “Fucking, sucking, pissing, whipping … that’s the least of what
I do.”

“I don’t understand,” I say.

“And you never will. You think that pen in your hand gives you a right to dig into my life and try an’ fix things? Well, it don’t. It’s just a fucking pen.”

“This isn’t my fault,” I say.

Roxanne snorts. “Then whose is it? If you hadn’t stuck your big nose in, Bailey would still be cutting hair and I would be … where I’m meant to be.”

“And where’s that? Screwing sailors and sticking needles between your toes to pretend you’re not dead inside?”

Roxanne blanches and tugs the pajama cuffs over her exposed feet but instantly punishes herself for the flinch by nipping her inner cheek with her teeth. It’s something I’ve noticed her do before, but I didn’t realize it was on purpose. Her inner flesh must be a transit map of repressed pain.

“Yeah,” she snarls, her head turning away from me to focus on the front window. “Cause that’s what I am, daddy’s little junkie whore.”

“Who calls you that?” I ask in a gentler tone.

She doesn’t answer.

“Lebed?”

Her eyes fix on mine again, but their intensity is sputtering, like a fire that’s consumed most of the oxygen in a room and has nowhere left to go.

“You can’t help yourself, can you?” she says. “Always questions.”

“It’s the only way I know to get answers.”

“And why do you need them?”

“Because I want to help.”

“Why?”

My words stumble as I struggle with the question. “I’m not sure I—”

“Why do you stick your nose in other people’s shit? Why write stories?”

“I guess it’s how I make a difference,” I blurt. “I don’t want to fight in a war, I don’t want to run into a burning building when everyone else is running out or make my mark in public office, but I want to connect—to let people see what and who is behind the headlines. I still believe that reporters make a difference. Our stories open eyes, keep most politicians honest, and act as the community’s watchdog. It’s the storytellers who are tasked with not just reporting history as it’s made, but being a public voice to stand up for injustice and shine a spotlight on corruption. It’d be easier not to give a damn, but we’re made this way—too flippin’ curious.”

“Then maybe this is how I’m made,” says Roxanne.

“No!” Once ignited, my anger burns hot. “No woman, and especially not a child, is born to be a whore.”

Roxanne actually smiles. It’s almost pretty.

“I’m glad you used that word,” she says. “I hate it when people say ‘sex worker’. Makes it sound like I jerk off chickens for a living. I’m a whore, plain and simple. Give me cash and you can use my body as a fucking ashtray.”

I blanch. “Who calls you daddy’s little whore?”

She smiles again, but it’s thinner and sharper than before. “You guessed right, but it was a long time ago. I was Lebed’s plaything until puberty hit. Soon as my tits started showing, he threw me out of his house and onto the circuit.”

“The circuit?” I ask.

She hugs her knees tighter and wipes her nose on the fleece. “It starts out okay: private clients, five-star treatment, nice clothes, pedicures and manicures; a lot of threesomes, fantasy games, deflowering the sons of important men. That’s actually a word they use: deflowering. As if the horny little pricks haven’t been jerking off for years. Some of the boys were sweet, though, especially those who were too scared to tell their daddies they were gay. Others were assholes, turning their fathers’ disapproval into a cruel streak. I fell from top-tier to bottom faster than most after I stuck a letter opener through one idiot’s cock. He was threatening to cut off one of my nipples as a souvenir at the time and I panicked.”

“What were you supposed to do?” I ask. “Let him cut you?”

Roxanne releases her knees and lowers her feet to the floor as Prince jumps off the couch and onto the arm of her chair. With a warm, fleece-lined lap exposed, Prince steps onto her thighs and kneads a little before turning around three times and curling into a furry cinnamon roll.

Roxanne pets the purring cat without answering my question.

I ask another. “Is the hotel where I found you the bottom rung?”

She shakes her head. “It might look like it, but there’s lower. Lots lower.”

“Why haven’t you left?”

“And go where?”

“Your sister loves you. She’d take you in.”

Fresh tears glisten in swollen eyes. “Until last night, I wouldn’t have believed that.”

“And now?”

“We need to get her back before it’s too late.”

“You agree she went to Lebed?”

Roxanne nods.

“To bargain for you?”

She nods again.

“And what will he ask in exchange?” I ask.

“There’s only one thing he’s interested in.”

“What?”

“My father.”

“So, your father’s alive,” I say.

“He has to be.”

“Why?”

“Because if he isn’t, Lebed wouldn’t give a shit about us. He’d have used us and tossed us without a second thought, but he’s always kept close watch—we’re his bait.”

“You and your sister?” I say. “Even when Bailey was living in Boston?”

Roxanne nods. “He’d tell me. Lebed. When he was lying beside me, making me do what he wanted, he’d tell me about my sister, where she lived, who she saw, what he would do to her if I ever tried to run away.”

“Jesus, what a bastard.”

Roxanne grins. “Oh yeah.”

“Bailey thought she escaped.”

“There is no escape. He has eyes everywhere.”

“And why does he want your father?” I ask.

“I tried to ask, but he would never get into specifics and always got angry if I pressed too hard. But it has something to do with that night before I was born; the night Bailey remembers when Lebed came to my parents’ apartment. He hired my father to do something, but I think Dad was supposed to die, too. Only he didn’t, and Lebed’s been looking for him ever since.”

“Twenty years is a long time to stay in hiding. He could be anywhere. South America? The North Pole?”

Roxanne shakes her head. “No, he stayed close.”

“How do you know?”

Her voice is barely a whisper. “I’ve seen him.”

“What? Where? When?”

“Just … glimpses. Sometimes at the hotel; sometimes in the street. He’s never talked to me, and at first I thought it was my imagination putting my father’s face on other men’s shoulders. After all, I only know him from pictures, but it’s him. I’m sure of it.”

“Did you tell Bailey this?”

She shakes her head and chews at her nails.

I stand up and run fingers through my unkempt hair. “She’s got nothing to bargain with. What the hell was she thinking?”

There’s a crack in Roxanne’s voice. “She’s trying to be a big sister again. After all these years, she still thinks she has to protect me.”

I glance down at the blue case on the coffee table. “I need to see Lebed.”

“Why would he see you? He holds all the cards.”

“Not all of them,” I say.

“No?”

I lock eyes with Roxanne. “I still have you.”