"All of them," I said. "Try the gas company too. And not just the city, okay? Give me Westchester, North Jersey, southern Connecticut."
"You're talking a big tab, man."
"I'm good for it," I told him, handing him a thousand in fifties. "The rest when you get back to me."
It only took him three days. To come up empty.
163
They wouldn't be too far underground, not these freaks. Humans who prey on children lead lives of monumental duplicity. The neighbors are always shocked when a bust goes down— not those people. They'd be community leaders, political conservatives, but with a soft spot for civil liberties. Tight lives, tightly controlled— they'd only let go inside their evil circle.
I called my pal Morelli, a crime reporter who came up hard. Asked him to leave me alone with his NEXIS terminal for a while. He said what he always says.
"Anything for me?"
I just shook my head.
164
He came back a few hours later. All I had to show for my work was an ashtray full of butts and a legal pad full of notes. Humans indicted for ritualistic abuse who had jumped bail, kiddie-sex rings exposed…some of the perpetrators not apprehended. Possibilities— they always find others like them.
"Any luck?" Morelli asked.
"Goose egg," I told him. "Thanks anyway."
165
I didn't say anything to Morelli about a newsclip I'd found. Sixteen-year-old girl. A babysitter in a nice lower Westchester neighborhood, she'd been arrested for sexual abuse of two little boys. The crime had taken place last year— the babysitter's name was being withheld because of her age. Full confession.
I parked my Plymouth in the municipal indoor lot across from the Yonkers Family Court. Seven-thirty in the morning— the place was empty. I walked through the lot, down the stairs in front of City Hall. The stone steps were littered with humans who couldn't find a place to sleep on the park benches, clutching their plastic garbage bags full of return-deposit aluminum cans and plastic bottles, waiting for the recycling joint to open.
I found a pay phone, dropped in a quarter. A very proper-sounding woman's voice answered. "Family Court."
"You alone?" I asked the voice.
"Yes," she said, and hung up.
The Family Court is in a regular office building on South Broadway. Nobody's allowed on the floor until it opens. I rang for the elevator, heard the gears mesh as the car started downstairs, and stepped through a metal door into the stairwell. When I got to the right floor, I gently pushed against the Fire Exit door. It was open.
I made my way down the corridor, dressed in my lawyer's suit, carrying an attaché case. Anyone stopped me, I'd say I was looking to file some papers.
Nobody did. She was waiting in the file room, a patrician woman with a proud, erect carriage, wearing a long-sleeved dress with lace at the cuffs and the throat. The boss clerk, she always got there early and left late— a disgrace to civil servants everywhere. I bowed slightly. She held out her hand. I opened the attaché case, gave her a Xerox of the newsclip. She read it carefully, nodding slightly. Then she walked over to a bin labeled "Pending" and searched through the folders. Pulled one out, showed it to me. I didn't touch it.
She walked over to the photocopier, ran off a half dozen pages. Smoothly and efficiently, the way she does everything. I put the pages in my case. Bowed again.
She turned her back on me, returned to her work. I don't know what she thinks of me, this lady. Nothing much ever shows on her face. But she knows what I do.
166
The papers I took with me had everything I needed. The kid's name was Marianne Morgan. Lived with her mother and father, attended a private school in Larchmont.
The next day, I called a guy I know. He's a caseworker in the local child protection unit, been there for years. He's also a major-league cockhound— some guys only like blondes, he only likes them married. Five-thirty in the morning, he answered the phone on the first ring. Probably just getting back home. I told him what I wanted. We made a meet for that night— he said he was coming into the city anyway.
167
I got there first— a bar on First Avenue in the Sixties. Ordered a mineral water, shot of Absolut on the side, looked around. Mostly an after-work crowd: men and women in matching pinstripes, talking about deals.
He was only a few minutes late. Slid in next to me, grabbed the vodka off the bar, tossed it down.
"I got the Intake notes," he said by way of greeting.
"With you?"
"In here." Tapping his temple.
"How'd you get a JD Intake? I didn't think that stuff went across agency lines."
"It doesn't. It should…they're the same kids…but it doesn't. Turf bullshit…you know."
"Yeah. So?"
"So she was a CPS referral first. Told her guidance counselor at school she was having sex with her father."
"How long ago?"
"In late '88, just before the Christmas break. She didn't want to go home from school."
"What happened?"
"She told the investigator the whole thing. Her father was a mirror freak. She hated the mirrors. Then, when we sent her to a validator, she recanted. Pulled back on the whole thing, said she made it up because she didn't want to get in trouble for her grades."
"It got dropped?"
"Yeah. Then she called the Hot Line herself about six months later. Told them the same story."
"And dropped it again later?"
"Right."
"You think it was true?"
"Hell, yes. We get recantations all the time, especially from teenage girls. She just couldn't pull it together. The way I figure it, she got herself busted so it'd be out of her hands."
"So she's in custody?"
"No. Her parents hired a lawyer for her. See, she was fifteen when it happened…with the kids she was babysitting…so she gets tried as a juvenile even though she's over the age now. The Family Court judge cut her loose. Gave the parents of the kids some Order of Protection. She has to report to a Probation Officer once a week pending trial, that's all."
A woman walked past, a young woman with too much butt for the jeans she was wearing— she was squeezed in there so tight the little back pockets wouldn't stay parallel to the center seam.
"Keep your mind on business," I told him. "Hard to talk with your mouth hanging open like that."
He snapped out of it, refocused his glazed eyes. I ordered another drink.
"You got the name of her Probation Officer?" I asked him.
"Wouldn't do you any good, Burke. She skipped out a couple of weeks ago. She's listed as a runaway now.
I was thinking of another question to ask him when he got up, shook hands goodbye, and went sniffing after the woman in the jeans.
168
Lying with my head against some pillows piled up at the end of Bonita's bed, smoking a cigarette, eyes half closed. Bonita on her knees, facing away from me, looking back over her shoulder, admiring the dimples over her heart-shaped butt. Her body still gleamed from oil and sweat.