“It was my mother.”
He let his disappointment in her show. After a moment he said, “I taught her how to hide. I thought that would be enough to keep her safe, but things have changed. The man she was running from before seems to have put out some serious money to get her. That means high-end killers. Why won’t you help me?”
“I owe her.”
“Then you should want what’s best for her.”
“I do. I’m not sure I know what that is, and I’m not sure you do, either.”
“How long have you known her?”
She stared at him in silence, thinking for a moment, then shrugged. “All right. There’s no reason not to tell you, so I will. I met her six years ago. It must have been about two weeks after you left her at the airport in Santa Barbara. I was walking along a hallway in my apartment building. I was crying, so I didn’t see clearly where I was going, and I came around a corner and bumped into her. We looked at each other, and I could see she was crying, too. It was so stupid that we stood there thinking about it for a second, and started to laugh.”
“Did she live there, too?”
“Yes. It was a terrible place, a whole building full of losers and people who were running away from something. It was a couple of miles north of town, and nobody talked to anybody, but after that, the two of us were friends.”
“What were you doing there?”
She narrowed her eyes for a moment, then seemed to change her mind. “Boyfriend troubles.”
“What kind?”
“He was looking for me. I left; he wanted me back.”
“Where was that?”
“Another city. It doesn’t matter to you which one unless you want to hurt me. You say you don’t, and anyway, I’m not going to tell you anything that will give you the power. I met him, and I went with him. My mother was religious. She put all my stuff on the front steps and locked the door and the gate. I stayed with Howard, and that was hard. He wanted a lot from me, and I did it. I cooked for him and his friends and did all the work around the place. He would sell crack to cars that pulled up to his corner. I held the money and the crack and his gun. See, if you got caught, they wouldn’t charge you as an adult until you were sixteen.”
“He told you that?”
“That’s right.”
“Did he tell you that you couldn’t get shot?”
“He didn’t talk about that. But you’ve got him right. That’s what he was. He was the one who got the money and I was the one who got the trouble.”
“What kind?”
“Howard got into a fight with the guy who sold him drugs. It wasn’t the kind of fight where you lay low for a while and then patch it up. It was the kind where you don’t even go back to your place to get your clothes. You leave town.”
“Is that when he turned you out?”
Her facial muscles seemed to slacken, so she had no real expression. “Yes.” She watched him for some particular reaction that she must have seen before, but she seemed not to detect it. She started again slowly. “He said it was just going to be once, and then we would be safe, and he would always be grateful. It was a town where we had never been, and nobody would know me or anything, so once it was done it would be over.”
“Was it?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It went on for about a week, until we had enough money to move on to another city, a bigger one. But Howard couldn’t make a connection. The man who was supposed to be in that city and willing to help him get set up was gone. He had to go out and spend money to get to know people who would introduce him to the people he needed to meet.” She sighed. “And the money ran out.”
“He turned you out again.”
She nodded. “This time it was different. The first time, we were both out, and I was dressed up and made up, and we would see a man and Howard would ask me if that one was okay, and I would either say, ‘Please, not that one,’ or ‘Okay.’ If I said okay, then he would ask the man if he was interested, and they would talk prices. Then I would talk to the man and take him up to our room. Howard would follow and stand outside to make sure nothing terrible happened. This time he set it up differently. I had to go out alone on the street where the men came to find girls. I didn’t want to. I was cold. I was scared of the men and the cops, and the other girls out there who looked like they wanted to beat me up or chase me off.
“Howard told me that if I didn’t go with anybody who didn’t have a really nice car and nice clothes, I would be safe. I turned a few down, and then a man came by in a Jaguar. He was maybe sixty years old and dressed in a black sport coat and blue jeans. When he held the steering wheel with his left hand, the coat sleeve slipped down a little and I could see a fancy watch. He leaned over to talk to me through the open window on the passenger side. He said, ‘Miss? Are you working tonight?’ I remember how polite he was. I was amazed at my luck. I could get into the car and off the street and not be cold or afraid for a while. I was so relieved that I really did have feelings for him, a little bit. I got in and he drove to the place where I was staying, and we went in. When we got there, I expected Howard would be around, but I didn’t see him. I had to unlock the door and turn on the light so we could go in. But Howard had been in the room, looking out the window and waiting. He had heard us come along the hall to the door, heard me get the key out to unlock it, and then hid. I locked the door after us and started to do my job, what I had promised this older man.
“All of a sudden, out of a closet came Howard, holding a knife. He scared the man with it, stole his wallet, his watch, and his car keys, and left him there tied up. Howard took me with him, drove out of that town to the next one. He stripped the car and left it, used the credit cards for a few hours to buy stuff, and kept the cash. The next night, when he got a room and sent me out on the street again, I went out and just kept going.”
“You ran to Las Vegas?”
“Not at first. All I did was get out of that city and go to another one. I got a job in a women’s clothing store. After a couple of months, I came home one night and I saw that the lights of my apartment were on. I saw him in the window, waiting. He was sure I was stupid enough to go right in. I wasn’t.”
“What did he want? Did you figure that out?”
“Me. Sometimes I thought he wanted me back, and sometimes I thought he showed up only after I’d been on my own for a while because he knew if he gave me a couple of months I would save some money and he could take it.”
“He doesn’t seem to have found you after that. What happened?”
“Ann Delatorre. We got to be friends. We told each other everything. After about a year, she gave me a present.”
“The name?”
“It’s more than a name. It’s a life. She stayed in that apartment building for only a few months. By the time I met her, she had already put a down payment on this house. She was getting ready to move in. She brought me with her.”
“Just like that?”
“She knew I had to have a place to live where he wouldn’t look for me. This is Ann Delatorre’s house. We both knew that if he thought I might be in Nevada, then a suburban tract in Henderson wouldn’t be the place. He’d think I would be in a crummy part of the city turning tricks.”
“How did the two of you get by?”
“She set up the name and used it for a while, bought this house, and let me stay with her. She started a mail-order business that she ran off the Internet, selling overstocks of name-brand clothes. I worked with her, handling the packing and shipping and a lot of the hours online. We never said it was permanent, either of us. But we both knew that staying safe meant staying hidden, and that the longer we lived quietly in this neighborhood running a mail-order business, the less likely we’d be found.”