“I’ve been paid for one day,” I said. “After that, we’ll see. Did you tell the police she’s missing?”
“Tried to,” said Dad. “But they said since she’s nineteen and left home on her own, there wasn’t much they could do.”
“Have you got another picture?”
He took out a battered wallet and gave me a small, wrinkled photo, a copy of the framed one.
It was thirty minutes back to my office. I used the time going over what I had seen and heard, trying to figure what it was that bothered me. It was possible the girl was Kimberly Johnson, that she’d sent the postcard, then had second thoughts. Her clothes and car indicated she’d found something paying more than minimum wage in the hills of Tennessee. A dancer? My ex-wife Jayleen had been a hoofer. We met in Nam where I was in army intelligence and she was entertaining the troops with a USO group. She was twenty-two, a year out of college, and it was a good gig for her, experience as well as pay. Never mind how we met and fell — all the usual moves — and married when my tour was over. Never mind the rest, either. People fall in love — it stands to reason that some fall out. She’s married to a nice guy now, and they have a kid. Her only dancing these days is to keep her cute shape in shape.
Shape? I visualized the way Jayleen walked — erect, good posture — a dancer’s gait. The Kimberly who hired me hadn’t walked that way — too loose, sort of — her steps lacked measure, rhythm. She was no more a dancer than I, and I have two left feet.
But the Johnsons’ Kimberly had studied dance in school. And what about the tag on the Mazda — CANDI? People change their names for professional and other reasons, sure. But I was willing to bet that if she were a dancer, it wasn’t with the Atlanta ballet.
They say that half of knowledge is knowing where to find it. In my business that means contacts which develop when one hand washes the other. I’ve scrubbed more than one in my time, so I made a few calls, starting with the number on the Johnsons’ postcard.
Sure enough, the computerized voice told me the phone was disconnected. The live operator informed me that the new number was unlisted. What I needed was an address. The telephone company keeps an up-to-date cross-listing by number. It’s not exactly confidential, but they don’t like to give it out to just anyone. An old army buddy named Endicott is a detective captain. He keeps stuff like that in his computer. I gave him a buzz and told him what I needed.
“Sure,” he said, “I’ll punch it in. And listen, what’s the name of that realtor at Hilton Head you rented from last spring?”
I told him and read him his number out of my address book.
“Thanks — okay — your number is for apartment 8-B at 3173 Buckhead Place.”
“What’s the billing name?”
“Langston, J. C. Know it?”
“No. You?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
He was on-line so I asked him to check the CANDI tag.
A moment later he said, “You’ve got a match — car’s registered to same name, same address. So?”
“So thanks.”
“What are friends for, huh? That guy at Hilton Head give me a break if I mention you?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Yeah,” he said, “and truth is more exciting than fiction.”
A cliché, but I knew what he meant. We accept coincidence in real life but reject it in stories. Like the Mazda and the Buckhead address. If the girl really was Kimberly, then she wrote the postcard and knew the apartment and the Langston who rented it. If she wasn’t Kimberly?
I drove over to find out.
Buckhead Place was a fifty-carat diamond’s throw from Phipp’s Plaza, home of opulent shoppes and Saks, which, I recalled from window-shopping with my pal Ellen the psychiatrist, stocked Gucci bags galore.
The apartment building was one of those semiclassy Bauhaus designs — lots of brick and glass, a sort of factory for living fast and efficiently. I pulled into the adjoining parking garage and borrowed a Dr. Jacobi’s spot, figuring he was either earning the rent at the office or blowing it on the golf course.
As I entered the foyer I was confronted by a security guard, a young guy in starched blues with a big gold badge and a radio in his holster instead of a .38. I was wearing my second-best suit and a clean shirt, and I knew where I was going, so I decided to draw on my years of experience as a military bluffer.
I gave him a steady look, eye-to-eye, and walked past him to the elevator and pushed the up button. He said, “Good afternoon, sir.” But he didn’t salute. I nodded and went to the eighth floor.
Number 8-B was left, down a green-carpeted hall hung with a couple of pseudoexpensive abstract prints, more glitter frame than quality.
There was a button with a talk box. I buzzed, but I didn’t talk when a female voice said, “Greg? You’re early — as usual!”
The door opened, and there stood my Kimberly in something black and lacy from Frederick’s. Her painted smile sagged as she said, “You!”
She tried to slam the door, but I caught it, invited myself in, and had a look around.
A dance studio this apartment was not, though there were more than enough mirrors for the cast of A Chorus Line.
“I’m calling the cops!” she said.
“We both know you’re not. And stop frowning — it makes wrinkles.”
“All right, what do you want?”
“I could say I want to tell you I spoke to your parents, which I did, only you’re not Kimberly Johnson. Why the fun and games?”
She took a white satin robe from the sofa and slipped it on, then faced me and said, “It’s for their own good. Kim’s in big trouble.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I can’t!”
“That bad? What will the police say?”
“You’d tell them, wouldn’t you? Men — you’re all alike!”
“So are working girls. So are the guys who own them.”
“All right,” she said, sitting on the sofa and clutching the robe to her neck as though a vestige of little-girl innocence still lingered somewhere in her soul. “Kim lived here with me and, yes, we’re in the business — you know what I mean.”
I nodded. Though I consider myself to be a man in the world rather than of it, I’d been around the block more than once.
“It’s the old story,” she said. “Kim wanted out. The people at the top said no way. She tried making a run for it, but they nabbed her. That was day before yesterday. I haven’t seen or heard from her since.”
“So they sent you to me, thinking I’d satisfy her folks?”
“Yes. What went wrong?” Her eyes narrowed. “You didn’t see the Johnsons — you followed me for a bigger payoff!”
“Wrong. I met Ovid and Nancy. They’re nice people who happen to love their daughter.”
“So now you’re working for them.”
“Today you’re paying the freight.”
She covered her eyes with one hand, said, “Then drop it! Kim’s a goner, and if you don’t lay off...”
I glanced at the mirrors, the carpet, the sofa, and the flashy bar in the corner. “Nice place you’ve got here. But they say a house isn’t a home. Are you happy?”
She dropped her hand and glared at me, but I saw tears in her eyes. “What’s happy got to do with anything? I’m in too deep to get out except dead!”
I should’ve been touched — maybe I was, a little. Truth is, I’ve known a lot of hookers, and I’ve yet to find the proverbial one with a heart of gold. Most of them are plain lazy — physically or mentally, usually both. But she was young, and she was leveling with me, so I sat down beside her and said, “Look, if you want out, you can get out, but not without Kimberly. Whatever’s happened to her, you’re part of it. So it’s not just you alone, now. The Johnsons are in it. So am I. We’re an extended family, so to speak.”