Without Remorse

  “Well, that was pretty easy,” Tony noted. The cooler was already in the back of his Ford Country Squire station wagon.

  “Who do you suppose won the race today?” Eddie asked. They’d neglected to take a radio with them for the trip.

  “I had a yard bet on Foyt, just to make it interesting.”

  “Not Andretti?” Tucker asked.

  “He’s a paisan, but he ain’t lucky. Betting is business,” Piaggi pointed out. Angelo was a thing of the past now, and the manner of his disposal was, after all, a little amusing, though the man might never eat crab cakes again.

  “Well,” Tucker said, “you know where to find me.” “You’ll get your money,” Eddie said, speaking out of place. “End of the week, the usual place.” He paused. “What if demand goes up?”

  “I can handle it,” Tucker assured him. “I can get all you want.”

  “What the hell kind of pipeline do you have?” Eddie asked, pushing further.

  “Angelo wanted to know that, too, remember? Gentlemen, if I told you that, you wouldn’t need me, would you?”

  Tony Piaggi smiled. “Don’t trust us?”

  “Sure.” Tucker smiled. “I trust you to sell the stuff and share the money with me.”

  Piaggi nodded approval. “I like smart partners. Stay that way. It’s good for all of us. You have a banker?”

  “Not yet, haven’t thought about it much,” Tucker lied.

  “Start thinking, Henry. We can help set you up, overseas bank. It’s secure, numbered account, all that stuff. You can have somebody you know check it out. Remember, they can track money if you’re not careful. Don’t live it up too much. We’ve lost a lot of friends that way.”

  “I don’t take chances, Tony.”

  Piaggi nodded. “Good way to think. You have to be careful in this business. The cops are getting smart.”

  “Not smart enough.” Neither were his partners, when it came to that, but one thing at a time.

  5

  Commitments

  The package arrived with a very jet-lagged Captain at the Navy’s intelligence headquarters in Suitland, Maryland. On-staff photo-interpretation experts were supplemented by specialists from the Air Force’s 1127th Field Activities Group at Fort Belvoir. It took twenty hours to go through the entire process, but the frames from the Buffalo Hunter were unusually good, and the American on the ground had done what he was supposed to do: look up and stare at the passing reconnaissance drone.

  “Poor bastard paid the price for it,” a Navy chief observed to his Air Force counterpart. Just behind him the photo caught an NVA soldier with his rifle up and reversed. “I’d like to meet you in a dark alley, you little fuck.”

  “What do you think?” The Air Force senior master sergeant slid an ID photo over.

  “Close enough I’d bet money on it.” Both intelligence specialists thought it odd that they had such a thin collection of files to compare with these photographs, but whoever had guessed had guessed well. They had a match. They didn’t know that what they had was a series of photographs of a dead man.

  Kelly let her sleep, glad that she was able to without any chemical help. He got himself dressed, went outside, and ran around his island twice—the circumference was about three quarters of a mile—to work up a sweat in the still morning air. Sam and Sarah, early risers also, bumped into him while he was cooling down on the dock.

  “The change in you is remarkable, too,” she observed. She paused for a moment. “How was Pam last night?”

  The question jarred Kelly into a brief silence, followed by: “What?”

  “Oh, shit, Sarah ...” Sam looked away and nearly laughed. His wife flushed almost as crimson as the dawn.

  “She persuaded me not to medicate her last night,” Sarah explained. “She was a little nervous, but she wanted to try and I let her talk me out of it. That’s what I meant, John. Sorry.”

  How to explain last night? First he’d been afraid to touch her, afraid to seem to be pressing himself on her, and then she’d taken that as a sign that he didn’t like her anymore, and then ... things had worked out.

  “Mainly she has some damned-fool idea—” Kelly stopped himself. Pam could talk to her about this, but it wasn’t proper for him to do so, was it? “She slept fine, Sarah. She really wore herself out yesterday.”

  “I don’t know that I’ve ever had a more determined patient.” She stabbed a hard finger into Kelly’s chest. “You’ve helped a lot, young man.”

  Kelly looked away, not knowing what he was supposed to say. The pleasure was all mine? Part of him still believed that he was taking advantage of her. He’d stumbled upon a troubled girl and ... exploited her? No, that wasn’t true. He loved her. Amazing as that seemed. His life was changing into something recognizably normal—probably. He was healing her, but she was healing him as well.

  “She‘s—she’s worried that I won’t—the stuff in her past, I mean. I really don’t care much about that. You’re right, she’s a very strong girl. Hell, I have a somewhat checkered past, too, y’know? I ain’t no priest, guys.”

  “Let her talk it out,” Sam said. “She needs that. You have to let things in the open before you start dealing with them.”

  “You’re sure it won’t affect you? It might be some pretty ugly stuff,” Sarah observed, watching his eyes.

  “Uglier than war?” Kelly shook his head. Then he changed the subject. “What about the ... medications?”

  The question relieved everyone, and Sarah was talking work again. “She’s been through the most crucial period. If there were going to be a serious withdrawal reaction, it would have happened already. She may still have periods of agitation, brought on by external stress, for example. In that case you have the phenobarb, and I’ve already written out instructions for you, but she’s gutting it out. Her personality is far stronger than she appreciates. You’re smart enough to see if she’s having a bad time. If so, make her—make her—take one of the tablets.”

  The idea of forcing her to do anything bridled Kelly. “Look, doc, I can’t—”

  “Shut up, John. I don’t mean jamming it down her throat. If you tell her that she really needs it, she’s going to listen to you, okay?”

  “How long?”

  “For another week, maybe ten days,” Sarah said after a moment’s reflection.

  “And then?”

  “Then you can think about the future you two might have together,” Sarah told him.

  Sam felt uneasy getting this personal. “I want her fully checked out, Kelly. When’s the next time you’re due into Baltimore?”

  “A couple of weeks, maybe sooner. Why?”

  Sarah handled that: “I wasn’t able to do a very thorough exam. She hasn’t seen a physician in a long time, and I’ll feel better if she has a CPX—complete history and physical. Who do you think, Sam?”

  “You know Madge North?”

  “She’ll do,” Sarah thought. “You know, Kelly, it wouldn’t hurt for you to get checked out, too.”

  “Do I look sick?” Kelly held his arms out, allowing them to survey the magnificence of his body.

  “Don’t give me that crap,” Sarah snapped back. “When she shows up, you show up. I want to make sure you’re both completely healthy—period. Got it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “One more thing, and I want you to hear me through,” Sarah went on. “She needs to see a psychiatrist.”

  “Why?”

  “John, life isn’t a movie. People don’t put their problems behind and ride into a sunset in real life, okay? She’s been sexually abused. She’s been on drugs. Her self-esteem isn’t very high right now. People in her position blame themselves for being victims. The right kind of therapy can help to fix that. What you’re doing is important, but she needs professional help, too. Okay?”

  Kelly nodded. “Okay.”

  “Good,” Sarah said, looking up at him. “I like you. You listen well.”

  “Do I have a choice, ma’
am?” Kelly inquired with a twisted grin.

  She laughed. “No, not really.”

  “She’s always this pushy,” Sam told Kelly. “She really ought to be a nurse. Docs are supposed to be more civilized. Nurses are the ones who push us around.” Sarah kicked her husband playfully.

  “Then I better never run into a nurse,” Kelly said, leading them back off the dock.

  Pam ended up sleeping just over ten hours, and without benefit of barbiturates, though she did awaken with a crushing headache which Kelly treated with aspirin.

  “Get Tylenol,” Sarah told him. “Easier on the stomach.” The pharmacologist made a show of checking Pam again while Sam packed up their gear. On the whole she liked what she saw. “I want you to gain five pounds before I see you again.”

  “But—”

  “And John’s going to bring you in to see us so that we can get you completely checked out—two weeks, say?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Kelly nodded surrender again.

  “But—”

  “Pam, they ganged up on me. I have to go in, too,” Kelly reported in a remarkably docile voice.

  “You have to leave so early?”

  Sarah nodded. “We really should have left last night, but what the hell.” She looked at Kelly. “If you don’t show up like I said, I’ll call you and scream.”

  “Sarah. Jesus, you’re a pushy broad!”

  “You should hear what Sam says.”

  Kelly walked her out to the dock, where Sam’s boat was already rumbling with life. She and Pam hugged. Kelly tried just to shake hands, but had to submit to a kiss. Sam jumped down to shake their hands.

  “New charts!” Kelly told the surgeon.

  “Aye, Cap’n.”

  “I’ll get the lines.”

  Rosen was anxious to show him what he’d learned. He backed out, drawing mainly on his starboard shaft and turning his Hatteras within her own length. The man didn’t forget. A moment later Sam increased power on both engines and drove straight out, heading directly for water he knew to be deep. Pam just stood there, holding Kelly’s hand, until the boat was a white speck on the horizon.

  “I forgot to thank her,” Pam said finally.

  “No, you didn’t. You just didn’t say it, that’s all. So how are you today?”

  “My headache’s gone.” She looked up at him. Her hair needed washing, but her eyes were clear and there was a spring in her step. Kelly felt the need to kiss her, which he did. “So what do we do now?”

  “We need to talk,” Pam said quietly. “It’s time.”

  “Wait here.” Kelly went back into the shop and returned with a pair of folding lounge chairs. He gestured her into one. “Now tell me how terrible you are.”

  Pamela Starr Madden was three weeks shy of her twenty-first birthday, Kelly learned, finally discovering her surname as well. Born to a lower-working-class family in the Panhandle region of northern Texas, she’d grown up under the firm hand of a father who was the sort of man to make a Baptist minister despair. Donald Madden was a man who understood the form of religion, but not the substance, who was strict because he didn’t know how to love, who drank from frustration with life—and was angry at himself for that, too—yet never managed to come to terms with it. When his children misbehaved, he beat them, usually with a belt or a switch of wood until his conscience kicked in, something which did not always happen sooner than fatigue. The final straw for Pam, never a happy child, had come on the day after her sixteenth birthday, when she’d stayed late at a church function and ended up going on what was almost a date with friends, feeling that she finally had the right to do so. There hadn’t even been a kiss at the end of it from the boy whose household was almost as restrictive as her own. But that hadn’t mattered to Donald Madden. Arriving home at ten-twenty on a Friday evening, Pam came into a house whose lights blazed with anger, there to face an enraged father and a thoroughly cowed mother.

  “The things he said ... ” Pam was looking down at the grass as she spoke. “I didn’t do any of that. I didn’t even think of doing it, and Albert was so innocent ... but so was I, then.”

  Kelly squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to tell me any of this, Pam.” But she did have to, and Kelly knew that, and so he continued to listen.

  After sustaining the worst beating of her sixteen years, Pamela Madden had slipped out her first-floor bedroom window and walked the four miles to the center of the bleak, dusty town. She’d caught a Greyhound bus for Houston before dawn, only because it had been the first bus, and it hadn’t occurred to her to get off anywhere in between. So far as she could determine, her parents had never even reported her as missing. A series of menial jobs and even worse housing in Houston had merely given emphasis to her misery, and in short order she’d decided to head elsewhere. With what little money she’d saved, she’d caught yet another bus—this one Continental Trailways—and stopped in New Orleans. Scared, thin, and young, Pam had never learned that there were men who preyed on young runaways. Spotted almost at once by a well-dressed and smooth-talking twenty-five-year-old named Pierre Lamarck, she’d taken his offer of shelter and assistance after he had sprung for dinner and sympathy. Three days later he had become her first lover. A week after that, a firm slap across the face had coerced the sixteen-year-old girl into her second sexual adventure, this one with a salesman from Springfield, Illinois, whom Pam had reminded of his own daughter—so much so that he’d engaged her for the entire evening, paying Lamarck two hundred fifty dollars for the experience. The day after that, Pam had emptied one of her pimp’s pill containers down her throat, but only managed to make herself vomit, earning a savage beating for the defiance.

  Kelly listened to the story with a serene lack of reaction, his eyes steady, his breathing regular. Inwardly it was another story entirely. The girls he’d had in Vietnam, the little childlike ones, and the few he’d taken since Tish’s death. It had never occurred to him that those young women might not have enjoyed their life and work. He’d never even thought about it, accepting their feigned reactions as genuine human feelings—for wasn’t he a decent, honorable man? But he had paid for the services of young women whose collective story might not have been the least bit different from Pam’s, and the shame of it burned inside him like a torch.

  By nineteen, she’d escaped Lamarck and three more pimps, always finding herself caught with another. One in Atlanta had enjoyed whipping his girls in front of his peers, usually using light cords. Another in Chicago had started Pam on heroin, the better to control a girl he deemed a little too independent, but she’d left him the next day, proving him right. She’d watched another girl die in front of her eyes from a hot-shot of uncut drugs, and that frightened her more than the threat of a beating. Unable to go home—she’d called once and had the phone slammed down by her mother even before she could beg for hetp—and not trusting the social services which might have helped her along a different path, she finally found herself in Washington, D.C., an experienced street prostitute with a drug habit that helped her to hide from what she thought of herself. But not enough. And that, Kelly thought, was probably what had saved her. Along the way she’d had two abortions, three cases of venereal disease, and four arrests, none of which had ever come to trial. Pam was crying now, and Kelly moved to sit beside her.

  “You see what I really am?”

  “Yes, Pam. What I see is one very courageous lady.” He wrapped his arm tightly around her. “Honey, it’s okay. Anybody can mess up. It takes guts to change, and it really takes guts to talk about it.”

  The final chapter had begun in Washington with someone named Roscoe Fleming. By this time Pam was hooked solidly on barbiturates, but still fresh and pretty-looking when someone took the time to make her so, enough to command a good price from those who liked young faces. One such man had come up with an idea, a sideline. This man, whose name was Henry, had wanted to broaden his drug business, and being a careful chap who was used to having others do his bidding, he’d set up a sta
ble of girls to run drugs from his operation to his distributors. The girls he bought from established pimps in other cities, in each case a straight cash transaction, which each of the girls found ominous. This time Pam tried to run almost at once, but she’d been caught and beaten severely enough to break three ribs, only later to learn of her good fortune that the first lesson hadn’t gone further. Henry had also used the opportunity to cram barbiturates into her, which both attenuated the pain and increased her dependence. He’d augmented the treatment by making her available to any of his associates who wanted her. In this, Henry had achieved what all the others had failed to do. He had finally cowed her spirit.

  Over a period of five months, the combination of beatings, sexual abuse, and drugs had depressed her to a nearly catatonic state until she’d been jarred back to reality only four weeks earlier by tripping over the body of a twelve-year-old boy in a doorway, a needle still in his arm. Remaining outwardly docile, Pam had struggled to cut her drug use. Henry’s other friends hadn’t complained. She was a much better lay this way, they thought, and their male egos had attributed it to their prowess rather than her increased level of consciousness. She’d waited for her chance, waiting for a time when Henry was away somewhere, because the others got looser when he wasn’t around. Only five days earlier she’d packed what little she had and bolted. Penniless—Henry had never let them have money—she’d hitched her way out of town.

  “Tell me about Henry,” Kelly said softly when she’d finished.

  “Thirty, black, about your height.”

  “Did any other girls get away?”

  Pam’s voice went cold as ice. “I only know of one who tried. It was around November. He ... killed her. He thought she was going to the cops, and”—she looked up—“he made us all watch. It was terrible.”

  Kelly said quietly, “So why did you try, Pam?”

  “I’d rather die than do that again,” she whispered, the thought now out in the open. “I wanted to die. That little boy. Do you know what happens? You just stop. Everything stops. And I was helping. I helped kill him.”