“Tell me more about the girls.”
“Shelby ran the show—with her crew. LaRue hung with them more than anybody else, but she was more on her own. Mikki was, like, all about Shelby. I think she had the hots for her, too, and just didn’t get it yet. There was another girl—kinda small black girl, with a great big voice. Really magolicious pipes.”
“DeLonna.”
“Yeah, yeah—I didn’t really know her. She only came around with Shelby a couple times. And there was a guy, but Sebastian didn’t allow boys in The Club. I think that’s why Shelby didn’t just bag it and stick with us. She had mega loyalty. They were hers, including the guy, so she just hung and ran sometimes, and talked about getting her own place.”
“He didn’t allow boys, but what about men?”
“It was just Sebastian. Actually, he, like, boosted us. Our self-esteem and all,” Mavis explained. “He always said stuff like we were worth more than anything we could liberate. He used words like that instead of, you know, steal.”
Mavis cocked her head at Eve. “Fancy words,” she said in a reasonably decent impression of Eve, “don’t make it less of a crime.”
“Funny. Why are thieves so hilarious?”
“Stealing’s kind of a funny business when you think about it. Anyway, he’d say how we should never give away what we had—meaning sex—or let anybody take it. And how we needed to wait until we understood all that stuff.”
She looked down at her fingers, joined with Leonardo’s. “He made me feel like I was worth something. No one ever had.”
Not a bad ploy, Eve thought, for getting a bunch of hungry girls to steal for you. “He had to move merchandise. Had to have a fence, had to buy supplies.”
“He mostly dealt with a couple pawnbrokers, but they never came around The Club—not while I was running with them anyway.”
“Women?”
“No. He hooked with this LC, but he never brought her around either. Look, he wasn’t—isn’t—a sleezewad. We had rules, and okay, sure, they were pretty loose, but we had them. We even had to study, like in school. He said there was no excuse for stupid. No illegals or booze. If you wanted to screw yourself up, you did it outside. That was the thing with Shelby,” Mavis remembered, circling back. “She had a taste for illegals, for brew. She wanted her own place so she and her crew could do what they wanted. That’s why I figured—we all did, I guess—she just took off.”
“How many girls?”
“It went up and down. Ten, maybe fifteen. More when the weather went sour. Some stayed a couple days, some stayed years.”
“I’ve got some pictures I’d like you to look at.”
“I saw them, on your board. I only recognized the three.”
“We’re still IDing. I have some pictures from Missing Persons reports. Can you look at them?”
“Oh.” Mavis let out a long breath. “Yeah, sure. Yeah. If it could help.” She turned to Leonardo. “I want to help.”
He brought her hands to his lips, then kissed her cheeks. “I’ll check on Bella.”
“You’re the biggest prize in the big, shiny box of prizes.”
“Maybe the biggest.” He touched his lips to hers. “You’re the sweetest. I’ll be right here.”
“I know. Okay.” She rose. “Let’s do it. Thanks for listening,” she said to Roarke. “And the wine.”
He stood, stepped over to enfold her in a hug. “You’re family.”
She squeezed hard. “One of the top ten phrases. Right up there with ‘I love you,’ and ‘For you it’s free.’”
When she went out with Eve, he sat, looked at Leonardo.
“I need to give Summerset a break.”
“Take a moment,” Roarke advised. “I can promise you he’s enjoying himself.”
“Little shaky, I guess.” Leonardo picked up the wine he’d ignored while Mavis had talked, while he’d held her through it. “I knew it all, but hearing her say it all again . . .”
“It makes it all real again. It makes you wish again that you could somehow go back and save her from all of it.”
Leonardo let out an unsteady breath. “It does. It does just exactly that. Everything got brighter when I met her, and faster. Then, it stayed bright but it all settled in. I could’ve gone on just fine with my work, and the women, the parties. It seemed like enough. Now? All of that could go. I don’t mean the women,” he said, suddenly flustered. “I mean there aren’t any women, not since Mavis. I mean she’s the only . . .”
“I understand.” The tangle made Roarke smile again. “Perfectly.”
“I mean, it could all go away, because I have my girls. It hurts when she hurts.”
“Yes. I understand perfectly,” Roarke repeated.
• • •
I know this is hard on you,” Eve began as they walked to her office.
“I need to say—before—I need to say maybe I’d have been one of those girls if it wasn’t for Sebastian. Or maybe I’d have ended up trading bjs for junk, like Shelby. She bragged about it. And maybe if I’d gotten through all that, maybe I’d still be grifting and getting nowhere especially if I hadn’t met you, if you hadn’t let me in.”
“Couldn’t keep you out.”
“Yeah, you could’ve, but you didn’t. And I’d never know this.” She pressed a hand to her heart. “I’d never know what it really is without Leonardo. I’d never have something so amazing and beyond the mag of the mag like Bella, and have a chance, a real chance, to be a really, really good mother. I want to be a good mother, Dallas, so bad it scares me shitless thinking I might screw up.”
“We both know about mothers who screw up, big-time. You’re not one of those, and never could be. I don’t know much about the other kind, not so much, but I know the kid’s insanely happy. I don’t know what the hell she’s babbling about more than half the time, but she’s happy as a monkey with a box of bananas. She’s safe, she’s not a whiner, and she already knows she can count on you and Leonardo for anything. That seems like it covers the job to me.”
“I want another one.”
“Oh sweet weeping Jesus.”
On a bubbling laugh, Mavis threw her arms around Eve, did her bounce. “Not right away, but not way down the highway either. I want another baby, for me, for my moonpie, and for my Bellamina. I am good at it, and maybe having the weird wigs about being good at it makes me good at it. Whatev, I want a bunch of them.”
“Define ‘bunch.’”
“I don’t know yet. More.” She drew back, swiped her hands over her face as the mix of emotions had flooded it. Looking at the board, she sighed. “I’m so lucky, and they weren’t. We got really lucky,” she said, taking Eve’s hand.
“Yeah, we did.”
“I’m going to look at the pictures, then I want to go home with my man and my baby. I want to put my baby to bed and watch her sleep for a little while. Then I want to have crazy sex with my man. Because I got lucky, and I’m never going to forget it.”
“They got pretty lucky, too, your man and your kid.”
“Damn right. We’re all stupid with happy.”
“Can’t argue. But before you go home to bedtime and sex, I need you to contact Sebastian, set up a meet.”
“Crap.”
“Sooner’s better,” Eve added.
• • •
Roarke came into Eve’s office after seeing Mavis and her family off, found her at her desk with a mug of coffee. And noted the two new pictures on the board, one with a question mark.
“I had to stick with this,” she said. “Mavis wanted to go home anyway, to put the kid to bed, then jump Leonardo.”
“I see. She said she recognized two more.”
“One for certain, one mostly for certain. I sent DeWinter and Elsie the data so they can confirm. The one she’s sure of—Crystal Hugh—she did some time at The San
ctuary. Got shifted to foster, went missing from there. Too many lines lead back to that building, that place, those people for it to be just because.”
“I’ll agree.”
“And now I’ve got four, possibly five, connected to this Sebastian character Mavis is rosy-eyed over.”
“He’s her father figure, Eve. She was a frightened, scared young girl, and he gave her structure, safety, a purpose.”
“Structure? Flopping in basements and empty buildings? And the purpose was stealing and bilking.”
“And yet.”
“Yeah, you’d think that,” she replied. “Seeing as.”
“Summerset provided me with a very nice home, furnished. I already knew how to steal and run a con, he just added some polish.” He picked up her coffee, took a sip. “I wondered why I felt a kind of affinity with Mavis, always. I see now we traveled some similar roads. How old was she when she ran?”
“Around thirteen, I think.” She stopped, met his eyes. “I wasn’t holding out on you, not telling you all that. It’s just . . .”
“It wasn’t yours to tell, not even to me. Just as she’s never told Leonardo yours.”
“I told her she could.” Eve shoved her fingers through her hair as the idea made her uneasy, even though it seemed right. “You know, balance it out.”
He leaned over, pressed his lips to the hair she’d just mussed. “I adore you.”
“Yeah, well, good. You’re going to have to because you’re going with me to meet up with this Sebastian.” She glanced at her watch. “In two hours, at some seedy dive in Hell’s Kitchen.”
“You plan such entertaining evenings for me. Two hours? That’s time enough for dinner. We’ll make it pizza.”
How could she argue with that?
Seedy covered it.
The hole-in-the-wall that had been named, fairly realistically, Belly Up slouched between a porn shop where a variety of strap-ons were featured in the dingy display window, and what had been in its latest and now-defunct incarnation a place called Bill’s Quik Loans.
Just across the street, the dying neon on a sex club stuttered NAKED—SEX—DANCERS in a migraine-inducing loop.
In its intermittent blue lights, Eve clearly saw the illegal deal being transacted by a bulky dealer in a heavy black coat, and his skinny, shivering customer.
“Is he shuddering because he’s jonesing,” Eve wondered, “or because he’s freezing his junkie ass off in that trench coat?”
“Likely both. If you’re going to bust them, I’ll wait.”
“Only take a minute.” She stepped to the curb, shouted over the dented hood of an ancient Mini, “Hey!” And waved her badge in the air.
Both bulky dealer and skinny junkie pounded sidewalk in opposite directions.
“You know they’ll both just deal elsewhere.”
“Yeah, but it’s fun to watch them run when I’m not going to chase them. Let’s go Belly Up with Sebastian—if he shows.”
It proved as seedy inside as out with a trio of shallow booths and a pair of scarred tables lining the sticky floor. The short black bar boasted three backless stools, and occupants who looked like they belonged there.
The flabby bartender didn’t look thrilled with his work, and after a flick of a glance toward Eve and Roarke appeared pissed off at the prospect of more customers.
The air smelled of cheap brew and centuries-old sweat.
The bony guy at the end of the bar slid off his stool as Eve passed, and strolled, desperately nonchalant, to the door and out.
She supposed he’d smelled cop even in the bad air.
She ignored the LC trying to make a deal with the man on the other stool, and walked to the back booth, and Mavis’s Sebastian.
He wore a suit—unexpected—of charcoal gray. It didn’t reach the heights of Roarke’s custom tailoring, but it was a decent fit. He’d paired it with a black turtleneck.
A silver pen peeked out of the breast pocket.
With his artfully shaggy mop of brown hair, the quiet, pale blue eyes, and neatly trimmed goatee, he might’ve been mistaken for a college professor. He even had his hands neatly folded over a ratty paperback book.
Long, graceful-looking fingers, she noted—certainly adept at lifting wallets, flicking off wrist units.
He rose as they approached. Eve managed to watch his eyes and his hands at the same time, just in case.
“Lieutenant Dallas.” He offered a hand—empty—and a smile as quiet and professorial as the rest of him. “Such a pleasure to meet you at last. And you.” He offered the same to Roarke. “Mavis has told me so much about you, and I follow news of you in the media, of course. I feel I already know you.”
“We’re not here to get chummy.”
“In any case.” He gestured toward the booth. “Let me buy you a drink. The safest here is beer in the bottle. Anything else is suspect.”
“On duty,” Eve said briefly.
“Yes, I understand. Still, the bartender looks askance when there’s no order on the table. There’s bottled water to be had. If that will suffice, just give me a moment.”
“What’s with this guy?” Eve asked, sliding into the booth as Sebastian stepped to the bar.
“He hopes to make a good impression.” Roarke angled his head to read the title of the book. “Macbeth. It suits the educated voice, the well-presented demeanor.”
“He’s a thief and an enabler of delinquent girls.”
“Yes, well, we all have our flaws.”
Sebastian came back, set down three short bottles. “I wouldn’t trust the glassware either. I’ll apologize for asking you to meet me in such a place, but you’ll understand I feel a bit more comfortable on my own turf, so to speak.”
He sat, looking comfortable, a man in his middle forties who kept in shape—body and mind.
“Shelby Stubacker,” Eve said.
He sighed, nudged his book to the side. “I heard the reports on the girls you found. It’s painful to me, on a human level, to know there are those who’d prey on the young. And painful on a personal level as Mavis said three had been mine.”
“Four.”
Shock flicked in his eyes. “Four? Mavis said three. Shelby and Mikki and LaRue.”
“Add Crystal Hugh, and possibly Merry Wolcovich.”
“Crystal.” He slumped a little. “I remember her very well. She was only nine when she came to me, still wearing the bruises her father had put on her.”
“Then you should’ve called the police.”
“Her father was the police,” Sebastian said with a snap in his tone. “There are beasts in every walk of life. She was hurt, hungry, and alone, with nowhere to go but back to the man who took out his frustrations on a child and her spineless mother. She stayed with us until she was thirteen. It can be a difficult age.”
He paused a moment. “Crystal. Yes, I remember Crystal. Soft brown eyes and the mouth of a longshoreman. I appreciated the first, discouraged the second. As I recall, she’d started considering boys, as girls will at that age, and straining against the rules.”
With a half smile, he lifted his bottle. “We do have them. She told me she was leaving and going with some friends. They were going to travel down to Florida. I gave her some money, wished her well, and told her she could come back whenever she wanted.”
“You let a thirteen-year-old girl walk.”
“They were only mine as long as they chose to stay. I’d hoped she’d gone to Florida, and sat on the beach. She deserved to. I remember Shelby as she was brash, rebellious—an interesting girl. A leader, but not always where others should be led. And Mikki because she would have followed Shelby into hell and back again. But the other you mentioned?”
“Merry Wolcovich.”
“I don’t recall right off. Fifteen years is a long time, and I’ve taken in a l
ot of girls over the years.”
It put her back up, this taking in girls as if he were some selfless hero instead of an exploitive criminal. She leaned forward.
“Let’s just lay this out. You train disenfranchised kids to steal, to break the law, to treat it like a game on one level, an avocation on another. So they run the streets, bilking people, taking money and possessions those people worked for, money they earned to pay the rent, to pay bills, or to blow at craps at a casino—because it’s theirs. And you make a profit on your school of thieves and grifters. Mavis might see you as some sort of savior, but to me, you’re just another criminal circumventing the law for his own gain.”
Nodding, Sebastian sipped his water. “I understand your point of view. You’ve built your life around the law, have sworn to uphold it. And while you’re neither naive nor rigid, your duty is your core. I’m a hard bite for you to chew and swallow, but you’ll do it. On a personal level for Mavis, and on both a personal and professional level for twelve dead girls.”
“Girls you might’ve killed. You helped Shelby get out of the new HPCCY, just as they were moving in.”
“I don’t remember doing anything of the kind. How did I help her leave there?”
“Forged documents. It’s something you do.”
“I may or may not forge documents. I’ll tread softly there. But I never did so for Shelby. Not of any kind. She wouldn’t have asked me.”
“Why?”
“First, because she knew better than to offer her usual bartering system to me. I don’t touch the girls sexually, despise any man who would, and she knew my line there. Second, it would have implied she needed me, and she was always out to prove she needed no one.”
“Did you teach her how to forge official documents?”
“Not directly, as again, she’d have never asked me to teach her any skill. It’s certainly possible she picked a few things up. She knew how to pay attention.”
“Shelby planned to get her own place and had one in mind. A born leader, in your own words, she might’ve taken a big chunk of girls with her, threatening your operation, cutting into your profits.”
He drank some water, watched her steadily. “I imagine you’ll have to explore that possibility. I’m outside your lines for one, and connected to at least some of those poor girls. But you know, as I do, Mavis is a very sharp judge of people. She knows I’ve never hurt a child in my life, never could or would.”