The Astral Read online

  Yet she truly felt as if fortune had handed her a second go-round, with Jack. He had walked mysteriously, miraculously back into her life at the very time when she was most prepared to realize the emptiness of her marriage to Walter.

  She could not blame Walter. He had probably been a better husband than she had been a wife, and he had given her Becky. For that she owed him her gratitude. However painful it had been to lose her, the years that Becky had graced her life had been an incomparable gift.

  It was not until she lost Becky, though, that she had finally seen her marriage to Walter in the light of honesty. They had lived together all those years without ever making that essential connection that made a real marriage of what was otherwise just a legal contract. Becky had been the one bright spot, the one thing that allowed her to keep her loneliness at bay. Without her, marriage to Walter had become unthinkable, unbearable.

  Walter was gone, though. There was room now for Jack, a space she very much wanted him to fill in her life. Besides, there had been that moment when she was dying and he had called her name. What could that be, if not a sign, an omen?

  She went in, carefully locking the balcony door, and settled herself on the sofa for her first night in her new home.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Late night Hollywood Boulevard was an open-air loony bin, in Chang’s oft-expressed opinion: dealers, users and losers, pimps and prosties, gangbangers, preachers, and curb trawlers.

  “Every kind of crazy in the world,” she told Conners. He looked even more the innocent surrounded by all this nuttiness. She felt like a baby sitter giving her charge a lesson in nightlife reality.

  Though technically, Hollywood was its own community, it was to her just another neighborhood in the admittedly wacky city of Los Angeles. Oddly, she loved L.A., the way a seasoned tar loves the sea, rolling with its waves, ever mindful of the sharks and reefs and sudden storms that await the unwary sailor, and yet cheerfully embracing all to her bosom.

  “Who’re we looking for anyway?” she asked.

  “There’s a couple of informers I’ve used from time to time; I thought we’d do a little digging.” A transvestite hooker in garish makeup looked him over with interest from a doorway, glanced at Chang, and lost her interest.

  “What made you become a cop?” Chang asked out of the blue.

  If he was surprised he didn’t show it. “The bucks, what else? Plus I heard women fall all over you.”

  “Well,” Chang said and glanced back at the hooker. “There you are.”

  “She did think I was cute, didn’t she?”

  “She thought you had the money for a blow job.”

  “What?” He gave her a look of mock surprise. “You don’t think I’m cute?”

  She did, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. “I think I don’t like guys who fish for compliments.” He laughed, flashing those perfect teeth. You couldn’t dent this guy.

  The owner of a food stand, Mediterranean Cuisine, according to the faded paint of its sign, recognized Conners and called to offer him a falafel sandwich, which Conners declined with a smile and a wave.

  “Actually, a falafel sandwich sounds good,” Chang said.

  “Not his sandwich. Trust me.”

  “You think his establishment isn’t up to the most exacting hygienic standards?”

  “That place isn’t up to dumpster standards. I had a snack there once, spent the weekend married to my toilet.”

  “Listen, I was thinking, the Desmond thing,” she said, “At the time, you said it was weird ballsy, the way it was done. What did you mean, exactly?”

  “Just that. The other snatchings, they took the kids from inside crowded malls, you can be clear away before the alarm is given. That one was so out in the open, where they could be seen. If Desmond had been a man....”

  “You mean, if her husband had been the one to go after the little girl?”

  He shrugged. “Might not have made any difference. The guy had a gun. You can shoot a man as easy as a woman.”

  “So, what do you make of it? Why the difference in m.o. on that one?”

  “Might have been just opportunity. Maybe they had a special order to fill. You know, some scumbag customer specifically asks for a girl that age, blonde hair, so on. They see the kid, go for it. They had the father distracted, didn’t expect the mother back so quick. Ah, here’s my boy now.”

  “My boy” turned out to be a twenty-something speed freak with bad teeth and long, unwashed hair. He saw them bearing down on him, looked around as if seeking an escape route and, finding none, waited for them resignedly.

  “Weasel, my man,” Conners greeted him with a clap on the shoulder that produced a wince and a pallid smile. “How’s it hanging, fella?”

  “Officer Conners. What brings you to our star-studded street this time of night?” Weasel asked with regret in his voice. There was a trace of the south in it, too. Probably he had run away from West Virginia years ago, Chang thought, headed for the bright lights of the big city, and had decayed like most of them did. The town ate up kids like him and spit the shells back out to litter the streets.

  “We’re looking for some information. I told my friend here nobody knows the town better than old Weasel.”

  Weasel twitched and tried for another smile that refused to come off. He was in constant motion, eyes rolling, hands and feet doing a meth-jitterbug. “Always glad to help, Officer Conners,” he said, swallowing rapidly a couple of times.

  “Kiddie porn,” Conners said.

  Weasel jumped as if he had gotten a jolt of electricity and his eyes spun convulsively. “I don’t do that shit,” he said in a voice several octaves higher. “I don’t go near that stuff.”

  “Wease. Wease,” Conners said, putting his hand on the bony shoulder again, “Like I told my friend here, there isn’t anything comes down on the Boulevard the Weasel doesn’t know about it.”

  “Drugs, sure, whores, shit like that. The kid stuff—no way, man, you can’t pin that on me.” He looked around again, appeared ready to bolt.

  “We aren’t trying to pin anything on you,” Chang said in her most soothing voice.

  “But we could, Wease, we could,” Conners added. “If we wanted to be hard-assed. Course, we don’t, you understand. We just want some help.”

  Chang reached into her shoulder bag and found her wallet. She peeled off a twenty, saw the gleam of interest in The Weasel’s eyes, added a second one to it. “All’s we want is information,” she said. “Like, who on the street is peddling it? Movies, pics, whatever. Somebody is. We just need to know where to look.”

  Weasel stared at the money, his eyes for a change almost still, and licked his lips. He looked around again, to see who might be watching them, and looked back at the twenties. Chang added a third one.

  “There’s a newsstand down by Wallace. I heard he’s got some shit like that, under the counter. Just for regular customers, people he knows really well, you know what I mean. Like, I haven’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t even look at that shit. That’s just what someone told me.”

  He shuffled a step closer to her, one trembling hand lifted slightly toward the money. She held it toward him and he snatched it in a quick, frantic gesture and before they could say anything else, he darted past them and was hurrying down the street, shoving the money into the pocket of his filthy jeans.

  “Nervous type,” Conners said.

  They found the newsstand, a dingy and dimly lit cave. A few newspapers and an array of girlie magazines, most of them undisguised porn, lined one wall, and a cash register and a counter occupied the other, a dirty glass top covering an assortment of stale candies and gum. A customer leafing through the magazines saw them enter, stuffed the magazine back on the shelf, and slid past them out of the store, his gaze carefully downward. A swarthy bearded man with large, nearly black eyes stood behind the register and looked them over warily, his expression suggesting that he too would like to disappear.

  “You the p
roprietor?” Chang asked.

  “Who wants to know?” His tone was surly, but he began to breath rapidly as his blood pressure mounted.

  Chang flipped her badge open for him. “We want the kiddie porn,” she said.

  He looked from one to the other of them, and past them to the girlie magazines on the wall behind. “It’s all legal stuff,” he said, nodding in that direction. “Go ahead, take a look for yourself. No kiddies there.”

  “The under-the-counter stuff,” Chang said. “For the special customers. We’re special, see.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never seen anything like that. This is a legit business.”

  Chang sighed, assumed a sad expression. “Well, sir, I thought we could handle this discreetly, just between the three of us,” she said in an aggrieved voice. “See, we’ve got an informant says you’ve got some goodies under the counter. What we could do, now, is I can call in for a warrant, and my partner and I will wait here till it comes, just to make certain you don’t dispose of anything, and then when we find it, we’ll take you in. These days the D.A. gets real livid about kiddie porn. But, see, this is the thing for you to understand: we’re not interested in you, not really. What we want is your distributor. So, here’s what I suggest. You give us your stash, all of it, and you write down your distributor’s name for us, and we go away. And as long as you don’t get anything more in stock—and, understand, we will come back from time to time to check on you—but, as long as you don’t, well, we won’t make you any trouble. Now, what do you say, could anything be fairer?”

  His eyes went back and forth again. His breathing was really fast now, and his face had broken out in sweat. He looked inches away from a real cardio-problem. After a moment, he reached under the counter, opened a drawer, and took out a large manila envelope.

  “It’s all I got,” he said. “I swear to Christ.”

  Chang picked up the ballpoint pen next to the register and handed it to him. “Don’t forget the name,” she said. “And phone number.”

  * * * *

  “You’ve rented an apartment in Boys’ Town?” Sandra sounded genuinely surprised.

  “It’s a very diverse community, mother.” Catherine switched the phone to her other hand as she inked a contract.

  “Oh, I know, I love it, I just somehow never imagined you there. You’ve always been a bit....” She hesitated.

  “Prissy?” Catherine suggested. Fermin had once, over a lunch with one too many cocktails, described her that way and it was a word she had sometimes since applied to herself in more critical moments.

  “Sheltered, I think, is the word I would use. Self possessed. You’ve always stood at the castle window looking down at life, dear. I should think that would be a bit more difficult in such a vibrant neighborhood.”

  “What an extraordinary thing to say.” Catherine stared at the phone in annoyance.

  “But true. Things have happened in your life, some good, some terrible, but they have always happened to you, never by you, darling. When it comes to the business of living, you’ve just never gotten down and dirty. Yes, now that I think of it, West Hollywood might be just the place for you.”

  “I’m glad you approve.” If her mother noticed her sarcasm, she gave no sign of it.

  “And there is one upside to consider, as a woman now living alone: if a strange man bursts into your apartment he’s more likely to be interested in your dresses than your body.”

  “Not funny, mother.”

  Her mother was unrepentant.

  * * * *

  She bought Bill a bottle of Dom Perignon as a thank you. Even if he weren’t into wine, that was a safe bet. You could surely always use a bottle of bubbly over the holidays, couldn’t you?

  Oughtn’t she to know that, however? In fact, she knew almost nothing about him apart from the fact that he was gay, not even if he had a partner—and was that the right word these days? Significant other? Friend? For a woman whose business was words, she felt incredibly ignorant.

  “I’m presently single,” he said when she asked, and added with a grin, “But shopping, in case you meet any prospects.”

  “I’m not likely—well, maybe I am now.” She smiled back. “Anyway, I do owe you one.”

  “You must have made a hit with our Jan. She can be hard to impress.”

  “I rather liked him—her?”

  “He’s a dear,” Bill said, switching sexual gears again. Which made Catherine think that maybe her mother was right: maybe she had been a bit too sheltered over the years.

  She pondered that in the ladies’ room. The last really decisive action she had taken in her life had been marrying Walter. From the day she had taken that plunge, she had been treading water.

  No, she corrected herself. That was no longer true. The last decisive action had been leaving Walter—and maybe that meant she was truly on the mend, not just from Becky’s loss, but from the stagnation of her life.

  She turned to look at herself in the mirror and as she did, the lights brightened, as if someone had turned a rheostat up. For a startled moment, she thought she saw someone in the glass behind her, but when she looked over her shoulder there was no one there.

  You must go to them. The voice seemed to be inside her head.

  “Them?” Catherine said aloud. It took her a moment to understand. “Those men? No, no, I can’t, I won’t.”

  There’s another little girl. Debbie will suffer a living hell. You must stop them.

  “But how can I? I can’t. There’s nothing I can do.”

  Mommy, Mommy.... It was Becky’s voice, calling to her.

  “Oh, God, no,” Catherine cried, but it was too late. Her image in the glass faded into the golden glow, the light seemed to explode, blinding, scorching....

  “Excuse me, Ma’am.”

  She was in a department store, Nieman’s, she thought. The man in front of her said, “I wonder if you could help me with something?”

  She started to reply, and realized he was not looking at her at all. He was looking through her. Literally. She suddenly realized who he was. She’d had only glimpses of him before, and then he was always unkempt. Now his hair was neatly trimmed and he was clean-shaven. He wore chinos, and an expensive looking leather jacket over a burgundy turtleneck. He might have been any one of the hundreds of unaccompanied males in the store for Christmas shopping.

  For all the pains he had taken to clean himself up, however, he was unquestionably Yellow Beard’s companion, the one she thought of as The Bear. And he was speaking to someone behind her.

  Heart racing, she looked over her shoulder at a matron dressed all in blue: a navy coat, a sky blue dress, turquoise shoes, and purse. Even her pewter hair had highlights of blue in it. She pawed through a rack of blouses while at her side a young girl of maybe ten or eleven fidgeted impatiently.

  “Mommy, can’t we go?” the girl asked.

  “In a moment, Debbie.” The mother looked in The Bear’s direction. “Yes?” she answered him a bit coolly.

  Catherine stepped back to watch. The Bear held up a sweater in one hand and a scarf in the other and gave Lady Blue a sheepish grin. “I’m no good at this kind of thing,” he said. Catherine was surprised to see how good an actor he was. His expression oozed an oafish sincerity. “I’m looking for presents for my wife, but I don’t know, do these colors look right together?”

  “Oh.” Lady Blue’s smile was warmer now. She had a high opinion of her own taste, and was always glad to share it with someone less gifted. She stepped toward him and looked doubtfully at the avocado green sweater and the nearly chartreuse scarf. “Is she fond of green?” she asked. She herself was not. Green made her look sallow. Of course, there were some who could wear it.

  “Well, now you mention it....” He screwed up his face for a moment, seemed to notice her costume for the first time, and grinned, a warm and thoroughly convincing grin. “I think she wears blue a lot more than green.”

  She nodd
ed. Blue was ever so much better. “Ah. Let’s look at what they have in blue, why don’t we?” She turned toward the display of sweaters and he turned with her—and managed, Catherine saw, to place himself between her and her daughter.

  Mother and stranger began to discuss sweaters, holding them up for one another’s inspection. This one she liked, but got a shake of his head.

  “Don’t look like her.” He offered an alternative and she pursed her lips before deciding against it and offering another.

  As Catherine watched, Debbie began to drift away. She paused to look at a mannequin in a pink taffeta gown and looked back at where her mother was still earnestly engaged in conversation with the stranger. She wandered a few feet further.

  Debbie will suffer a living hell....

  No, Catherine thought with sudden determination. She hadn’t wanted this, did not want to be here, but here she was, and clearly she was meant to stop what was obviously a kidnapping in progress.

  But how, she wondered? And where was Yellow Beard? Surely he could not be far away. Her eyes scanned the crowds. He was here, she was certain of it. Where?

  A man stepped from behind a column. At first, her anxious gaze went over him and right on past. Something clicked, and she looked again. It was him, Yellow Beard—only, the beard had been shaved off, just as in her dream.

  That was not the only change, either. His hair, long and yellow and straggly before, was a medium brown now, short and as nicely cut as his partner’s.

  It was his face that had changed the most, however. The mole was definitely gone. In its place she could see only a faint mark where it had been. What she hadn’t fully noticed in that previous, brief vision of him, however, was his nose. That, too, was different, straight where before it had been decidedly bent. It was a face etched permanently in her mind, but if she had only that police picture to go by, she wouldn’t have recognized him. She might have walked right by him in a busy department store and never even have seen him.