The Deadly Pearl Page 4

  “This here’s Esther, and the lady on my left is Ruth. Just like the Bible, dig? They ain’t sisters, though they look alike. Work for me outta Boston, but I invited ’em to New York for a few days. They stayin’ with me, but I told them I have a visitor who could use some company. So they gonna stay with you for a while, unless you wanna be by yourself.”

  Jennifer stepped toward Pearl and the two blond girls. The girls’ legs were bare, and they were barefoot. She liked that. God, did she like that! Pearl knew; he knew, and he must have told them. Bless your black ass, Pearl, my love.

  “Pearl, my sweet, you know how I adore company.”

  He grinned. “Sho’ nuff, baby, I do know.”

  The telephone rang.

  Unseen in another room, one of Pearl’s men picked it up, then buzzed him.

  “’Scuse me, ladies.” He gently took himself from the two teen-age girls, leaving them and Jennifer staring at each other while he walked behind the bar to a telephone extension. He picked up the receiver, holding it to his ear without speaking, listening in silence, his brow suddenly furrowing, hard eyes narrowing.

  When he hung up, he looked at the pale pink telephone for several seconds. Jennifer turned to him, smiling. “Pearl, the young ladies and I …” She saw his face, and she kept quiet. Her tone quickly switched. “What’s—”

  He interrupted her, his face unsmiling, his voice soft. “Trouble. With Roger tonight. Somethin’ happened, and I got to look into it. You stay here, or you can go on to your hotel. I check with you later.”

  He moved quickly across the orange fur rug, his hands gripping the knife and the sword.

  A door slammed behind him.

  Softly Jennifer murmured, “Onward Christian soldier, marching as to war.”

  Aloud she said to the two teen-age whores, “Would you like some candy, little girls?”

  Chapter 4

  INSTINCT

  SHARP NEEDLES OF ANNOYANCE dug into Robert Sand’s brain, making him uneasy. His instincts and reflexes would not let him dismiss the fight in Roger’s apartment. A tiny voice raced back and forth across his mind, shouting silent questions. Invisible doubts plunged eagle claws into his brain, holding on tight.

  Samurai training had given him instincts surprising sometimes to himself. He had earned those instincts with seven years of training under a martial-arts teacher whose goal was physical and mental perfection, nothing less. You learned because you suffered and bled, and in those years Robert Sand had done a lot of both.

  Pain was no friend, but it was an acquaintance Sand knew well.

  It was pain that had made him into a samurai. That’s why he was determined to work at something until he understood it.

  “This isn’t the end of it,” he said to Foster. “They didn’t beat the pimp just because of the girl. There’s more to it than that. That’s why they were so thorough, and that’s what they were telling him when you kicked in the door.”

  Foster nodded once, remembering Sand’s calm but firm warning about kicking in doors before you’ve tried to check out what’s on the other side. Foster was a pro, and telling him once should be enough, Sand thought, unless he’s getting more uptight about his missing daughter.

  If he was, Sand could understand. Roger was no sweetheart, but the three dudes who stomped him and tried to waste Sand and Foster were a lot meaner. If these were the kind of men dealing in runaway teen-age girls, Rochelle Foster had more trouble than she needed.

  They left the wrecked apartment quickly, before the noise drew police. If the Baron came back from Europe and learned that the Black Samurai and one of his own Secret Service agents were sitting in a New York jail, his Texas temper would explode through the roof.

  Sand’s arm was around Roger’s waist, dragging him along the hallway, down the stairs, and out into the chilly April night. A white wino lay on the sidewalk, his face caked with thick black dirt and dried red-yellow sores. Two Puerto Rican boys, no older than ten, held kitchen knives in small fists, trying to pry open a window of Foster’s car.

  Foster, his hand tightly gripping the fifteen-year-old black girl, Amanda, yelled, “Little bastards! Move!” Laughing and cursing Foster’s mother, the kids ran, one of them holding a hubcap in his hand, arm straight up in triumph and defiance.

  “Spics,” mumbled Foster.

  He drove, Amanda beside him. In the back seat of the dark red Mercury, Roger leaned his battered head as far back as he could. There was no other way for him to breathe through a crushed, bleeding nose and a mouth swollen from being kicked and punched. One eye, purple and ugly yellow, was entirely closed.

  They were heading for a Harlem hospital on 135th Street and Lenox Avenue. Roger’s choice. His voice was raspy, like an old man’s, and his words were slurred, coming through a mouth that minutes ago had had a foot jammed in it. “Harlem. No questions up there, man, ain’t no never-mind ’bout nothin’. Just gimme there. Know some people, everything’s gonna be cool.” His tongue probed for loose teeth, found a couple, and his face knotted with pain. Both of his hands rested palm-up in his lap, a sign of helplessness and defeat.

  “You think so?” said Sand, looking at the pimp’s bloody, lumpy face and misshapen mouth. A mask. Looks as if he’s wearing a horror mask. “If you’ve got friends in that hospital, you’d better hope they’re good at building faces. You could use a new one, starting now.”

  Roger grunted, then coughed, spitting fresh blood on the yellow jumpsuit. A doctor for Roger and a policeman for Amanda.

  The car stopped for a red light. Three Puerto Rican teenagers crossing the street slowed down in front of the car, slapped the hood with their palms, and yelled. Catching a glimpse of Amanda, one of them yelled, “Hoo-hoo. Baby, I got what you need, you got what I want. How much you charge?”

  She covered her face with her hands, and her body shook as she wept quietly. Foster stiffened. It could have been Rochelle. His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, and when the light turned green, his foot came down hard on the accelerator, and the Mercury leaped forward.

  Sand’s voice was soothing as he touched her gently on her thin shoulder. “Want to go back to your family?”

  She nodded yes, the hands tipped with blue fingernail polish still covering her face.

  “Where are they?”

  “North Carolina. Charlotte.”

  “How long you been here?”

  “Three days.”

  “Why did you run away from home?”

  She lifted her head up, wiping the tears from her young face with her thin fingers. “Don’t know. School, bad grades, whippin’s at home …”

  “You’re better off back there, know that?”

  She nodded once.

  “How did you meet Roger?”

  Her lips were pressed tightly together as she fought against more tears. Tears clung to her trembling chin like delicate beads of glass on soft brown. “B-bus terminal. Port Authority, Eighth Avenue. He and thi-this woman, they came up to me and say they have this place f-for young girls to stay … to stay, and I …”

  She broke down. Foster looked at her, his face feeling a pain that was hers and his too.

  Sand could guess the rest. No need in making her relive it. Pimp bastards. Using women to lure girls. Hanging around bus terminals, airports, and places in the East and West Village where sad kids, hopeful and hopeless at the same time, fled to in hopes of finding the ghosts of “Flower Power.”

  Flower Power was dead. And these kids were rushing to join it.

  But when you’re in a huge, frightening, cold city, and you’re hungry, scared, lonely, and don’t have a place to sleep, you’ll believe anyone promising food, shelter, a kind word.

  Smooth-talking pimps, with broad-brimmed hats and flashy clothes, feasted on the misery of the young. Using women, the pimps lured a runaway like Amanda to a room or an apartment and then began “The Process.”

  “The Process.” Repeated rape by the pimp and his friends, with sodomy and sexua
l sadism thrown in for a quick brutal education. Beat her over and over and maybe force her into drugs. Whatever it takes to get her to whore, do it. Break her spirit, teach her respect for “Daddy,” ’cause from now on the pimp is gonna be her “Daddy.”

  Get her a cheap wig, tight-fitting clothes, teach her to lie about her age to cops and customers too. Get her turning tricks right there in the room. Run in customers, anybody with ten or twenty dollars. Watch her do it, see how well she’s learned her lesson. If she likes it, or if she doesn’t give any trouble, turn her ass out. On the street, in “the life.” She’s a “ho” now, Jim. Make sure somebody’s watchin’ her all the time, at least until she’s really broken in.

  Give her a “Jones,” a dope habit, and she’ll never run away. Yeah, Sand knew the story.

  He didn’t want Amanda near Roger anymore. That’s why he had driven past a policeman on St. Mark’s Place, stopped at the other end of the block, then let her out of the car and told her to go back to the cop. Before she left, he showed her the snapshot of Rochelle Foster. No, Amanda hadn’t seen her.

  They watched until she reached the cop and he turned and spoke to her.

  She was scared enough to go back home now.

  They drove toward Harlem. “Worse than I thought,” Foster mumbled. “Shit hole down here. Thought D.C. was bad, but, man, this place—”

  “We’re just getting started,” said Sand. “Hang on. She needs you. Maybe more than ever. Don’t come apart.”

  They had started almost forty-eight hours ago, when Sand was jogging in Central Park at seven in the morning, enjoying the cool fresh air, the quiet, and the beautiful blue of the early-April morning.

  Five miles a day. Without legs, a man was nothing. So he ran every day. That was Master Konuma’s law. Sand had never forgotten that. In the past, running by itself had saved his life.

  That morning, he had noticed the dark red Mercury moving back and forth, keeping within sight of him as he jogged. It passed him, then came up behind him, and passed him again.

  He ran lightly, sporadically breaking into quick sprints, then slowing down to a steady pace, his arms pumping evenly, a light sweat breaking on his forehead and darkening the armpits of his gray sweatshirt. If the car held muggers, he’d deal with that when it happened. If it were cops, that was another thing.

  There was no reason for cops, but you could never tell. Was it someone from a past mission who’d learned of his whereabouts and had picked this lonely spot for revenge? That hadn’t happened yet, but it was only a question of time before someone from his past came looking for him.

  Together, he and the Baron had torn down some powerful people, the kind of people who didn’t forget or forgive. One day they would try to even up the score.

  The dark red car passed him, slowed down, and stopped. A door opened, and a man in a gray suit stepped out in the dawn-darkness and waited, slamming the door behind him. Sand kept jogging toward him, his senses now alert and ready.

  The man was Foster, and he got to the point. “I need your help.”

  Sand stopped, swinging his arms from side to side, then stretching them overhead. “Baron send you?”

  “No. Here on my own.”

  “He know about it?”

  “No.”

  Sand was puzzled. “Let’s walk. Tell me about it.”

  Foster did. He wanted help in finding his daughter, who had run away to New York. “We live in Washington. She’s always talked about coming here. I traced her to a bus terminal in Washington. They say she bought a ticket here.”

  “Mind telling me how you found me?’

  “I’ve backed you up a few times when the Baron said so. I heard you tell him you run every day in Central Park when you’re staying in New York. I just drove around until I found you.”

  “Why me? Why not the cops?”

  “Shit, man, cops don’t move until there’s a dead body somewhere. I been a cop, and I know. Hundreds of kids run away every year, and nobody does shit about it. Cops don’t go after them; they ain’t got the time or the interest. To them, my daughter’s just another nigger kid. To me, she’s all I got. Ain’t got no wife, she’s dead. Been thinkin’ of marrying again, but all I been able to do is stick my kid off with relatives and try to hold on to this goddamn job. I know it ain’t been the best thing to do, but it’s been the onliest thing.”

  They walked across the wet grass, hearing bird sounds and the quick noise from cars passing on the road behind them. Sand looked at him. “You got a reason to worry?” Foster was silent; then he answered. “Used to be a cop before joining the Secret Service. Worked runaways out of Washington. Bad scene. That shit’s so bad, you can’t believe it. What pimps and creeps do to kids you wouldn’t fucking believe.”

  “You sure she’s here?”

  “They said so at the Washington bus terminal. Said she took a bus headin’ straight for here, no stops, no nothin’. Look, I know the Baron’s away and everything, but ain’t no way I can do this alone. I seen you do a few things. You smart, you tough.”

  “And I’m black.”

  “I tell you straight, yeah, I’m countin’ on that.”

  If I say no, thought Sand, what are my reasons? None. Absolutely none. The Baron’s away for three days, and maybe we’ll turn her up in that time. And isn’t this what it’s all about? Didn’t we say we’d help the helpless? A father and his daughter. She’s a big deal to him.

  “I’ve got some more running to do. When I finish, we’ll start.”

  Foster’s smile was weak, but it came from the heart, a troubled heart. “Thanks, bro’.”

  Now Sand turned to Roger. “Pearl. Who is he?” Roger took air in through his mouth before answering. “Pimp, goddamn pimp like me. Thinks his shit don’t stink, thinks he some kinda special man. His asshole point to the ground like mine.”

  “He’s not like you. He had you beaten. He’s got men working for him. That means power. He’s got power, you got pain. Tell me about Pearl.”

  Roger coughed, lifted his hands from his lap, then let them drop back. More defeat. Pearl was different, and he knew it. Too late to jive now. “Pearl, he, yeah, well, he important.” The words sounded thick, as though wrapped in a towel. “Got lots of girls ho’in’ for him. New Yawk, other ci-cities, lotsa ass out on the street for Pearl.”

  “The girls, are they all young?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did you hold out on him? Weren’t you supposed to find girls and turn them over to Pearl?”

  “God. …” Roger touched his ribs and winced. Sand was counting on the beating having killed the pimp’s resistance. It had. “Yeah. Me and Wesley, shit, man, I want my own stable, wanna be boss. Don’ wanna turn gals over to Pearl. Two hundred dollars ain’t shit for a ho’. Git more than that a night from one bitch.” His head flopped from side to side.

  “Where’s Pearl?”

  “’Round. He’s ’round. Nobody see him, nobody. He got people out front of him. Never on the street, he never on the street. Cops, nobody touch Pearl. That fucker smart, Jack.”

  Sand frowned. His instinct was slicing away at him again. His words came faster. “The men who beat you, they said Pearl was planning something big. Is he?”

  “Uh-huh. Yeah, he got somethin’ big comin’ up. Pimps work for him say he gettin’ girls together for big score. Gonna ship them somewhere. Nobody say what, but it’s big score, big. … Hey, you guys ain’t pigs, why you ask about Pearl?”

  Sand looked into the rear-view mirror, and his eyes locked with Foster’s. The Black Samurai shook his head quickly, signaling Foster into silence.

  “We saved your life, we’re taking you to the hospital. That’s all you need to know. If we hadn’t come through that door, you would be in a hole someplace with dirt in your face.”

  Roger nodded once in understanding. He could dig it. Cops meant a possible bust, questions that could tie him up with that young pussy he was pushing, and could lead to time in the joint. He didn’t w
ant that. He’d done time, and there wasn’t anything worse than that.

  He couldn’t think now. Pain was hooking into his eyes and squeezing his face until it bled and mashing his body until ribs cracked. All he could do was tell them what they wanted to know and hope to hell he could get somewhere, stop this pain, then lay low until everything was cool again.

  Sand held the small snapshot near Roger’s one good eye. “Seen her around?”

  Shifting his head back and to the right, straining for light from passing streetlights, Roger stared at the snapshot, slowly shaking his head. “No man, ain’t seen this chick. That why you lookin’ round here?”

  Sand nodded.

  Roger coughed, his face wincing with the pain of it. “Check Pearl’s people,” he rasped. “Maybe one of them done grabbed her. You run into Pearl, you give him what you give them other dudes.”

  “Where can I find Pearl’s people?”

  “Lots of places. Sometimes they find you, and that ain’t good. Some bars, man. Talk to some his ladies, them’s the places to check out.”

  “Where?”

  “JJ’s. Fifty-seventh Street, Eighth Avenue. Buddy’s, near St. Mark’s Place. Pancake place on Broadway and Forty-fourth. Places like that. Players there, their ladies, too. Watch your ass, man. Bad people.”

  “A name, any name near Pearl.”

  Roger’s chest heaved, then fell. His slurred words were taking longer to come through his bleeding mouth. “Chink. Muscle for Pearl. Big dude, mean as shit. Look up Cool Papa. Collection man. He take up money from ho’s, other pimps. Git it on to Pearl. That’s the fucker I bet told Pearl on me. Nino. Spanish dude. Deals coke to Pearl’s people so maybe he know somethin’. Oh, shit, bro’, I’m hurtin’.”

  So’s Amanda, thought Sand. “The woman who worked with you—who is she?”

  “Hey, man—”

  “Maybe Pearl thinks she helped you double-cross him. If he gets to her, she’ll end up looking like you.”