Sacrifice by LindaO

“Where’s the boy, Clancy?” Smithy demanded.

The butcher shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Smithy nodded. Torres hit him again. Jo-Jo and Dion watched from the doorway.

“Damn it, Smithy, I don’t know!” Clancy said. He grabbed the edge of the table and pulled himself off the floor.

“It’s not like I ask for his ID.” He chuckled without humor, wiping blood off his mouth. “Not that it would be real anyhow.”

“Again,” Smithy said.

Torres drew his hand back.

“Wait, wait!” Clancy yelled. “Shit, man. He’s a street kid. I don’t know where he lives.”

“Torres.”

“Wait!” He’d been a loss less cooperative the first ten times they’d hit him, but now he was wearing down. “I know where he hangs some time. That’s all I know.”

“Where?” Smithy demanded.

“You know where St. Herman’s used to be?”

Smithy looked at him blankly. “I know,” Torres said.

“Up the hill there, under the bridge, there’s a squatters camp. He stays there some time. Used to, anyhow. I don’t know if he still does.”

Smithy considered the butcher for a long moment. His arm hurt. Torres’ knuckles were bleeding. “If he shows up here again, you better call me.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

As they went out the front door, Clancy wiped his mouth again. Then he picked up his cleaver. “They show up here again,” he said darkly, “they better bring a lot more men.”

The counter girl looked at him. Then she crossed her arms, shook her head, and turned back to her soap operas.

***

Every pawn shop in the world. Reese thought, had the same underlying odor. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was. Dirty wet carpet. Dust. Desperation. But underneath the local scents, they all smelled the same.

He approached the older man at the back counter. “Help you?” the man asked evenly.

Reese gave him the copy of the pawn ticket. “I need to redeem this.”

“Sorry. I can only redeem with the original ticket.”

There were a couple ways to shake down a pawn shop owner, Reese knew. He took the simplest one: He opened his wallet and slid a hundred dollar bill across the top of the cracked glass showcase.

The man looked up at him with renewed interest.

Reese added a second bill.

The man picked up the two bills and the claim ticket and disappeared into the back room.

He came back in two minutes with a smallish camera case. He put it on the counter and opened it to reveal mid-priced digital camera that looked almost brand new. There were two lenses with it, and the instruction book. “Seventy-five bucks,” he said.

Reese shrugged and put a third hundred dollar bill down. “Keep it,” he said. He closed up the camera case. “What can you tell me about the girl?”

Having been bribed adequately, the pawn shop owner didn’t try to gouge him for more. He was clearly a professional. “Young, skinny. Scared.”

“When did she pawn the camera?”

He had the pawn slip with the copy of the claim ticket. “Two weeks ago tomorrow.”

“Say what she needed the money for?”

“No. But her boyfriend was with her, and she handed him the cash right in the store. Might have been for drugs, that’s what it usually is, but I don’t know. They didn’t act like junkies.”

“Did she seem afraid of the boyfriend?”

“No.” The man rolled his eyes. “They were all kisses and giggles.”

And that, Reese thought, was everything he needed here. It was the first thing that had gone right all day. “Thank you,” he said warmly. He picked up the camera and left the pawn shop.

***

Finch organized his new data base and compared the cards which could not be swiped to the list to be sure he’d included all the names. Then he set to work learning about the people Clay and others had robbed. Aldo Rossi was not among them, of course; that would have been far too simple.

While he worked, Harold kept a link open to Reese, but he focused his attention on the conversation in Christine Fitzgerald’s apartment. Lis had been extremely quiet at first, and Christine had simply given her some yogurt and left her alone. From the gentle irregular ticking noises, she was working at her computer. She did not, Finch noted, talk to Zelda, though that was her preferred method of operation. The teenager was cramping her style.

After a time the girl began to speak unprompted. “How come you have such a big computer?”

“It’s my business,” Christine answered. “I conduct computer security audits for a living.”

“Say what?”

“I hack corporate computers and then tell them how to be more secure.”

“Oh.” And then, “Do you ever play games on it?”

“All the time.”

There was a bit of quiet, and then, “You have a kitten!”

“That’s Smokey,” Christine answered. “John found her in a trash can. You can pick her up if you want.”

“So, what? Does he just bring you all his strays?”

“I don’t know. This is a fairly recent development.”

“He’s cute.”

“He’s a she.”

“Not the kitten. John.”

“Oh. Yeah. He knows.”

“He’s kinda scary, though.”

“That depends on what side of him you’re on.”

Lis went quiet again. “Will he really help Cash?”

“Cash?”

“That’s what he calls himself now.” Lis chuckled a little, sadly. “He said Eddie sounded like a little kid.”

“Cash Clay? Seriously?”

“Everybody says that. I don’t get why it’s funny.”

Christine groaned. “No, I don’t imagine you do.”

Finch touched the phone and said quietly, “See what else she’ll tell you about Clay.”

There was half a breath of pause. Christine wasn’t used to his voice in her ear. But she covered quickly. “How long have you known him?”

“Since fifth grade. Well, I was in fifth grade. He was in seventh.”

“They went to grade school together,” Finch mused aloud. “That’s very helpful.” He reached for his own keyboard.

“How’d you meet?” Christine asked. “You want another yogurt?”

“I shouldn’t.”

“It outdates Sunday. We should eat it.”

“Okay.” And then, “I started there in the middle of the year. At the middle school. And there was this girl, Cindy. She was the big B, you know? She decided she didn’t like me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can she have some?”

Finch squinted up at the speaker.

“Ummm, just let her lick a little off your finger. Any more than that might upset her stomach.”

“Okay.” There was actual giggling. “It tickles.”

“I know. Don’t let her near your ears, it tickles like crazy. So what about Cindy?”

“She was picking on me in gym class. We went outside with the boys and ran laps, you know, in the spring? And she kept picking on me, and Eddie came and got right in her face about it. Cash.”

“That was nice of him.”

“Yeah, except she was one of those early bloomers, you know? She was like six feet tall. And Cash wasn’t. She beat the crap out of him.”

Christine evidently tried not to laugh, but she didn’t succeed.

“And then he almost got suspended for starting it. And they didn’t do anything to her, just because she was a girl. It wasn’t fair.”

Finch changed lines. “Mr. Reese?”

“What’ve you got, Finch?”

“I’ve got a name. Elisa Hammond. Originally from Elkhart, Indiana. Moved to Oak Ridge, Connecticut several years ago with her family. She went missing three weeks ago, on the night of her sixteenth birthday. The local police originally issued an Amber Alert, but then cancelled it.”

“I figured her for a runaway,” Reese answered. “She came to New York to be with her boyfriend.”

“Her family is somewhere more affluent than Clay’s. The parents may have disapproved of the relationship.”

“Especially since he’s been living on the street for the past two years. They must have kept in touch somehow.”

“Judging from Miss Holland’s social networking footprint, keeping in touch is not a challenge for her.” Finch shook his head. “Friends, photos, trivia … would you like to know her favorite color?”

“Sky blue.”

“Impressive, Mr. Reese. Our young lady is a veritable social butterfly. Unfortunately, none of her contacts seem to be in the city. And she hasn’t logged in to any of her sites since she left home.”

“So she dropped everything,” Reese said, “all her friends, her family, everything, to come here and be with Clay? On the street?”

“It looks that way. I’ll do some more research.”

Reese growled. “At least Christine got her to eat something.”

“Fatty acids,” Finch agreed. “She’s absolutely right about that, you know. A bit of adequate nutrition may enable Miss Holland to think much more clearly.”

“We can hope so.”

Finch switched back to the other conversation. He’d been half-listening while he talked to Reese; there had been something about dogs and cats and a horse. And a little sister. He double-checked his identification of the girl: Elisa Holland had a sister, Amelia, who was 13.

“I shouldn’t have eaten that second one,” Lis complained. “I’m stuffed.”

“How long have you had an eating disorder?” Christine asked bluntly.

“I don’t. I just have to stay thin so I can be a model.”

“You’re a model?”

“Well, not yet,” Lis answered. ”But I’m gonna be, once me and Cash get straightened around.”

“Oh.” Christine kept her tone almost neutral, but Finch could tell it was difficult.

“I don’t really want to be a model,” Lis continued blithely. “I want to be a photographer. But Cash says it’ll be way easier to break in there if I’m a model first. Because I’ll know people then, you know?”

“Sure.”

“I’m not really sure he’s right, though. Because the people I’d know from modeling would be like fashion people, right? And I want to do real photography. Photojournalism. Go to, you know, combat zones and stuff like that. Disasters and stuff.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Like after 9/11. When I was a little kid, I’d find pictures, in magazines and stuff, and they were amazing, you know? And I would just like, sit and look at them in my room and I would just cry. I want to take pictures that make people cry.”

Christine didn’t say anything at all then.

Finch could tell that she was in pain, that the teenager had inadvertently invoked some of the hacker’s worst memories. “I think she’s trying to say that she wants to take pictures that move people,” he told her quietly.

“Uh-huh,” she responded.

Lis didn’t notice. “So anyhow, yeah, I’m going to get into modeling and then make the change when I’m older, like twenty-five or something. You know, too old for modeling. And in the meantime, I really like being skinny, too. I mean, I think I look good like this. I hardly even think about food any more. And then there’s that other thing.” She giggled awkwardly. “I don’t have to worry about periods anymore.”

Finch felt his cheeks grow hot. He was glad only Bear was there to see him.

“Right,” Christine answered evenly. “That’s important, huh?”

“Well, it’s, you know, whatever. But Clay really likes it, ‘cause it means I can’t get pregnant, right? So we don’t have to worry about, you know, using anything.”

In the brief silence that followed, Finch both desperately wished he had access to the cameras in Christine’s apartment, and was devoutly glad that he didn’t. Whatever expression the hacker had on her face, it was enough to bring even the chatty teenager up short.

“What?” Lis said. She sounded nervous, even frightened. “You know what I mean, right?”

“Your boyfriend,” Christine said, in very precise syllables, “wants you to starve yourself so that he doesn’t have to wear a condom?”

“Well that’s not the only reason,” Lis protested quickly. “Like I said, it’s about the modeling and breaking into photography … “

“But mostly it’s so he can ride raw.”

Lis hesitated. “It’s not like that. He’s not like that.”

There was a second pause. When Christine spoke again, her voice was flat, almost expressionless. “Zelda,” she called, “get us a cab. Right away please.”

“I’m on it,” the computer voice answered.

“Your computer talks!” Lis said, delighted.

“Yeah.” Christine’s voice remained flat. “Put the cat down. Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going for a ride, and we’re going to have a talk. A long and excruciatingly detailed talk that someone like your mother should have had with you years ago. And you do not need to hear it.”

This last sentence, Finch gathered, was directed at him and possibly Reese, because as soon as she said it, Christine’s phone went dead.

He listened to the silence for a moment. “Mr. Reese?” he asked quietly.

“I heard her,” Reese confirmed. His voice was also hushed. He sounded a bit shaken. “I think … we might be just as glad … “

“That we’re not listening to the rest of this
conversation?” Finch supplied. “I think I agree.”

“I, uh … let me know if you hear from them.”

“I will.” Finch paused. “Mr. Reese? I think it might be wise if you …”

“Found Clay before Christine does?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“I’ll do my best.”

***

The homeless camp was easy enough to find.

There a black Lincoln SUV parked illegally at the curb at the bottom of the hill. Reese drove past it and found a less conspicuous parking spot. He left his suit coat in the car and slipped on a windbreaker from the trunk. He didn’t look casual or remotely destitute, but it was a step in the right direction. He circled widely and slipped up the hill behind the camp.

The little camp was not well-organized; there were make-shift tents and lean-tos in an irregular pattern tucked under the shelter of the overpass. Reese saw at least two burn barrels and a fire pit, all too close to the tents. There was trash all around the perimeter and even inside the camp: Food wrappers, beer cans, whiskey bottles. It smelled, too, of rotted food and human waste. A well-run camp would have addressed most of those issues …
He shook his head. Not every camp was lucky enough to have a Joan to keep things in order.

While he watched, Aldo Rossi and three of his men strode through the little camp like they owned it. The man Reese had leveled in the butcher shop wasn’t there, but the others were cut from the same cloth. Fit, strong, well-armed. They pulled back blankets and tarps and looked into every tent. The residents protested, but quietly; Aldo’s guys all had their handguns out.

The mobsters were bunched up. Nervous. Reese probably could have taken all of them, but there were too many guns and innocent bystanders. John paused behind some scrubby trees and waited. He surveyed the ground. If they found Clay here, he wasn’t going to let them leave with him.

The camp residents started to gather. They were all young, mid-twenties and younger, and not particularly hearty-looking. They weren’t going to take on the men with the guns. But they were watching, angry. Muttering.
The mobsters bunched up even more. Reese could tell they weren’t aware of what they were doing, or that their behavior emboldened the gathering crowd.

He watched the homeless people, waiting for a leader to emerge. It didn’t take long. A tall boy with blond hair in a green coat moved to the front of the pack. The others looked to him. He stood his ground, not moving on Rossi or challenging him, but not backing down when the young mobster approached. They spoke, very briefly.

Edward Clay evidently wasn’t there.

Rossi and his men threw a few things and kicked over a fire barrel just for fun, but they left without harming anyone and without finding the boy.

Reese waited and watched. Ten minutes after the mobsters left, the young leader walked out of the camp. Reese trotted back down to the street and stepped in front of him. “Hey. Talk to you a minute?”

The young man looked him up and down. Reese could see the assessment in his eyes, and the decision: He was going to run. A good choice, actually, but Reese grabbed his arm. Up close, the boy reeked of marijuana. “I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t want any trouble. I’m looking for someone. A boy. The same boy those guys with the guns were looking for.”

The young man looked at his face, then down at his hand, then back to his face. Then without warning he tucked his lower lip under his top teeth and whistled very loudly.

Reese glanced up the hill. A handful of other young men were hurrying down from the camp the help their unofficial leader. A second wave followed them.

He released the boy’s arm and took a step back as the others surrounded him. “All right,” he asked evenly, “what’s the percentage?”

“The what?”

“I know that you’re upset because Rossi and his goons stomped through your camp. And you couldn’t do anything to stop him because of the guns. But I’m not waving a gun around, so you think you can take out your frustrations on me. I get that. But it’s not going to happen. So what percentage of your guys do I have to drop before you settle down?”

The blond grinned. “You’re pretty cocky, old man.”

Reese sighed and waited. The leader poked at him half-heartedly. John blocked easily and went on waiting.

The man behind him, the biggest in the group, jumped toward his back. Reese ducked and moved to the side, and the man fell past him to the ground. The next attack came from his right. John shot his arm out in a straight punch and the man dropped.

Two more, slightly behind to his left. Reese threw an elbow at the first, grabbed him before he could fall, and slung him around against the second.

The first attacker staggered up, but backed away. The others stayed on the ground. The loose circle of the blond’s companions became looser.

“So,” Reese said, counting, “twenty-five percent, then?”

The young leader shook his head. “Make it worth my while?”

“Too late for that. Edward Clay.”

The boy shook his head. “Don’t know him.”

“Cash. He calls himself Cash.”

“That little asshole. Yeah, we know him.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

The boy considered. “Two, three weeks.”

“When the girl showed up,” the bigger guy offered.

“Lis?”

“Lis, yeah,” the leader answered. “He was okay before that. But once she showed up he got all weird. Protective, you know?”

“You hit on her?”

The young man grinned. “”Hell, we all hit on her. Fresh meat, gotta take a shot, right? All she had to do was say no. But she got all prissy about it. Offended, you know? Like she was way too good for any of us.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was just askin’. She didn’t have to get all hysterical. But she started crying, and then Cash got all up in my face. It was a bad scene. So they moved out. Haven’t seen ‘em since.”

“Where would he go?”

“How the hell would I know?”

“You know everything that goes on at the camp. You know where else he would go.”

The kid looked at him. Looked up the hill. Looked around at his guys. “Sometimes he’d get a room, when he had a little cash. The Savoy.”

“Or the Rex,” the big guy offered.

Reese nodded. He already had those locations from Robinson. “Anywhere else?”

“Nah. That’s all I know.”

“Thank you.”

Reese walked back to his car. Behind him, the group grumbled, then went back to their camp. John opened the trunk and replaced the windbreaker with his suit coat.

When he closed the trunk, one of the girls from the camp was standing next to the car.

“Hello,” Reese said.

“You lookin’ for Cash?”

“Do you know where I can find him?”

“Will you make it worth my while?”

She was probably in her early twenties, but her face already had the marks of a hard drinker. “If I give you money, will you promise to get something to eat?”

“Sure, whatever.”

Reese fished a twenty dollar bill out of his wallet, held it folded between his fingers.

The woman smirked. “Seriously?”

Reese pulled out one more.

“You know St. Augustine’s?”

“I know it.”

“Building across the street’s vacant. There’s a camp in the basement. You get in from the alley. Under the plywood. It’s pretty hidden. Not many people. Little Miss Suburbs would have felt safe there.”

Reese let the girl take the money.

***
q95;