“Does Debbie know what happened?” Mattie said.
“Yes,” Chloe said, biting her lower lip. “She called me right after and said I’d embarrassed her. She said I screwed up.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Did she know about the backpack?” Mattie said.
“No.”
“Did you tell her about what the man did?”
“No.”
I crossed my legs at the ankles and leaned forward in a half-hearted stretch. Hawk and I had performed many walking lunges that morning, and it felt good to hang there for a moment.
“Can you ask her to meet you?” Mattie said.
“No.”
“Can you ask her to meet us?” I said.
“I don’t want to get in trouble,” she said. “I just want all this to go away. When I think about that man and what he was doing, I want to throw up. I got a boyfriend. I didn’t even tell him. He’d probably think I was a whore, too.”
“Please don’t say that,” I said.
Chloe nodded.
“Can you tell Debbie you know another girl who’s interested?” Mattie said.
I looked to Mattie and shook my head. Mattie, being Mattie, ignored me. I reached for Pearl and slipped the harness around her skinny brown body. She rewarded me with more kisses and a healthy dose of puppy breath.
“I know she’s got a summer job at an ice-cream shop at the bottom of Pru Center. That’s where we first talked about giving massages and how much it would pay. I tried to get on at the food court but they weren’t hiring.”
“Tell her you’re sorry you got nervous, but you have a friend who’s ready to make some fast money,” Mattie said. “And tell her I’m seventeen.”
“I don’t know, Mattie,” Chloe said. “What if she recognizes you?”
“It won’t matter,” Mattie said.
Chloe placed her hands on her hips and stared out onto the beach, where some kids had started a pickup game of volleyball. They laughed and played, someone setting up a large speaker beside some beach towels. Endless summer.
“Okay,” Chloe said, nodding. “But watch yourself, Mattie Sullivan. Something about this man. I don’t know. He was friendly at first. But something in him changed. He had a look, watching me as he took the towel off. I don’t know. It was weird. Like an animal. It looked as if he wanted to hurt me. Hurt me real bad.”
“No one’s hurting you,” I said. “Ever.”
Chloe looked to me and then back to Mattie. “This guy really do all those things you said?”
“Leaping tall buildings in a single bound?” I said. “Outracing locomotives?”
Mattie shrugged. “Yep,” she said. “I don’t want to say too much. It always goes to his head.”
8
Two days later, I knocked off work and walked around the corner to join Wayne Cosgrove for a quick drink at Davio’s. Wayne was late as usual, so I started early with a tall Allagash White. I’d yet to break the foamy head when Mattie sauntered in and took a seat beside me at the bar.
“Startin’ a little early,” she said.
I eyed the beer, then looked over to Mattie. “Thank God,” I said. “You caught me just in time. I was about to chug this entire pint.”
“You could at least wait until five. Or until you got home to let Pearl out.”
“Pearl’s with Susan,” I said. “I’m on my own tonight.”
“Good,” she said. “We need to talk.”
“I’m present in both mind and spirit.”
“Busy?”
“As a beaver.”
“You don’t look busy.”
I took a long sip of cold beer. “I spent half the day checking out our new pal, Greebel,” I said.
“And?”
“He’s a creep, too.”
“And?”
“And I found no mention of a specialty in working with foot-massage enthusiasts.”
“What about the other half of your day?”
I shrugged. “Background work on some cops for a defense case for Rita Fiore.”
“Checking out the cops?”
“Some cops,” I said, “are like Belson and Quirk.”
“And others.”
“Others,” I said, “not so much.”
“I think that Rita Fiore has the hots for you.”
“Shocking,” I said, doing a subtle Sean Connery. “Positively shocking.”
I drained a little bit more of the beer, the foamy head soon gone. Little bubbles rose up and broke the surface as the bartender placed a bowl of mixed nuts on the bar. I decided I might never leave.
“I found Debbie Delgado,” she said. “I waited all day until she came on at that ice-cream shop at Pru Center. I went up, ordered a strawberry cone, and basically shot the shit with her until some customers came up. I told her when she got a break, I wanted to talk with her about maybe hooking me up with her rich friends.”
It was early evening at Davio’s, and much of the dining room was empty. The large U-shaped bar had just started to fill up with the office crowd. Lots of men in loose ties speaking with women in sleeveless silk tops. I liked being among the office crowd after work. Their exasperated faces made me recall why I did what I did.
The bartender returned. Mattie ordered a Coke without ice. The bartender left, and I nodded at her excellent selection.
Mattie picked up a cocktail napkin and began to play with the edges. She had on jeans and her Sox windbreaker, hair pulled into a ponytail and her face scrubbed of any makeup. She looked as wholesome as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
The bartender set down the Coke and walked away.
“I waited around for like an hour, and finally Debbie comes out and sits with me in the food court,” Mattie said. “I tell her that I’ve heard that she’s got some kind of connection with a rich guy who likes to get his feet rubbed. Actually, I didn’t say feet. I just said some rich guy that likes massages. And Debbie stopped me right there. She said I wasn’t exactly the type. And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And she says, ‘You’re way too old.’”
“You are ancient.”
“I asked her how young are we talking,” Mattie said. “And Debbie says, ‘the younger the better.’ Can you believe that crap? The younger the better? I didn’t know what to say and just blurted out that that was pretty sick. And Debbie was like it was no big deal. She says the man just liked fifteen-, sixteen-year-olds.”