A Woman’s Eye

THE PUPPET by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

DOROTHY DAVIS’s first crime novel was The Judas Cat, published in 1949, Since that time she achieved an enviable reputation for her ability to write novels and stories with both believable rural and urban settings. Her more than twenty novels include at least four that have been nominated for the Edgar Award and she was made a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America in 1984. Most critics consider A Gentle Murderer to be her best novel, and one of the best crime novels of the post-World War II era.

Over the ring of the doorbell came the cry, “Help me, Julie… Let me in!”

Julie, out of bed before she was rightly awake, pulled on her robe and ran, barefoot, to the front of the shop. It was half-past one in the morning. She unbolted the door and opened it on the latch. Her upstairs neighbor, Rose Rodriguez, was shivering in a silvery dress that glowed in the stark Manhattan street light. Julie let her in, then bolted the door and lighted a lamp.

“I don’t know where Juanita is. She’s not in her bed. I thought maybe she comes to you?”

Julie shook her head. “Sit down while I get my slippers.”

The chair creaked with its burden. In the years Julie Hayes had occupied the shop, the ground floor apartment on West 44th Street, Mrs. Rodriguez had put on weight. Her one child, Juanita, had grown from a string bean to puberty with a sudden promising beauty.

Mrs. Rodriguez pointed at the row of dolls when Julie returned. They sat on a table, their backs against the wall. “They are Juanita’s, no?”

“We’ve been mending them,” Julie said. “Now tell me what’s with Juanita?”

“It’s boys. I know it’s boys.”

You ought to know, Julie thought. It was apparent Mrs. Rodriguez had just returned from an evening out. Her husband wouldn’t know about it. Juanita would. Julie was not a great hater, but she would have been hard put to find a kind word for the woman now twisting off the flashy rings from her fingers. “Where do you think she is? Let’s start with that.”

“She wants to go to her friend Elena’s for supper. I say okay, but you be home by nine o’clock. The whole holiday weekend and she hasn’t done her homework.”

“Did she come home?”

“Julie…” The woman’s face became a mask of contrition. “She has a very good father but not so good mother. You know?”

Julie ignored the ploy for sympathy. “Isn’t it possible she tried to call you? To ask if she could stay overnight? And then stayed anyway when she couldn’t reach you?”

“She knows better. Papa will not give permission. He will kill me…” The woman began to sob.

“Stop that!” Julie shouted. “Let’s call her friend’s house right now.”

“You know her number, Julie?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t even know her name except Elena.”

“Then you can’t do anything till morning. I can call the police…”

“No. No police. They come and ask questions.”

“Yeah.”

Mrs. Rodriguez brushed away green tears. Her mascara was running. “You are right. She stays with Elena, I think. That’s what I tell Papa if he looks and sees she’s not in her bed. A wild man.”

“First thing in the morning, call the school. Ask for the principal. Whoever you get, find out Elena’s last name, her phone number…”

The woman laid her hand on Julie’s. “Please, will you call? Say it’s for me, Señora Rodriguez. Say I don’t speak very good English. That’s the truth, no?”

“Mrs. Rodriguez…”

“Please, you call me Rose. We are friends, no?”

Julie could not go back to sleep. She listened for Juanita’s father to come home from work, a tired, bemused man who moonlighted on a second job while his wife moonlighted in her fashion. Juanita had grown up a silent, angry child who beat her dolls and pulled off their arms and legs. Now she and Julie were putting them together again with glue and heavy thread, a Christmas project for the really poor. It had taken Julie a long time to make her smile, then laugh, to make her see the dolls as little Juanitas. A lot of her own angry childhood had gone into the making.

Mr. Rodriguez came home. Julie waited for the explosion, the reverberations of which would run through the building. But none came. The woman would have persuaded him the child was asleep in her bed. Julie sat up and phoned the local precinct. The only complaints involving children were drug related: downtown bookings, parents contacted.

“How about the prostitutes-any young ones?” The wildest possibility.

“They’re all young-and as old as Magdalene,” the desk sergeant said. Then: “This wasn’t a sweep night, Julie.”

Nothing came of inquiries to the local hospitals.

Julie lay back and thought about when she had last seen the youngster. Late afternoon yesterday. Probably when she was coming home to ask permission to go to Elena’s. What was she wearing besides the red, white, and green streamers? Julie couldn’t remember. The Italian colors were for the Columbus Day Street Fair. Nor could she remember Juanita’s ever mentioning Elena. She was only beginning to make friends. So, thank God for Elena. Sleep finally came.

The girl opened her eyes. She seemed to be dreaming of waking up, but she had to be still asleep. She was lying in a huge, strange bed under a blanket with her clothes on. The room was dark except for a patch of gray light in the ceiling. Curled up on her side, her thumb in her mouth, she stared at the light. It looked more like a sheet floating up there, but the flickering lights of a plane appeared and moved quickly out of sight again. She heard the roar go away. It was a skylight in the ceiling, something she had seen only in a movie.

She tried to wake up. She bit her thumb, and when it hurt she knew that she was already awake. Then she remembered what had happened to her before the sleep: the woman and a man in the dirty lobby of an old theater where she had gone to see the puppets. At the fair the woman had told her about them and promised to show her how they worked. She had wanted to learn how to make puppets and how to make them act. The woman said she was a natural. She and Julie might even use the dolls and make their own puppet show. But there weren’t any puppets, and she knew the minute the door had closed behind her that she should never, never have gone there. The woman grabbed her and covered her mouth when she started to scream; the man held her legs and roped them together, then knocked them out from under her, sat on her, pinned her arm down, and must have stuck a needle in her. The place in the hollow of her arm hurt now when she touched it. She distinctly heard him say, “Five minutes.” She tried to scratch and bite. The man swore at her and the woman said, “For Christ’s sake, Danny, do you want her looking like a battered child?” Her memory stopped right there. Now the important thing was she had to go to the bathroom.

She inched her way to the edge of the bed in the direction she was facing. Something white stood on the floor a few feet from the bed-a bucket, she made out after a few seconds of study. She would have to use it, and maybe that was what it was there for. She crawled to it. It seemed safer to stay close to the floor. She wondered if her shoes were in the bed but didn’t think so. She squatted over the bucket but nothing happened. While she waited she made out the shapes of some scary figures on the other side of the bed-a lot of chalky white people just standing. They seemed to be moving toward her. She tried to cry out, but couldn’t, and her legs were shaking. She was sure she was going to fall. She managed not to, and the figures didn’t come round the bed. They weren’t even moving. Statues? If that was what they were, could one of them be the Blessed Virgin? “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…” She heard her own voice mumbling the prayer, then the beginning trickle of her water, then the gush, noisy in the pail.

She had just finished when the door opened behind her and sent a splash of light across the room. The man came in and lit a lamp on a table near the door.

“Figured out what that was for, did you? You’re a smart girl.”

She made no sound or move.

“Get back into bed and stay there till she brings your breakfast. I don’t want you messing round the studio. Do you know what a studio is? It’s where artists work.”

If she ran for the door, what would happen? He was too close to it and she couldn’t run. She couldn’t even move. Only her heart bumped inside her.

“Did you hear me? Into bed!”

“No,”

He grinned at her and took the hypodermic needle from his pocket.

She lunged, stumbling, toward the bed.

The guidance counselor, Dr. Alverez, sent Elena Cruz back to her classroom. Julie used the counselor’s phone to call Mrs. Rodriguez and tell her the news was not good. “You’d better waken your husband and then call the police, nine one one. Juanita did not go to Elena’s house at all last night. Elena was at her aunt’s house for dinner. In other words, Juanita has been missing since you last saw her. You simply must call the police.”

“Julie, please!” The woman’s voice rose hysterically.

“I’ll call you later,” Julie said and hung up.

The counselor was watching Julie with an appraising eye. “You know, don’t you, you’re the best thing that ever happened to Juanita.”

“Doesn’t help much now, does it?”

“If there’s anyone she’ll get in touch with it’s you.”

“So if I don’t hear from her, where is she? What’s the worst possibility you can think of, doctor?”

The counselor gave an enormous sigh. “That she was abducted. But if she was, she must have set herself up for it willingly-the lie about dinner at Elena’s.”

“Her mother thinks it’s all about boys,” Julie said.

“I wish it were. Ridiculous of me to say that, but the boys are a lot more interested in Juanita than she is in the boys.”

“Do you know what her home situation is like?”

Alverez nodded. “Her father works long hours. Whatever her mother does while he’s away, Juanita’s ashamed of it.”

“She usually stops at my place on the way home if I’m there. Yesterday she didn’t. I just happened to see her go by. I think she’d been to the street fair. If you’d ask her class-mates whether anyone saw her-where and what time-it would be great. When I went out not long after I saw her, I found a flyer stuck in my mail drop. Now I wonder if she put it there. Maybe. You try to think of everything. This was about a rally of the West Side women to close up the porn shops in the neighborhood.”

Alverez smiled. “Well, I can tell you this: If there’s a budding feminist in the sixth grade, it’s Juanita Rodriguez.”

“Take a bite, honey, or I’ll eat it. Didn’t your mother ever say, If you don’t eat it, I will’?”

Juanita did not answer. She was sitting at the table, the big woman between her and the door. It was daylight, but the room was lighted mostly by long tubes in the ceiling. There weren’t any windows except the one in the roof. The man, Danny, was poking around among the statues and moving some boxes. There were paintings, too, one on a three-legged stand and others stacked on their sides. Danny wasn’t doing anything, only moving things around. With his little eyes and skinny moustache he didn’t look to her like an artist.

The woman broke off a piece of the Danish, touched Juanita’s tight lips with it, and then ate it herself. Her fingernails were like dabs of blood, her mouth a red smear. Even her hair was red. She was as old as Mama, a lot older than Julie. Everybody would be looking for her, but where would they look? Papa would shout and whack her mother. Then he’d cry.

“Take some coffee, Juanita. It won’t hurt you, I promise.”

“You promised there were puppets.” Her first words except for the “No” to the needle.

“We do make puppets.”

The man gave a bark of laughter.

“Shut up, Danny. And you’re not supposed to touch any of their things back there. It’s in the agreement.”

“Fuck the agreement.”

“Don’t you talk like that in front of her,” the woman shouted.

“What in hell is going on with you, Dee?”

“Why don’t you go out and look for what you’re supposed to be looking for?”

“Because it’s nine A.M. and nothing’s open yet.” He came out from among the statues and stopped at the table. “The lights in here are no damn good for us. We should’ve known that.”

“Then get some that are! Honest to God, Danny, you’re in New York City.”

“Don’t hassle me, Dee. You’re the one jumped the gun, though I’m damned if I see why. Little Miss Perfect here.” He caught a handful of Juanita’s hair and pulled her head back-not roughly, but not gently either. He looked at her from her eyes to as far down as he could see and then let go. He poked his finger at the woman’s face. “Just don’t get too fond of her. She’s a puppet, remember.”

Julie, after several phone calls, reached an organizer of the antiporn rally. She promised an item in the Our Beat column and then told of the missing youngster. “It’s a long shot, but if you were handing out flyers at the street fair yesterday, I wonder if you saw her.”

“I wasn’t there myself, but there was an incident at the fair that might have involved your young person. Let me give you the number of Sue Laughlin. You mustn’t take her literally if she makes it sound like gang rape, That’s just Sue.”

A chorus of infant and toddler voices rang through Julie’s conversation with Sue Laughlin. “I thought the girl was older-sixteen, maybe. And she did volunteer. Anyway-shut up, Jamie. Can’t you see Mommy’s on the phone?-anyway, she was handing out our flyers when this gang of young jocks started to tease her-’What’s pornography, Juanita?’ That sort of thing.”

“Did they call her by name? It’s important.”

“How would I know her name if they hadn’t? Then one of them snatched the flyers from her and they all clowned around throwing them into the air. And what did she do? She grabbed an umbrella from a concession stand and began thrashing the mischief out of them.”

Gang rape, Julie thought.

“They ran off and the guy selling the umbrellas tried to make her buy the one she’d taken. I was going to say something, but a woman who’d been watching the whole thing said she’d buy the umbrella.”

“Did you know the woman?”

“No. I don’t think she’s from the neighborhood. There were hundreds of people, you know.”

Julie felt herself tighten up. “Did she speak to Juanita?”

“I couldn’t say for sure. I just wasn’t paying attention after that.”

“Could you describe the woman?”

“A big, solid woman, well dressed but flashy, too much makeup, red hair…”

Julie reached Detective Russo at precinct headquarters with her bits of information. Dominic Russo and she were old friends so he could say frankly that he would give it what time he could, but from her parents’ report the youngster sounded like a runaway. The case would go to Missing Persons within twenty-four hours. “We’ll give out her description at roll call and put it on the bulletin board. But you know how many kids hit the streets every day.”

“Yeah.”

“Most of them come home in a day or two.”

“Some don’t ever. I’ll keep in touch, Dom.”

“Don’t I know that,” he said.

Julie went upstairs to see the Rodriguezes as soon as they got home. Juanita’s father was sitting in the kitchen, his head in his hands. He looked up at her when she laid her hand on his shoulder. His eyes were wet. “Why she do this to us? Why?”

Julie, to reassure them of the girl’s resourcefulness, told them how Juanita had confronted the boys who were taunting her. Mrs. Rodriguez turned and stormed at her husband, “Men are pigs. You’re all pigs!” It ought to have been funny, Julie thought, but it wasn’t.

Juanita sat on the bathroom stool in a silk robe that was much too big for her. She had taken a shower she hadn’t wanted and washed her hair on the woman’s command. She hadn’t wanted to take off her clothes, but she was afraid the woman might make her, and might come into the bathroom with her. She hadn’t done that. She only made Juanita hand out her jeans, jacket, and sweat shirt, her bra, panties, and socks. She hadn’t seen her sneakers since they brought her here.

She knew now that this was a loft. The bathroom was fancy-new. So was the kitchen, which didn’t have any doors. The living room ran all the way from the studio-the room with the big bed and the statues-to what must be the front of the building. Street noises seemed to come from there, and there must be a very big window with heavy curtains covering it. Threads of light showed at the top and at the floor. A Castro convertible bed, where they must have slept, was open. The woman, who said she must call her Dee, told her the big door was to the elevator and was kept locked. Juanita was pretty sure there had to be a fire escape. But where?

“Come out now, Juanita. I want to fix your hair.”

“Could I have my clothes, please?”

“You’ll get dressed later. Come on now.”

She went out to where the woman motioned her into a chair in front of a mirror. “Can’t I get dressed before he comes back?”

“First I want to do up your hair.” Dee had a dryer in hand. “Little dark pom-poms might be nice. You could look Japanese. Like a geisha girl.”

“Please. I hate this.” Juanita tugged at the robe.

“Just be patient. You’re going to have beautiful new clothes.”

Dee blow-dried her hair to where she could work with it, making little round buns she fastened and then let loose, then fashioned again. “Very pretty, my little geisha.”

Juanita’s fear was getting bad again. She almost wished the man would come. They might have another fight, a long one. When her mother and father fought, she could run away and hide. Where could she run and hide here? She’d make a dash for the big window and pound on it. She would jump up and down. But people would point and laugh and wouldn’t do anything. Unless the man came and tried to give her the needle and she fought him right there in the window. Maybe then,

“A penny for your thoughts.” Dee smiled at her in the mirror and then looked at herself. “How I wish I was young like you again.”

“Don’t let him stick the needle in me anymore.”

“Over my dead body.”

Juanita felt a little more secure and tried once more, “Couldn’t I have my clothes back now?”

“No, dear. I’ve already put them in the garbage disposal.”

In the early afternoon, with the help of Vendor Licensing and Traffic Control, Detective Russo located the Greystone Puppets truck. It was impounded in the Twelfth Avenue lot for illegal parking overnight. According to the gatekeeper, the owner had arrived early that morning, but without enough money to pay both fine and storage. He was due back within the hour. Otherwise he’d owe the city another hundred dollars for storage. Julie took what money she had in the house and waited outdoors for the squad car to pick her up. Where she had used to carry a pocketful of coins for blind beggars and street musicians, she now carried dollar bills for the homeless.

She and the two precinct officers Russo had commandeered examined the truck. It was locked up tight, but that didn’t mean much, given its condition. As one of the cops said, it was hard to tell what breed it was. They could see the skeleton of a stage set on a platform that probably rolled out onto the tailgate. There was a trunk marked COSTUMES and some painted scenery scaled to the stage. But no puppets.

Very soon a little man with a wisp of a moustache, hollow cheeks, and great melancholy eyes, came up lugging a duffel bag. He showed the cops his receipt from the city. “I had to hock my puppets. They’re my kids! My goddam living.”

“I’ll help you if you can help me,” Julie said. She didn’t look as though she had much to help with, in sneakers and raincoat. But as soon as she started to describe Juanita she was in charge. She soon had the puppeteer wagging his head. He remembered the girl, all right. “She kept asking me questions-did I make the puppets myself, did I make them out of old dolls. Could she make them. She wanted to know where I was going next. ‘Florida,’ I says. ‘I don’t want them to catch cold.’ When she saw I was putting her on-the saddest look I ever saw.” Then he was jolted aware. “She’s come up missing?”

“Since five o’clock last night.”

“I was there on the street till ten. But listen: there was this woman I thought at first was the kid’s mother. She was telling her about puppets. I was changing the act, see. I got three different acts…”

Julie waited out his setting the scene. One of the cops activated a pocket recorder.

“Somewhere in there I got the idea this dame was a con artist. I don’t mean I thought it exactly. It just crossed my mind. She was like playing to me too. That’s what kept the youngster interested. She watched to see if I was interested. That kid’s no fool. The redhead was telling about this old theater she was renovating and how she was collecting puppets that could make like singers…”

“Where? Did she say where it was?”

“No, ma’am. Not to me, she didn’t, and I’ll tell you this, she knew about as much about puppets as I know about King Tut. But that’s where I lost touch. I got a hand puppet that’s my buddy. Whenever we get enough people around, Andy and I pass the hat. It’s a living. I guess you could call it a living.”

“What else about Juanita?”

He shrugged. “One minute they were there, gone the next. That’s how it is when you’re playing the street.”

The police pressed him for a description of the redheaded woman. Then Julie asked him if he thought the theater she spoke about might be a real place.

“Could be.”

“Nearby?”

Again he shrugged. Then: “I don’t think that kid would go with her anyplace she couldn’t walk to.”

A buzzer signaled Danny’s return. While the elevator groaned its way up, Juanita glanced toward the heavily draped window at the front of the loft. Dee clamped her fingers around the girl’s wrist. “Don’t you even think of it! Do you want to get killed?”

Juanita, still in the silken robe, gathered it tighter in front of her. It didn’t have any buttons. She tried not to see herself in the mirror because it wasn’t really her. Dee had made her up to look oriental. But she watched in the mirror for the elevator’s arrival. When it stopped, Dee had to unlock the door to let Danny in. He took the key from her and locked it again.

“So?” Dee wanted to know.

He didn’t answer. He came near and stared at Juanita in the mirror. He made a face like he was going to throw up. “What’ve you done to her? And what in hell is she doing out of the studio?”

“We needed a bath.”

“Then we need another bath. She looks like a midget’s whore.”

“Fun-nee. Did you get what you went for?”

“No. The answer is no. Dee, she’s supposed to look like an angel. That’s why you fell in love with her.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“I got a contact. That’s all I got and I’m going to go see him as soon as you and I straighten some things out.”

“Danny, how much time do you think we have?”

“Maybe we don’t have any. This town ought to be the best. But it’s the worst yet. Get her inside there so we can talk.”

Confined again in the studio, Juanita put her ear to the frame of the door, then to the keyhole. Then she lay down on the floor and tried to hear from under the door, but only the sound of their voices reached her, going away as though to the front of the building. A new sound startled her until she realized it was her stomach growling. She’d promised Dee she would eat. She knew Dee liked her. That’s what made Danny mad. But there wasn’t any food. Dee looked in the cupboards and the fridge. How could they live someplace with no food in the house? They didn’t live here. It was like a hotel, only it was a loft they rented. Their suitcases were on the floor, open, with clothes falling out of them. They’d rented from an artist, which was why Danny wasn’t supposed to touch anything in the studio.

She sat on the edge of a chair and wound her feet around its legs. The dressing gown smelled of perfume and sweat. She wished they’d start fighting again so she could hear them. If they didn’t have any time, would they go away and leave her locked in this room with the bucket and the big bed? She hated beds more than most things. Her mother and father fought a lot about beds, and her mother had boyfriends she didn’t think Juanita or Papa knew about. Papa didn’t. She did. She knew that was why her mother let her go when she said she was going to Elena’s. She had a date with a boyfriend. Juanita thought of the kids getting on her about the flyers-“What’s pornography, Juanita? how come you know so much about it?” She knew it was dirty pictures, but she wasn’t going to say it to them. She felt herself going sick again, scared. She tried to think of Julie. Julie would really try to find her. Maybe she’d find the puppet man. He could tell her about Dee. But what else? She hadn’t seen Danny before she walked into the old building with the hand-painted sign on the door: PUPPET SHOW INSIDE. Julie walked a lot and she might find it.

Juanita began to walk then, too. Round and round the room she went, barefoot, the silk gown dragging the floor. Finally she entered the alcove where the statues stood around like people at a funeral. There were other things, half-finished bodies, heads. She recognized the smell of clay. Tools and brushes and tubes of paint lay on a table. There was a painting on a three-legged stand, and other paintings were stacked in racks. This was where Danny wasn’t supposed to touch anything. She came on several camera cases then, and something rolled up with metal legs sticking out. There were two flat boxes with straps that were marked FILM. These things belonged to Danny, she felt sure, not to the artist. Danny said the light wasn’t any good. He was going to take her picture, and he wanted her to look like an angel. That didn’t sound like Danny. She’d have thought he would want her to look like a whore.

Julie was in luck when she reached the Actors Forum. A session had just ended. Nobody there knew much about pup-pets, but when she’d given the actors and apprentices the story, most of them volunteered to organize a street-by-street search of old West Side buildings in which a puppet theater might now be playing or where appropriate renovation might be under way. They would all go first to precinct headquarters and coordinate with the police. “Mind you,” Julie cautioned, “the real puppeteer said the woman didn’t know anything about puppets. It was probably a story made up to lure the youngster. She’s eleven years old and she’s pretty. What else can I tell you?”

“We’ll find her, sister,” Nuba Bradley, a tall, black actor who seemed to have grown three inches with the current hair style, bent almost in two to kiss her cheek.

Reggie Bauer hung back to talk to Julie while the others got under way. Slight, blond, and brittle, Reggie knew New York society from the Bowery to the bridge tables; these were where, it was said, he made enough money to support himself as an actor. “You don’t think for a minute it’s got anything to do with puppets, do you?”

Julie waited,

“Do you want my scenario?”

“Not if it’s too far out. Of course, I want it.”

“Kid porn.”

“What does that mean?” She knew well enough. Or thought she did, but she hoped it wasn’t so.

“Child pornography. The lady was shopping for innocence, the real thing. In the meantime, either she’s got a partner for her or somebody’s out there looking for an experienced young dude to match her up with.”

Julie didn’t question him on his expertise. She thought she knew how he came by it. Except that Reggie was gay. The thought must have shone through her eyes. He said, “A lot of it’s faked, you know, especially the pleasure.”

“How would they find a boy like that? Where?”

“Through somebody in the business, Somebody knows somebody who likes boys. A certain amount of trust is involved in the transaction.”

“Oh, my God,” Julie said. “Maybe I know someone myself.”

Juanita stood beneath the skylight and turned around slowly. On tiptoe she could see what looked like the top of a barrel. Bringing one of the chairs to stand on, she could see that it was a water tower. She could see other buildings and a lot of sky. She could also see where water leaked in around the skylight. If she could get up there, she might be able to push the window out.

She went back to the door and listened. She couldn’t hear anything except faraway car horns and the rumble of the city much as it sounded when she was home alone in the daytime. Maybe they’d both gone out. Maybe they’d already gone and left her. And left the camera and everything? She didn’t think so. She wasn’t going to let them photograph her without her clothes on. Not unless he used the needle again. This time she’d kick it out of his hand or kick him where she knew it would hurt most. “Over my dead body,” Dee had said. But Dee was afraid of him too.

She took the painting off the three-legged stand. Even if she could step on the stand, it wouldn’t be high enough. Again she listened at the door. They’d gone out to lunch, she decided, and Dee would bring back something for her. It had to be after lunchtime. As quietly as she could she pulled the table under the skylight. The stand just fit on top of it. The dressing gown made it hard for her to climb, and she knew it was going to get in her way if she got high enough to try to move the window. But it had pockets. She found a paint-smeared knife and a chisel, which she pocketed. She also took a hammer and tied it around her waist with the sash of the robe. She tried not to think of Danny, but in spite of herself she imagined him unlocking the door just as she stepped from the chair onto the table. She began to melt again with fear.

“No!” she cried aloud without meaning to. She waited. Nothing happened. She could not climb up on the stand. The ledge she wanted to step onto was too high. She pulled the chair up onto the table, but in doing it she nudged one of the legs of the stand and the whole thing clattered to the floor. Not a sound came from the other side of the door. This time, after she’d set up the stand and placed the chair beneath it, she boosted herself up without tumbling the works. She waited and listened. There were sounds she hadn’t heard before in the building, noise like heat coming up in the pipes, machinery sounds that might be the elevator. But it never seemed to arrive. Her heartbeat was too loud to hear much else. She made it safely up onto the chair. She could see the twin towers of the Board of Trade Buildings. She was in lower Manhattan. SoHo. Of course: where the artists were. She got one foot sidewise onto the ledge and tested to see if it would hold her. It seemed to, but when she tried to lift the other foot the stand wobbled and collapsed. She missed the chair and fell and, flailing, brought the chair down after her. Before she knew whether or not she was hurt, Dee threw open the door and came running to her. Juanita tried to pull the robe close around her.

“I wouldn’t’ve believed it! He was right, I shouldn’t’ve left you alone. Let me look at your face.” On her knees, Dee examined her face, touched her eyes, nose, lips. “Say ouch if it hurts.”

Juanita determined not to say ouch no matter how much it hurt. She managed to loosen the hammer and tie the sash around her. Dee felt down her arms and pulled the robe open to see her middle. Juanita closed it again. She knew there would be bruises where she’d hit the table, but she didn’t make a sound when Dee touched the sore spots.

Dee got to her feet and pulled the girl up. “You’re lucky in more ways than one, you little fool. Let’s put these things back where they were. I promise I won’t tell Danny if you promise to do what you’re told from now on. Promise me?” She gave the girl a shake.

Juanita was trying not to cry. She did hurt, but she forced a big smile and nodded what could be taken for a promise. She had lost the chisel on the way down, but she could feel the knife stuck deep in the pocket of the robe.

Julie stopped at the shop to see if any message had come through her service. Most of the calls pertained to business. She put them on hold. Several Women Against Pornography members had joined the neighborhood search. Mrs. Rodriguez had called twice. Julie ran upstairs. The woman had heard nothing. Her husband had gone to the police station to wait. There were a lot of Perdidas in her lamentation.

Julie walked the four blocks to Kevin Bourke’s electrical shop on Eighth Avenue. Mr. Bourke was one of the first people she’d met after moving into the shop. He loaned a friend of hers some lamps to help decorate it. He had lived in the neighborhood all his life, he attended St. Malachy’s where the Catholic actors went, supported the Irish Theater, and looked a bit like Sean O’Casey, whose plays he admired fervently. He had been in trouble when Julie met him, on the complaint of a boy who turned out later to have been a prostitute. Julie might not have been so direct if her mission had been less urgent.

Mr. Bourke looked at her sadly over the top of his rimless glasses. “I’ll not waste your time asking why it was me you came to. Do you know how many years I’ve been in therapy to amend that fall from grace?”

“I wouldn’t have come to you at all if I knew anyone else to go to.”

“You’re not alone, and I’d rather have you remember than most of those who do. Thank God, I’ll soon be an old man.”

Julie thought he already was.

“I wish I could help you, Julie, but I’ve not been hospitable to that kind of visitor for a long time.”

“I understand and I’m sorry I came, Mr. Bourke.”

Mercifully, a customer entered the shop and she could get away. She plunged out the door and almost collided with a street person who stepped back to admire the window he had cleaned of a car illegally parked at the curb. What could he see, she wondered, the windows all blacked out. She glanced back at the license plate-California. All that sunshine they wouldn’t let in the windows.

Juanita ate. Ordinarily she loved Chinese food, but now she could hardly swallow. She had a plan. It came out of the daydreams she often made up about Julie and herself. Dee, she could see, was getting nervous. She walked back and forth waiting for Juanita to finish eating. She stopped and threw a lot of clothes that were lying about into one of the suitcases. She listened for the elevator. She looked at her watch. She was waiting to change Juanita’s hairdo. The pompoms had come undone when she tumbled off the table. Danny didn’t want her to look like a geisha girl anyway. Dee wouldn’t tell her what a geisha girl was. She knew what an angel was, but she didn’t feel like one of them either.

Dee came close and looked at the plate. “Starved, weren’t you?”

“Dee, I don’t like Danny. Do you?”

The woman gave a surprised laugh. “Not always.”

“Are you married to him?”

“We’re partners. Does that answer your question?”

“You just live together, right?”

“Right. If you’ve had enough to eat, go sit in front of the mirror.” Dee took the plate to the sink and scraped and rinsed it.

Juanita sat on the bench at the dressing table and drew the robe tightly around her. She watched Dee approach, drying her hands on a dish towel. “Why don’t you split from him? I mean, everybody does it. My mother and father talk about it all the time.”

“Stop talking so much and go wash your face. You got some dirt on your cheek.”

The dirt was a sore spot. Juanita saw that her plan wasn’t going to work, but she had to try anyway. She didn’t have any other. “Dee, what if you and I ran away before he gets back? He’s mean to you, too. I’ll bet he beats up on you, right? Couldn’t we go someplace and make a real puppet show?”

Dee folded her arms and looked down at her for a long time. “Don’t you ever want to see your parents again?”

“Not really.” She gave her shoulders a shrug.

“You’re a conniving little bitch, Juanita. Did you think I’d fall for a line like that? Get up and take off the robe.”

“No.” The knife was in the pocket. “I don’t want to take it off, please.”

Dee came up behind her and tried to wrench the robe from her shoulders. Juanita clung to the lapels. But when she could hold on no longer, she wriggled round on the bench and swung at Dee with all her might. The red hair leaped off the woman’s head and plopped on the floor like a bird’s nest. Juanita jumped for the wig and ran with it to the front of the loft. She tried to get through the heavy curtains, but Dee was too close. She threw herself at the girl and brought her to the floor.

Julie was near despair when she got home. Reggie Bauer’s scenario could be due entirely to his own aberration. Great. But if that were so, what to do next? Once more she checked in with her service. A call had come from Nuba Bradley of the Actors Forum. They had found a sign saying PUPPET SHOW INSIDE. A homeless person was incorporating the sign into his wind shelter. A building-by-building search was under way. Julie called Detective Russo. He confirmed the search and the discovery of a pair of sneakers that could belong to the missing subject. “You might as well know the worst,” Russo summarized. “They’re bringing in a squatter from the building across the way. He watched two people load something into a station wagon about eight o’clock last night. We’ll try to improve his memory, but all there is so far-a black wagon. Even the windows looked black to him.”

Julie phoned Kevin Bourke. The line was busy. She had left his place only ten minutes before and had not even taken off her coat. She ran back to and up Eighth Avenue. A cabbie pulled alongside her and tapped his horn. She signaled that she wanted him, but kept on running. She could see the black car at the curb outside Bourke’s shop. Not a cop in sight, not even a meter maid.

Mr. Bourke stepped out of the shop with the customer, who looked at his watch and poked a cautionary finger at Bourke. He strode to the wagon and pushed the street person out of his way. When he drove off, the cabbie took over the spot.

“I tried to call you,” Bourke said. “You’d have known what I meant.”

“I got a bead on him,” the cabbie said as Julie jumped in. The wagon turned left at the stoplight. The late afternoon traffic was building. On Ninth Avenue it was at a crawl. The wagon stayed near the middle lane; the cabbie, to be sure the car he followed didn’t opt for the Lincoln Tunnel, kept to the fire lane himself.

Julie made a note of the California license number and asked the driver if he couldn’t radio a message to the police.

“No, ma’am. I’m a gypsy. I don’t have that intercom stuff. But don’t you worry none, he ain’t going to get away.”

But he almost did get away, slipping into a tunnel lane and then spurting out of it instead of turning west. He ran the light and went free while the westbound traffic closed in ahead of Julie’s cab,

“He sure drives California style,” the driver said. “What’re you after him for?”

“I’m pretty sure he helped kidnap an eleven-year-old girl,”

The cabbie shot out on the orange light and within four blocks of progressive lights was headlights-to-back-bumper with the wagon. “I’ll ram him if you want me to.”

“For God’s sake, no. I want to see where he’s going.”

At Fourteenth Street the wagon made a couple of starts in the wrong direction before taking off down Hudson. Now Julie was afraid he’d know the cab was following him. At Bleecker and Bethune he came to a full stop at the playground gate.

“Keep going,” Julie said.

But the driver in the wagon rolled down his window and signaled. The cabbie stopped alongside him.

“How in hell do I get to Houston Street from here?” He pronounced it like a Texan.

“Follow me,” the cabbie said, and then to Julie as he led the way through the Greenwich Village maze, “See my point?”

The cabbie crossed Houston, a one-way street going west at that point, and signaled the wagon. But the wagon turned east, the wrong way.

The cabbie swore and ran two lights to get back on Houston by way of Sixth Avenue where Houston was two-way by then. They kept their distance as the wagon slowed down at every intersection, the driver looking for his street. He turned in at Wooster. But Wooster, they discovered when they got there, was blocked this side of Prince Street. A movie shooting there? So where were the trailers, where were the cops? The cops loved movies. Julie overpaid the cabbie and took her chances on foot. She knew SoHo pretty well.

She soon spotted the black wagon parked tight against a high wire fence midbloek. The driver was wriggling across the front seat to get out on the passenger side. He went to the back and unloaded a couple of high-wattage lamps and a reflector. Could be they were on rental from Mr. Bourke. The man started up the street with them on the opposite side to the crowd. Julie stayed on the crowd’s side, but at the fringe. At last the distant wail of approaching police. Two things happened at once: the man set down the lamps and reflector and, ignoring the crowd, took out his keys to unlock a door, and the crowd let out a collective cry, “Look! Look!”

Julie looked. A woman was dancing nude in the third-floor picture window. Not dancing, but jumping up and down, flailing her arms, and not a woman. It was Juanita.

Julie plunged across the street, waving to the girl and calling out, “Juanita!”

Some of the crowd moved with and past her. Interpreting for themselves, they caught hold of the man, pushed him from one to another, and pulled at his clothes. The multi-locked loft door swung open. The redheaded woman took a step into the street, then tried to retreat inside the building again. When no one else took hold of her, Julie lunged and grappled her to the ground. The crowd loved it. The police came finally, swinging their nightsticks to disperse the crowd.

Julie and Juanita rode home in the chief inspector’s car after they had stopped at One Police Plaza, to swear out the necessary complaints. There were things Juanita would not or could not talk about-mostly her fear and what she’d imagined might happen to her, but she liked to tell the action parts, especially how, when Dee had chased and caught her, she clung to the front window drapes and brought them down on top of Dee and her. By the time Dee had found her wig, Juanita was dancing in the window. Oh, yes, she insisted, she was dancing.

In time, police across the country fleshed out the chronicle of Dee and Danny, a horror story. They would arrive in a city, sublet quarters, recruit local talent, film, and move on. They supplied a flourishing market in underground cassettes. The true horror was not only in their corruption of the innocent, but in the despair in which they left the corrupted. These unfortunates rarely went home again and almost never broke their silence on the street.