Promise Me

CHAPTER 43

Edna Skylar had been right, Myron thought. Katie Rochester looked older, more mature somehow. She twiddled a cigarette in her hand, but it remained unlit.

The dark-haired man stuck out his hand. “I’m Rufus.”

“Myron.”

They shook hands. Rufus sat down on the couch next to Katie. He took the cigarette from her hand.

“Can’t smoke in your condition, honey,” Rufus said. Then he put the cigarette between his lips, lit it up, threw his feet up on the coffee table, and let loose a long plume of smoke.

Myron stayed standing.

“How did you find me?” Katie Rochester asked.

“It’s not important.”

“That woman who spotted me in the subway. She said something, right?”

Myron did not reply.

“Damn.” Katie shook her head and put a hand on Rufus’s thigh. “We’re going to have to find a new place now.”

“What,” Myron said, pointing to a poster of a naked woman with her legs spread, “and leave all this behind?”

“That’s not funny,” Rufus said. “This is your fault, man.”

“I need to know where Aimee Biel is.”

“I told you on the phone,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“Are you aware that she disappeared too?”

“I didn’t disappear. I ran away. My choice.”

“You’re pregnant.”

“That’s right.”

“So is Aimee Biel.”

“So?”

“So you’re both pregnant, both from the same school, both ran away or disappeared—”

“A million pregnant girls run away every year.”

“Do they all use the same ATM machine?”

Katie Rochester sat up. “What?”

“Before you ran, you went to an ATM machine—”

“I went to a bunch of ATM machines,” she said. “I needed money to run away.”

“What, Rufus here couldn’t spot you?”

Rufus said, “Go to hell, man.”

“It was my money,” Katie said.

“How far along are you anyhow?”

“That’s none of your business. None of this is your business.”

“The last ATM machine you visited was at a Citibank on Fifty-second Street.”

“So?”

Katie Rochester sounded younger and more petulant with every response.

“So the last ATM machine Aimee Biel visited before she disappeared was at the same Citibank on Fifty-second Street.”

Now Katie looked genuinely puzzled. It wasn’t faked. She hadn’t known. She slowly swiveled her head toward Rufus. Her eyes narrowed.

“Hey,” Rufus said. “Don’t look at me.”

“Rufus, did you…?”

“Did I what?” Rufus threw the cigarette to the ground and jumped to his feet. He raised his hand as if about to slap her backhand. Myron slid between them. Rufus stopped, smiled, raised his palms in mock surrender.

“It’s okay, baby.”

“What was she talking about?” Myron asked.

“Nothing, it’s over.” Rufus looked at her. “I’m sorry, baby. You know I’d never hit you, right?”

Katie said nothing. Myron tried to read her face. She wasn’t cowering, but there was something there, something he’d seen in her mother. Myron lowered himself to her level.

“Do you want me to get you out of here?” he asked.

“What?” Katie’s head shot up. “No, of course not. We love each other.”

Myron looked at her, again trying to read distress. He didn’t see any.

“We’re having a baby,” she said.

“Why did you look at Rufus like that? When I mentioned the ATM?”

“It was stupid. Forget it.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I thought… but I was wrong.”

“You thought what?”

Rufus put his feet back on the coffee table, crossing them. “It’s okay, baby. Tell him.”

Katie Rochester kept her eyes down. “It was just, like, a reaction, you know?”

“Reaction to what?”

“Rufus was with me. That’s all. It was his idea to use that last ATM. He thought it being midtown and all, it would be hard to trace to any spot, especially down here.”

Rufus arched an eyebrow, proud of his ingenuity.

“But see, Rufus has lots of girls working for him. And if they have money I figure he takes them to an ATM and gets them to clear out the cash. He has one of the clubs in here. A place called Barely Legal. It’s for men who want girls that are—”

“I think I can put together what they want. Go on.”

“Legal,” Rufus said, raising a finger. “The name is Barely Legal. The key word is legal. All the girls are over eighteen.”

“I’m sure your mother must be the envy of her book group, Rufus.” Myron turned back to Katie. “So you thought…?”

“I didn’t think. Like I said, I just reacted.”

Rufus put his feet down and sat forward. “She thought maybe this Aimee was one of my girls. She’s not. Look, that’s the lie I sell. People think these girls run away from their farms or their homes in the burbs and come to the big city to become, I don’t know, actresses or dancers or whatever and when they fail, they end up turning tricks. I sell that fantasy. I want the guys to think they’re getting some farmer’s daughter, if that gets his rocks off. But the fact is, these are just street junkies. The luckier ones work the flicks”—he pointed to a movie poster—“and the uglier ones work the rooms. That simple.”

“So you don’t recruit at high schools?”

Rufus laughed. “I wish. You want to know where I recruit?”

Myron waited.

“At AA meetings. Or rehab centers. Those places are like casting couches, you know what I’m saying? I sit in the back and drink that badass coffee and listen. Then I talk them up during the breaks and give them a card and wait until they fall off the wagon. They always do. And there I am, ready to scoop them up.”

Myron looked at Katie. “Wow, he’s terrific.”

“You don’t know the real him,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m sure he’s deep.” Myron felt the itch in his fingers again, but he swallowed it down. “So how did you two meet?”

Rufus shook his head. “It ain’t like that.”

“We’re in love,” Katie said. “He knows my dad through business. He came to the house and once we saw each other…” She smiled and looked pretty and young and happy and dumb.

“Love at first sight,” Rufus said.

Myron just looked at him.

“What,” he said, “you don’t think it’s possible?”

“No, Rufus, you seem like quite the catch.”

Rufus shook his head. “This here, this is just a job for me. That’s all. Katie and that baby, they’re my life. You understand?”

Myron still said nothing. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the picture of Aimee Biel. “Take a look at this, Rufus.”

He did.

“Is she here?”

“Dude, I swear on my unborn child I’ve never seen this chick before and I don’t know where she is.”

“If you’re lying—”

“Enough with the threats, okay? What you got there is a missing girl, right? The police want her. Her parents want her. You think I want that trouble?”

“You have a missing girl right here,” Myron said. “Her father will move heaven and earth to find her. And the police are interested too.”

“But that’s different,” Rufus said, and his tone turned into a plea. “I love her. I’d walk through fire for Katie. Don’t you see? But this girl… she’d never be worth it. If I had her here, I’d give her back. I don’t need that kind of hassle.”

It made sad, pathetic sense.

“Aimee Biel used the same ATM,” Myron said again. “Do you have any explanation for that?”

They both shook their heads.

“Did you tell anyone?”

Katie said, “About the ATM machine?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think so.”

Myron kneeled down again. “Listen to me, Katie. I don’t believe in coincidences. There has to be a reason why Aimee Biel went to that ATM. There has to be a connection between you two.”

“I barely knew Aimee. I mean, yeah, we went to the same school, but we never hung out or anything. I’d see her at the mall sometimes, but we wouldn’t even say hello. At school she was always with her boyfriend.”

“Randy Wolf.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know him?”

“Sure. The school’s Golden Boy. Rich daddy who always got him out of trouble. Do you know Randy’s nickname?’

Myron remembered something from the school parking lot. “Farm-boy, something like that?”

“Pharm, not Farm Boy. It’s with a PH, not F. You know how he got it?”

“No.”

“It’s short for Pharmacist. Randy is the biggest dealer at Livingston High.” Katie smiled then. “Wait, you want to know my connection to Aimee Biel? Here’s the only one I can come up with: Her boyfriend sold me nickel bags.”

“Hold up.” Myron felt the room begin to spin ever so slowly. “You said something about his father?”

“Big Jake Wolf. Town hotshot.”

Myron nodded, almost afraid to move now. “You said something about him getting Randy out of trouble.” His own voice suddenly sounded very far away.

“Just a rumor.”

“Tell me.”

“What do you think? A teacher caught Randy dealing on campus. Reported him to the cops. His dad paid them off, the teacher too, I think. They all chuckled about not wanting to ruin the star quarterback’s bright future.”

Myron kept nodding. “Who was the teacher?”

“Don’t know.”

“Heard any rumors?”

“No.”

But Myron thought that maybe he had an idea who it was.

He asked a few more questions. But there was nothing else here. Randy and Big Jake Wolf. It came back to them again. It came back to the teacher/guidance counselor Harry Davis and the musician/ teacher/lingerie buyer Drew Van Dyne. It came back to that town, Livingston, and how the young rebelled, and how much pressure there was on all those kids to succeed.

At the end, Myron looked at Rufus. “Leave us alone for a minute.”

“No way.”

But Katie had some of her poise back. “It’s okay, Rufus.”

He stood. “I’ll be right behind the door,” Rufus said to Myron, “with my associates. You got me?”

Myron bit back the rejoinder and waited until they were alone. He thought about Dominick Rochester, how he was trying to find his daughter, how maybe he knew that Katie was in a place like this with a man like Rufus and how maybe his overreaction — his desire to find his daughter — was suddenly understandable.

Myron bent close to her ear and whispered. “I can get you out of here.”

She leaned away and made a face. “What are you talking about?”

“I know you want to escape your father, but this guy isn’t the answer.”

“How do you know what the answer is for me?”

“He runs a brothel, for crying out loud. He almost hit you.”

“Rufus loves me.”

“I can get you out of here.”

“I wouldn’t go,” she said. “I’d rather die than live without Rufus. Is that clear enough for you?”

“Katie…”

“Get out.”

Myron rose.

“You know something,” she said. “Maybe Aimee is more like me than you think.”

“How’s that?”

“Maybe she doesn’t need rescuing either.”

Or, Myron thought, maybe you both do.