Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [34]
“Yes,” she said eventually, head down.
There followed the kind of story I could probably have filled in for myself. Two girls, growing up in the 40s. Only one of them sexually abused, but the other regularly beaten to shit. Laverne the former—sometimes volunteering to prevent Shelley from getting hit. Mother escaped the 40s through death, and her daughters followed as soon as they could by climbing a couple of floors as strippers. Laverne the better dancer, better hustler; Shelley traipsing behind, pulled in her sister’s tiny, doomed wake.
Then, a month ago, Laverne hooked up with someone. Shelley didn’t know the name, only that the guy had money and that her sister had met him dancing in the 130s. She didn’t see so much of Laverne after that, and started falling deeper into the habits her sister had always somehow kept her out of; doping, and turning tricks to pay for it. As I listened, I could tell that Shelley had known, while she was doing it, that she was starting herself rolling on a slope which got very steep very quickly indeed: and that there’d been nothing she could do about it. Seven days ago a missed shift had left her with no money, and she’d come to Laverne to see about a twenty-dollar loan. She’d found the mess at the far end of the room and nearly run straight back out.
Instead she stayed for a moment, torn between terror and knowing that no one else in the world would bother to report what she was seeing. Then she spotted Laverne’s purse lying down by the wall. Two hundred dollars inside.
“That wasn’t mentioned in the scene report,” I said. Shelley started crying, and I waited until she could hear me. “She would have wanted you to have it,” I added gently.
Shelley looked up, hoping for absolution. Her eyes were coping with her life much better than the rest of her, were still big and clear and brown. I wished for a moment that I could meet this girl’s father, lean in close and teach him a couple of home truths. “You think so?” Shelley asked.
“She was your big sister, wasn’t she?” I said. I watched her eyes as they flicked away, and saw that in time she’d feel okay about it. On the one hand I was glad; on the other I knew that part of what I was doing was getting myself into her confidence, the way you do when you want information out of someone. I didn’t feel great about it. I never had. But that was what the job was about.
In the end there wasn’t much more information to be had. Shelley had called the police, they turned up and went away again. Their questions were perfunctory, and they hadn’t been back. Then yesterday Mal showed up, and that had been different. He tried to find stuff out, got frustrated at Shelley’s answers. Problem was, Shelley really didn’t know much. All you had to do was look at her to see she barely knew anything at all. Like me, like everyone, half the code for her life had been written before she was old enough to know what was going on. All she could do now was watch the lines of instructions play themselves out.
I stood up. Shelley was still perched on the edge of the chair, staring into nothing. It didn’t look like she’d be singing again this afternoon.
“There much of the two hundred left?” tasked.
Shelley gave a small, tight smile without looking up and kept staring at the half-bottle of wine. I took my wallet out and found a hundred-dollar bill.
“Remember what Verne would have told you to do with this,” I said. “What were good things, and what were bad.” I put the money on a shelf in the hallway and left.
92 was another washout; the apartment empty, a “For Rent” sign outside. The neighbor on the right was a bad-tempered old tosser; he said the victim had been working for the Devil in some administrative capacity, possibly opening His mail for Him. On the other hand, he also claimed to be 180 years old, so it’s possible he was as mad as a snake. A battered and yellowing news sheet headline taped to his door said “Suffer the little children”; I couldn’t work out whether this was a plea for sympathy or a heartfelt request. The neighbor on