“I didn’t break it,” Franklin said. “I punished it a little. Anyway, it wasn’t your best feature, the way it stuck out too far.”
“If you insist on having the whole story told,” Loretta warned Captain, “there will be outraged people standing in line to break your nose every day of the week.”
Franklin said, “Well put, darling.”
“Thank you, Franklin.”
Belatedly parsing what Franklin had said immediately after the assault, Captain asked, “Resolve what matter?”
“The future of this girl,” Franklin said. “Birth certificate—”
“There is no birth certificate.”
“Then tell us the place of birth.”
“On the road, in a carny bus, between one county fairground and another. Who bothers with a birth certificate for a thing like her?”
“What is her mother’s name?” Loretta asked.
“She had a dozen of them. I never knew her real name. I think even she didn’t know it anymore.”
“Do you have any idea where she might be?”
“Somewhere dead and buried, the way she lived her life.”
Loretta glanced worriedly at me, and Franklin asked Captain, “Lived it how?”
“She was an alcoholic. Loved her hashish. Laudanum. Ayahuasca. You name it. Good-looking woman. Had two occupations, if you want to know.” Captain lowered his hand from his nose and looked at me. “She danced in the hootchy-kootchy show and whored herself to anyone who had seven dollars in his wallet.”
“You wretched sonofabitch,” Loretta said.
Captain shrugged. “You wanted to resolve the matter before us.”
Loretta came to me where I sat on the vanity bench with my back to the makeup table and mirror, and she put a hand on my shoulder. “You shouldn’t have had to hear that, honey.”
I met her eyes. They were a lovely shade of green. “It’s okay, ma’am. There are truths that can hurt you and truths that free you. All that he said was just the second kind.”
She got down on one knee and took one of my gloved hands. “You’re amazing, aren’t you. Everything changes now, sweetheart.”
I was about to askhoweverything would change, which was when Franklin said, “If she wants to, the girl’s coming with Loretta and me. What will it take for you to just walk away?”
Captain stared at his bloody fingers for a long beat. “I never let go of what’s mine. I hold fast to it.”
“She isn’t yours. She never was. You can explain yourself to the police and make an argument for keeping her—or you can tell me how much you want to stay out of her life forever.”
“People like you think you can buy anything.”
“We’re not buying her. We’re paying ransom to her kidnapper, ransom to bring her home where she belongs.”
Captain looked up. There was a terrible meanness in his eyes. His lips glistened with blood that oozed out of his nose. I’d read Bram Stoker’sDracula, a compelling though fanciful novel that, just at this moment, didn’t seem so fanciful after all.
He said, “You can’t kidnap what the mother didn’t want, what the mother would have thrown away. If you save a dog from the pound before they put it down, that’s no crime.”
“So it’s the police, then,” Franklin said. “You’re that sure of yourself, are you?”
“I didn’t say police. I’m just laying my cards out so you can see it’s not for sure a losing hand. There’s potential in it.”
“Name a price.”
