Rader, a tall, broad man with coarse dark hair and a long face, wore a business suit, a .38 Special in the inside pocket. He looked like a mob enforcer with a grievance. ‘What did he do?’ Rader said again. He had no discernible accent. The voice was deep, the tone direct. The texture was pro-grade sandpaper. ‘How did he know about your work? I’m not talking airlines.’
‘He has a way of getting to know someone that hollows out a little piece that they aren’t ready to give. He does it very quickly.’
‘You worked for him, how?’
‘Like I said, I checked all boxes. He was captivated. So was I, in a way. Falling for it. He loves that.’
‘He’s a sadist?’
‘He’s not randomly cruel, unless you give him reason. Then he is very, very, most exceptionally sadistic,’ Yvonne said. ‘He said I wasn’t his usual type. I guess he wasn’t ready to give so much, but he gave it and it was too late. It was a real thing to him. All I needed to do was love him back, or act like I did.’ She flipped open the Marlboros, plucked one out. ‘We were having a good run. I didn’t even start looking for an out. So there was my first mistake.’
‘When you worked for him—’
‘He gave me ready-mades, you know? One-shots. I drove alone, late at night. They were all girls he’d known for a week, or six. Or just a couple of dates. The split could be over a lot of things; a girl’s interest in his business, or if she colored her hair. One thing in common: they all end badly, and Skylar walks away with an intimate knowledge of her weak spots.’ Yvonne closed her eyes a moment. Then she placed the cigarette between her lips. A flicker from her lighter in the dark. ‘I feel bad talking about it. Bad for them.’
‘Don’t,’ Rader said. ‘This is a consultation.’
‘He’d pay me, cash, for these one-shots. A break-in for something personal, something that no one can replace. I didn’t think. I just did it. And when I came back—’ She looked away, covered her face. ‘When I came back, he was waiting, in a suite or in the bungalow, and it really turned him on.’
Rader was silent. He could hear Yvonne sobbing there beside him while the smoke curled in the still summer air.
She said, ‘I never told anybody that before. You know what’s weird? All the compartmentalizing, avoiding coloring these jobs with emotion—it hit once Skylar rid himself of me. It all hit me. And for days and days, I could not think of anything else.’
Rader waited, staring out at graffitied wagons, winding across the track in the moonglow, into the dark. He knew there was more to come from her. Speaking now would snap that.
Yvonne said, ‘When I began to make a place in my head for all that, the rest of it, that left-for-dead feeling he does so well, it hit me again. Harder, in fact. I can’t go on hating him, John, and feeling like his latest victim.’
‘You thought of letting it go?’ Rader said.
‘Who says he let go of me?’
Rader frowned. ‘He’s been in contact?’
‘He doesn’t know where to find me.’
‘There’s nothing you can do to him that won’t draw you back into that world.’
‘I understand. That’s my funeral,’ she said.
‘You didn’t seek him out. It happened.’
‘It was bad luck,’ she said, waving more smoke. ‘Bad luck that I deserved.’
A train thundered past on the bridge. Neither of them said a word for a moment.
‘I’ve asked you already,’ Rader said. ‘What did this guy do?’
‘Let’s go over the other stuff first,’ Yvonne said.
‘We’ve been there.’
Yvonne pulled a Manila envelope from inside her leather jacket. ‘Open that envelope when I’m not around, okay?’
Rader nodded.
Yvonne, shaking her corn-blond hair, turned to Rader for a moment. ‘We had fun back in Cabo, didn’t we? Not that you stayed long. There was a client in Vegas, she phoned you up. You said you’d come back.’
‘I got sidetracked,’ Rader said.
Yvonne was still looking at him. ‘Are you seeing anyone? I always wonder. I know this is a consultation.’
‘Remember Jill Goldblatt?’
‘You’re dating her?’
‘She has her own life. I see her for a day, two days. Then I don’t see her for a while.’
‘Maybe it’s already over.’ Then Yvonne was quiet a moment. She drew a sharp breath and said, ‘Right at the end Skylar wanted me to steal something else. I knew it was a test. I liked the challenge. Except it was no challenge at all.’
‘What did he ask you to steal?’
She was quiet again, and crushed her eyes shut.
‘It went bad?’ Rader said.
‘It went very bad. For me.’
‘I think we’ve got enough for now,’ Rader said. ‘But I’ll need more, if I decide to proceed.’
‘I don’t expect it to be cheap. What happens next?’
‘I take a look,’ Rader said, ‘up close.’
‘You won’t get close.’
‘I can get close enough.’
‘Torrent city, that’s almost one hundred miles upstate. Even up there he’ll still feel remote.’
‘Leave it with me,’ Rader said. ‘But you need to hear something first.’
Yvonne folded her arms, turned to face him now.
Rader said, ‘You talked about destroying him. Now that’s not a job I’d take on. I don’t think you could afford that, and I know I wouldn’t want it. But I will investigate this guy, and see what I can find in his world that he’d like to banish. If there’s something there—something tangible that I know will hurt him—then I’ll tell you. And you can use that information as a weapon, or find someone else who will. But there is one more detail, and you already know what that is. Sometimes—a lot of the time—it’s just better to let things be. Starting this, whatever it becomes, could have consequences.’
‘I’ve thought of that.’
Rader studied her.
She said, her voice low and dry, ‘I’ve considered that in so many ways.’
‘And?’
She shook her head. ‘I used to think about being inside his head. Even now: What am I doing in there, at the mercy of his thoughts, and what is he doing to me?’ She dropped her gaze again. ‘You know the only other person who came close to making me think that way? My father. Two men in my life—that’s thirty years—two men did that to me.’
Rader still studied her. ‘Did Skylar know about your father?’ he said.
Yvonne hesitated a moment. Then: ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘he did.’
3
‘I could’ve been out at this time of night,’ Jill said, that hint of gravel in her words. ‘But then, you’d have found a way in. Whiskey sound good?’
‘No ice, no water,’ Rader said. ‘I ran into someone tonight. Could be a job.’
‘Eighty proof, straight up. Think I’d forget?’
They were standing by the bar in the living room of her brick house in Kiel Township, two miles from Pittsburgh. Jill gazing at him with her smoky blue eyes. Her hair was still that auburn bob, maybe an inch longer, and her face was soft and milky white.