Free Taming a Sea Horse by Robert B. Parker Page B

guy gestured with his head and we walked over to a door beyond the sofa. Behind me I heard the lady with the purplish red hair say, "A nice massage today?"
    We went through the door and into a corridor. There was a stairwell up the right wall. The tall guy opened one of the doors. It was a small room like the examining room at a doctor's office. The walls were narrow vertical planking painted green. There was a table covered with a white sheet, a straight chair, and a small side table with baby oil and lilac water and a small pile of towels on it. The tall guy closed the door and leaned against it.
    "Customers get sort of nervous they see a guy looks like you hanging around in the reception area."
    "Afraid I'm a cop?"
    "Well, you got the look, 'cept you're so polite."
    "Nothing wrong with a good massage," I said. "No law against that."
    "Sure, what do you want to know about Ginger Buckey?"
    "Where she went from here," I said.
    "Beats me," he said.
    "Her father brought her to you," I said, "and you gave him a finder's fee. Now that may be doing business just like U.S. Steel does business, but it might be white slavery."
    "And if it was?"
    "If it was, or if it looked like it was, I bet I could get the cops and Cumberland County and maybe the U.S. Attorney's office interested enough in whether it was white slavery or not to make a genuine economic impact on the business here."
    "Maybe you'd end up feeding lobsters in Casco Bay, you did that," he said.
    "Tough talk for a guy wearing a shoestring for a tie," I said. "I'm already the toughest guy in Lindell."
    "Where the fuck is Lindell?" he said.
    "It's where Ginger came from. Why do this hard? You tell me where she went from here and I go away and leave you to massage your way to health and fortune, maybe even get yourself a lower plate. You don't, and either you've got to put me in the bay, which I don't think you can do, or have me accusing you of trafficking in children. The Press Herald will be on your ass, and the cops. It'll be awful."
    He was wearing a gun under his left arm. You can wear a gun without it showing, but some guys want it to show, and some guys don't care.
    "You don't think I can handle you," he said.
    "If I thought you could, would I still be here annoying you?"
    He put his left hand into his side pocket and came out with a pair of brass knuckles. He put them on his right hand and moved it in a little circle at waist level and said, "Now what do you think?"
    I sighed. "I think it's been a hard year," I said. "And I'm tired. And I think you are dumb as hell to put those things on your right hand, which means it will take you an hour and ten minutes to get your gun out from under your left arm, whereas I…" I took the gun off my hip and showed it to him without really pointing it. He looked at the gun. His right fist stopped moving in a circle.
    I said, "Sort of embarrassing, huh?"
    He let his fist drop to his side. "Now what?" he said.
    "I don't feel like shooting you," I said. "I don't feel like taking your brass knuckles away and knocking you down and kicking out the rest of your teeth. All I want is to leave you in peace and good health and go see the people that Ginger Buckey left you for."
    "I'll get in trouble," he said.
    "They won't know," I said.
    "How do I know you won't tell them?"
    "Because I said I wouldn't."
    "And if I don't tell you?"
    "I blow the whistle on this place so loud that the people you're bribing won't be able to help, and the ownership will get in trouble and be mad as hell at you."
    "For crissake, man, she was already a pro when we got her."
    "She was fourteen," I said. "White slavery, babe. Film at eleven."
    "I passed her on to a guy from Boston," he said.
    "Who?"
    "Guy named Art Floyd."
    "And what did he do with her?" I was still holding the gun in a sort of random way, not exactly pointing but not really hanging at my side either.
    "How the fuck do I know, man. Probably put her in a house up there. You think we had a long talk