Conspiracy Theory(54)
“The johns actually come to Adelphos House?’
Anne shook her head. She was going to let the tea steep until the water was black. “No, of course not. Some of the pimps do, to try to get the girls back, but not the johns. I go downtown, to the streets where the girls walk, and take pictures there. Of men at the doors of cars. Of men getting into cars. Sometimes even of men getting blow jobs in cars. I’ve got a telescopic lens, and I’ve got some equipment that’s supposed to make it possible to take pictures in the dark without a flash—which doesn’t work too well, for some reason, maybe because I don’t really understand how to use it. I can’t use a flash because it tips them off, and then they chase me.”
“I’ll bet,” Gregor said. “Have you been doing this for long?”
“Three years.”
“Then I’d say it was a damned miracle you haven’t been killed.”
“I don’t believe in miracles,” Anne said. She took the tea bag out of her cup, tasted the tea, and nodded. “Red Rose. Excellent. Where was I? Oh, yes. I don’t believe in miracles. I don’t believe in faith healing. I don’t believe in God. But most of all, I don’t believe in politicians who’ll talk for two hours about their deep commitment to religious faith and never say one concrete thing about what they’re going to do if they’re elected. I’ve made it my mission to get one politician in this city to come right out and say, ‘we’re going to start arresting the johns and prosecuting them.’ If he says that, I’ll sit still and listen to how his life turned around when he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and savior.”
“Had a bad year with Philadelphia politics, did you?”
“With Philadelphia politics and the national kind, both. Don’t even get me started on the national prayer service after nine-eleven. Or faith-based social services, unless you’re talking about Catholic Charities. And yes, I know what the Catholics got caught doing less than five years ago. But then, I could go on and on about the fashion magazines and the movies too. Do you know what we’ve done, Mr. Demarkian? We’ve redefined beauty in women to mean a body type only found in human females at the start of adolescence. Grown women don’t have tiny waists and narrow hips, not usually. Eleven-year-olds do.”
“Right,” Gregor said.
“I’m ranting.” Anne stood up. “Give me a second here.”
Gregor watched her as she went back into the living room. She fussed with her coat, which she’d left on the couch, and came back carrying a small manila envelope.
“Here,” she said, throwing the envelope down on the table. “Take a look at these. I took them the night Tony was killed.”
Gregor opened the envelope and drew out a thick stack of color photographs. They might as well have been black and white. He saw a car. He saw a girl who looked the way actresses did when they tried to look like children. He saw bits and pieces of a man’s body. A leg. An arm. Once or twice, he got the side of a face, but the pictures were blurry. He couldn’t make out the man’s features.
“The girl’s name is Patsy Lennon,” Anne said. “We first found her on the street about two years ago. She had just turned eleven. We’ve handed her off to child services half-a-dozen times. She hates foster care and runs away, or they try to reunite her with her family, which is a disaster. Her mother is a drug addict who turns tricks for dope, and she’s always got a pimp who wants Patsy peddling her ass. Patsy runs away and finds a pimp of her own.”
“The pictures of the man aren’t helpful,” Gregor said.
Anne laughed. “No, they’re not. I told you I was a lousy photographer. But I saw him with my own eyes. I saw him get into that car with Patsy Lennon. I saw him get a blow job from Patsy Lennon—”
“And you didn’t try to stop it?”
“I couldn’t have stopped it. I know. Back when I started, I wasted a lot of time trying to stop blow jobs. I got beat up a couple of times. But I saw him do it. And then he put Patsy back on the street and took off, and I followed him. I had the Adelphos House car and I followed him all the way out to my brother Tony’s house. Not that that was difficult, by the way. He wasn’t exactly tearing up the road.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Ryall Wyndham. Or he says it is.”
“And you don’t believe him?”
Anne shrugged. “There are dozens of people like Ryall Wyndham all across the country, all across the world, maybe. They worship Jackie O. They desperately want to be part of Society, as if Society still existed in the way it did in the thirties. Oh, I’m not saying that it doesn’t exist at all. There are still in people and out people, and there is still ‘social standing,’ if that’s the kind of thing you’re interested in. They’re interested, so they change their names and find some way to connect to the people they think are important—people like Charlotte, to be frank about it.”