Jackie O never looked back.

He tried not to think too deeply about what he did. Jackie O was a God-fearing man, and gave generously to his local church, seeing it as an investment in his future, if nothing else. He knew that what he was doing was wrong in the eyes of the Lord, but if he didn’t do it, then someone else would, and that someone might not care about the women the way Jackie did. That would be his argument, if it came down to it and the good Lord was looking dubious about admitting Jackie to his eternal reward.

So Jackie O watched his women and his streets, and encouraged his peers to do likewise. It made good business sense: they weren’t looking out only for their whores, but for the cops too. Jackie didn’t like to see his women, half-naked and dressed in high heels, trying to run from Vice in the event of a descent on the Point. If they fell in those heels, then, likely as not, they’d do themselves an injury. Given enough notice, they could just slink away into the shadows and wait for the heat to disperse.

That was how the rumors came back to Jackie, shortly after Alice and her friend had disappeared from the streets. The women started to tell of a black van, its plates beaten and obscured. It was a given on the streets that vans and SUVs were to be avoided anyway, because they were tailor-made for abduction and rape. It didn’t help that his women were already a little paranoid because stories were circulating about people who had gone missing in recent months: girls and younger men, in the main, most of them homeless or junkies. Jackie O had seriously considered putting some of his women on temporary medication to calm them down, so at first he was skeptical about the mythical van. No approaches were ever made to them from the men inside, they said, and Jackie suggested that it might simply be the cops in another guise, but then Lula, one of his best girls, came to him just as she was about to take to the streets.

“You need to watch out for that black Transit,” she told him. “I hear they been asking after some girls used to service some old guy out in Queens.”

Jackie O always listened to Lula. She was the oldest of his whores, and she knew the streets and the other women. She was the den mother, and Jackie had learned to trust her instincts.

“You think they’re cops?”

“They ain’t no cops. Plates are all torn up, and they feel bad, the men inside.”

“What do they look like?”

“They’re white. One of them’s fat, real fat. I didn’t get a good look at the other.”

“Uh-huh. Well, you just tell the girls to walk away if they see that van. Tell them to come to me, y’hear?”

Lula nodded and went to take up her place at the nearest corner. Jackie O did some walking that night, talking to the other pimps, but it was hard with some as they were men of low breeding, and lower intelligence.

“Yo bitch spookin you, Jackie,” said one, a porcine man who liked to be called Havana Slim on account of the cigars that he smoked, didn’t matter that the cigars were cheap Dominicans. “You gettin old, man. Street’s no place for you now.”

Jackie ignored the taunt. He had been here long before Havana, and he would be here long after Havana was gone. Eventually he found G-Mack, but G-Mack just blew Jackie O right off. Jackie O could see that he was rattled, though, and the older man began filling in the blanks for himself.

One night later, Jackie O glimpsed the black van for the first time. He had slipped down an alleyway to take a leak when he saw something gleaming behind a big Dumpster. He zipped himself up as, gradually, the lines of the van were revealed to him. The rear plate was no longer battered or obscured, and Jackie O figured there and then that they were changing the plates on a regular basis. The tires were new, and although some damage had been done to the side panels, it looked purely cosmetic, an attempt to divert attention from the van and its occupants by making it appear older and less well maintained than it really was.

Jackie reached the driver’s door. The windows were smoked glass, but Jackie thought that he could see one figure, maybe two, moving inside. He knocked on the glass, but there was no response.

“Hey,” said Jackie. “Open up. Maybe I can help you with somethin. You lookin for a woman?”

There was only silence.

Then Jackie O did something dumb. He tried to open the door.

Looking back, Jackie O couldn’t figure out why he’d done it. At best, he was going to make whoever was inside the van seriously pissed, and at worst, he could end up with a gun in his face. At least, Jackie O thought that a gun in the face was the worst that could happen.

He grasped the handle and pulled. The door opened. A stench assailed Jackie O, as if someone had taken the bloated carcass of a dead animal buried in shallow ground and suddenly pierced its hide, releasing all the pent-up gas from within. The smell must have made Jackie nauseous, because there was no other way of explaining what he thought he saw inside the cab of the van before the door was yanked closed and the van pulled away. Even now, in the comfort of his own apartment, and with the benefit of hindsight, Jackie could only recall fragmented images.

“It was like it was filled with meat,” he told Louis. “Not hanging meat, but like the inside of a body, all purple and red. It was on the panels and on the floor, and I could see blood dripping from it and pooling in places. There was a bench seat in the front, and two figures sitting on it, but they were all black, except for their faces. One was huge and fat. He was closest to me, and the smell came mostly from him. They must have been wearing masks, because their faces looked ruined.”

“Ruined?” asked Louis.

“I didn’t get a good look at the passenger. Hell, I didn’t get much of a look at anything, but the fat one, his face was like a skull. The skin was all wrinkled and black, and the nose looked like it had been broken off, with only a piece left near his forehead. His eyes were kind of green and black, with no whites to them. I saw his teeth too, because he said something when the door opened. His teeth were long, and yellow. It must have been a mask, right? I mean, what else could it be?”

He was almost talking to himself, carrying on an argument in his head that had been going on since the night he had opened the door of the van.

“What else could it be?”

Walter and I separated after our lunch with Mackey and Dunne. They offered to meet up with us again if we needed any more help.

“No witnesses,” said Mackey, and there was a sly look in his eye that I didn’t like. I didn’t care about what they might have heard, but I wasn’t going to let someone like Mackey throw my past back in my face.

“If you have something you want to say, then say it now,” I said.

Dunne stepped between us.

“Just so we’re clear,” he said, quietly. “You handle G-Mack how you want to, but he better be breathing and walking when you’re done, and if he expires, then you be sure to have a good alibi. Are we clear on that? Otherwise, we’ll have to come after you.”

He didn’t look at Walter when he spoke. His eyes remained fixed on me. Only as he turned away did he speak directly to Walter. He said: “You better be careful too, Walter.”

Walter didn’t reply, and I did not react. After all, Dunne had a point.

“You don’t have to come along tonight,” I said, once the two cops were out of sight.

“Bullshit. I’m there. But you heard what Dunne said: they’ll fall on you if something happens to this G-Mack.”

“I’m not going to touch the pimp. If he had anything to do with Alice’s disappearance, then we’ll get it out of him, and later I’ll try to bring him in so he can tell the cops what he knows. But I can only speak for myself. I can’t speak for anyone else.”