The Debt Collectors War

Chapter 35

Several hours had passed while they visited the farmhouses. It was mid-morning now, and the businesses in the town should be open. One of the buildings the missing kid had visited several times was a café and bar at the edge of the town.

A social hub like that seemed the best place to go next.

Ellie asked Joe to drive there, and they parked down the street, and watched it for a while. Sameh slumped in the back, and seemed to go to sleep. Ellie and Joe kept watching the café.

It looked cheap, and old. It had paper advertising posters on the wall. A performance space and bar, Ellie thought. It was probably struggling in a town like this.

They watched for a while, trying to work out what they were seeing. Young people’s fashions and identity-groupings had fractured, even since Ellie was that age. She couldn’t keep track any more, even in Měi-guó, even with years of TV watching, which ought to have kept her up to date. She watched, and people came and went, probably having coffee and breakfast.

She watched people go past, and couldn’t see anything special about most of them. Then three teenagers left the cafe, and Ellie sat up and said, “Them.”

In a lot of his photos, their missing kid had black hair and clothes and eye makeup. The three leaving the cafe did too.

Sameh woke up, and opened her door. Ellie and Joe got out the SUV.

Ellie went down the street, after the young people in black. Down the street, and around the side of a building, into an empty square of land, covered in weeds, and also conveniently out of sight of the main street of the town.

“Hey,” Ellie called. “Hold on a second.”

The three young people stopped and looked at her. Two were girls, and one was a boy. There was a lot of dark-dyed hair and heavy old-fashioned jewelry and smudgy eye makeup, and all three of them wore bright pink socks and wrist-bands as well. Ellie didn’t know what the pink meant, and she didn’t especially care. It was the dark hair and eyes, like their missing kid, which she was interested in.

“We’re looking for someone,” Ellie said to them.

“Good the fuck for you,” the boy said.

“I’m trying to be polite,” Ellie said.

They all just looked at her.

“Fine,” Ellie said. She grabbed the nearest arm, one of the girls, and twisted her around and into the wall. Joe grabbed the other girl, and just held her, his arms around her chest, trapping her. Sameh punched the boy, then twisted him into an arm-lock against the same wall as Ellie was using.

Sameh probably hadn’t needed to actually hit anyone, but Ellie didn’t really care.

The three kids were secured, so she glanced around, quickly. A man had come out of a doorway nearby and was standing there looking at them.

“Deal with that,” Ellie said to Joe. To the girl Joe was holding, she said, “Stand there and don’t move.”

Joe let go of his girl, and walked towards the man, saying something in an authoritative voice, a bossy voice. That they were debt-recovery and he should move along, something like that.

The girl he’d let go just stood there helplessly, a bit overwhelmed, looking at her friends. That was exactly how Ellie wanted her.

“I tried to be polite,” Ellie said to the other girl, the one she was holding against the wall.

“So?” the girl said. She was tough, or acting tough. She probably had to be, growing up in Měi-guó.

Suddenly Ellie was annoyed. Suddenly the morning’s irritation spilled over.

“So be fucking civil or I’ll get a lot less polite,” Ellie said.

The girl struggled anyway.

“Stop,” Ellie said, and tapped the girl’s face against the wall. Not hard, but the wall was brick, and rough, and that was enough. The girl stopped struggling and went still.

“We’re looking for someone,” Ellie said, and took a tablet out her leg-pocket, and used voice-control to find a picture of the missing kid. Once she was holding the tablet she didn’t have any spare hands to touch the screen.

She showed the girl she was holding the photo. The girl looked, but didn’t say anything. Ellie showed the other girl.

“Let me see,” the boy said. His nose was bleeding where Sameh had hit him. He looked, then shook his head, “We don’t know her.”

Ellie had a voice analyzer running, and it lit up when he spoke.

“Yes you do,” Ellie said to him, suddenly very pleased.

She was fairly sure he’d been lying, anyway, even without the voice analyzer’s warning. He had spoken for all three of them, claiming something he couldn’t know for certain, rather than just speaking for himself.

“We fucking don’t,” he said.

“Watch your mouth,” Ellie said. “Where’s this kid? Who’s he with?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’ve seen him?”

The boy didn’t answer.