IT WAS another few minutes until Immaculata came back. She had an armful of paper with her.
"Look at this," she told me, and sat down next to Max.
They were kids' drawings: stick figures, crude crayons-they didn't mean anything to me.
"So?" I asked.
"Look at them again, Burke. Look closely."
I lit a cigarette and went through them again. "How come the pictures of the kids have no arms?" I asked her.
"That's it. Now you see. The children have no arms. And see how small they are next to the big figures? Look at this one…"
It was a picture of a little child looking at a giant penis pointed at her face. The child had no arms-her mouth was a straight line.
"She's trapped," I said.
"Yes. She is without power, you understand? She is small, her abuser is huge. The penis is her whole world. She has no arms to fend it off. She has no legs to run. She's in a cage."
"How do you break her out?" I wanted to know.
Immaculata took a deep breath. "Some of them never do break out. We have to give them back a sense of control before that happens. If we start too late, they look for control with drugs, or they try suicide. Or they surrender."
"Surrender?"
"To the feelings. It's not just the loss of power. Children have sexual feelings too. If you awaken them too early, they get out of control, and the kids themselves look for sex…it's what they think is love."
"Fucking maggots."
Immaculata didn't say anything. Max reached across and took a couple of the wooden matches I used for my smokes. He broke one until it was about a third the size of the rest, and put it next to a full-size match. Then he took the big match and snapped it off until it was even smaller than the first one. He looked at Immaculata.
"It won't work. To the child, the abuser is always all-powerful. You can't make him small-you have to make the child big."
I took the tiny piece of match that was supposed to be the parent, lit another match, and touched it to the little piece. It went up in flames.
"That won't work either, Burke. You can make the perpetrator disappear from the earth, but not from inside the child's mind."
I didn't say anything. Immaculata's face was calm, her eyes watchful but showing nothing. I looked at Max-his face was a concrete mask. He wasn't buying this any more than I was.
"What's this got to do with the tape recorder, Mac?" I asked her.
"In my office, the child has to not just be safe, she has to feel safe. She has to learn she can control parts of her life. She has to learn she has the right to say 'No!' Okay?"
"Okay."
"Most of the kids have been involved in a conspiracy of silence. The offenders make them promise not to tell-keep it a secret. Or they make the kids believe something terrible will happen if they do. So I tell them if there's something they don't want to go on the tape recorder, all they have to do is reach over and turn it off. So they are in control."
"And they turn it off when they get to the stuff you need for court?"
"Sometimes they do," she said.
I lit another smoke and closed my eyes, buying some time to think. When it came to me it was so simple I was sure they'd already thought of it.
"Use two tape recorders," I told Mac.
"Two tape recorders?"
"Sure. The one on top of the table-the one the kids can turn off if they want, right? And you keep another one out of sight, maybe under the table or something. And you let that one run all the time. So even when they turn off the first one, you still have everything on tape."
Immaculata put the two fingernails back against her cheek, thinking it over. "That would be dishonest," she told me.
"Better to let some scumbag walk away laughing?" I asked.
She waited a second or two. "No," she said. And a smile broke across her lovely face. "That's what we'll do."
Max made an "I told you so" gesture to his woman, now smiling himself. Immaculata reached over and squeezed my hand, and Max's smile broadened.
Immaculata was the first woman ever to come into our clubhouse. She'd be the last. Like all truly dangerous beasts, Max would mate for life.
I left them with each other and went in the back to make my call.