Mask Market — Andrew H. Vachss

They meet in a no -- name diner. A shadowy man hands Burke a CD dossier of someone he wants found. Minutes later, as Burke watches from an alley, his client is gunned down by a professional hunter -- killer team. Burke slips away, unsure if he's been spotted. Later, when he examines the dossier, he discovers that the missing woman is Beryl Preston, a girl he'd rescued from a brutal pimp twenty years earlier--when she was only thirteen--and returned to her father. Now he has to find her again--not only because she might be in danger, but also because he has to prove to himself that his rescue mission hadn't been financed by a predator who wanted his "property" returned. His search will force him to confront a new kind of human ugliness and, finally, to practice the survivalist triage that has marked--and cursed--his life since childhood. In Mask Market, Burke the outlaw investigator finds himself searching for the truth: not only about a girl named Beryl, but also about himself.