Choice of Evil (38 page)

The speaker spit out, “You could not. . .” but his voice trailed off.

“You know the truth,” I told him, calm and quiet and centered as deeply as I ever had been in my life. “You only killed Angelique. That’s when your art was done. When you found out the real reason why you did it. She taught you. She’s not lying. You are her father. But she was the one who gave
you
life.”

“My life is art. And my art is death.”

“Yes. And you’re done now. You’re Wesley. You can’t die. So you can’t stay either.”

“I know,” he said. A human voice now. He must have switched off the distorter in the microphone.

“Take Zoë with you,” Nadine begged him. “I wanted to go with you then. I can help you now. I can be with you. I don’t want to be here.”

She was crying then. I didn’t move, even when the cigarette started to burn the tips of my fingers.

“Come here, child,” he finally said.

Nadine walked forward. Touched the yellow button. And stepped into the darkness.

I heard a faint click as the Lexan door closed again.

I sat there, frozen, watching the barrier.

A white-orange fireball exploded in front of my eyes. The room rocked.

I got off the floor, surprised I was still there. I knew what was coming next. Wesley was going out again. The same way. I wondered how much time I had even as I ran toward the waiting elevator.

“
R
eprogrammed,” the maniac had said. I didn’t touch any of the buttons in the elevator. I climbed onto the railing and shoved the flat of my hand against the ceiling. The security panel yielded. I climbed out of the car and looked across. Empty black space. Sure—only that one car went to the secret top floor. But the blackness ahead of me wasn’t the Zero. There
had
to be other cars. I slipped the gloves onto my hands, wished for a flashlight. The stairway was sealed at the bottom. This way was my only shot. And a timer somewhere was ticking away my life. How much was left before he turned into Wesley for real?

I jumped, reaching out for the cable I couldn’t see. I hit it with my chest, grabbed on as hard as I could. Got a grip but it was too greasy—I lost it and started to free-fall. I. . . crashed onto the roof of the car below. Felt the wind go out of me. Didn’t fight it, waiting even as my mind screamed the opposite command. I got a breath. Clawed around frantically until I found the panel’s handle. Yanked it up and dropped inside. Stabbed the button for the ground floor, willing the damn thing to drop like a stone.

It opened into the lobby. I sprinted toward the thick glass doors and pulled with all my strength. Locked! Sure, the son of a bitch wouldn’t do anything without a backup plan. Alive, I could tell the truth. I pounded on the door. Useless. I looked around frantically, knowing it was coming and. . .

The night lit up. The quad beams of my Plymouth, aimed right at the door. I semaphored wildly. The Plymouth backed up, tires squealing, spun into a J-turn, and shot toward me, rear end first like they do in Demolition Derbies. I backpedaled toward the elevator as the Plymouth roared right up the steps and crashed into the doors, splitting them wide open. I ran for the passenger door, wrenched it open, and dove inside as the big car lurched forward, bouncing down the steps, fishtailing as it hit the street, then shot toward the FDR.

I looked over at the driver and caught Wolfe’s Satan-slayer smile. “Controlled collision,” she said. “The Mole wanted to work the lock, but the Prof said it was probably rigged. So we waited. When we saw you, it was time.”

“I. . .”

“I know you do,” Wolfe said, as the night behind us turned into flame.

I
t was probably getting light outside somewhere, but none of it penetrated into Mama’s.

“All she did was love him,” Wolfe said. “And he must have hated all the freaks, just like she did. Why didn’t he just go on and—”

“It was his choice,” I told her. “She knew his secret. She loved him for it, but he had no love left in him. He wanted to go, but he wasn’t going to leave anyone who would make excuses for him. You know how they talk about a choice of evils? He had all the choices. And evil was the one he chose.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Wolfe said. “I think he loved her. The only way he could.”

“He was just. . . what, then?”

“I don’t have a name for it.”

“Doesn’t matter. He’s gone now.”

“You’re not,” she said, leaning toward me, her hand on mine, gray eyes soft with something I’d never seen before. “And it’s your time now. Your time to choose.”

An excerpt from

DEAD AND GONE

by
ANDREW VACHSS

Soon to be available in hardcover from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Y
ou know what it takes to sit across the table from a man, listen to him talk, look into his eyes. . . and then blow his brains all over the wallpaper?

Nothing.

And the more of that you have, the easier it is.

“
Y
ou pick a spot yet?” The voice on the cell phone was trying to come across as bored with the whole thing, but I could pick up little worms crawling around its edges. Impatience? Nervousness? No way to know for sure.

“No,” I told him. “And if I can’t find one in a few minutes, we’ll have to do it next time.”

“Hey, pal,
fuck
you, all right? There don’t have to
be
a next time.”

“Up to you.”

“Hard guy, huh? I guess that’s right—it’s not
your
kid.”

“Not yours, either,” I said, my voice level and unthreatening, sending my calmness out to him. “We’re both professionals—how about we just keep it like that? This is a trade. You know how trades work. Soon as I find a safe spot, I’ll pull in, just like we agreed, okay? We’ll hook up, do our business, and everybody gets paid.”

“You don’t find a spot soon,
nobody
gets paid.”

“I’ll get back to you,” I said, and killed the connection.

It had taken weeks to get this close. A missing kid. Too young to be a runaway, but there’d been no ransom note. Just a. . . vanishing. That was almost ten years ago. It wasn’t a media story anymore. The cops told the parents they were still looking. Maybe they were.

The parents were the kind of people the cops would put out for, that was for sure. She was a gynecologist; he did something in biochemistry. But they were also first generation Americans; Russians. So when they got a call from a man who spoke their language, a man who said he ran a “recovery service” on commission, they took their hopes and their fears to Odessa Beach. Not the one on the Black Sea, the one in Brooklyn.

In the Russian mob, even the grunts have a hierarchy. You can read their rank right on their bodies—the specialists mark themselves with prison tattoos. The symbols tell you who’s the thief, who’s the assassin, who uses fire, who does bodywork. But they didn’t have anyone who does what I do. So Dmitri, the boss, reached out across the border. To a Chinatown restaurant run by a Mandarin matriarch who trafficked in anything except dope and flesh. She didn’t sell food, either.

“Half a million dollars?” I asked her, seated in my booth in the back, the third bowl—of a mandatory three—of hot-and-sour soup in front of me.

“They say,” Mama answered. Meaning: she wasn’t endorsing it herself; she wouldn’t vouch for anyone involved at the other end.

“
And
a hundred for me?”

“For whole trade,” she said, reminding me that I hadn’t found this job on my own—they’d called her. The whisper-stream knows a phone number for me. After it bounces around the circuits, it eventually rings at one of the pay phones in the back of Mama’s restaurant.

“Six hundred,” I added it up. “And Dmitri, he’s going to taste too, right?”

“He say, same country, he help for nothing.”

“And
you
say. . .?”

Mama just shrugged. We’d never meet the parents. What they wanted was a middleman. The hundred large was all there was as far as we were concerned, no matter who else was getting what.

“Why come to me, then?”

“Cossacks know I find you. Say you know. . . these people.”

“You mean they think—?”

“Not
same
people.
Those
people.”

“Ah.” Sure. Who knew the freaks better? They raised me. Recaptured me every time I ran, aided and abetted by the only parent I ever had: The State. I learned from the freaks, did time with them. And, when I got the chance, I hurt some of them.

Never enough of them, though. Those scales would never balance.

Mama was silent, letting me decide. Work was money. This deal wasn’t a retirement-size score, but it was strong cash.

Any other circumstances, she would have been all over me to take it. Instead, she looked a question at me.

I knew what she needed to hear. “I can do it,” I told her. Meaning: I could trade cash for a stolen kid and just walk away. Keep it professional.

Mama gave me a sharp look, then nodded slowly.

W
hoever they were, they knew their business. I was waiting at the corner they’d had the Russians send me to, standing next to a pay phone. It rang. I picked it up.

“You’re going to hear me say a 917 number. I’m only going to say it once. You walk
away
from that pay phone.
Far
away. When you get far
enough
away, you call the 917 number. Don’t bother writing it down—it’s going to disappear after this one call. That’s the way we’re going to work this, until we get it all sketched out. A new number each time, understand?”

“Yes,” I said, keeping it short. If he thought I was trying to prolong the conversation, he’d smell cop. And that would end it.

“You ready for the number?”

“Yes.”

He gave it to me. I shook my head “No!” at the men from Dmitri’s crew who’d been standing next to me and walked over to where my Plymouth was parked, keyed the ignition and took off.

I drove all the way out of Brighton Beach, one hand on the cell phone the Mole had built from spare parts around a cloned chip. As soon as I got clear, I punched in the number he’d given me.

“Go ahead,” is all I said.

“We’re not going to play around,” he told me. “The Russians, they’re
already
satisfied, understand? So don’t be asking any questions about the merchandise. All you and me have to do is figure out how to make the exchange.”

“Safest place is right out in public.”

“Safest for
who
, friend? I don’t think so.”

“Just tell me how you want to do it.”

“That’s the problem. . . I can’t think of a way to do it and still be safe. And I
have
to be safe. Otherwise, I’m just going to keep the merchandise. I was told
you’d
know a way.”

Who told him? The Russians? Someone else? Or was this just his way of saying he was putting all the weight on me? I spun it through my mind quickly, but nothing came up on my screen.

“You know East New York? The flatlands south of Atlantic?” I asked him.

“Sure. Not a chance.”

“Maspeth, then? By where the water tanks used to be?”

“Nope. I’m not going anywhere near tunnels, chief.”

“Hunts Point?” I offered, letting just a trace of annoyance show through.

“Where in Hunts Point?”

“You know what I’m driving?” I asked him, ignoring his question, trying to feel my way through to him. He talked like a pro, flat-voiced, detached. But what pro snatches a kid, keeps him ten years, and then turns him loose? The cash wouldn’t be worth the risk. He kept saying “I,” as if it were just him, as if I were dealing with the kidnapper himself. But that didn’t ring true. He had to be a middleman, same as me.

“No,” he answered.

“Listen close: 1970 Plymouth, four-door sedan. Painted a dull gray primer with a bunch of rust blotches on the sides. Outside mirror’s held on with duct tape.”

“Sounds like an old yellow cab.”

“That’s exactly what it is. You won’t see many like it still alive. But the
next
time you see it, it’s going to have a broad stripe of day-glo reflecting tape, orange, front-to-back. No way to miss
that
in your headlights, right?”

“So?”

“So I drive to Hunts Point. Triborough to Bruckner Boulevard to the Avenue, make a right, okay? Then I go out into the prairie, moving nice and slow, make a few circuits. There’s a thousand places for you to stash a car in there, and I don’t know what
you’ll
be driving, see? You watch me pass by, you check for tags and wait. Or you pull right out behind me; do it however you want. Soon as you’re happy, you ring me on my cellular. . . I’ll give you a number for that night.”

“How’ll I know it’s—?”

“Let me finish. You’ll like it. I find a good spot. I park. You watch me from a safe distance. You sound like a man who knows where to get some night-vision optics. Make your own decision when to come in. Or not. Soon as you’re ready, you tell me what you’re driving so I don’t spook when I see you pull up. We make the exchange, takes about fifteen seconds—me to check for a pulse, you to count the cash, okay?”

“I’ll get back to you,” he said.

H
e’d done that. And tonight, he was somewhere behind my rear bumper, watching and waiting.

I pulled into a strip of concrete that dead-ended at the river. Some kind of garbage dump or recycling plant to my right, wasteland to my left. I did a slow U-turn until I was facing out the way I’d come.

I saw a pair of headlights blink on and off once, about a hundred yards away. Had to be him. I thumbed the cellular into life.

“Yeah?”

“How’s this?” I asked him.

“I don’t like that abandoned car on your right.”

“If you were closer, you could see it’s wide open. Nothing left but a skeleton.”

“You got a flash?”

“Yes.”

“Get out. Shine it on the car. Light it the fuck
up,
understand?”

I didn’t bother to answer him. Just pocketed the phone, climbed out of the Plymouth, walked carefully over to the stripped-to-the-bone car and sprayed it with a mega-watt halogen beam. In the ghost-white light, the car looked like an Oklahoma double-wide after a tornado.