Choice of Evil (39 page)

“I still don’t like it,” the phone said. “Find another spot.”

I didn’t say a word. Got back in the Plymouth and pulled out. . . slowly.

He passed on my next choice too. And the one after that. I went on auto-pilot, hardly speaking at all, mechanically searching for spots. I left the cellular on, the lifeline between us.

“Change of plan,” his voice cut into my thoughts.

“What?”

“I
found a spot. Just past the meat market. Drive back over there.”

“Right.”

It was only a couple of minutes away. But when I drove by, slowly, I couldn’t see anything but a couple of burnt-out hookers waiting on a semi. Or a serial killer. Car-trick roulette, with all their blood money on the double-zero.

“Keep going,” the voice said.

He must have me on visual now
, I remember thinking. I didn’t answer him, just let the Plymouth motor along, a touch past idle.

“See the train?”

Train?
I saw what was left of an abandoned railway car sitting on rust-clogged tracks. “Yeah,” I told him.

“Kill your lights and pull in there.”

The ground was all ruts. I drove real slow, like I was worried I’d snag an axle, but the Plymouth’s independent rear suspension handled it fine. I’d told the trader the truth about what the car had started out as, but all it had in common with the original was the body.

I figured he was somewhere in the shadows, and in a four-by, too. He didn’t know what the Plymouth could do, so he thought he’d given himself an edge.

But it was me who had the edge—my Neapolitan mastiff, Pansy. One hundred and fifty-five pounds of war dog, resting comfortably in the Plymouth’s padded trunk. Pansy’s about eighteen years old. I’d raised her from a tiny pup, weaned her myself. She’s lost a step or two. But you couldn’t have a better partner at your back. More than a partner. . . part of me. And like everything that was part of me, we’d chosen each other.

When I got almost parallel to the boxcar, I could see I’d been right on both counts. His ride was a black Lincoln Navigator, crouched in the boxcar’s shadow.

“Get out,” his voice came over the cellular. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”

I did that, moving like I had major arthritis, slitting my eyes against the expected blast of light.

He didn’t disappoint me. It was so white I felt the heat. Then it blinked off. I kept my eyes on the ground, waiting for the ocular fireworks display to fade.

The driver’s-side door to the Lincoln opened. A man got out. At least I thought it was a man. I’d never be able to pick him out of a lineup.

“Where’s the money?” he called over to me.

“In the backseat.”

“Get it. . . slow.”

I walked stiffly back to the Plymouth, opened the back door, reached for the satchel on the floor. At the same time, I pushed the button to pop the trunk. Not all the way, just to the first detent. Maybe six inches of space. But Pansy was free now.

I stiff-walked back to where I’d stood before. Dropped the satchel to the ground at my feet.

“Step away,” the man said.

“No. This is as far as I go without the kid.”

“You’ll get the fucking kid, friend. Just move off a few feet, that’s all.”

I did that.

“Get out here!” he snarled over at the Lincoln.

The passenger door opened and a kid got out. I couldn’t see him real well. . . only knew he was a boy because that’s what the Russians had told me. Real skinny. Wearing a dark jacket and jeans. His pale hair was shaved on the sides and spiked in front. The kid seemed to know what he was doing—walked to my left until he was out of the shadow and I could see him better.

“We trade steps, now,” the man said. “One for one. You get closer to him; I get closer to the money. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Now.”

We each started walking, me slower than him. I still had the edge—the kid could move on his own, but the money couldn’t. As soon as I got close enough for the kid to hear me, I said: “Come over here to me. Everything’s going to be all right now.”

The kid started toward me. I stood my ground, turning my head slightly to watch the guy pick up the satchel. The kid made some kind of grunting sound. I looked back and saw him holding a pistol, aimed right at the center of my chest. I tried to dive and roll, but I was too slow—the first couple of shots hit me in the rib cage. I staggered back, groping the darkness like it was a handrail, felt another shot slam into me somewhere.

Then I heard Pansy’s war cry as she launched over the rutted ground, heading for where I’d fallen. The kid saw her coming, the hellhound on his trail. He turned and ran but Pansy hit the back of his thigh and pulled him down like a lioness dropping an antelope.

The guy near the money started shooting at me. It felt like a sledgehammer to my kidneys. He ran past where I was lying in the dirt, yelling something. I was fading, going dim.

ABOUT THE TITLE

When his girlfriend, Crystal Beth, is gunned down at a gay rights rally in Central Park, Burke, the underground man-for-hire and expert hunter of predators, vows vengeance. But someone beats him to the task: a shadowy killer who calls himself Homo Erectus and who seems determined to wipe gay bashers from the face of the earth. As the killer’s body count rises, most citizens are horrified, but a few see him as a hero, and they hire Burke to track him down . . . and help him escape.

In
Choice of Evil
, Burke is forced to confront his most harrowing challenge: the mind of an obsessive serial killer. And soon the emotionally void method behind the killer’s madness becomes terrifyingly familiar, reminding Burke of his childhood partner, Wesley, the ice-man assassin who never missed, even when the target was himself. Has Wesley come back from the dead? The whisper-stream says so. And the truth may just challenge Burke’s very sense of reality. Expertly plotted, addictively enthralling,
Choice of Evil
is Andrew Vachss’s most haunting tale to date.

ANDREW VACHSS

Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social caseworker, a labor organizer, and has directed a maximum-security prison for youthful offenders. Now a lawyer in private practice, he represents children and youths exclusively. He is the author of numerous novels, including the Burke series, two collections of short stories, and a wide variety of other material including song lyrics, poetry, graphic novels, and a “children’s book for adults.” His books have been translated into twenty different languages and his work has appeared in
Parade, Antaeus, Esquire, The New York Times
, and numerous other forums. He lives and works in New York City and the Pacific Northwest.

The dedicated Web site for Vachss and his work is
www.vachss.com

BOOKS BY
ANDREW VACHSS

Flood

Strega

Blue Belle

Hard Candy

Blossom

Sacrifice

Shella

Down in the Zero

Born Bad

Footsteps of the Hawk

False Allegations

Safe House

Choice of Evil

Everybody Pays

Dead and Gone

Pain Management

Choice of Evil

Copyright © 1999 by Andrew H. Vachss

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1999, and in trade paperback by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1998.

Vachss, Andrew H.
Choice of evil / Andrew Vachss
p.  cm. — (Vintage crime/Black Lizard)

1. Private Investigators—United States—Fiction. I, Title. II, Series
PS3572.A33 C48    1999
813’.54—dc21    99-61596
CIP                    

Random House Web address:
www.randomhouse.com

eISBN: 978-0-375-71913-4

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