Shella (37 page)
Authors: Andrew Vachss
She didn’t sleep so long. I had time, though. Time to think. When she opened her eyes, I told her.
“I can get you out of here,” I said.
“What?”
“You can come with me. You don’t have to … die here, Shella. We can go someplace. You can talk to me. Like it was. I can find him, too. Take him out before you go.”
Her eyes were real soft, like they used to be, sometimes. I felt her hand on me. “Who, honey?”
“Your father. Like I promised.”
“He’s dead, baby. Long time dead I found out. Once I started my march, I knew I could do him. Do him myself, the way it should be. He never left where he was—it was easy to find out. He just died. In his sleep. He was an old man. Just died. There’s nothing left to do.”
“We could still …”
“I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to go anyplace either. I want to be done. Out of this.”
She looked at me. A hard straight look. Shella’s look.
“One more deal, my partner. One more deal. You came a long way to hear. If I tell you what you want to know, will you do it?”
I lit a cigarette to get some time. She tapped my hand for a drag. I held it to her lips. She couldn’t sit up anymore.
“Will you?”
I just nodded—I couldn’t talk.
“I love you,” Shella said.
Her neck snapped like a dry twig.
I walked out the front door of the hospital. It was getting dark. The Jeep was sitting there. Like Duke’s radio, with new batteries in it.
I got behind the wheel, started the engine. I sat there for a minute.
Then I put on the headlights and pulled out of the parking lot, driving slow.
When I got to the highway, I headed east.
Going to pick up my jacket.
A
NDREW
V
ACHSS
“Vachss is in the first rank of American crime writers.”
—
Cleveland Plain Dealer
BLOSSOM
Two things bring Burke from New York to Indiana: a frantic call from an old cell mate named Virgil and a serial sniper whose twisted passion is to pick off couples on a local lovers’ lane.
Crime Fiction/0-679-77261-8
BLUE BELLE
With a purseful of dirty money and the help of a hard-bitten stripper named Belle, Burke sets out to find the infamous Ghost Van that is cutting a lethal swath among the teenage prostitutes in the ’hood.
Crime Fiction/0-679-76168-3
BORN BAD
Born Bad
is a wickedly fine collection of forty-five stories that distill dread down to its essence, plunging readers into the hell that lurks just outside their bedroom windows.
Crime Fiction/0-679-75336-2
DOWN IN THE ZERO
The haunted and hell-ridden private eye Burke, a man inured to every evil except the kind that preys on children, is investigating suicides among the teenagers of a wealthy Connecticut suburb and, along the way, discovers a sinister connection.
Crime Fiction/0-679-76066-0
FALSE ALLEGATIONS
A professional debunker specializing in “false” allegations of child sexual abuse has stumbled across the case of his career—the real thing. What he needs now is a man who knows how to find out the truth, a man like Burke.
Crime Fiction/0-679-77293-6
FLOOD
Burke’s newest client is a woman named Flood, who has the face of an angel, the body of a high-priced stripper, and the skills of a professional executioner. She enlists Burke to follow a child’s murderer through the catacombs of New York so she can kill him her bare hands.
As Burke tries to unravel a string of sex crimes, he is caught in the crossfire of two rogue cops who are setting him up to be the next victim.
Crime Fiction/0-679-76663-4
HARD CANDY
In
Hard Candy,
Burke is up against a soft-spoken messiah, who may be rescuing runaways or recruiting them for his own hideous purposes.
Crime Fiction/0-679-76169-1
SACRIFICE
What—or who—could turn a gifted little boy into a murderous thing that calls itself “Satan’s Child?” In search of an answer, Burke uncovers mechanisms of evil even he had not imagined.
Crime Fiction/0-679-76410-0
SHELLA
At the heart of this story is a natural predator, Ghost, searching for a topless dancer named Shella, who has vanished somewhere in a wilderness of strip clubs, peep shows, and back alleys.
Crime Fiction/0-679-75681-7
STREGA
The implacable Burke has a new client, a woman who calls herself “Strega” (Italian for an erotic witch)—and a new assignment that leads him into the deepest oceans of the twisted city.
Crime Fiction/0-679-76409-7
VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD
Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:
FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, AUGUST 1994
Copyright © 1993 Andrew 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, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1993.
The Knopf edition of this book was cataloged as follows:
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vachss, Andrew H.
Shella : a novel / by Andrew Vachss.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-375-71907-3
I. Title.
PS
3572.
A
33
S
48 1993
813′.54—dc20 92-75207
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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