Strega

by Andrew Vachss

  Max and Immaculata came in together. She greeted me the way she always does—a slight bow of her head over her hands clasped in front. Always formal. She sat down across the table from me. Max went around behind me so he could watch her lips when she spoke.

  "What was that I was watching?" I asked her.

  "That was what we call a 'validation,' Burke."

  "Validation?"

  "That little girl has gonorrhea—a sexually transmitted disease. It was my job to find out how she contracted it."

  "And she showed you?"

  "Yes. The large doll is her father. Many children, especially very young ones, have no ability to use a narration. Most of them don't even have the words for what has been done to them."

  "I never saw dolls like that," I said.

  "They're 'anatomically correct' dolls. Under the clothes, the bodies have genitals proportionate to their size. They have to be specific, especially when the children don't speak."

  "You mean when they're too young?"

  "Not necessarily. The child you saw is almost six years old. But she had been told that the 'game' Daddy plays with her is their special secret and she isn't to tell anyone."

  "Did he threaten her?"

  "No. In fact, most incest offenders don't use threats until their victim is a lot older than this one. The child almost instinctively knows something is wrong with the activity, but the combination of guilt and fear is usually enough to ensure silence."

  "What was that thing at the end—with the arms on the doll?"

  "Just what it looked like to you. Rage. Sexually abused children are often consumed with anger at the person who hurt them. And sometimes at the person who failed to protect them as well. Part of the treatment process is letting them know it's okay to say 'No!'—it's okay to be angry. The arms and legs of the dolls are attached with Velcro; the children can tear them apart—and maybe put them together later, if they come that far."

  "Doesn't the kid live with her father?"

  "She lives with her mother. The incest happens during the time she visits him."

  "No more visits for him?"

  "That's really up to the courts. When the child showed signs of having been sexually abused, the mother took her to a doctor. She didn't know what was wrong, but she knew something was. The doctor didn't find anything physical—he never thought to check for V.D., it never occurred to him. The actual diagnosis wasn't made until weeks later—when the mother took the child to the emergency ward because of a vaginal discharge. The child was referred to a program where they do therapy and also teach the children physical and emotional self–defense. I work there too—I need the supervision to qualify for my license here. What I was doing in the playroom was preparing the child for supervised visitation with her father. She has to know she can confront her father and tell him to stop, and she has to feel protected if she is to do that."

  "Why should this maggot get any visits with her?"

  "That's a good question," she said. "The answer is that the child must work through her own rage at what happened to her. She has to recapture a sense of control over her life. The supervised visits are not meant to benefit the father—they are therapeutic for the daughter. And, at the same time, the father can start his own treatment."

  "How about if he denies the whole thing?"

  "They usually do, at first. But eventually, most of them do acknowledge what they have done—covering it, of course, with a thick layer of self–justification."

  "What justification?"

  "Oh, that the child was the instigator…that this was nothing more than showing his affection in a special way…minimizing

  "What bullshit. Is he going to be tested for gonorrhea?"

  "Yes, he will be tested. But it takes less than twenty–four hours for all traces of the disease to disappear if he gets treatment. However, the courts will consider the presence of a sexually transmitted disease together with my validation. And find against him."

  "You're telling me there really is treatment for these people?"

  "That's one of the major arguments in the profession today—I don't know the answer."

  "I don't know about incest like this. But the maggots who like sex with kids never stop."

  "Pedophiles may well be incurable. I don't know. I work only with the victims."

  Max crossed over to stand behind Immaculata. He shook his fist tightly to show me how proud he was of his woman. She looked up at him and I knew this wasn't a day for gin rummy.

  9

  EVERYTHING probably would have blown over between Immaculata and Mama except that Max brought his woman to the restaurant one night. In honor of the occasion, we all took one of the big tables near the back. There's no air conditioning in Mama's place, but the atmosphere was like a meat locker anyway. Mama wasn't insane enough to openly insult Immaculata, so they fought their battle with the subtle fire only women of character ever truly master.

  One of the thugs brought a huge tureen of hot–and–sour soup. Mama bowed to Immaculata, indicating she should serve everyone—that's what bar girls do, right? But Immaculata never flinched—she took Max's bowl off his plate and spooned in a generous helping, being extra–careful to serve it properly, a full measure of all the ingredients, not just the thin stuff on top. Mama smiled at her—the way the coroner smiles at a corpse just before the autopsy.

  "You serve man first, not woman. Chinese way, yes?"

  "Not the Chinese way, Mrs. Wong—my way. To me, Max comes first, you see?"

  "I see. You call me 'Mama,' okay? Like everybody else?"

  Immaculata said nothing, bowing her head ever so slightly in agreement. But Mama wasn't finished.

  "Immaculata your name? I say that right—Immaculata? Is that Vietnamese name?"

  "It's the name the nuns gave me—a Catholic name—when the French were in my country."

  "Your country Vietnam, yes?"

  "Yes," said Immaculata, her eyes hard.

  "Your father and mother both from Vietnam?" Mama asked innocently.

  "I don't know my father," Immaculata responded flatly, "but I know what you want to know."

  The table was dead quiet then. Max watched Mama, making up his mind—Mama had survived two wars but she was never as close to death as she was at that moment.

  Max pointed one steel finger at my face, then opened his hands, asking a question.

  I knew what he wanted. "No," I told him, "I don't know who my father was either. So what?"

  Max wiped his hands together: "All finished," he meant. The discussion was over.

  But he wasn't going to pull it off that easy. "You want to know my father's nationality, yes?" asked Immaculata.

  "No," Mama said, "why I want to know that?"

  "Because you think it would tell you something about me."

  "I already know about you," Mama snapped.

  "And what is that?" asked Immaculata, the air around us crackling with violence.

  But Mama backed away. "I know you love Max—that good enough. I love Max—Max like my son, right? Even Burke—like my son too. Have two sons—very different. So what, yes?"

  "Yes, we understand each other," Immaculata told her, as Mama bowed her agreement.

  "You call me 'Mama'?" the dragon lady asked.

  "Yes. And you call me Mac, okay?"

  "Okay," said Mama, declaring a truce, at least when Max was around.

  10

  BSUT MAX wasn't around now, so I'd have to leave the money with Mama. No big deal—anytime I make a score, I stash some of it with Max or Mama. It's not that I have such good savings habits—it's just that it's a long time between decent scores for me. I didn't mind working without a license, but I wasn't going to try it without a net.

  The last time I went back to prison changed everything. When you're raised by the state, you don't think about the same things citizens do. You find out sooner or later that time is money—if you don't have money, you're going to keep on doing time. Most of the guys I c
ame up with were doing life sentences on the installment plan. A few years in—a few months out.

  I thought I had it figured out before I took my last fall. Up to then, I kept making the mistake of involving citizens in my business. There's a different set of rules for them and for us. You stab a man in prison, you might end up in the Hole for a few months—you stick up a liquor store on the street and you're looking at telephone numbers behind the walls, especially if you've been there before. I'd taught myself some things by then, and I knew better than to work with partners who wouldn't stand up. And I knew where the money was—if I wanted to steal without making citizens mad at me, I had to steal from the bad guys. Back then, the heroin business was strictly European—the blacks were only on the retail end and the Hispanics hadn't made their move. The Italians were moving pounds and pounds of junk all through the city, and they weren't too careful about it—they had no competition. Max wanted to hijack the gangsters when the money changed hands, but that wouldn't work—the Italians transported the dope without a care in the world, but they got paranoid as hell when it came to cold cash. Too many bodyguards—I wanted a nice smooth sting, not the O.K. Corral.

  Finally, I came up with the perfect idea—we'd hijack the dope, and then sell it back for a reasonable price. It worked fine at first. Max and I watched the social club on King Street for a few weeks until we saw how they did it. Three, four times a month, a blue pastry truck with Jersey plates would pull up to the front door, and the driver would offload the covered trays of pastries and the metal tubs of tortoni and spumoni. Within a couple of hours, a dark blue Caddy would pull up outside and the same two hard guys would get out. They looked enough alike to be twins: short, muscular, with thick manes of dark hair worn a little too long in the back.

  Max and I watched them walk up to the dark–glass front of the social club. If a couple of the old men were sitting outside—always wearing a plain white shirt over dark suit pants, polished shoes, talking quietly—the young guys would stop and pay their respects. They were muscle all right, but family muscle, working their way up the ladder.

  The young guys would go in, but they wouldn't come out for hours. It didn't add up—boys like that might be allowed in the club to get an assignment, or on a special occasion, but the old guys wouldn't let them just hang around.

  Max and I learned to be patient in different places, but we both learned it well. It took another few weeks to work our way around to the back of the club and find a spot where the constantly watching eyes in that neighborhood couldn't see what we were doing. Sure enough—ten minutes after they went in the front door, the muscle boys went out the back. One carried a suitcase, the other held a pistol parallel to his leg, barrel pointed down. The guy with the suitcase tossed it into the open trunk of a black Chevy sedan, slammed it closed, and got behind the wheel while the gunman watched the alley. A minute later, the Chevy took off with both of them in the front seat.

  I didn't have the Plymouth then, so Max and I followed them in a cab—me behind the wheel and Max as the passenger. I didn't mind taking some reasonable risks to make some unreasonable money, but I wasn't about to let Max drive.

  The muscle boys took their time—they cruised up Houston Street to the East Side Drive. When they crossed the Triboro into the Bronx, I looked a question at Max, but he just shrugged his shoulders—they had to be going to Harlem sooner or later. Sure enough, they circled Yankee Stadium, hooked onto the Major Deegan Expressway, and took the exit to the Willis Avenue Bridge. At the end of the exit road all they had to do was make a quick right and they were back over the bridge and into 125th Street, the heart of Harlem. Another few minutes and they parked in the back of a funeral parlor. We didn't follow them any farther.

  The next two runs followed the same route—we just had one more piece to check out and we were ready to operate. We met in Mama's basement—me, Max, Prophet, and the Mole.

  "Prof, can you get a look at how they transfer the stuff? It's in the back of the Golden Gate Funeral Parlor on Twenty–first," I said.

  "The next time the move goes down, the Prof shall be around," he assured us.

  "Mole, we need three things, okay?" I told him, holding up three fingers to let Max follow along. "We need to disable their car real quick, get the trunk open, and get in the wind."

  The Mole nodded, his pasty skin gleaming in the dark basement. "Tiger trap?" he wanted to know. He meant one of his bombs under the lid of a manhole cover—one flick of a switch and the street would open up, dropping the car into the pit. That would sure as hell disable the car, open the trunk, and give us all the time in the world to walk away. It wasn't exactly what I had in mind—the Mole's heart was in the right place, but it would take years of therapy to reduce him to a lunatic.

  "Mole, we don't want to kill them, okay? I had in mind maybe the Prof gets their attention for a second, Max and me hit them from either side and brace them—you pop open the trunk, grab the suitcase, and slash the rear tires. How's that?"

  "How does the trunk lock?" the Mole wanted to know. It was all the same to him.

  I looked over to the Prof and he nodded—we'd know soon.

  "You can get us an old Con Ed truck, Mole?" I asked him.

  The Mole made a face like "Who couldn't?" It was true enough for him—he lived in a junkyard.

  11

  THE NEXT time the muscle boys stopped at the red light before they turned onto the bridge for Harlem, things were a little different. The battered Con Ed truck was nosed against the metal support for the traffic light, blocking most of the intersection. The black Chevy slid to a smooth stop—running red lights wasn't the best idea when you were carrying a trunkful of dream dust.

  I climbed out of the driver's seat, wearing a set of Con Ed coveralls and a thick leather tool belt around my waist with another strap over one shoulder. My eyes were covered with blue–tinted sunglasses—I had pasted on a heavy mustache a few minutes ago. The Con Ed cap covered a thick blonde wig and the built–up heels on my work boots made me two inches taller. The Prof was slumped against a building wall, an empty bottle of T–Bird by his side, dead to the world.

  I walked toward the Chevy, spreading my hands in the universal civil–service hostile apology: "What can I do?" The driver wasn't going for any delay—he spun the wheel with one hand to pull around the truck: I could get out of the way or get run over. His hard face said it was all the same to him. He was in control.

  Then it all went to hell. I tore open the snaps on the coveralls and unleashed the scattergun I had on a rawhide cord around my neck just as the Mole threw the truck into reverse and stomped the gas. The truck flew backward right into the Chevy's radiator, and one chop from Max took out the guy in the passenger seat before he could move. The Prof flew off the wall, an ice pick in his hand. I don't know if the driver heard the hiss from his rear tires—all he could see were the twin barrels of the sawed–off staring him in the face from a distance of three feet.

  I flicked the scattergun up a couple of inches and the driver got the picture—his hands never moved off the wheel. He didn't see the Mole slither out of the truck and around to the back of the Chevy—another couple of seconds and the trunk was open and Max had the suitcases.

  I patted the air in front of me to tell the driver to get down in the front seat. As soon as his head started to drop, I cut loose with the scattergun right into his door. I blasted the second barrel where his head had been a second ago, taking out most of the windshield, and sprinted for the side of the warehouse where the cab was waiting. Max was at the wheel, with the Mole beside him, the engine already running. I tossed the empty scattergun to the Prof in the back seat, dove in beside him, and we were rolling. Everyone knew what they had to do—we were pretty sure there was no backup car, but it was too early to relax. The Mole had his grubby hands deep in his satchel and the Prof was already reloading the shotgun for me.

  12

  WE LEFT the suitcases with the Mole in his junkyard and split up. We didn't
make our move for a few weeks—the mobsters were too busy murdering each other to answer anonymous telephone calls. I don't know if they dusted the driver and his partner or not—probably kept them alive long enough to make sure they were telling the truth, and then started looking. But they weren't looking outside the family. Me and Max and the Prof were sitting in Mama's restaurant when we read the headline in the Daily News.—"Torched Building Was Gangster Tomb!" It seems someone had wiped out a whole meeting of the heroin syndicate and then set fire to the building—the Fire Department hadn't discovered the bodies for a couple of days, and it took another few days for the cops to make positive identifications. That kind of massive hit didn't sound like it was connected to our little hijacking, but we didn't know who we could ask.

  The Prof looked up from the paper. "Sounds like Wesley's work to me," he whispered.

  "Don't ever say that name again," I snapped at him. Wesley was a guy we had done time with before—if I thought he was operating in New York, I'd move to the Coast.

  Anytime you pull a snatch–and–switch, the last part is the hardest. You can grab the goods easy enough—the mark isn't expecting the move—you just disappear and let them look in their own backyard. But when it gets down to exchanging the goods for cash, you got major troubles. It's easy enough to do if you don't mind losing some of your troops along the way, but our army was too small for that kind of sacrifice.

  We agreed to wait another two weeks. It was fine with the Prof. Max looked unhappy. I spread my hands, asking him "What?" He just shook his head. He'd tell me when he was ready.

  13

  WE WERE in the sub–basement of Mama's restaurant, planning the exchange. It was simple enough—I'd make contact over the phone, explain my problem, and wait for the solution to come from them. Sooner or later they'd agree to use one of the freelance couriers who work the fringes of our world. These guys worked off a straight piece, no percentage—maybe ten thousand to deliver a package and bring something back. You could move anything around the city that way—gold, diamonds, blueprints, funny money, whatever. None of the couriers were family people, although one was Italian. They were men of honor—men you could trust. Even back then, there were only a few of them. There's even fewer now. Anyway, the scam was for them to suggest some halfass plan that would get me killed, and for me to act scared and start to back out. They'd eventually get around to suggesting one of the couriers, and Max was on that list. We'd agree on Max, and that would be it. Simple and clean—the heroin for the cash. I laid it out for the others, figuring on scoring about fifty grand apiece when this was over.