Strega

by Andrew Vachss

  "You get stopped, you borrowed the car from me. I'll stand up on it. I got all the insurance, recent inspection. You're clean on this one."

  Sure I was—if Bobby told the cops he lent me the car. If he said it was stolen…

  "Is it a deal?" he wanted to know.

  "One week. I make those phone calls. Then we'll see," he said.

  "What do you get for a stolen–car rap these days?" I asked him.

  "Figure maybe a year—two at the outside."

  "Yeah," I said, looking at him. He had me in a box, but not one that would hold me for long. "I'll show you the security systems on the Plymouth," I said, holding out my hand for him to shake.

  "You won't know your own car when you come back, Burke," Bobby said, his hand on my shoulder, leading me back to the front garage.

  "I always know what's mine," I reminded him.

  We had a deal.

  50

  THE LINCOLN was a big fat boat. Driving it was all by eyesight—you couldn't feel anything through the wheel—like they used Novocain instead of power–steering fluid. The odometer had less than six thousand miles showing. Even the leather smelled new.

  I stopped next to a pushcart restaurant, loading up on hot dogs for lunch. There wasn't any point hiding the car—even if Bobby had called it in stolen, the plates wouldn't bounce unless they pulled me in for something else. I was in his hands—for now. He could make the Plymouth disappear easily enough—but if he fucked me around I could make him disappear too. I get real angry if someone makes a move on me when I'm playing it square. The way I have to live, I don't get angry too often.

  When Pansy came back downstairs I gave her four of the six hot dogs, chewing on two of them myself, washing them down with some ice water from the fridge. Putting it together in my head—finding the little boy's picture would be like finding a landlord who gives too much heat in the winter. I had to have an angle, and Bobby was my best shot.

  I keep my files in the little room next to the office. Six cabinets, four drawers high, gray steel, no locks. There's nothing in there that would get me in real trouble—no names or addresses of clients, no personal records. It's all stuff I pick up as I go along—stuff that could help me at some point. Gun–runners, mercenaries (and chumps who want to be), heavy–duty pimps, kiddie–porn dealers, con artists, crooked ministers. I don't keep files on crooked politicians—I don't have enough space, especially since I have to sleep in that same room.

  But I do keep files on the flesh–peddlers—they can't run to the cops when they get stung, it's not in their program. Those merchants sell two products: people and pictures. I checked the magazine file—the kiddie–porn rags were all the same, mostly kids doing things to other kids, smiling for the camera, playing with fire that would burn their souls. Occasionally an adult would intrude on the fantasies of the freaks who bought this stuff—an anonymous cock in a little kid's mouth, a thick hand holding a kid's head down in a dark lap. The pictures were all the same—recycled endlessly behind different covers. The kids in those pictures would all be at least teenagers by now. Recruiting other kids.

  The underground newsletters kept the pictures pretty clean. Lots of arty photography—nude kids posing, playing volleyball, wrestling with each other. Plenty of contact information—post–office boxes, mail drops, like that. But every Vice Squad cop in the country was probably on the mailing list and it would takes months to work my way through the maze and actually make a decent buy. They'd try me out first—tame stuff, semilegal—with a ton of rhetoric about "man–boy love" for me to wade through.

  I looked through my list of overseas addresses. Almost all kiddie porn used to come from places like Brussels and Amsterdam. The European countries are still a safer harbor for pedophiles, but the real heavy production was all home–grown now. Kiddie porn is a cottage industry. You can walk into a video store and come out with enough electronic crap to make a major motion picture. I didn't need the expensive stuff—a Polaroid was all the kid told Strega about. That was all I needed, and a lot more than I had.

  Crime follows dollars—that's the way of the world. No buyers—no sellers. The professionals in the hard–core business have the technology to supply the huge amounts of filth humans want to buy, but the professionals were too big a target for me. Too spread out, too detached. The organized–crime guys were into kiddie porn for the money—if I wanted to find one lousy Polaroid, I'd have to go to someone who was in it for love.

  51

  IT WAS just past midday, probably early enough to risk using the hippies' phone, but I was going out anyway. Pansy was sprawled out on the Astroturf, an expectant look on her ugly face. "You can come with me later," I told her. I was going to see the Mole, and I couldn't risk turning my beast loose near the junkyard—if she didn't get into mortal combat with the dogs the Mole keeps around she might just decide to stay.

  I called the Mole from a pay phone a few blocks from the office. No point in wasting a trip if he wasn't around, and only God knew the Mole's hours.

  He answered on the first ring the way he always does—he picks up the phone but he doesn't say anything.

  "Can I come up and talk with you?" I said into the mouthpiece.

  "Okay," came the Mole's voice, rusty from lack of use. He broke the connection—there was nothing else to say.

  The Lincoln drove itself north on the East Side Drive. I set the cruise control to fifty and motored up to the Triboro Bridge. A decent suit on my back, no gun in my pocket, and a set of clean papers for a car that wasn't stolen—I hadn't been this much of a citizen since I was ten.

  I met the Mole when I was doing a job for an Israeli guy, but I didn't really get to know him until I did another job, much later. Another one of those anonymous Israeli guys came to my office one day. He wasn't the same guy I'd met the first time, when they wanted me to find some ex–Nazi, a slimeball who'd worked as a concentration–camp guard. I did that job, and now they wanted a gun–runner. The Israeli said he wanted to buy weapons and needed me to set up the meet. Somehow I thought there was a bit more to it. The man he wanted to meet sold heavy–duty stuff—shoulder–fired missiles, antitank cannons, stuff like that. And he sold them to Libya.

  I told the Israeli I wouldn't meet with the guy myself—I didn't do business with him and I didn't want any part of someone else's beef. When I said I didn't trade with the gun–runner, the Israeli asked me if I was Jewish. He's the only guy I ever met who asked me that.

  It was the Israeli who took me to the junkyard the first time. They left me alone in the car, the dog pack cruising around me in the night like sharks lapping against a rubber raft. I don't know what they talked about, but the Israeli got back into my car carrying a little suitcase.

  The Mole has no politics—he doesn't consider blowing up Nazis political. After the second job, I was a friend to Israel. And after a lot of years, I was the Mole's friend too. After I took the weight down in the subway tunnel, I was his brother.

  I threw a token into the Exact Change basket, hooking a left and then a right to Route 95. But I ducked into the warehouse district off Bruckner Boulevard, finding my way to the Mole's junkyard. Hunts Point—New York's badlands. Topless bars. Diesel–fuel stations. Whores too raunchy to work Manhattan stalked the streets and waved at the truckers, flashing open their coats to show their naked bodies, then closed them quickly before the customers got a good look. I heard pistol shots, spaced a couple of seconds apart. Over to my right, two men were standing a few feet away from an abandoned old Chrysler, pumping shots into the body. Glass flew out of the windows; the old wreck's body rocked with each shot. It wasn't a homicide going down—just a seller demonstrating his goods for a prospective buyer. Hunts Point is a dead zone for police patrols—no citizens allowed.

  I turned the corner near the entrance to the Mole's joint, driving slowly, scanning the street with my eyes. I heard a horn beep. The Mole's head popped up in the front seat of a burnt–out Volvo sitting at the side of the road. He climb
ed out, wearing his dirt–colored jumpsuit, a tool belt around his waist and a satchel in his hand. He looked like another part of the wrecked car.

  He walked over to the Lincoln and climbed into the front seat. "Mole!" I greeted him. He nodded, confirming my diagnosis. We drove around to the side entrance, a rusting old gate secured by a dime–store lock. It wouldn't keep a self–respecting thief out for ten seconds. The Mole jumped out, selected a key from the several dozen he had on a saucer–sized ring, and popped the lock. I pulled the Lincoln inside while he locked up behind me. I kept the windows up as we pulled deeper into the junkyard—I couldn't hear them, but I knew they were around. I glanced in the rearview mirror—the ground around the gate was already covered by a thick blanket of dogs. More of them loomed up from the dark depths of the yard, padding forward slowly, all the time in the world. The gate wouldn't keep a thief from getting in, but no power on earth was going to get him out.

  The dogs were all sizes and shapes. I remembered the old Great Dane—a black–and–white Harlequin monster, now missing an ear. A matched set that looked like boxers approached from the front with something that might have once been a collie on their flank. But the real pack bounded up on my side of the car—lupine heads closer to wolves than German shepherds, alert, intelligent black faces over broad chests, thick tails curled up on their backs. Their coats looked like brown fur dipped in transmission fluid, matted and heavy. Only their teeth looked clean, flashing white in the dim sunlight. The pack had been working and making puppies in the South Bronx jungle for so many years that they had evolved into a separate breed—the American junkyard dog. They never saw a can of dog food. Or a vet. The strongest survived, the others didn't.

  There were safer places to walk around than the Mole's junkyard—like Lebanon in the busy season.

  The Mole jumped out of the Lincoln, shifting his head for me to follow. I slid over and got out his side. The Mole blundered through the dog pack like a farmer walking through a herd of cows, me right on his tail.

  The dogs nosed my legs experimentally, wondering how I'd taste. One of the pack growled a threat, but the Mole ignored it like he does everything else they do. The Mole's underground bunker was on the other side of the junkyard—we weren't going there.

  A red Ford station wagon was sitting in a patch of sunlight ahead of us, its entire front end smashed all the way into the front seat—a head–on hit. The back seat had been removed, propped up against the rear bumper. A cut–down oil drum was on one side, a thick book with a plain blue cover on top. The Mole's reading room.

  A dog was asleep on the Mole's couch—a massive version of the others in the pack, his neck a corded mass of muscle. He watched us approach, not moving a muscle. Only his tail flicking back and forth showed he was alive.

  "Simba–witz!" I called to him. "How's by you?" The huge beast's head came up, watching me. His ears shot forward, but his tail kept the same rhythmic flicking—back and forth, like a leopard in a tree. A bone–chilling snarl came from his throat, but it wasn't meant for us. The pack stopped dead.

  The Mole walked over to his couch, sat down, half on top of Simbawitz. The beast slipped out behind him, sniffed me once, and sat down on the ground. I sat down next to the Mole, reaching for a cigarette, glad it was over.

  The Mole reached in his jumpsuit, came out with a slab of fatty meat, and tossed it to the dog. Simba–witz tossed it in the air, caught it, and burst into a run, holding his prize aloft. The pack swung in behind him, yipping like puppies. We sat quietly until they disappeared. They wouldn't go far.

  "Mole," I told the pasty–faced genius, "I need your help on something."

  I paused, giving him a chance to ask what I needed his help for—it was a waste of time.

  "I got a job," I said. "This little boy—he was in a day–care center or something, and someone took a picture of him. With a Polaroid. I need to get the picture back."

  "Who has it?" the Mole asked.

  "I don't know."

  The Mole shrugged. He was good at fixing things, or making them work. And especially at blowing them up. But he didn't know how to find things.

  "It's a sex picture, Mole."

  "What?" he asked. It didn't make sense to him.

  "Mole, these people forced the kid to do a sex thing with a grown man, okay? And they took a picture of it. To sell."

  The Mole's little eyes did something behind the Coke–bottle lenses he wore. Or maybe it was the sunlight.

  "Who does this kind of thing? Nazis?"

  To the Mole, every evil thing on the planet was the work of the Nazis. If Bobby did get me a meeting with the Real Brotherhood, I'd have to go without the Mole.

  "Kind of," I said, "kind of the same thing. People who go on power trips, right? In the kid's mind, as long as they have the picture, they have his soul."

  "If you find the people.

  "I know, Mole. That's not the problem now. I need to find the picture."

  He shrugged again—what did I want from him?

  "I have to find the picture. It's like a scientific problem, right?" I asked, reaching for a way into his megawatt brain, probing for the switch to turn on the light.

  "Scientific problem?"

  "You once told me that to solve a problem in science you take all the known facts, then you work out some possible outcomes, right? And you keep testing until you prove…whatever you said."

  "Prove the hypothesis?" the Mole asked.

  "Yeah," I said, "the hypothesis."

  The Mole sat slumped on his couch, watching the smoke curl from my cigarette. Quiet as concrete.

  "You need a scenario," he finally said.

  "What are you talking about, Mole?"

  "A way something could happen. You take the result—what you already know—and you reason backward. You eliminate whatever wouldn't work until you are left with what the past had to have been."

  The Mole took a breath—it was a long speech for him.

  "I don't get it, Mole," I said. "You mean, if you have a problem, you reason backward and see how the problem started?"

  "Yes."

  "Could you figure out where cancer came from like that?"

  "Yes," he said, again.

  "So where did it come from?" I asked him.

  "It would be too complicated for me to explain it to you," the Mole said.

  "You mean I'm not smart enough?" I asked him.

  The Mole turned his face slightly toward me, trying to explain. "You're smart enough. You don't have the background—the scientific knowledge. If it was in your world, you could do it."

  "This picture is in my world," I told him.

  "I know," he said.

  I lit another cigarette, looking around the junkyard.

  "Mole, show me how to do it."

  The Mole sighed. "You understand—it only works if you have enough data."

  I nodded.

  "You know the Socratic method?" he asked.

  "Where you ask questions to get at the truth?"

  "Yes," he said, barely able to keep the surprise from his voice. You spend enough time in prison, you read more than comic books.

  "Can we try it?"

  "Yes. But not on cancer. Let me think."

  I stubbed out my cigarette in the dirt next to the couch, waiting.

  "You know about AIDS?" the Mole asked suddenly.

  "Yeah, I guess. A superkiller."

  "Where does it come from?"

  "Nobody knows," I told him.

  "I know," said the Mole.

  I sat bolt upright on the couch. If he knew where AIDS came from, we could all be rich. "Tell me," I said.

  The Mole held up his fist, index finger extended. He grabbed the finger with his other hand. Point number one.

  "Did AIDS come from God? Is it God's punishment for something?"

  "No" I said.

  "How do you know?" he asked.

  "God's been on vacation for fifty years from New York," I said. "You try Dial–a–Prayer
here, all you get is a busy signal."

  The Mole didn't say anything, still waiting for a Socratic answer.

  "Okay," I said. "It's not God's punishment because little kids have it too. If God is punishing babies, we should have new elections."

  The Mole nodded. It was good enough for him. He didn't hate the Nazis out of any religious conviction. The Mole worshiped the same god I did: revenge.

  "How do people get this disease?" he asked.

  "Sexual contact, blood transfusions, dirty needles," I said.

  "If it comes from sex," he asked, "how did the first person get it?"

  "It's something in the blood, right? Something where the blood doesn't make immunities like it's supposed to"

  "Yes!" he said. "There has been some interference in the chromosomes to create the first cases. But how did that interference take place?"

  "Nuclear testing?" I asked.

  "No," he came back. "If that were so, far more people would have been affected. Especially people near the site of the tests."

  "But what about if some people are…susceptible to radiation. You knowif it has a different effect on them than on other people."

  "That is better—a better hypothesis. But it is too broad, too weak. Think of more experiments—experiments on people."

  "Like they used to do on prisoners—like with malaria and yellow fever and stuff?"

  "Yes!" he barked. "Experiments on people."

  "Like the Nazis did in the camps?"

  The Mole's eyes changed shape, like there was a different fuel in his reactor. "They experimented on us like we were laboratory rats. To make twins from the same egg…eliminate what they called genetic defectstest it on us before they used it on themselves."

  "AIDS came from Nazi experiments?"

  "No. They didn't have the scientific knowledge. Sadistic amateurs. They just wanted to torture people. They called it science. When doctors help the torturers .

  I had to get the Mole off that topic. When he thought too much about the Nazis, the blood lust blocked everything else.

  "So some other experiments?" I asked. "Something going on now?"