Strega

by Andrew Vachss

  "Like methadone?"

  "Sure. You understand. Of course, heroin addiction is a product of many, many thingsbut heroin was first really introduced into this country by the United States government. After World War I, too many of our soldiers returned addicted to morphine. Heroin was the wonder drug that would make them all well again.

  "It sure raised hell with the fighting gangs," I said.

  "You remember the heroin monster, sweeping through our communities, turning young people into zombies? This was because the street gangs had begun to reach a kind of political awareness.

  "Some political awareness," I said. "I came up in the fifties—all we ever wanted to do was keep other clubs off our turf, drink a little wine, play with the girls. Nobody even mentioned politics."

  "Not then," Pablo said, "but soon after. The fighting gangs were in every part of the city. Independent units, yes? If they had ever combined"

  "Not a chance," I told him. "I don't think I ever knew a word for a black guy except 'nigger' until I was out of reform school."

  "Racism is like heroin, Burke—it divides people from their true needs—it pacifies them with promises of foolishness."

  I held up a hand like a traffic cop. "Hold it, brother. You're going too fast for me. What's this got to do with a baby–raper?"

  "It's the same thing. Politics controls the reality which is presented to the public. Look, Freud taught that sex between children and adults was simply a fantasy—something in the minds of the children—something they imagined as a way of dealing with their own sexual feelings toward their parents. Now we know these feelings actually exist—the Oedipus complex, for example. But just because all children have such thoughts does not mean that reports of actual incest were a fantasy. It took us a long time to learn this truth. Politically, it was better that incest be thought of as a fantasy. This meant we gave treatment to the victim, but this 'treatment' was bogus—it made the children believe a lie and doubt the reality of their own senses.

  "That would make them…"

  "Crazy. Yes, that is what it did do. And those children who acted crazy were displayed as proof of the fact that they were crazy to begin with. Comprende?"

  "But why? Who wants to protect people who fuck their own kids?"

  Pablo sighed, disgusted as always with my political ignorance. "Look at it this way. Suppose a slave were to escape from the South and make it to New York. Suppose we put him into psychotherapy—suppose we convinced him that the whole experience of slavery was nothing more than a bad dream—do you not see the political value? We would not have to confront the slave–keepers—we could continue to practice trade and commerce with them, maintain our own self–interest economically. Yes?"

  "But slaves…" I said, groping for the clincher to prove Pablo wrong, "they'd still have the scars…"

  "You think an incest victim would not have scars?" he said.

  I lit a cigarette, thinking of Flood and the scars she made on herself to replace the brand of a rapist—how she poured gasoline on herself over the tattoo the gang put on her, lit a match, and held on to her one friend in the world until the fire made them free. "What good would it do to trick a kid like that?" I asked.

  "Children don't vote," he said.

  "And Freud said there was no such thing as incest?"

  "Freud did not make a conscious decision to accept the women stories as fantasies—he lived within a political climate and he responded to it."

  "But we know it happens."

  "Now we know. But to truly know it then, you had to experience it.

  "So if you thought the experience was all in your mind…"

  "Yes," said Pablo, grateful that I was finally seeing the light that shone so brightly for him.

  I got to my feet, pacing uncomfortably in the small room. "Forget politics for a minute," I said. "We know people do these things to kids, okay? Do we know why?"

  Pablo tilted his head until he was gazing at the ceiling. "I will tell you everything we actually know—it won't take long. We know people have sex with children—the children of strangers and also their own. We know this has something to do with power—the power grown people have over children. In fact, sex with children is not sex as you would understand it, Burke. It is not, for example, the kind of adaptive mechanism which could cause a man to turn to other men when there are no women—like in prison. This is another dimension entirely. The pedophile—the one who has sex with children—he may be able to have sex with women, or with grown men. But he does not prefer to do this. The more intelligent the pedophile, the more skillfully he may rationalize his behavior, but the truth is really simple—he knows what he does is wrong and he does it anyway."

  "I thought those freaks couldn't help themselves?"

  "No! They can stop—they choose not to."

  "It can't be that simple," I told him. "Who the fuck would choose to pass up women and force little kids to?"

  "All that is within them is within you and me, my friend. If every man who felt sexual violence toward a woman acted on that feeling, New York would not be a city—it would be a graveyard."

  "You mean it's not?"

  "You joke when you do not understand. Just because some of the lower beasts walk our streets does not make our community into a jungle— not so long as people struggle against the beasts."

  Pablo took a dark bottle down from a shelf and poured himself a glass of that jungle juice he drinks all the time. I passed up his offer with a shake of my head.

  "To rehabilitation!" he said, tossing down half the glass.

  "You ever try that with one of these freaks?" I asked him.

  "One time. One time we did just that," he mused, his eyes somewhere else. "My people brought a man in here years ago. He had been molesting children in the neighborhood, and it was thought best to turn him over to our clinic.

  "Why not the cops?"

  "My people wanted justice, Burke. And they knew the man would probably never be prosecuted. His victims were not important."

  "What did they expect you to do?"

  "The man agreed to go into treatment with us. He made a specific contract that he would cease his activity while we tried to do something about his behavior."

  "Behavior?"

  "Only his acts were a danger to our community—his motivations are so deep inside him that it would take years of treatment for them to surface. And even then we could probably do nothing about them. We asked only that he stop."

  "Did he?"

  "No. We cannot know why he made his choice—what forces were within him. We can only assume that he tried to walk the line. One day he slipped and fell."

  "What did you do then?"

  "Nothing. At that point, it became a matter for the police."

  "I thought you said the cops couldn't do anything."

  "They could in this case, compadre. When he slipped and fell for the last time, he was on a rooftop." Pablo held his glass in a silent toast to the only rehabilitation that really works.

  We sat in silence for a minute—each waiting for the other. Pablo took another sip of the jungle juice. "Hermano, truth we have been talking about crime, not about psychiatry. And you know more about the behavior of such people than I do. Many times we have called upon you to predict the actions of such evil people—our paths originally crossed for that very reason, yes?"

  I nodded—it was the truth.

  "And you have become my brother, verdad? Do you think I call a man my brother and do not understand him?"

  "No—I know you understand."

  "Then maybe you should tell me why you have come to talk with me," Pablo said.

  I took a last drag on my cigarette, feeling the cold wind eddying in the corners of his office, stirring the dust, making its own howling only I could hear. And I started to tell him about Strega.

  80

  I TOLD HIM everything. It didn't take as long as I'd thought it would—maybe there wasn't so much to tell. Pablo took off his glasses, caref
ully rubbed them on the lapel of his white coat, waiting to be sure I was finished.

  "What is so puzzling to you, my friend? A person with a task to do uses the weapons he has, no? This woman wants you to do something—she obviously believes the money is not strong enough to bind you to her will. The sex is nothing more than a chain she tosses over your neck— a leash you put on a dangerous dog."

  "It doesn't work like that. If she was working me to make sure I did the job, the sex would be a promise, right? A reward. Something to look forward to when the job was done."

  "A promise, then? Not a performance?"

  "It always seems like a promise…but it's not."

  "The woman promises nothing?"

  "Nothing."

  Pablo looked at the ceiling, thinking it through. "She has already paid you some of the money, yes? If you took the money and didn't do the jobwhat could she do?"

  "Nothing. Maybe she thinks she could, but…nothing."

  Pablo shrugged. "I cannot see what makes this so difficult for you. Perhaps the woman is just covering her bets—making sure your nose is open—that you keep coming back for more. Remember when we were young menhow much we would risk for a night of love with a woman?"

  "I'm not young anymore," I said. I couldn't remember ever being that young.

  "Listen to me, Burke. It is not reality which controls our lives, it is the perception of that reality."

  "More politics?"

  "You cannot dismiss truth by mocking it," Pablo said, his voice hardening. "So long as my people believe their life is acceptable, then it is acceptable. My people live on a slave island, but their chains are food stamps and welfare programs.

  "This is getting away from me," I told him.

  "Because you are ignoring your senses—because you will not listen to what you have already learned."

  "I am listening. I told you everything, Pablo."

  "You have told me nothing. You said only what you saw—and you have been precise in your reporting, like an investigator. But you have told me nothing of what you feel, comprende?"

  "No," I lied.

  "What does this woman make you feel—that is more important than the sum total of everything else. Close your eyes, Burke. Think her name into your mind. Feel itlet it come to you."

  I closed my eyes, playing it square. Letting it come into me. Pablo floated away from me—I could feel him in the room, but we weren't alone.

  "What?" he asked.

  "A cold wind," I told him. "A chill…"

  "All this sex, and no fire?"

  "No fire. Dark sex. It happens like it's supposed to, everything works, but nobody smiles. Only part of her is with melike she's standing somewhere else …a movie director…She's someone else when she wants to be."

  Pablo was quiet, waiting for me to say something else. But I was tapped out.

  "Burke, when you make love with her—do you think of making a baby?"

  "It can't be. I can't say why…but we couldn't make a baby with what we doShe has the only child she wantsIt's like…if she wanted…she could make acid run inside her."

  "Even her kiss is cold?"

  "I never kissed her," I said.

  Pablo watched as I lit another cigarette, his eyes playing over the pictures of his children sitting on his desk. "You know that Puerto Ricans are a special tribe, my friend? You know we are not 'Spanish' like some gringos think we are? And like some of us wish to be? Puerto Ricans are African, Indian, SpanishOur roots are in many continents, and the knowledge of our people is that mixture in our blood. We call it 'racial knowledge,' and it is deeper than you could ever imagine."

  I looked at Pablo—at his dark skin and tightly curled hair. I thought back to when the cops would bust the fighting gangs when we were kids. The dark–skinned Puerto Ricans would never speak English—they didn't want to be taken for black. I thought of the black face of the soldier on São Tomé, talking to me in a bar just before we went over the water to Biafra. Showing me a picture of his wife, smiling. Saying 'Muy blanco, no?" to get my approval. Liberals wanted to find their roots—survivors wanted to keep from getting strangled by them.

  "When you first talked about this woman, I thought you were describing a Santería priestess. You know them—they mix voodoo and Christianity the way a chemist mixes two drugs. But this woman, she is nothing like that. Her rituals are in her head—they are not handed down from another—they are her own creation."

  "Yeah. But…"

  "What does she call herself, my friend?"

  "That's a funny thing—her name is Gina, the name her people gave her. But when she got older, they started to call her something else. Strega. You know what it means?"

  "Sí, compadre. But it means nothing…or everything. It depends on who is talking. On the tone of their voice—their relationship to the woman. We have the same word in Spanish. Bruja. It meanswitch, perhaps. A woman with great powers, but maybe with evil in her heart. It can even be a term of affection…a bitch with fire in her eye and the devil in her hips, you understand?"

  "Witch. Bitch. It doesn't help me."

  "One is inside the other—but, remember, the witch includes all else. A woman who is a witch can be anything she wants to be—she can take many forms. An old woman, a child. A saint, a devil. And this is always her choice. We can never see such a woman—only the manifestation of herself she allows us to see. If ten men see her, they see ten different women. And each will believe he has seen the truth. A man cannot see a witch."

  "Pablo, come on. You believe that shit?"

  "I believe what is true," he said, his voice grave. "I believe this wisdom handed down to us over the years has survived for a reason. To ignore the truth is to fail to understand why the truth has survived."

  Survival. My specialty—my birthday present from the state. "What does she want?" I asked him.

  "Only she knows that, Burke. Bruja is a fire—she must have fuel."

  I ground out my cigarette. "The best thing for me to do is make tracks, right?"

  Pablo nodded.

  "But I have this job to do," I told him.

  "You will not always be this confused, Burke. When Bruja manifests herself to you, it will be clear. You will know the truth. She will not attempt to hold you without the truth—you cannot be tricked by such a woman—they disdain the wiles of normal women. All their slaves are volunteers."

  "Who would volunteer to be a slave?"

  "A man who fears freedom," Pablo said, getting to his feet to embrace me. It was a goodbye.

  81

  THE LINCOLN was standing out in front of the clinic as if it had never moved. The driver's door was open, the engine running. I can take a hint. I was off the block in seconds.

  It was deep into the hours past midnight—still not too late to go to Mama's joint, but I wasn't hungry. The Lincoln turned itself north toward the Triboro—I was going to loop around and head back to the office. But I found myself on the long span heading for Queens instead. The bridge was quiet. I passed the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway, my last chance to head back downtown. But the Lincoln kept rolling, past LaGuardia. By then I knew where I was going.

  Strega's house was still and dark as I let the Lincoln drift to the curb—maybe her husband and her daughter were allowed to return to the castle after midnight. I hit the power window switch, leaving the engine running. Lit a cigarette and watched the red tip in the darkness like it was a book I wanted to read, listening to the night sounds. A Yellow Cab rattled past—a late–arriving passenger from the airport going home to the wife and kids.

  I threw my cigarette into the street, watching her house. A tiny light came on in an upstairs window, barely visible behind a gauzy curtain. I looked hard, trying to fix the exact location. The light went out.

  I pushed the gas pedal down, letting the big car take me back to where I was safe. It felt as if she was playing with me in that upstairs room—letting me go. This time.

  82

  THE NEXT morning was n
o better. Strange days. The big part of staying off the floor is knowing how to wait. When you hit the floor in my neighborhood, there's no referee giving you time to get your brain back together. I knew how to stay off the floor, but this case was all bent and twisted. I had money in my pocket, nobody was looking for me—I should have been golden. Julio's weak threats wouldn't make me lose sleep. I could just wait a few weeks, keep my head down—tell Strega I came up empty. And walk away.

  But when you spend your life lying to everyone from streetside suckers all the way to the Parole Board, you learn that lying to yourself is a self–inflicted wound.

  I drove over to one of the post–office boxes I keep around the city in various names. The one in Westchester County is the one I use for kiddie–sex freaks. It's in Mount Vernon, just over the border from the Bronx, maybe forty–five minutes from the office. All I found were some "underground" newsletters and a magazine. The newsletter never quite crosses the line—just some pictures of kids mixed with whining about this repressive society. One even had a column supposedly written by a kid himself—bragging about how his life was enriched by his "meaningful association" with an older man. That dirtbag the Mole had brought me to would have approved. Most of it reminded me of the stuff the Klan puts out—who got arrested recently (and why he was innocent), what politicians are trying to make a name for themselves with "anti–kid" legislation…that kind of crap. Some freaks burn crosses, some burn kids. The feature story was about some priest in Louisiana doing time for sodomizing a bunch of altar boys—the newsletter said the real issue was freedom of religion.

  It was a waste of time. I knew it would be. Someone once said people in hell want ice water. If that's all they want, maybe they deserve to stay there.

  I pulled the car over on the West Side Highway, near 96th Street. It was peaceful there–a few guys working on their cars, one crazy bastard casting a fishing line into the oil slick, a young woman throwing a stick for her dog to fetch. The dog was an Irish setter. His coat gleamed coppery red in the sunlight as he dashed in and out of the water, chasing the stupid stick. The woman called to the dog—time to go. The dog stopped and shook himself, water flying from his coat in a fine spray. I threw away my cigarette. That was what I needed to do—shake off this witch–woman and get back to myself.