Dead and Gone b-12

by Andrew Vachss

  “Twenty, twenty-five years ago?”

  “Yes. But you … guess, do you not? I mean, you do not know this for a fact; it is a surmise?”

  “That’s right. The beast got loose in Cambodia in 1975, I think.”

  “I was five years old,” she said, her voice soft and dreamy, but her eyes stayed on mine, unblinking. “My father was a lawyer. You know what happened to anyone with an education? To anyone with any knowledge of the world outside the fields?”

  “Pol Pot.”

  “He was only one of them. A symbol. A horrible butcher, yes. But he did not kill three million people by himself. The Khmer Rouge were swollen with lust for blood. If the Vietnamese had not come, the killing would have gone on until there was no one left to die.”

  “How did you—?”

  “My parents knew they were coming. They knew there was no escape. My mother was a peasant born. She had friends in the fields. My parents handed me over. My new people tried to provide for me. It was … impossible.

  “I … eventually lived with a guerrilla group near the Thai border. They purchased me from the people who had me. They were not freedom fighters; they were drug lords. When the leader discovered I could do sums very quickly, he got me books. About money. He was very interested in money.

  “The books were mostly in English. Some were in Russian. There were Russian soldiers in the jungle. Independent outfits. It was as if they all knew governments would fall, but heroin would always have value. Like gold or diamonds. So they traded together. Made alliances. I became the translator for the leader. He could trust me, because I was a child, so I had no power. Even if I could have escaped, the jungle would have devoured me.

  “I was very patient. One night I was able to leave. In Thailand, money is god. I had to be very careful. Anyone would hurt you. Anyone would take your money. But I did speak English. I found some students. American students. In the Peace Corps. One of them helped me buy papers. I came here. First to California. I had names of people. I found some of them. And then I found myself.”

  “Why would you tell me this?” I asked her.

  “To be fair. I know about you.”

  “What could you know?”

  “My … people, in New York, they say you are a man for hire.”

  “Even if that were so—”

  “But here, you are hunting for yourself. This is personal, not professional.”

  “Why do you say?”

  “Because of what you do not say. About money.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You hired me. I am a woman for hire, and you hired me. But you never discussed the price of my services. As if it did not matter to you. So either you are concerned only with your target, or you plan to cheat me. Or dispose of me.”

  “You’re pretty relaxed for someone who’d even consider that last … thing.”

  “All my life, I have had only minutes—minutes at the most—to make decisions about people. One day I will be wrong. That day I will die.”

  “Is that … I don’t know, Buddhism or something?”

  “It is the Zen of violence. It has no logic, only essence. There are no computations, no calculations. No facts. Therefore, no theories.”

  “It sounds dangerous.”

  “No. It is a total thing. Do you know the fear of not knowing? Do you understand the terror of being utterly without power, in the hands of those who might use you, might hurt you, might kill you … might do … anything?”

  I looked at her, saw trace lightning the color of iodine flash in her black eyes. “Yeah, I do know,” is all I said.

  “Yes,” she said, accepting my answer as truth. “So you do not wait for decisions to be made by others. You act. If you succeed, you hold the power of your decision. If you fail, you die. It is the only way.”

  “The Tao?”

  “If you like. The Way is not one way. We are born into this world differently, one from the other. There is no fate. No destiny. There is only random chance. When you act, you alter that randomness. It may be for your good; it may be for your death. But it is better to make the decisions for yourself. No matter the outcome, the fear is gone.”

  “Fear is the key,” I told Gem later that night as she sat lotus-positioned on the carpet, a plain white tablet on her thighs. “Controlled fear. We have to spook them enough to get them out in the open, but not so much that they take off.”

  “What they do not know, then?”

  “Yeah, that’s the way I figure it, too. If we address it right to the drop box, they’ll know we have at least that much.”

  “Do you know what you want to say?”

  It was another hour before it was done. Gem worked silently, setting up her gear with the practiced, careful movements of a bomb-maker. First she sprayed some cleanser on the surface of the desk and wiped it vigorously with a silk scarf. “Formica,” she said, in a satisfied tone. “No fiber transfer.” She coated her hands with a trace of talcum powder and slipped on a pair of surgeon’s gloves. Next she took out a factory-sealed box of typing paper, opened it along one seam with a single-edged razor blade, and took out a sheet. She wrote quickly and precisely, using a cheap roller-ball pen, the kind they sell a few million of every year. “Purchased in Corpus Christi, Texas, about two years ago,” she said when she saw me looking at the English version she had copied from.

  Gem’s handwriting was more like printing, only the slight serif on some letters and the right-hand slant hinting at individualism.

  Sergei & Sophia–

  Dmitri is dead. You are connected to this through the boy. There is danger for you. Dmitri kept records. For your own safety, we must meet. I will be in O’Bryant Square at the corner of Park and Washington on Monday afternoon, at 2:00 p.m. I will be wearing a bright-red jacket .

  It was signed “Your Friend.”

  Gem picked up a small can of compressed air. She sprayed the single sheet of paper thoroughly, using the gentle sweeping motion of a graffiti tagger, then folded it precisely in thirds. Next she opened a new packet of manila-colored Monarch-size envelopes—I could see they were the self-sealing type—and addressed one carefully. Then she inserted the letter, peeled off the strip to expose the adhesive, and rubbed her gloved thumb along the seam to make sure the seal was tight. The stamp came from a roll; a stick-on.

  Gem slid the stamped, addressed envelope into a Ziploc bag and sealed it.

  “If we mail it today—Tuesday—they will get it on Friday at the latest. That still gives us Saturday as a fail-safe.”

  “If they check their box every day,” I reminded her.

  She shrugged. I knew what that meant: they would or they wouldn’t—it was out of her hands. And there was always another Monday.

  Later that day, I stood very close to Gem, holding the mailbox slot open and shielding her as she made the Ziploc spit out its contents.

  “Do you know this town?” I asked her.

  “Why? What is it that you need?”

  “Unless you brought a red coat with you, it’s what you need.”

  A smile played across her face. “I love shopping,” she said.

  We found her a brilliant red coat—a hunter’s jacket, the guy in the store told her. She also found a pair of lace-up boots she fancied. And some other stuff.

  We had a late lunch with Byron at a little restaurant he knew about. He held his lips in a whistling position as he watched Gem eat, but no sound came out.

  “So you figure on me coming back no later than Sunday morning, okay?” he said.

  “Perfect. Thanks.”

  “Sure. Tell you what—drive me out to where I’ve got the limo stashed. I’ll take it back to Seattle; you keep the hot rod until I get back. The suite’s covered, no worries there.”

  “You want me to meet you at the airport Sunday?”

  “No need. There’s always plenty of cabs around at PDX. And that way, there won’t be any phone calls.”

  “Speaking of …”


  “How many you want?”

  I spent the next couple of days prowling Portland. Knowing I didn’t have enough time to really learn the streets, but wanting to get a sense of the terrain. I’d checked the plaza where we’d set the meet—it was only a few blocks from the hotel—and I knew it couldn’t be boxed without a damn regiment standing by. The hotel was my trump—a place to duck into where I could just disappear.

  Anyone interested might check the lobby, but no way the hotel was going to stand for a room-to-room unless it was the police asking. Whoever they might be considering for backup, I was sure the Russians weren’t bringing the law.

  Gem always passed on coming along with me. Said she had some things to do. Sometimes she was there when I got back, sometimes she wasn’t. She must have found a greengrocer nearby—the living room smelled like a fruit stand from all the produce she had stacked in various spots. Refrigeration wasn’t a problem; Gem ate everything she scored the same day she brought it back. She asked me once if I wanted some pomegranates. I played along and told her no thanks. She ate them all, neatly and completely.

  My first day of prowling turned up a bakery a few blocks away. A good one, from the smells. Picked out a half-dozen pastries. Plump ones, oozing with custard and cream. Gem gave me a sly smile and a wink, as if I’d just bribed her. And a tiny trace of a wiggle as she pranced over to the desk to arrange the pastries in a neat, precise row.

  She washed them all down with hits from a huge bottle of water, talking between bites.

  “You are in danger?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I just don’t know from who.”

  “But the people I am to meet—they will know?”

  “They’ll know something. Maybe the solution to the puzzle, maybe just another piece of it.”

  “If there was no danger to you, you would not be seeking them?”

  “No.”

  She regarded me soberly, despite a mouth surrounded by powdered sugar. I felt like I was cocaine on her scale: telling her I weighed a kilo while her readout said two pounds.

  “It cannot be as you say. Not only as you say.”

  “Why?”

  “You are in a rage. A cold, black rage. When we talked … before … you told me you understood the fear. I believe that is true. But you are being hunted, yes? You were almost killed, and by people you do not know. Where is your fear now, Mr. Burke?”

  “It’s there, I promise you.”

  “Is it? Whoever your enemies are, you could hide from them. But what you want is their blood.”

  “Why would you say—?”

  “Revenge is only for small things,” she said, her voice a thin strand of white-hot wire. “For my country, for my people, there can be no revenge.”

  “So you forgive the Khmer Rouge?”

  “So you mock me? What do you know of our … suffering?” she said, something deeper than anger in her tone. I figured she never finished the first time she talked about it, so I just shut up and listened. “What revenge could you imagine for such a scale of evil?” she went on. “Could there be revenge for what Hitler did to the Jews? Or Stalin to his people? For Idi Amin? In Cambodia, it was not one tribe against another. It was not Rwanda. Or Bosnia. Or Northern Ireland. It was not even the ‘class struggle’ so beloved of Marxists, although Pol Pot claimed to be one. What happened was that the monster was set free. The monster in men that kills, and tortures, and rapes for … for the pure evil joy of it. Revenge? For true revenge, we would have to kill the Devil.”

  “There is no Devil. There is no ‘evil’ that gets loose. It’s all inside humans. Some humans. And it’s those humans who have to pay.”

  “Which humans? The ten-year-old boy who bashed in babies’ skulls with a shovel because his leaders told him the babies were the seeds of the privileged class? The people who made moral decisions not to kill died for their choice. Would you cleanse all Cambodia to be certain none of the guilty escaped?”

  “No. But they can be found if only—”

  “Found? Perhaps. Some of them. Some few of them. But even South Africa has a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They are trying to heal their country, not exterminate all those who committed atrocities. Rwanda is going to have trials. They will take decades, and only a handful of people will be punished. Only zealots want revenge. Most people, what they want is food. They want safety. And they want a future. Revenge will provide none of that.”

  “That’s their choice.”

  “But not yours.”

  “Not mine.”

  “People have hurt you. In your life, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you always able to have your revenge?”

  “No. Some of them … I could never find them. Others died before I could.”

  “But you still hate?”

  “I don’t think I do. I don’t hate the dead—I hate what they did.”

  “So … now? Why do you hate now?”

  “Could you come here?” I asked her.

  She walked slowly over to where I was sitting, turned her back, cocked one hip, and perched on the arm of the chair.

  “I want to tell you something,” I said.

  It took a long time to tell her. I didn’t start out to do that—just wanted to explain how Pansy had died, loyal past death. But I kept going backwards, all the way to when Pansy was a pup. How you were supposed to wrap an old alarm clock in a towel and let the puppy sleep next to it—it would sound like a heartbeat from her mother, and comfort her. I let her sleep on my own heart instead.

  When I stopped talking, she stayed quiet. I could barely see her in the darkness that had dropped like a lazy curtain.

  “Who pays?” she whispered.

  “Whoever was there. Whoever sent them.”

  “And then you are finished?”

  “Yes.”

  “I do not believe you,” is all she replied.

  The next morning, she was gone, the door to her room standing open. I was up by five-thirty, so she must have taken off when it was pitch-dark outside. I flicked on the light in the hall. It threw off enough to show me that her suitcase was still there. The living room held no note. Her laptop was missing.

  I showered and shaved, aimless, taking my time. Went out and ate a slow breakfast: a toasted bagel with cream cheese and pineapple juice. The cream cheese had little bits of chive, sharp and clean. The juice tasted like they’d just taken a machete to a fresh batch of pineapples that morning. But the bagel was a flop—mealy, flabby, and with no real crust. I guess what they say is true.

  I found an OTB a few blocks from the hotel. But even though it took plays on out-of-town tracks, all the action was on thoroughbreds or the dogs. I only bet the trotters. And I fucking hate greyhound racing—I know what happens to the dogs as soon as they lose a step or two.

  Back to learning the streets. I spotted a poolroom, but shrugged off the temptation—the fewer people who got a close-up of me before the meet, the better. Traffic was often clogged, especially where they were building a trolley line through town, but the drivers seemed either resigned to it or more polite than I believed people in cities could get.

  By midday, I’d found a giant Borders on Southwest Third. Turned out the place took up the whole corner. I saw more gorgeous women in their coffee shop than you’d see in an L.A. restaurant. But these girls were all reading books, not waiting on tables, so I never talked to any of them.

  I just strolled, looking around. I kept seeing signs that said Portland was the “Rose City,” but I didn’t see any roses.

  After a whole day, I decided that the Northwest sector looked most like places I was used to operating in. And that the Horse was loose in Portland’s streets, riding a lot of young kids, its weight too much for them to carry. I knew the end of that script.

  Gem didn’t come back that night. I watched television until narcolepsy set in. Didn’t take long.

  On waiting-day number three, it rained. I continued my learning on foot, London-cabdriver-
style, getting the nuances I’d miss behind the wheel. Couldn’t cover a lot of ground, but whatever I covered, I covered tight, working my way around and behind O’Bryant Square.

  It was one block square: ground-level at one end, full-width terraced at the other, the steps perfect for sitting. No fences or gates, so it had easy access to all four of the streets that made up its borders.

  I never found it empty, no matter what time I went past. Homeless nomads with clear plastic sacks of recyclables they’d rescued from the trash, students with their backpacks and attitudes, burnt-out runaways. A guy in a business suit was meeting a woman who couldn’t have been his wife from the way he kept eye-sweeping for anybody he might know, a young girl was drawing something in a large tablet, two men in their thirties openly shared a joint. And pigeons. Plenty of pigeons.

  When I got back, Gem was there, perched on the arm of the easy chair like she’d been when I told her about Pansy. She didn’t turn around when I came in.

  “Why don’t you sit in the chair?” I asked her.

  “I was saving it for you,” she said, almost formally.

  “Thank you,” I replied, in the same tone.

  I sat down.

  “Do you want something to eat?” I asked her.

  She flashed a smile, nodded her head.

  “Anything in particular?”

  “No. Just—”

  “—a lot, right?”

  “Yes.”

  It was the first time I’d tried room service since I’d been at the hotel. No risk, as I saw it. A hotshot studio exec like me, who’d look twice at an exotic dinner companion in his room? I ordered as if there were three people eating, and came up only a little short … which I cured when I told Gem I didn’t want my dessert.

  She took three chunky white pills with her meal, not making any big deal about it. I didn’t ask, so I was surprised when she said, “Monocal. It’s the only way to get fluoride bonded with calcium.”

  “Why would you need that?”