Shella

by Andrew Vachss

  It made me sad, being cheated that way.

  One morning, there was a soft tap on my door. I opened it. It was one of the gay guys who lived together at the end of the hall. His partner was standing just behind him, suitcases on the floor. I didn’t say anything.

  The guy who knocked was wearing an orange tank top, a fat, soft-looking man, mostly bald.

  “We’re moving out,” he said. “Just wanted to say goodbye.”

  “Goodbye,” I told him, watching. They never spoke to me before.

  “You should go too,” the man said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Show him,” his partner said. “Hurry up.” His partner was small, dark-haired. He was wearing a white silk shirt, like a woman’s blouse. He had makeup on his face, eyeliner.

  “You never hassled us,” the fat man said. He took some slivers of steel out of a leather case, walked next door. He played with the lock for a second and the door came open. I looked over his shoulder.

  The room smelled ugly. Fast-food cartons all over the place, on the floor, everywhere. In one corner there was a high stack of magazines, up to a man’s waist. On the wall, there were pictures. A woman on her knees, ropes around her hands behind her back, ropes around her ankles. She was wearing a blindfold. All the pictures were like that. Most of them were slashed, like with a razor. One woman’s face had a black X across it. The windows were sealed shut with duct tape. Everything smelled like rot.

  “The cops’ll be here soon,” the fat man said. “Don’t open the closet.”

  I turned around to leave. The little guy with the eyeliner on his face was standing in the door, facing out. He had a pistol in his hand, held close by his leg.

  I walked down the stairs to check out, my duffel bag over my shoulder. The clerk didn’t say anything, didn’t even look up.

  When I hit the street, I saw an Indian working under the hood of an old car. I moved slow, so he could see me.

  I found another hotel a few blocks away. The window looked out into an alley. The same Indian was out there, working on the same car.

  About a week went by. I went for a walk one day, had something to eat. When I opened the door to my room, the Indian was sitting there.

  “It’s time,” he said. “Time to meet the man.”

  “Okay.”

  “Not now. Sunday. We have to go to his office. When there’s nobody around to watch. Be downstairs, five in the morning. I’ll pick you up.”

  I was there, waiting like he said. It was a cab that pulled up. The Indian was in the back seat. He didn’t say anything to the driver. The cab took off. Still dark out.

  I couldn’t see the drivers face through the partition—he was wearing one of those chauffeur’s caps. His hair was long, black.

  The cab was quiet inside, moving steady, stopping for all the lights. I saw the meter in the front—it was running, like we were a fare.

  We got on the highway, headed downtown.

  “You’re not asking any questions?” the Indian said.

  “I don’t have any questions,” I told him.

  The cab pulled over. The Indian took a little black box from his pocket, pushed a button. I heard a beep from the front seat. The driver held the palm of his hand flat against the plastic partition. The Indian held his hand against it, like the way you shake hands in prison when they don’t let you touch.

  The Indian got out. I followed him. He had a red rose in his right hand. The building was the tallest one I ever saw—I couldn’t see the top from the ground.

  The security guard was sitting in front of a whole bunch of little TV sets. Each one had a different picture, black and white. One looked like an underground garage.

  The Indian held up the red rose. The security guard hit a switch. One of the little TV screens went blank.

  We walked over to the elevators. When the door closed, the Indian pushed 88.

  When we stepped off the elevator, the floor was empty.

  I followed the Indian down a long corridor, all windows to our left. The doors on the right were all open, nobody inside the rooms. Clicking, beeping sounds, like machines talking to each other. The Indian moved quiet, but he moved fast. The corridor made a right-angle turn at the end, and then we started down another hallway. This was down the middle of the building, no more windows.

  The Indian held up his hand. I stopped behind him. He pointed to the carpet in front of us. I looked close. There was a thin line across the hall, side to side. Another one a few feet away. I stared at it until it came clear … a bunch of little X’s covering about four feet, longer than any man’s stride. The Indian held his finger to his lips, pointed to the spot on the carpet where the X’s started. He stepped back, took a short run, and jumped over that section. He walked off a few feet to give me room—then I did the same thing he did.

  We made one more turn and the Indian walked into an office. A man was at a desk, typing something. He was facing away from us, next to a big window. The Indian tapped on the door frame. The man spun around, like he was surprised to see us.

  The Indian walked in, took a seat in front of the desk. I sat down next to him. On the man’s computer screen I saw what looked like the floor plan of a building.

  The man turned to face us. He had a long neck, a small head. Like a weasel. There was a big lump over one eye, bulging. The lump was pale, even whiter than his face. His eyes were bright blue, like the neon signs they use to get you inside the strip joints.

  “You don’t make much noise, Chief,” the man said.

  The Indian didn’t say anything.

  “Is this him?” the man asked.

  The Indian nodded.

  The man looked at me like he expected someone else. He turned away from us, tapped keys on his computer. Stuff came up on the screen, black on a white background. Too far away for me to read.

  “You ever been in Houston?” he asked me.

  I didn’t answer him.

  “Ever been in the Four Seasons Hotel on Lamar? In Houston?”

  I watched him. The Indian didn’t move.

  “Ramon del Vega was found in a room there. With his neck broken. Looked like a robbery. Except he had a gold-and-diamond Rolex still on his wrist. Almost nine thousand cash in his pockets.”

  I didn’t say anything. I remembered the guy. The people who set it up, they had me registered in that hotel. I got a call. The voice just said “Now” and hung up. I went to the top floor, taking the stairs. Saw the room-service waiter outside the door with a tray. I stood there against the wall. As the waiter was bowing his way out, his hand full of cash, I stepped inside through the open door. The guy inside started to say something. I broke his neck. Then I went back to my room. Two men came to my room, gave me the money I was promised. I checked out before they found the body.

  I never knew the guy’s name before this.

  The man with the lump on his head kept tapping the keys, asking me more questions. I sat there, listening. The man rubbed the lump on his head.

  “You’re sure this is him?” he asked the Indian again.

  The Indian got up, walked over to the side of the room. There was a postage meter, one of those electronic scales. The Indian made a gesture for me to come over, stand by him. The man got up from his desk, came over with us. He walked twisted. Standing next to me, he was much shorter. One leg was in a big crooked boot that laced up the front, like the foot was too big for a shoe. The Indian took something out of his pocket. Flicked his wrist, a long blade shot out. He put the knife on the postal scale. The dial on its face lit up. It said:

  0 4.3 1.21.

  Then he put his hand on the scale, just barely touching it with his fingertips. The numbers flashed, kept changing. Only the first o stayed the same. The middle numbers jumped: 1.1, 0.9, 1.3, 0.7. The end numbers jumped too, only not as much: 0.29, 0.52.

  “It reads in tenths of an ounce,” the Indian said to the man. “You can’t hold your hand steady enough to stop the numbers jumping. It
’s too sensitive.”

  “So?” the man said.

  “Try it,” the Indian told him.

  The man put his hand on the scale. I could see him lock up his face, concentrating. He couldn’t stop the numbers from jumping. He pushed down hard—it didn’t make any difference.

  “Pick a number,” the Indian told the man.

  The man looked at the Indian. Rubbed the lump on his head again. “Zero point six,” he said.

  The Indian nodded at me. I put my fingers on the scale, getting the feel, letting my fingertips go right inside my head, no wrist or arm between them. I thought about the numbers the man wanted until they came up on the face of the scale. It fluttered a little bit, then it locked in. I held it there.

  “Pick another,” the Indian said.

  “One point eight,” the man said.

  I let my fingertips go heavier until the number he wanted came up. I locked it in again.

  The Indian lit a cigarette. I held the numbers while he smoked it through. The man watched the scale. Then he limped over to his desk and sat down.

  We were sitting back across from him. Time passed. I didn’t keep track of it. The man looked over at the Indian.

  “So what’s that prove?”

  “You know what it proves,” the Indian told him. “You want him to bend a crowbar in his bare hands, break some boards, crap like that?”

  “I have to be sure.”

  “You know how to do that. What you told me. About Raiford.”

  “He’ll sit for it?” The crazy man talked. Talking like I wasn’t there.

  “You got Wants and Warrants?” the Indian asked.

  “No.”

  “You told me he jumped parole.”

  The man rubbed his lump again. “You trust me? I could get him pulled in, he’s the same guy.”

  “You won’t.”

  The man sat there for a few minutes. Then he got up, limped over to something that looked like a Xerox machine. He lifted up the cover, turned it on. It made a whining noise. Then he went back to the computer, tapped some more keys. “Okay,” he said to the Indian, “let’s run him.”

  The Indian got up, gestured to me to follow. He spread his hand out, palm down, pointed to the glass plate on the Xerox machine. I put my whole palm against it. Left it there for a minute.

  “Okay,” the man said from his desk.

  The Indian took a spray can from next to the Xerox, wiped off the glass.

  We sat down again. Waited.

  In a few minutes, there was a beep from the computer screen. The man hit the keys again, read the screen.

  “It’s you,” he said.

  The Indian and I smoked a couple of cigarettes apiece while the man played with his computer. He spun around in his chair to face us.

  “The PVW is off,” he said.

  “Parole Violation Warrant,” the Indian said. Looking at the man, explaining it to me.

  “Yes. You’re dead,” he said to me. “Killed in a train wreck in South Carolina. Amtrak out of D.C., heading for Florida. Unidentified white man, mangled pretty bad. We just ran his prints, got a match with yours. You’re off the computers. Dead.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You know what I want?” the man asked, looking right into my eyes.

  I nodded.

  “I find your girl, you do this for me … that’s our deal?”

  I nodded again.

  “Show us,” the Indian said.

  “What?”

  “You know he can do it…. Show us you can.”

  The man smiled. His teeth were yellow, crooked, all mashed together in his mouth. He went back to his computer.

  “Huntsville, Alabama,” the man said.

  I watched him.

  “Room 907. Marilyn Hammond. Executive VP for an options-trading firm on the coast. Declared an income of one hundred and eighty-eight thousand dollars last year. She’s a white female, five foot four, a hundred and fifty-one pounds. Brown hair, brown eyes. Divorced, no kids. That’s what she’s doing now.”

  “That’s not Shella,” I told him.

  “No, that’s not her, that’s what she does. This Marilyn, she’s heavy into S&M. That’s the way she gets off. Your Shella, she’s a hardcore top, you understand? After you went down in Florida, she took off. But she didn’t go back to dancing … she disappeared into the fem-dom underground.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “She can’t hide,” the man said. “It’s easy to find fetish players. All they think about is their games. It’s perfect for your girl … she doesn’t even have to be an outlaw. She’s not even selling sex now. They advertise in the magazines. Role-playing. Discipline sessions. All that stuff. I can find her.”

  I thought about that cottage we’d rented a long time ago. That girl, Bonnie. Shella slapping her.

  “We have a deal?” the man asked me.

  “We’re changing the deal,” the Indian said.

  The man rubbed the lump on his head, not saying anything.

  “We want to do your work first,” the Indian said. “Then, when you find his woman, he doesn’t have to come back and see you.”

  The man smiled his smile again. “So what I promised you for bringing him to me, for getting him to do the work … you don’t want to wait for that either?”

  “No,” the Indian said.

  “You’re worried he’s going to find his girl and take off … not come back and do the work?”

  “No.”

  “What if he does the work and I don’t find the girl for him?”

  “You will.”

  “You threatening me?”

  “Yes.”

  The man turned to me. “You okay with this? You do the work for me first, then I find the girl?”

  “You look while I’m working,” I told him.

  “The Chief here will tell you what I need done, okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “When it’s done, you get your girl.”

  I nodded.

  “I can find her,” the man said. “I can find anyone.” I just looked at him—this part was over.

  “I found you,” the man said.

  As we stepped outside, a cab pulled up. A different one. We got in the back. The Indian didn’t say anything to the driver.

  When we turned into the block near where I was staying, the Indian turned to me.

  “Get your stuff, check out, okay?”

  I did what he told me. The cab was still waiting out front. I put my duffel bag in the trunk.

  “You got a car around here?” he asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “Give me the keys.” I did it. “Show me where it is.”

  The cab pulled up next to my car.

  “I’ll follow in your car, okay?” the Indian said.

  The cab went along Broadway, turned into a block lined with apartment buildings on both sides. The sign said Carmen Avenue. The cab came to a stop. The driver didn’t say anything.

  I smoked a cigarette. After a while, the Indian opened the back door. I got out. We took my duffel bag from the trunk. I followed the Indian inside the building. It was a big apartment, long. It went all the way through: windows on the street, windows out back, into an alley. My car was parked back there.

  The Indian opened the refrigerator, showed me there was food inside. Furniture in the apartment, like somebody lived there. He gave me two keys. “One’s the front door downstairs, one’s for this place. The rent’s paid, nobody’ll bother you. There’s a phone in the living room. When you hear it ring, pick it up, don’t say anything. If it’s me, I’ll talk. If you don’t hear my voice, just hang up.” He gave me back my car keys too.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow morning,” the Indian said. “I’ll call first. Anybody rings the bell downstairs, don’t pay attention.”

  “I got it.”

  He turned like he was going to go. Then he spun around and faced me. Stuck out his hand, open. I didn’t know.… I put out my own hand.
He grabbed it, squeezed, hard. I squeezed back, careful not to hurt him.

  Then he went out the door.

  I opened my duffel bag, laid out my stuff Took a shower. Turned on the TV set. I left the sound off, watching the pictures in the front room. The curtains were closed—it was like night.

  A nature show came on. A snake caught a big fat furry animal. It swallowed the furry animal, a big bulge all through its body.

  The snake was a monster. Dangerous to anybody. But when it was all stuffed with food, it could hardly move. And it couldn’t bite.

  I made a sandwich, took some cold water from the refrigerator. When I finished, I smoked a cigarette. The telephone was one of those old black ones, with a dial instead of push buttons. I looked at it for a while.

  I don’t know one single phone number. Not one.

  I tried to think about what happened. It’s hard for me. I asked Shella if I was stupid, once. A long time ago. Her face got sad.

  “You’re not stupid, baby. Not like dumb-stupid. You don’t get things because you don’t feel them, that’s all. Like your brain is all scar tissue.”

  “I never got hit in the head. Not real hard, anyway.”

  “You just do it different than most people. There’s things we don’t want to remember. I worked with a girl once. She was a real racehorse, a sleek girl with legs that went on forever. Everybody called her Rose … ’cause she had such long stems, get it?”

  “I guess.…”

  “Oh, shut up. Just listen for a minute. Rose was hooking big-time. Worked out-call, never less than five yards a night. She didn’t draw lines, a three-way girl, she’d take it anyplace you wanted to put it. You get that, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “She killed a trick. Stabbed him to death with a letter opener. The papers said he didn’t have a drop of blood left in him when she was done. She didn’t even try and run for it—the cops found her right there. I went to visit her in the jailhouse. At first, it was like she didn’t recognize me. I held her hand. Then her eyes snapped and she knew who I was. I asked her what happened. She just said … ‘Flashback.’ That’s all she said. Flashback.