Terminal

by Andrew Vachss

  And a white supremacist with no reason to lie said he had a man who could tell us the part we didn’t know.

  “We have to—”

  The Mole doesn’t interrupt, unless he needs to get the train back on the track. This time, he pointed to a large, flat piece of equipment, with four VU meters on the front.

  We all turned to watch as he stood up and pushed a button.

  “This is ‘pause,’” the man with the subterranean complexion and Coke-bottle glasses said. “When I activate it, what you will hear is not the original. The signal-to-noise ratio was very poor—probably just a cassette recorder in the pocket of one of the people talking. There are only two voices. I put them on separate tracks”—he pointed at a pair of cone-shaped speakers, placed equidistant from the thing with the meters on the front—“so there will never be a doubt as to which one is talking. Here is a transcript my son made.” His pale-blue eyes met Michelle’s lilac contact lenses; the pride of parenthood lanced between them, so clear you could actually see the beam.

  He handed Max a thick sheaf of paper, bound along the left side and coated in heavy, transparent plastic.

  Then he pushed a button.

  “How come you give me the full search, and I don’t get to do the same to you?”

  I didn’t recognize the Tootsie Pop voice—hard around the edges, soft in the core—but I put the speaker’s age around fifty.

  “You think I’m working for the Law, walk out.” The cancer-man’s voice: low in volume, too self-assured to waste effort on threats.

  “It’s not that,” the other voice said, whining with resentment. “It’s just…well, you know, I haven’t had a finger-wave since I got out.”

  “You think that was a thrill for me?”

  “No. You know I didn’t mean that. Only…”

  Nothing but a throbbing silence for several seconds.

  “Okay, forget it. But something like this, a man has to be careful.”

  “I was.”

  “Not you. Me.”

  “You said a man,” the AB old-timer said, his voice the opposite of the other guy’s. “There’s only one of those here, in this room. You asked for me. There had to be a reason. Whatever it is, I know it’s not Brotherhood business. So it better be money. Lots of money. Something you want done, but you don’t have the stones to do on your own, maybe. Or, maybe, something you need a crew for, and you don’t have one. So you’re going to say something. Something you don’t want anyone else to hear.”

  “If it was, you could understand why I’d want to check for—”

  “You don’t need to check for what you already know. You know me. You know my name. You know my pedigree. You know I don’t talk.”

  “Sometimes, when people get…desperate, they—”

  “Look at me,” the AB man commanded. “Look at me the way you looked at me Inside. What do you see, punk? I’m the man who stood between you and a ram job from every nigger in the joint. Right? Right?!”

  The tape was silent for a few seconds. Long enough for the other man to nod, I was guessing.

  “You were supposed to be some kind of long-con guy,” the AB boss said. “A paper man. So you must have done your homework. Before you got word out to me, I mean. You know I don’t have paper on me. No wants, no warrants. No parole, no probation. No arrests, no charges. You could confess to more killings than that sack of shit Henry Lee Lucas, what could I use it for? The Law’s got nothing I want. And I sure as fuck wouldn’t waste my time blackmailing you.

  “I searched you to make sure you’re not here working for the Feebles, trying to get Brotherhood info, make some kind of deal for yourself. Me, I got no deal to make. So now we’re done with this. Talk, or walk.”

  The sound of a cigarette being lit. Exhalation.

  “I’ve got something,” the stranger’s voice said.

  Another exhalation.

  “A murder.”

  “Call 911,” the AB man said. I could hear the dismissive shoulder-shrug in his voice.

  “This is an old murder. More than thirty years old. Three men—boys they were then, but that doesn’t matter—did it. Rich boys. Rich boys who got richer.”

  “The ones you told me about when we were Inside? They’re still alive?”

  “Yes! All three of them. I’ve got everything on them. And every single one could pull millions in cash out of safe-deposit boxes alone.”

  “So what changed since you first told me? You’ve got some suspicions—”

  “Proof,” the stranger said, confidence adding strength to his voice. “Absolute, rock-solid, stand-up-in-court proof. What’s changed is that now I realize that I can’t turn it into the kind of money it’s worth, not by myself.”

  “This proof—you saw it for yourself?”

  “I…Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

  “This murder’s never been solved?”

  “Never. And the girl they killed was no throwaway, either. Her family was rich, too. They still have muscle. Thirteen years old. Raped to death. You think they forgot? I’m telling you, this is worth a fortune. Millions.”

  “So you say.”

  “No. I mean, I will say, if it comes to that. But I’ve got a lot more than that.”

  “What? DNA? Fingerprints?”

  “Not DNA…probably. It was a long time ago, like I said. Fingerprints? They probably left some, but how could they still be around now? It doesn’t matter. Even without any of that, I’ve got something that nails their coffin.”

  Sound of another cigarette being lit.

  “I got pictures. I got one of the bats they used on her. And the kicker: a piece of paper. An old piece of paper—they’ve got all kinds of ways now to prove how old it is—with them all but admitting it. This club they had, they kept a journal. I made them give it to me, to protect myself, from what they asked me to do. Plus, for all they know, I got them on tape, too. I always had a lot of that recording stuff in my place back then…and that’s where we were when they told me about it.”

  “So you want to give them what you have in exchange for—?”

  “A million apiece. That’s three. And all I need is a half.”

  “Half of—?”

  “No, no. Half a million. The rest is yours, all yours. I know there’s expenses with something like this.”

  “How come you never just—?”

  “These are rich men,” the stranger’s voice said, fear threatening to break through the thin membrane of his voice. “Really rich. Who knows how they might react if I was to—”

  “So you want me—”

  “The Brotherhood. I want the Brotherhood. That kind of…operation, it’s not part of their world. If they even saw some of the men you’ve—”

  “They might just call the cops.”

  “Not a chance,” the stranger said, confidently. “Not when you put certain stuff—stuff I’m going to give you—on the table.”

  Another exhale.

  “Then it’s done,” the stranger said. “Done for everyone. They’re not coming after you guys, not people like them. And me, I’ll be in a place where they could never find me.

  “See how sweet? You get paid. I get paid. And they get the Sword of Damocles removed from hanging over their heads all these years. Everybody wins.”

  Sound of another cigarette being lit.

  Exhale.

  “I’ll listen,” the cancer-ridden man said. “If you’re playing straight, there might be a move here. If you’re not, I can find you a lot easier than you found me.”

  “It happened in 1975,” the other man’s voice said. “It was late summer. Maybe two-thirty, three in the morning. I hear a car pull up. I figured it was probably one of the local rich boys, looking to score some weed. My light was on, so—”

  “Your light? Outside your house? Meaning you were open for business?”

  “Exactly! Everyone in town knew that signal.”

  “Which means the cops did, too.”

  “Sure.
And so what? The kind of kids I sold to, you think the cops would’ve done themselves any favors busting them?”

  Silence on the tape. I could see the AB man on the screen in my head, making a “keep talking” gesture.

  “There were three of them. I knew them all. From dealing. But they weren’t there to score weed—they were scared. Scared to death. You know how some people get so scared they actually stink from it?”

  On that screen in my head, I could see the AB man. Just sitting there. Staring at the sniveler, not saying the obvious.

  “I got them calmed down. Best I could, anyway—one of them, he couldn’t stop crying like a baby. What they told me was this: There was this girl in their neighborhood. A little younger than them, but way filled out, and she knew it. The oldest one, he had his own car. You know what that kind of thing means to kids. And this girl, she wasn’t even fourteen, okay? But when he asked her to go someplace with him—the movies, I think it was—she just laughed in his face.

  “It wasn’t like she had a boyfriend or anything. She was just one of those natural-born cock-teasers. You know the kind I mean. She let one of the other two—the one who couldn’t stop crying, in fact—hold her tit once. In the backyard of her own house—big house, with a gazebo—you know what that is…?”

  Sound of a match scraping. Flame. Cigarette being lit. Exhale. Figuring that was all the response he was going to get, the stranger picked up his story:

  “Well, anyway, here’s the thing. He had to kiss her ass first. I don’t mean be nice to her; I mean, get down on his knees like a bitch and actually kiss her ass. And he did it. Me, I would have—”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yeah, it does. I’m trying to show you what kind of—”

  “It doesn’t matter what you would have done.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that’s…Anyway, she was—to hear them tell it—like some kind of devil-bitch. She gave the other one—not the crying one, not the guy with the car, the third one—a hand job once. But she stopped before he got off. And then she told him, if he ever wanted another one from her, he had to finish that one himself…and let her watch. You see what kind of cunt she was?”

  Sound of a cigarette exhale.

  “They spent a lot of time on her. Like they had some sort of club. Sick bastards. They took pictures of her. One even broke into her room, took a pair of her panties. Next day, the cunt sees him, tells him he should have taken a pair from the hamper—they’d smell better.

  “All they could do was think about what they wanted to do to her. Tie her upside down and whip her until she begged. Begged for everything, I mean. The guy with the car, he kept talking about how he wanted to fuck her in the ass, make her scream, you know?”

  Exhale.

  “They followed her everywhere. She knew it, but she wasn’t afraid of them. She wasn’t afraid of anything, the way they told it. One night—the night they came to my house—they caught her alone. They decided they were going to do it. All of them. One after the other, then all at the same time. Teach the dirty little whore a lesson she’d never forget.

  “They took her to this place they had all set up. A house that was empty for the summer. One of them had the keys—he was supposed to water the plants or something. They even had this old rug they were going to lay down on the floor. When they were done, they were just going to roll her up in it, and unroll it on her front lawn.

  “They had cameras. Polaroids. If she ever opened her mouth, the whole school would see them. See her on her hands and knees, one cock in her mouth, another up her ass.

  “It worked just like they thought it would. They grabbed her, took her to the place. And they all did her. She wasn’t such a mouthy bitch then. Even posed for the pictures. Only…only she died.”

  Exhale.

  “That’s when they went nuts. They never figured on…something like that. She just stopped breathing. They knew it was all over then.”

  “Why come to you?”

  “I was a little older than them.”

  “How little?”

  “What difference does that—?”

  Silence.

  Cigarette exhale.

  “Twenty-two,” the stranger said, just the faintest hint of defensiveness in his tone. “They knew I was a man—they were boys, just little punks—they knew I could get things done. I told them, yeah, I could take care of it. Take care of everything. But it would cost them. Cost them big.”

  “How much?”

  “I didn’t say. They didn’t ask. They just said, ‘Do it, Thorn. Please do it.’ And I did.”

  “Did what?”

  “Just what they planned, only in a different spot. I rolled her body up in the rug, carried her out to this place in the woods I knew. I pushed a big log over her, covered the body with stuff from the ground. Didn’t take long.”

  “They never found the body?”

  “Oh, they found it,” the stranger said, bitterness almost overpowering his voice. “Assholes didn’t give me enough time to do a professional job. I would have put her through a woodchipper or in a furnace. Or gutted her and dumped her in the lake. But it didn’t matter. The cops never had a suspect. Never made an arrest.”

  “Her parents had money?”

  “A lot of money. Everybody there had money. Even my parents had money…not that you’d know it from the way I had to live. They—the cunt’s parents—they hired private detectives, even got the FBI involved, I heard. But there was nothing.”

  “That big a case, maybe they still have tissue samples, hair, fingernail scrapings….”

  “The kids were all wearing rubber gloves. Masks, too—I don’t know why—they told me she knew it was them from the moment they snatched her. Condoms. Like I said, they were planning this for a long time. Now, the rug—that I did burn. But they don’t know that. If I still did have it, the forensics guys might get enough stuff off it to bury them all.”

  “What’d they end up paying you?”

  “A 1976 Corvette Stingray,” the stranger said, reverently. “Brand-new. I ordered it with everything. All white, inside and out. Man, if I still had that car today, it’d be worth—”

  It’d be worth crap, I thought to myself. Maybe ten thousand, tops. The Vettes of the Gas Crisis era were sad little weaklings, about as “collectible” as Edsels. I filed the thought away: either this guy knew nothing about cars, or he was someone who kept his lifelong bitterness derma-close, hating the rest of the world for the opportunities he fucked himself out of.

  “That was it?” the AB-OG said, in his machine voice.

  “Well, yeah. I mean, later on I tapped them for little loans. That was much later, when things went bad for me. They were always happy to help out an old friend who fell on hard times.”

  “You don’t have a tape, do you?”

  “No. But they don’t know that. And they sure don’t know I don’t have that rug.”

  “What do you have?”

  “The Polaroids. Nice clean, sharp copies. And something else. Something special.”

  I didn’t know what the Mole had done to the cassette tapes the AB man had left with me—probably wouldn’t have understood if he had explained it, either—but the audio quality was like being in the room. I caught the Prof’s eye. His slight nod told me he was thinking the same thing I was. Max was buried in the transcript, still reading.

  “You’re not from out here,” the stranger on the tape said, a little bit of confidence seeping into his voice. “New York, it’s got a set of laws you wouldn’t believe. Back then, anyway. Here’s the way it worked: you’re under age sixteen, you could walk into a church with an Uzi, mow down a few dozen people, and the worst you could get was juvie time.”

  “Until you were twenty-one, right? Then they’d just put you—”

  “Then they had to cut you loose!” the stranger’s voice said, proud to out-knowledge the man he feared. “There was this kid, I forget his name, but I know he was a mud; he killed a whole lot of differ
ent people, just because he liked doing it or whatever. He was the one that got the law changed. A reporter did this big story on him—for New York magazine, it was, I remember—about how kids could get away with murder. That’s what got the law changed.”

  “So?”

  “So that law, it was like standing between heaven and hell. Because, if you were under sixteen, no matter what you’d done, you’d never see a real penitentiary. But on your sixteenth birthday, you’re a man. None of this ‘transfer hearing’ stuff you read about in other states. You know, where the court gets to decide if you should be tried as a juvenile or as an adult. In New York, you turn sixteen, you go straight to criminal court. No social workers, no ‘best interests of the child,’ none of that crap. Trial by jury. And if you lose, you go down the same as any other adult.”

  Exhaled cigarette.

  “Don’t you see what I’m telling you, br—?”

  I could feel the stranger stop himself before he slipped and called the cancer-ridden man “brother.” He was tiptoeing as it was—that deep of an insult could cost him a lot more than a refused offer. “Look,” he said, quickly, “two kids commit the same murder. I mean, they do the exact same things…say, shoot a guy in the head, using two different guns, and the coroner said either shot would have been fatal. Only difference between the kids is they were born twenty-four hours apart. One turns sixteen the next day; the other turned sixteen a few hours before the murder. It’s 1975, remember? The younger one gets kiddie camp; the older one gets life. Sixteen in this state makes you a man; and a man’s crime means a man’s time.”

  “That’s the trick in this?” the AB man said. Not challenging, just making sure he understood what he was being told. “The fifteen-year-olds, they don’t have that much to worry about, but the one who’s sixteen, he gets The Book?”

  “Right! So, if you go to one of the fifteen-year-olds—right now, today, I mean—he knows the one who was sixteen at the time is going to confess, cut a deal for himself. He has to. And if you go to the one who was sixteen, he knows the other two will talk—what would there be to stop them?”