That's How I Roll: A Novel

by Andrew Vachss

  I must’ve gotten lost in that thought, because the next thing I remember was, Jayne started panting like she’d just run a race, making little gasping sounds. She bucked so hard I was afraid she’d come loose from me, but she put her face down and bit into the pillow I’d learned to slip under my head.

  I don’t know how to write down the sound she made before she collapsed against my chest. But she recovered quick enough.

  “Don’t stop, Esau. You’re not done yet. Come on!”

  ou want to know what that was all about, don’t you?” she said, a few minutes later.

  “Not if you—”

  “Ssssh. That was an orgasm, Esau. That’s what you have every time when you … shoot off inside me. It’s not the same for a woman. We don’t feel such things in only one place; it takes over our whole bodies.”

  “But you never—”

  “Did that before? Of course not. I didn’t even know I could. Listen to me go on. I know what they’re supposed to feel like—I’ve faked them often enough.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Not every man wants the same thing, Esau. Most of them, all they care about is satisfying themselves. But there’s always a few that want to believe they’re such bulls in the bedroom that they can make any woman … come, that’s the word they use. Any woman, even a whore.”

  “You’re no—”

  She put two fingers over my lips. “Not to you, Esau. I know that. Just like you’re no … client to me. I knew you were a very special kind of man the first time I ever met you.”

  “I—”

  “Shush, now. I’m telling you things of value. It’s kind of a tradition around here for men to bring their sons to a … to an experienced woman for their first time. But they don’t really want their boys to learn anything, not from a woman like me. The only lesson they want taught is that there are women so low you can pay them to have sex with you.

  “But you, you wanted Tory-boy to learn to be gentle. To kiss a girl sweet. None of these men wanted their boys to kiss a … woman like me at all. They didn’t want them to learn how to talk, how to caress, how to … well, really, how to do anything at all. What they wanted is to be able to take their boys down to wherever they hang out and brag that he’s a man now.”

  “So, when a boy like that gets full-grown, when he gets married, what does he know about … doing it right?” I asked her.

  “Nothing is what he knows. Why do you think they’re all brought up to marry virgins? How is someone going to spot your ignorance if they’re ignorant themselves?”

  “That all seems so … Well, you said it yourself just now: ignorant.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Not to the men. If their wives don’t know what to do, there’s always women like me.”

  “But there are folks who love each other. I know there are.”

  “Don’t confuse those things, Esau. Just because a man may be faithful, he’ll still feel it’s up to the woman to make him happy. And the only way a man is going to be happy is if he thinks he’s got the magic touch when it comes to his own woman.”

  “How would he know that?”

  “Remember what I said before? About faking an orgasm? Well, for that, a woman has to be good. Good and kind, both. Faking the orgasm, that’s just a skill. Something you can learn; something you can get good at doing. With most men, you don’t even have to be all that good to fool them, because they want to be fooled.

  “But kindness, that isn’t faking it at all. There’s nothing in that for the woman, you might think. But you’d be wrong. Doing a kindness because you want to make your man feel more like a man, that’s love. True love.”

  “So, before, you—”

  “Just stop right now! You’re supposed to be such a genius, can’t you use your mind? If I was faking—before, I mean—if I was faking just to be kind, why in the world would I explain how that works? In this bed, that first time, the only virgin there was you. Understand? That was you, trusting me. Can’t you keep on doing that, Esau?”

  “I never stopped,” I told her. And it was the truth.

  aybe Lansdale had just used me to get rid of an old enemy, the way Judakowski had sent that hyped-up young man into Lansdale’s bar a year or so back.

  Or maybe he was showing me real respect by knowing I’d want to square accounts with Judakowski my own self. The way a man should.

  None of that matters. If it wasn’t for Jayne being gone, I never would have told a word of how she’d healed me.

  But I don’t mind admitting that when she’d said “honey” that night, it made me think of the first woman to ever use that word on me.

  I don’t even mind admitting that I couldn’t wait to drop in at Lansdale’s bar. Once I’d made sure it was a night Nancy would be working, that is.

  aybe it’s just as well my hand was forced. Sooner or later, the day would have come when Tory-boy wouldn’t have been able to drive me home. So what difference was there between the hospital and the penitentiary?

  ven after Judakowski, I wasn’t in any danger. Nobody was going to suspect me of such a thing. Yes, Judakowski always had a lot of jobs out. What happened to him can certainly happen when a man doesn’t get paid for work he did. But even the cops who knew what I did and who I did it for, they believed I only worked long-distance. How else is a cripple going to shoot anyone, especially a wary man like Judakowski had been?

  Judakowski was right to be wary. I doubt there was a person in the world he could truly trust. His men weren’t with him the way Lansdale’s men were with him. They were nothing but a paid labor force, and they had to know that.

  You can buy obedience, but you can’t buy the kind of loyalty that makes a man throw himself between a pistol and his boss.

  Lansdale might have had plenty of worries—being shot in the back was never one of them.

  verything had been going along just perfect until those master-race morons showed Tory-boy a club he could join. Not some club that maybe might let him in if he did things for them; this club, they wanted him for himself.

  “I’m a pure Aryan, Esau!” he told me, all excited. “See, there’s ice people and mud people, and I got the perfect blood in me. They’re a great group of guys. And they understand, too. The first night, they tried to get me to have beers with them. I told them I can’t do that. Mostly, when I say that, folks look at me funny. But not them, Esau. After I told them I had to keep bad stuff out of my body, they looked at me like I was just talking sense.

  “The leader, he even said I was the ideal example! Pure, clean living, that was the way to build our race.”

  thought it would pass. Tory-boy could get all excited about something and then forget about it by the next day.

  But it only got worse. One morning at breakfast, Tory-boy told me he had a new girlfriend. “They picked her for me, Esau. And guess why! ’Cause we’ve got the best blood. She’s pure white, too. So we’re going to make babies. We’re going to uplift our race!”

  I knew that was never going to happen. Years ago, I’d had Tory-boy fixed. I got the doctor to read the medical records, and he agreed a vasectomy would be “in the young man’s best interests.” With me signing as guardian, it was all over in an hour.

  Tory-boy didn’t know why he was getting the “operation.” When I told him it had to be done, otherwise he could end up in a wheelchair like me, that was all it took.

  I needn’t have bothered with all that. Tory-boy knew I never would do anything that wasn’t good for him, no matter what.

  It would be a while before those skinhead imbeciles found out Tory-boy couldn’t make babies, but they already knew what he could do with a baseball bat.

  They didn’t need Tory-boy, but they sure knew how to use him. When he told me about going out on “actions” with his “brothers,” I knew it was just a matter of time before they killed someone. And who would end up taking the blame for it.

  I couldn’t put protection on Tory-boy anymore. He had learned
too much new stuff. He wasn’t exactly sure why muds and homos and race traitors were all controlled by the Jews, much less why they all had to be exterminated. Still, he was ready to do his part.

  I guess he didn’t remember the real reason why the Beast had killed Rory-Anne that long-ago night. Telling him nigger cock was much better than his was the same as her asking him to do it.

  I felt my heart start to crack in my chest, stress fractures already forming on its surface.

  had almost waited too long. When Tory-boy came home and showed me the swastika tattooed on his arm, that’s when I knew things had changed forever.

  Not because of the tattoo—because he hadn’t asked me first.

  That’s when Tory-boy told me he needed the tattoo because a real important meeting was due to happen the very next month. The big leader himself was coming all the way from Louisville to speak. Men were driving from Columbus, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Wheeling, Richmond … and a lot of other places. He couldn’t be the only one there without what he called “White Power ink,” could he?

  The night of that important meeting, I suffered some kind of attack. It was so bad I could hardly speak, and my upper body was locked up so tight I couldn’t get much of a breath, either.

  Tory-boy picked me up, carried me to the van, and drove me to the emergency room, paying no attention to red lights or stop signs.

  When they took me in the back, the doctors told him he couldn’t stay there with me. Tory-boy didn’t move. So some young doctor called for the security guards. But they were local boys, and they told the doctor they weren’t about to get themselves broken into pieces over nothing—all the young man wanted to do was stay with his brother, what was so wrong about that?

  That really infuriated the doctor. He ordered a nurse to call the police. She told him, “I’m sorry, sir, but you’re not from around here. Trust me, the police won’t come, not if you tell them who it is you want them to try and haul out.”

  t took a long time to run all their tests. They had my whole medical history there, and they could see I’d never had a seizure before. The doctors were puzzled, but doctors never admit that, so they kept at it for a long time before they said I was “stabilized,” but I’d have to go over to the state hospital for more tests pretty soon.

  Tory-boy probably thought his “brothers” would understand, once he explained why he’d missed the big meeting.

  aybe someday he’ll find another club that will want him to join.

  The one he used to be in is gone, and I don’t think there’ll be another one taking its place, not around here. I can’t see them trying to start up a new operation in the same town where seventy-nine of them were all inside a concrete building—Tory-boy said they called it “The Bunker”—when a series of sequential explosions turned the whole thing into a giant incinerator.

  Every one of them cremated, like they told Tory-boy they were going to do to the Jews someday.

  he very next day—a Wednesday, it was—Tory-boy and I went for a long ride, all the way to the state capital. The people I make things for told me where I could find a needle artist who’d know better than to remember things. His shop was always closed on Wednesdays anyway.

  That man knew his work. He turned Tory-boy’s swastika into a big butterfly. A black butterfly, outlined in red, with just a touch of gold beneath.

  Tory-boy never flinched all the time the needle was working on him. He never feels pain in his body.

  All his pain is in his blood.

  o now you know. You know the only crime I ever got caught clean for was by accident. I don’t mean I didn’t intend it; I just mean I never imagined the kind of investigation it would launch. How could I know the FBI had an informant planted in with those Nazi people? That’s how they knew every single person who was supposed to be in that cement tomb. And that’s how they knew who wasn’t there when their man got blown to bits.

  And they only knew that much because plenty of folks had seen Tory-boy around after the concrete oven had done its job—there were no bodies inside that anyone could hope to identify.

  So, when they came out to the house after that, they came in force. The only way to save the dogs was to tell Tory-boy to let them pass. Otherwise, the men wearing all that body armor would have had their chance to use those machine guns and other toys they couldn’t wait to play with. Tory-boy would have tried to stop them, and their gunning down his dogs would’ve turned him into a monster worse than anything those men had ever imagined.

  Once they got inside the house, they surprised me by acting so polite. But I was a match for them in that department. I knew Tory-boy would be anxious, what with all those people and cars around, but I never let it show.

  They told me what they already knew, and I didn’t blink. But once they showed me their own agent’s field reports, once I did the math and worked out the dates, I saw there wasn’t but one way to save Tory-boy.

  knew that the Feds had their own courts, but that didn’t concern me. Once we had the deal worked out, I knew I wouldn’t be gone more than a week or two before being sent back home. That’s how long it would take for me to plead guilty.

  I had to make sure I took that plea in front of people who didn’t know me. The way the law works is, you can plead guilty all you want, but it’s a jury gets to set the penalty.

  I couldn’t be sure that local folks would look all that unfavorably on me killing all those Nazis. It wasn’t like you could find a lot of liberals around here, but I couldn’t imagine any of them shaving their heads, or wearing those silly costumes. Those Nazis might be all white, but they were still all strangers.

  But of all the things that separated us, I think it’s music that would create the widest chasm. Around here, people respect music. I don’t mean “today’s hits” or that video garbage—once you’re in our hearts, we never forget you. So, even if WWVA isn’t the king of radio anymore, Hank Williams is never going to give up his throne.

  Lansdale never said, and I never asked, but I felt I knew why he named his little nightingale “Patsy,” too.

  All those White Power people did with their music was make a lot of noise. It wasn’t just that nobody from around here bought their CDs; nobody from around here would want anyone to think their music was our music.

  So my own people might not want to sentence me to death, but outsiders didn’t speak our language, and I knew that confessing to all the other murders I’d committed would guarantee I’d get what I wanted.

  hadn’t known the Feds had a plant in with those Nazis, but it didn’t matter. I knew the truth, deep inside myself. I was—I don’t know any other word for it—jealous. I should have been satisfied that, no matter what, I’d never lose Tory-boy’s love. I should have been pleased that he’d shown he was a lot smarter than I’d given him credit for. I knew that because he didn’t tell me about those skinheads until he’d already joined up; Tory-boy had known exactly what I would have said if he’d asked me first.

  And that tattoo.

  I would have killed them all for that alone. Killed them because I wanted them dead.

  If I could have turned my hate into explosives, there wouldn’t be any of them left, anywhere.

  hat’s how I ended up here, telling my true story. I don’t know when anyone will read it—it could be pretty soon; it could be decades.

  If it turns out that I’m never betrayed, the final timing is all up to Miss Webb. I’d taught Tory-boy to mind her just like he did me. We were holding hands, Miss Webb and me, when I told him that for the first time.

  And if Miss Webb—if Evangeline—was my … my woman, that was enough. Tory-boy always minded his big brother, so it made perfect sense to him that he had to mind his sister-in-law. He might not know about legalities, but my Tory-boy knew me. And he knew I’d made my choice.

  here were some complications involved in order for them all to get together and give me the assurances I needed. But they managed it.

  When everyone turned t
heir cards faceup, the hands looked like this: the State could clear dozens of unsolved killings on their books with the statements I was going to make when I pleaded guilty, but it would be a federal jury that would pronounce the sentence.

  The deal was fair all around. The Feds wanted some things. The local DA had his own list. And there was something I wanted, too. It would take years for them to execute me, and I had to be near Tory-boy—as near as I could get—until it happened.

  When everybody knew their role, the Feds read me a list of agents who’d been murdered within my reach. I picked a bomb that had been planted in the car of an FBI agent who worked way north of here.

  In fact, that’s where they started. They had this big map loaded onto the computer, so it could project on a huge screen. Our house was in the center of that map, and they had different-colored circles around it.

  Concentric circles, like when you throw a rock into a pond. Whenever they moved the circles away from our house, the readout in miles would show in a corner of the screen.

  The map was dotted with black “X” marks. One for every murdered agent whose killer had never been found.

  When they first activated the screen, sure enough, a black “X” popped up where that Nazi bunker had been.

  I hadn’t known I was signing my own confession when I blew up that bunker. But it wouldn’t have stopped me if I had.

  What did shock me a little was seeing another black “X” where that motorcycle gang had set up their hangar so many years ago.

  I guess about the only place the Feds didn’t have their hooks in around where I lived was with the local bosses. Or maybe they did; if they were still alive and undercover, they wouldn’t have shown up on the map.

  hat’s how I ended up here. Coming home while I waited to die was my choice, and I was intractable on that score.

  I couldn’t risk waiting for the needle anyplace other than close to home. I had to make sure they kept me in a place where Tory-boy could visit.

  I had to be in a place where I could still get messages out when I needed to. A place where I could still do business.